The Return: A Novel (42 page)

“That’s your romantic imagination,” said Marder.

Statch, who was sipping at a margarita, sputtered at this, causing a plume of fine spray that glittered in the light of the dozens of luminaria placed around the terrace.

“Says the most romantic person in the world to the absolute least.”

“Maybe you’re changing. Maybe we’re switching personalities: maybe it’s your turn to be romantic and mine to be the coldly calculating one.”

A certain bitterness in this remark struck her, and she said, “Excuse me, but is anything wrong?”

“Not really. I’m just fine, if you ignore that I’ve turned my house into a fortress bristling with military hardware, controlled by mercenary killers under the command of a gentleman who, to my certain knowledge, has been a few bricks shy of a load since 1969. I’m looking at a party full of nice people dressed as corpses and wondering which of them is going to be actually dead in the next few days, the deaths being my fault, my fault, my grievous fault. And all because I…”

“All because what, Dad?”

He could feel her interest focusing on him, the primary urge to comprehend that she’d had since age five, the thing that kept her here, where she too was probably going to get shot.

“Because I liked the view from this terrace.”

She waited, but nothing more than this evasion came. He drank another couple of swallows of the
añejo.

“I think you’re exaggerating, Dad. The army will be back through here in a couple of days and the bad guys will return to skulking and a little light dismemberment. They’re not going to launch a mass attack againt this house with Major Naca and his tanks in the district.”

“You’ve been apprised of Major Naca’s motions?”

“In a way. He called me and I wormed it out of him. He’d just come back from the cemetery and he wanted to talk.”

“He lost a child?” asked Marder, for today had been the first Day of the Dead. In the old days there had, of course, been many, many little angels, and although there were fewer now, there were still plenty among the poor of Mexico.

“Wife and two little kids, in the earthquake.”

“Not the big one in Defe, surely. He’d be way too young.”

“No, the Manzanillo one in ’95. They were on vacation and they were strolling down the street after lunch and a façade fell on them. Missed him, killed them.”

“Good Christ! He told you this on the phone?”

“He did. I was surprised too.”

“Do you have a … relationship with this man?”

“I had coffee with him once. But on the other hand, it’s El Día de los Muertos. Normal rules don’t apply. He seemed like a lonely person who wanted to talk to a sympathetic stranger about his loss. It happens on trains and airplanes all the time. Sometimes it’s the beginning of a relationship and sometimes it’s just what it is, a reaching out to an anonymous human, like a secular confessional.”

“Which is it in this case, do you think?”

“Oh, I don’t know—he’s an attractive guy, a little old maybe, but isn’t that what they say about daddy’s girls? I certainly haven’t been overly successful in establishing lasting relationships with my contemporaries, and when I think about the kind of dating I was doing in Cambridge, it’s like it was happening to a different person. He’s up in Apatzingán, and when he passes through here again we’ll see how it goes. Don’t hire the hall yet.”

Now a figure approached, dressed like many others in a skeleton-printed long-sleeved T-shirt. To this had been added a stylish wraparound calf-length skirt and a skull mask with a pre-Columbian look: bright red, studded with glass jewels, and sporting a long red plume above.

Statch said, “Speaking of inamorata … I’m going to find someone to dance with. See you on the battlements, Daddy.”

She bounced away, waving gaily at the red mask as she left.

Who sat at Marder’s table and tilted up her horrid visage.

“If your wars are as good as your parties, Marder, the narcos haven’t a hope.”

“It
is
a good party,” said Marder. She had a hectic look quite different from her usual severe professional visage—a mask, he thought, just as artificial as the scarlet thing perched on her head. “Have you been dancing and drinking your fill?”

“Drinking, not dancing, I’m afraid. It was drummed into me as a little girl that our kind does not whirl around the floor to the strains of the mariachi. They rendered me a perfect little tight-ass. God forbid someone should mistake me for a
naca
.”

At this moment, the band—four guys from Playa Diamante, from the El Cielo end of town, the cousins of someone, with a guitar, a
guitarrón
, a fiddle, and a trumpet—started a bolero after a spate of bouncing
canciones rancheras
. Almost without thought, Marder rose and took Pepa’s hand. “No one would ever suspect you of being a
naca
, Señora,” he said. “You are as
fresa
as it is possible to be, nor could the most abandoned dancing detract an iota from your
fresismo
. Which we will now demonstrate,” he added, and led her onto the dance floor.

Marder knew a good deal about Mexican dancing, and it was clear after a few minutes that his partner did not. He therefore took her in hand; at least she knew how to follow his lead as they cruised through the evolutions of the bolero. He did some fancy work, not discreditably, and she registered an amused appreciation.

“I’m starting to believe you
are
a Mexican, Marder,” she said. “Where did you learn to do those moves?”

“In Sunset Park. That’s a Mexican neighborhood near where we used to live. My wife liked to dance. She was very good at it too.”

“She sounds wonderful.”

Marder picked up the tone of this remark. “She
was
wonderful. She was graceful, intelligent, creative—Maria Soledad Beatriz de Haro d’Ariés. Perhaps you’ve read her poetry?”

“I’m afraid not, but that’s certainly an interesting name. My parents come from high
criollos
but not quite as high as that. My, my, you are a surprising man. So she was a poet too. I am myself prosy, and clumsy, as you are no doubt observing this minute.”

“I’m observing nothing of the kind. And she was wonderfully beautiful, a superb mother, and a terrific cook.”

“I’m shriveling: say her bad points, please.”

“There are only two I can think of. One was that she was a little crazy. Every so often she would have a screaming fit. I mean she practically had to be physically restrained to keep from hurting me, or herself. And she would direct this insane rage only at me, never at the kids, thank God, or at anyone else, because I was responsible for uprooting her from her native soil and leading her into loathsome exile.”

“If you don’t mind me saying so, that’s ridiculous. Why couldn’t she hop on a plane? Or, for that matter, you could have settled here if it was so important to her.”

“No, I
said
she was a little
crazy
. The point of the madness was that her father had to forgive her or she couldn’t return. And he wouldn’t. He was that kind of man. He had fallen to zero in the eyes of the world, maybe, but to his family he was still the
hidalgo
, the
hacendado
.”

“Yes. I know men like that. What happened to him?”

“He was assassinated. He resisted extortion from
los malosos
and they sent a couple of
sicarios
after him. Her mother was killed in the same attack. No one in the family bothered to tell her. When the lawyers made the distribution after the will was read, it turned out that her mother hadn’t forgotten her. There was some old family jewelry she wanted Chole to have. That’s how she found out. A FedEx package with a pearl-and-garnet necklace, some silver, a couple of brooches, and a letter from a lawyer. And she came apart.”

The bolero ended and the band took up a sprightly
corrido
in the
tierra caliente
style.

“Could we sit this one out?” said La Espinoza. “I could use another drink.”

They sat, and in a moment or two Epifania came by with a cold pitcher and filled Pepa’s glass with margarita.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” said Marder. He poured and drank another shot. Around him the fiesta had become blurry, like an arty photograph of a fiesta, and the shrill trumpet seemed unnaturally loud. He heard a woman scream and the sound of men shouting at one another. Well, that was all right—there were inevitably fights at fiestas. He wondered if Skelly had posted guards. No, it was still the truce of Santa Muerte, the white goddess whom the murderers all worshipped. In another day the killing would begin again.

“I know why,” she said confidently. “So then what happened? She came apart and…”

“She was sort of gone. The kids were away at college by then, and somehow the woman I’d loved for over twenty years just wasn’t there anymore. She’d been replaced by someone who screamed curses at me when she wasn’t in a drugged-out sleep. It was very strange, like being in a dream. I said to her, let’s go to Mexico, find out what happened, get back with your family. No, she didn’t want that, it was too late, I’d ruined her life, and so on and so on. I figured I could set something up, get a place down where she used to live, a nice house, and surprise her, somehow get her on a plane and when she got there everything would work out. Somehow. I was not thinking too clearly, obviously, but I pushed ahead. I found a woman who specialized in rentals in the right area, and I started looking at properties with her, and … what can I say? I was miserable, she was attractive, and we started a thing. I mean right there in her office, on the desks, on the floor.”

She listened as the rest of the awful story came out. Her face was hard to read: encouraging, impassive, sympathetic? Marder suspected that, given her profession it was a professional face, developed to maximize the flow of tragic tales in a country unusually rich in them.

When he was done, she did not comment or offer condolences or, worse, tell him he shouldn’t blame himself. She only took his hand and said, “Let’s dance some more.” Out on the floor she clutched him, pressing her body against his, ignoring the tempo of the current song; they circled slowly in a corner, like a toy spun by a soft wind. As he circled, Marder caught a periodic glimpse of Skelly and Lourdes, who were really dancing to the tune; he could see sparks of sweat lit by the glowing pepper lights as they whirled. He felt of stab of irritated pain—not quite envy, because he would not have traded his own life for Skelly’s, but rather a wish that he had more of the man’s talent for life in the moment. Skelly looked young in the colored lights, far younger than Marder. Was it the life he’d chosen or the human growth hormones? Pepa was now pushing her breasts into his chest and resting her head against his collarbone. What was this? Marder decided not to think about it, to live like Skelly for the space of a dance.

But not quite. “Have you been able to talk to Lourdes?” he asked.

He felt her stiffen. “As a matter of fact, I have.”

“And?”

She pulled away from him and looked into his face. “You’re really interested in this, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Are you going to interview me about why?”

“No. I owe you any number of favors, and I’m as completely indifferent to the fate of beautiful young girls as it is possible to be. I spoke with her. I reminded her of the delights of fame and wealth. The girl has the attention span of a seagull, although she seems to like conspiracies and so should do well in Mexican television. I haven’t spoken to the priest about his car.”

“I’ll arrange that. I’m going up to La Huacana tomorrow morning to inter my wife’s ashes. The two of you can come along.”

“The two—”

“Yes, you have to come too. To keep the seagull focused on getting on her plane.”

She paused for a moment, her hand resting on his shoulder. They both regarded the dancing Lourdes. The perfect face was alive with pleasure and the promise of undying love. Skelly was soaking it up; they could see the delight on his face, the hard planes, the hard eyes all made soft by her presence, by her delight in him.

“That’s one of the most amazing pieces of acting I’ve ever seen,” said Pepa, “and I speak as a professional.” She leaned again into Marder and they continued their own, more ambiguous dance.

*   *   *

Somewhere past three in the morning, the band closed down, collected its fee plus a substantial tip from Marder, and drove off to their barrio. The women cleared the foodstuffs away and the lights went out. Marder walked his dancing partner up to the second floor, both of them very drunk and giggling with it, stumbling down the darkened hallway. They stopped at the door to her bedroom and he clasped her hand.

“Well, this has been very pleasant,” he said, “really the most pleasant evening I’ve had in a long time. Everyone had a good time, didn’t you think? Maybe it was the situation—maybe they all thought it was going to be the
last
good time.”

“Mexicans always party like it’s going to be the last good time. It’s a national trait. And for so many of us it
is.
I mean, it’s a good bet, especially in Michoacán.”

“Yes, there’s that. But we also believe that the dead are always with us, and maybe the dead enjoyed the party too, maybe life and death don’t matter quite so much as we’ve been taught. Or do the dead like to see the living having a good time? Are they jealous? I wouldn’t be, I don’t think. When I’m dead I plan to be a happy spirit.”

“What was the second thing about your wife?” she asked.

“Excuse me?” Marder was having trouble standing up. He threw an arm around the woman and leaned into her.

“Before, you were telling me about your wife and I admitted that she sounded superior to me in every way, and you said, no, she was deficient in two things and one of them was that she was crazy. What was the other?”

“Oh. I meant she was dead and you’re not. Assuming alive is better, which is sometimes difficult to believe. I’m starting to talk nonsense. Maybe it’s time to sleep.”