Dancing with the Tiger (2 page)

I've worn a mask most of my life. Most people do. As a little girl, I covered my face with my hands, figuring if I couldn't see my father, he couldn't see me. When this didn't work, I hid behind Halloween masks: clowns and witches and Ronald McDonald. Years later, when I went to Mexico, I understood just how far a mask can take you. In the dusty streets, villagers turned themselves into jaguars, hyenas, the devil himself. For years, I thought wearing a mask was a way to start over, become someone new. Now I know better.

—Anna Ramsey, from her unfinished memoir,
2012

She wore black, the color of nuns and witches, the color of the loneliest corners of outer space, where gravity prevents all light from escaping, the name given to boxes tucked into airplanes, the ones that explain the disaster. She chose green earrings to match her eyes, a bra that accentuated her cleavage. The strappy sandals she fastened around her ankles gave her the three-inch rise she needed to look him in the eye.

She drove to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, found a garage, let a valet park her car. The air was so cold she could see her breath.

“I won't be long,” Anna told the boy, slipping him a few bucks. “Put me near the exit.”

The reception was already under way. Beneath a cathedral ceiling, svelte guests murmured small talk and gossip. Gay men in tight pants and tangerine neckties. Pale nymphs in taffeta miniskirts or cowgirl
braids or Clark Kent glasses, trying to prove they could be beautiful no matter how badly they dressed. Grandes dames, donors, scions of Rockefellers and Guggenheims, women with names like Tooty and Olive, their thinning hair shellacked into gladiator helmets, their spotted wrists weighed down with bangles. The Velvet Underground sang,
“I'll be your mirror.”

Anna plucked champagne from a passing tray, ran her hand down her dress. Her engagement ring caught the light. Familiar faces drifted past. Artists. Celebrities. Critics. A man who had pressed her to sleep with him. She'd told him she didn't do that anymore. She was with David. Monogamous, a virtue that sounded like a disease.

The champagne hit her hard. Anna hadn't eaten since that morning's sugar doughnut. She finished her flute, took another, set off to find David, strolling past Campbell's soup cans, Marilyn, tawdry black-and-white films from the Factory. Everything cheap and loud and repeating itself.

She found him holding court in the Damien Hirst room, schmoozing next to a shark suspended in formaldehyde. Looking into his eyes, she felt nothing. Their three years together, a collapsible hat. Instead of slapping him or sobbing, she dug down deep and pulled up her love, let it radiate across her face. She revealed her whole self, perhaps for the first time. Only hours before, she would have done anything to make him happy.

David acknowledged her with a playful mouth. His circle opened to let her join.

Black, the color of mourning.

Black, the color you could never take back.

“Anna,” he said. “You look . . .”

She swept into his arms and pressed her lips over his. Not a cordial
peck of recognition or reunion, but a full-body embrace, bare arms wrapped around his head, fingers playing his short hairs, breasts flattening his lapels, pelvis teasing his hips, yes, there. He stiffened, embarrassed, surprised, but then drew her close. Anna put everything she had into the kiss, three years of affection and trust, three years of plans for tomorrow, and the day after that, three years of fucking monogamy. Her warm tongue made the transfer from her mouth to his as her hand entered his breast pocket.

Black, the color of sex.

Black, the color that fire leaves behind.

She let him go. David's forehead creased with confusion. His lips puckered as his long fingers reached into his mouth and withdrew the offending object. Curious guests leaned in; their gleaming faces filled with prurient delight to see the unflappable David Flackston, a curator of modern art at the Met, open his mouth and remove a diamond ring. Even more curious was his new pocket square—a beige pair of ladies' panties.

When the papershop girl announced that her family was moving to Veracruz, Hugo felt his blood drain from his body. He asked
When?
and Lola said
Two weeks
and Hugo said
How long have you known?
Lola said
They told me yesterday
. Hugo paced the paper shop, slamming his fist on the counter because she was leaving him and because in Veracruz every man would see what he'd seen and smell what he'd smelled and what was now his alone might be stolen by any man looking for stationery.

Like a good fire, their love affair began with paper. Hugo was writing his cousin in Texas and needed the kind of skin-thin stationery that makes even the firmest intention seem like a dream. He'd stopped in a
papelería
and the girl behind the counter smiled. His stomach tightened. She wore a yellow dress with white bunting, all schoolgirl and fresh daisy. Her fingerless lace gloves fastened with a snap. The first
customer paid for his pens, the second did his copying. The door jingled shut, leaving the two of them, Hugo and the girl, surrounded by pencils and compasses and pens with invisible ink.

“How can I help you?” she said.

Hugo unrolled his lust, crimson as a Persian rug. The girl twirled her hair, toying with him, promising good service if only he asked. In his mind's eye, Hugo touched her as gently as his nature allowed, tracing his fingertips over her thigh. He was a gardener, a man used to cultivating difficult flowers. His adoration pleased her, he could tell. It pleased her to know he found her irresistible, a pastry in the bakeshop, too pretty to eat. He was a man. Perhaps this alone justified why he wanted the girl in the yellow dress, why he did not ask her age. If she was old enough to work in the
papelería
, she was old enough to handle money and men. Hugo said exactly what he was thinking: “I came here to buy stationery, but then I saw you.”

He thought of his wife. Her face came to him in a hard chip of light, an accusation so stark he turned away. Afterward, he did not think of his wife again. Not when he flattered the girl, not when he ran his finger along the underside of her arm. Not the next day, when he brought her yellow dahlias. Or the next, when he led her to the back room, slid his hand between her legs, and discovered the papershop girl went to work every day damp and hungry.

Each afternoon, Hugo returned. He swiped the girl's earbuds, listened to the rhythm of Romeo Santos, then made an indecent proposal of his own. He kissed her ear, combed her hair with his fingers, tattooed her skin with chalk. When a customer called for help (“Is anyone here?”), he pressed a ruler against her throat. After the door slammed, the girl laughed, licked his palm. His desire burned like the end of a match. He wanted to take her youth. He wanted to build her a pyramid
that reached the sun. He wanted to put her in a cage and feed her guava and plant his seed inside her every day. He wanted this child to make him a child who would outlive them both. When she took him in her mouth, she called him Papi. She was not really a child. She had breasts, hair. Her lace gloves matched her underwear. She was old enough that he couldn't help her with homework. He shoved her math book across the counter, lifted her dress, slipped inside her, whispering, “Little schoolgirl. This is what I know.”

—

But now she was leaving him
. His knuckles bled in the creases. He'd seen men punch walls and now understood the satisfaction. He wound up again.

“Basta,”
the girl cried, pulling his arm. “I have something to give you.”

She dragged him to the back of the store. Hugo collapsed in a chair. The girl nuzzled into his lap, pushed a package toward him. He pulled the ribbon, determined to be gentle, to rouse his best self. A book of Aztec history. He saw she was proud of this adult gift, and he wondered whether she had given him the book because he spoke Nahuatl, the language of the Mexica, his ancestors, one of the original Aztec peoples, or whether she was sending him a message that she would go to university one day, become more than a shopgirl, pregnant at twenty, delivering child upon child, living in a two-room house spiked with metal supports for a second story that would never be built. He flipped the pages—Acamapichtli, Aztec warriors and priests—feeling weak before these brave men. Lola stroked his head, coddling his grief. His hurt hand grasped the hem of her dress.

She read aloud.
“The practice of human sacrifice was fundamental to
the Aztecs' faith. Thousands of men, women, and children were killed each year in hopes of appeasing the willful gods and keeping the fragile universe in balance. On holy days, priests in black robes led victims—warrior, prisoner, slave, or maiden—up the Great Temple and carved out their beating hearts with a flint knife.”

Lola noosed her arms around his neck: “If you were sacrificed, how long would your heart beat for me?”

“Forever, my yellow schoolgirl.”

Satisfied, the girl seesawed in his lap, blew in his ear, kept reading:
“The sacrifice was cooked and eaten, invigorating the living with fresh energy from the dead. Priests hung the skulls on a rack and wore the flayed skins during sacred ceremonies. The morning after the slaughter, the sun rose, proof of the ritual's efficacy. The sky at dawn turned pink, a reminder of the human blood spilled in homage to the deities.”

She smiled, flirty, happy. “What sacrifice would you make for our love?”

“I would offer you my heart on a gold plate, and when you ate me, I would live inside you forever.”

The girl dropped a flip-flop, wiggled her sparkling toes. “It's like Jesus. The Son of God died for our sins. Now in Communion, we take his body and blood.”

“Like love.” Hugo peeked beneath her blouse. “I spill my blood for you.”

Something inside the girl snapped.

“What blood?” she sneered. “What sacrifice? You come here, spill yourself, and go home to your fat wife and chickens. If you love me, leave your ugly wife and marry me. Punish my father, who watches me through the door when I undress.”

Hugo grabbed her chin. “That is a lie. Your father is a lawyer.”

“My father is a lawyer who peeks through a crack in the door.”

“I will kill him and steal you away.”

“You would not dare.”

Hugo slapped her. She clutched her cheek, but did not cry. The coldness of her stare stopped his pulse. He buried his face in her breasts, breathed the air she warmed.
She has watched too many telenovelas. She is playing a part.

“Your father never touched you,” he said.

“His desires keep him awake at night. He stalks the hallway like a lynx.”

Hugo felt himself slipping backward, losing purchase. He did not want to marry the girl or harm her father. He liked things as they were, the yellow afternoons lined up like books on a shelf. He even loved the paper shop: the smell of ink, the bright pens and notebooks under glass. The shop made him feel like a boy again, only with the bonus of sex, the missing delight every boy senses is his reward if he ever manages to grow up.

“Give me time,” he pleaded. “I will arrange things.”

But he did not arrange things. Every day, he went home and dug in his flowerbeds and ate food like a hollow man. When his wife asked what was wrong, he said nothing was wrong, and his wife made him tea from plants in the yard and sought advice from a witch doctor, who mixed a love potion that she sprayed in his socks.

The looter locked himself in the safe-house john, unfolded the money Reyes had thrown him. Two thousand dollars. An insult. A pittance. Degrading to man and mask. To the living and the dead. The looter lifted the window shade, watched night descend. Across Mexico City, mothers fixed dinner. Fathers fell into their armchairs like kings. Children wrote down wrong answers in pencil. Every day ended in darkness.

He lit his last rock.

The rush punctured his psyche, sandblasted his heart, filled him with a glow he could never replicate or describe but, if forced to name, he would have called love. He fell to his knees, pressed his cheek on the cool toilet seat, dreaming a hundred ways to get even with Reyes: rattlesnakes, lead paint, toxic prostitutes. The looter snickered, wishing
he had company in his head. A square dance of partners. But it was all high talk. You didn't get even with a drug lord. You got dead.

Who the fuck wears a hat with pink ribbons?

There was one real hitch to his bliss. He was out of crank. Most days, he was one thing or its opposite: In a cave or out. Rich or broke. High or wishing he were more so. This conformed to the Maddox Principle of Opposing Equilibrium, a little theory he'd coined that went like this: His shady life in Mexico was exterior stuff, surface, cover of the book, not the book. What mattered long-term was a man's inside, his core, his heart, mind, soul,
being
. If his insides stayed true, the outside could indulge in sybaritic delights: women, crack, looting. In fact, it would be irresponsible not to.
Because there was time.
Time for hedonism and excess. Time
later
to settle down. Reform. Rise from the ashes for a second act. A third. Wisdom was the rare province offered to those who'd tried everything once.

The faucet dripped. He listened.

He wanted the mask back, but by now Feo had photographed it, logged it in the books. The looter tried to forget the scraps he'd been thrown, but when he closed his eyes, the death mask grinned, ten million bits of turquoise glued onto the shattered face of a man. Its lone eye taunted:
Who the fuck are you?
A man or a dog?

He thought back to high school, how he and his buddies used to cliff jump at Eleven Mile Reservoir. They'd pound a six, staring down two stories of rock at the freezing water, gathering their nerve, until one of them chanted their call-to-arms.
“Dogs, would you live forever?”

A strip of light shone under the bathroom door. Timeline. Tightrope. Arrow. The looter studied it until he made up his mind.

—

He snuck out of the safe house,
riding an ice skate of adrenaline. Ten minutes later, he reached the orange juice stand. Pico was just a kid but reliable. He wore an Astros baseball cap and a gold cross. His face was round as a plate and just as empty. Pimples. Baby fat. Another
güey
who didn't belong to anyone. Where was his mother? The looter paid cash for his goodies, but didn't know the Spanish word for the last item on his Christmas list. He laid his cheek on paired hands, an angel pantomiming sleep.

Pico laughed. “You have a date tonight?”

The looter cupped his palms. “Big tits.”

“Give me a minute. Mind the shop.”

Pico popped into a
miscelánea
, returned beaming, brown bag in hand. “Hold on a minute.” He cut an orange, squeezed it. Pico always made his clients fresh juice, like he wanted to be sure all his junkies got their vitamin C. Or maybe with pulp under his nails, he appeared legit to the cops, to his
abuela
. He handed over the juice and the bag.

“Hey, some free advice,” Pico said. “Take a shower and you won't have to drug her.”

The looter gave a wolfy grin. “Hey, more free advice. Ask the pharmacist for medicine to clean up your face.”

“Cabrón,”
Pico swore, but he was smiling, pleased someone had bothered to notice his messed-up complexion.

“Hey, Pico.”

“What?”

The looter bowed. Blood rushed to his face. He almost fell over, but righted himself. Harold Lloyd, hanging on a clock.
Safety Last.
He was Everyman. He was Nobody with a capital N.

“Vaya con Dios.”
He meant this as a joke and he meant this sincerely.

“¿Dios?”
Pico chucked the orange peels in the garbage. “We sold God to the Americans with Texas.”

“We sold him to the Chinese.”

Pico shrugged. Mexicans didn't want to hear about American hardship.

The looter limped down the block, hips stiff from the cave. The limp was new but suited him, a pirate disguise. His hands left sweat stains on the bag. He'd take a bump in the first alley he found. Now always trumped later. The juice made him nervous. Maybe Reyes had poisoned the oranges.

He turned the corner, threw the fucking cup against a wall. The juice dripped down the stucco, a new sun exploding.

—

That night,
he crashed in the safe house. Not that he could sleep. Spirits circled the compound like ghosts, all those dead men—fuckups and cowards, assassins and cons. Who missed them? Who loved them? Who cared enough to sort the arms from the legs? Inside Pico's goodie bag, ten white bullets. It was hard to have confidence in things so small. He stuffed them in his hip pocket. Crafty as Cortés, he set out to explore.

The safe house was a place to flop, store dope, hide stolen cars. From the outside, the place passed for normal: three stories, four-car garage, security wall, grass tough as matches. Inside, the mood was tense, men jacked on coke and paranoia. The first-floor storage rooms were kept under constant surveillance. Normally, the guards huddled on the ground, texting, but tonight the merry threesome played poker: Feo, Alfonso, and some other fool. When the looter strolled up, the men
lowered their cards. AK-47s hung from their chests like guitars. Each was working a six of Tecate. A drained liter of Cuervo lay tossed to the side.

“Señor arqueólogo,”
Feo called out, his face puffy and red, “fetch us more tequila.” He lifted his gun halfheartedly.

The looter thought of five things to say, but instead asked,
“¿Dónde?”

Feo gestured with his gun. “In the basement. Go, faggot. Earn your keep.”

The looter found the light switch, headed down the dim stairs, bracing for corpses, but there was just a bunch of yard stuff, barbed wire, dog food, bottles of bleach. A case of tequila sat next to the hot-water heater. He unscrewed a bottle, dropped in Pico's pills, hula dancing them until they dissolved. He didn't budge for a good minute, got stuck there, thinking how most hard things in life were easy, most easy things hard. Then, moving again, he cinched the cap, took the stairs up, two at a time.

“
Caballeros.
Let me break the seal for you.” He twisted the bottle open with a maître d's flourish, took a pretend swig.

Feo glared. “He's drinking before us. What kind of service is that?”

Alfonso curled his tatted lip. “Shoot him.”

Feo snuggled his gun into the looter's rib cage. It rested there, a thing that could go off. Saliva clogged the looter's dry throat. You couldn't argue with stupidity. You had to wait it out.

The third guy grabbed the bottle, drank, wiped his mouth. “If you shoot him, I'm not cleaning it up. You can explain to Reyes what happened to his precious digger. If not, it's your turn.”

Feo stared at the punk. He had a new enemy. He shifted his gun to face the third man. He wouldn't pop him, but if the gun went off, the bullet wouldn't be wasted.

“Play your cards,” Feo snarled. “Pass me the bottle.”

The looter evaporated, locked himself in the john to wait. He stared at the lonely faucet, the grout, the feminine curves of the pedestal sink, put a name to what he'd committed to: He was risking his life to screw over Reyes. That, or he was finally standing up for himself.

—

A half hour later,
he tiptoed back to the hall. The guards lay splayed, heavy with sleep. He tapped Feo's thick shoulder. Nothing. The looter entered the first storage room, switched on his headlamp. Bricks of marijuana were piled knee-high. Without warning, the third guard lifted his head. The looter flattened into a shadow, closed his eyes. He could die here or he could not die here. The precariousness of the moment brought fresh understanding. Fuck Guatemala. He needed to go home. Make amends. Pay his mother back the three grand he'd stolen. Buy her a new microwave. Rub her fallen arches.

He willed the guard to drop back asleep. As if by command, the man collapsed, curling into a comma, a messy hunk of punctuation, silent again.

The looter's hands trembled as he opened the second door. The room was a wreck of duffel bags, helmets, and guns. His fingers played over shelving crammed with relics—pots, urns, magical flutes, pieces he'd sold to Reyes months ago lay stacked without order or care. A take-out fried chicken container rested on a hammered gold mask. A bully stick balanced on a Mayan urn. Reyes claimed he was an art collector, but he needed Gonzáles to tell his head from his ass.

On the bottom shelf, a familiar blue face glared up at him.
Motherfucker, get me out of here.

The looter lifted the mask, already calculating his next move. He'd send Gonzáles a photo, have the asshole dealer find a buyer with deep pockets. No need to mention this hiccup with Reyes. Just tell Gonzáles that Reyes had passed on it.

Mask so nice he'd sell it twice.

Floating out of the vault room, he murmured a cradlesong to the junkies and hit men.
Sleep, little babies. Sleep, beautiful boys.
Even the worst men looked innocent when they slept. Their faces were the masks they'd wear when they died. Their own faces, at peace.

Gliding into the perfumed night of Mexico City, the looter whispered,
“Col-or-a-do.”
The death mask grinned in his satchel.