Dancing with the Tiger (32 page)

With a pitiful cry, Constance clambered to the side of the pool. She crouched and paddled the water with cupped hands, drawing the tiara closer, nearly falling in. When the crown was a yard away, she hooked it with the barrel of her rifle. The drenched scarf dripped black water on the flagstones. She set down the gun and held the tiara, fingered the
scarf, held it briefly to her nose. Her hands trembled. She turned to her husband, her face drained of color and expression, features flat and stony as a Mayan mask. Her eyes begged for reassurance, explanation.
What happened here? What has been happening?
She was ready to believe, to follow his story wherever it led. Any peg to hang her coat on. Any wisp of plausible fact.

Thomas's mouth twitched, formulating a fresh confabulation, but then he seemed to change his mind and gazed over the wall, down to the glittering lights of Oaxaca, like he was already down there, gone.

Anna turned to Salvador. He and the others watched Constance, wondering what she would do. The chapel, the masks, the petty affairs, the disappointments and deceit, all these she had borne. But this? Anna stepped forward, but for a second time stopped herself.
She doesn't want you.

Time slowed. The skeleton floated, white as alabaster, water licking its rib cage, its skull, its delicate fingers. Still crouched, Constance seemed unable to rouse herself. Her cheeks trembled. Her chin quivered. She held out a hand, then dropped it. The night's silence was broken by a wretched sob. She crumpled, chest heaving, crushed by the weight of what she now understood. All masks had been lifted, and she saw her husband and she saw herself. A sadist and a sycophant. Two Americans lost in Mexico.

She twisted, her face runny and red. “What did you do to her? What have you done? You hurt her. You hurt me. Everyone.” Using the gun as a crutch, she staggered to her feet. “All those girls I pretended not to see. For what?” Tall again, she hoisted the rifle to her shoulder, braced her legs, took aim squarely at her husband.

For the first time, Thomas looked worried. He patted down the air. “Now, puppet, don't fly off the handle. Holly gave me the crown before
she left. It was a present. I didn't tell you because I knew how upset you'd be—”

Constance cut him off. “You are a liar. You lie over and over again. I can't stand the noise that comes out of your mouth. Give Anna the mask.”

Thomas did not budge.

Constance shook her rifle. “Squirrel, I am not asking you.”

The look Thomas gave Anna could have killed a snake. He shoved the mask into her chest. Its one decent eye rolled:
You again.
Thomas turned. A gunshot exploded. Anna screamed. Thomas buckled. Blood seeped through his pants. Daniel ran to his side. “
Jesus
Christ
, she shot him.” Chelo backed up, hand protecting her belly. The looter stepped in front of her, a shield, arms spread, but Constance kept the rifle firmly aimed at Thomas. “That's enough,” Daniel shouted. “You've hurt him.” With his belt, he fashioned a tourniquet around the sodden leg, murmuring about mistakes and violence and ridiculous and what the hell kind of circus was going on here anyway. Thomas was shaking, an animal in shock. Salvador spun behind a tree, frantically whispering into his phone,
Amapolas . . . emergencia . . . accidente.

Finding herself unscathed, Anna rushed to check on her father, the looter, the girl. This moment of calm was shattered by the sound of crashing glass. An eerie
whoosh
swept across the yard, followed by a loud crack as the chapel burst into flames. A second later, the right side of the roof blew off. Masks flew across the lawn, and a series of low blasts shook Anna's insides.

Salvador shouted at Anna to go to the house, then ran across the yard for a hose. Ignoring his directive, Anna went to stand by her father. Together, they watched.

The chapel burned quickly, as if by divine ordination. The wooden
beams and pews kept the fire stoked. The soaring flames animated the masks' ghastly faces, their charred mouths gaping. Skulls rolled in the embers. Daniel darted about, trying to save a few treasures. The two dogs barked themselves hoarse, and the peacocks screeched from their cage, and the neighbor's donkey brayed in terror. Soledad appeared, breathless, still in her apron, hair frazzled. At the edge of the patio, she fell to her knees, crossed herself, lips moving, all sound lost in the chaos. Salvador yanked the hose across the grass and shot a stream of water into the blaze, without any noticeable effect. He was screaming,
“La casa, la casa,”
and the Mendez family appeared and formed a bucket brigade. Anna joined in, horrified to see that the fire had reached the woods. Thin branches sizzled like tinder. It had not rained in weeks.

A fire truck roared up the street, followed by police and an ambulance. Salvador opened the gate. Men in yellow hard hats leapt across the yard. Curious neighbors snuck in behind them. They wore nightgowns and flip-flops and held toddlers, whose soft faces watched the fire like it was TV. One man shot a video with his phone. The firemen hustled out a sloppy hose. The chapel seemed bigger now that it was burning, its insides spewed on the lawn, a foul purging, a secret revealed. One by one, the walls fell, and when the belfry collapsed, the brass bell dropped like a severed head. Constance drank red wine straight from the bottle, rifle at her side, bony knees high in her slung-back chair. Two police officers questioned Salvador. Mexicans suspected Mexicans first. Chelo sat on the wall, rocking in the curl of the looter's arm. Anna remembered Thomas, but he had disappeared somewhere. Perhaps to the hospital.

“Where's Thomas?” she asked Salvador, who was clutching empty buckets, breathing hard.

“What?”

“Thomas.” Anna pointed to where blood stained the grass. “Where
is
he?”

“Ni idea.”

Anna checked the house—the living room, the couches—and the ambulance, vacant but for two EMTs smoking, then circled back to Constance.

“He took off,” Constance said, finger pointing to the woods.

“You didn't stop him?”

Constance answered slowly, her eyes fixed on Anna's throat. “I could never stop him.”

“But by law . . .”

“The law?” Constance gave her a withering look. Her face was smudged with soot.

Anna gave up. Her eyes stung from the smoke. Her dress was stained, its hem ripped loose and sagging, but she was okay. Salvador was okay. So was her father.

“How did the fire start?” she asked, changing tack. “Do they know?”

“Eventually,” Constance said, raising her wine bottle, “the small ones retaliate.”

Down in the valley, a firecracker exploded. A sunflower of purple and gold blossomed, then trailed off in spermlike fizzles, some new kind of failure.

“They never stop with the damn
cohetes
. What time is it?” Anna checked her watch. Three a.m. She called out over the wall. “God is sleeping, people.”

Constance raised a hand. “God was a collector. God was the
first
collector.”

Anna whipped around.
“What?”

Constance really did look crazy. Her pale eyes were remote and watery. Her painted toes curled into filthy terry-cloth mules. Her robe hung open and her nightgown dipped dangerously to one side. She gripped her weapon like an aging Amazon.

“The animals. The plants. The desert.
We
are his collection. This
was
his chapel.” Constance swung her arm at the wrecked lawn, the crushed flowers, the oily puddles and embers, the hoses and fallen timbers, the charred chapel, a half-melted monster.

“And look what we've done with it,” Anna said, assessing the apocalyptic vision.

Constance smiled darkly. “It's more fun to collect things than care for them. But I wouldn't worry too much about the mess.”

The firefighters had the blaze under control. Salvador was on the phone again. Soledad was calming the dogs.

“You're right, we shouldn't worry,” Anna agreed, her mood as black as her dress. “The Mexicans will clean it up.”

—

Not long after,
the police questioned Anna. She botched her grammar, but they didn't seem to care. The verb “shoot” was
disparar
, which always sounded like “disappear,” which was the point of shooting something, or someone, after all, to make them disappear. Exhausted from inept conjugations and pantomime, Anna withdrew to a bench overlooking the pool, keeping an eye on Holly. Thomas had disappeared, but Anna was going to make damn sure the evidence did not. Her father joined her. He made a face at the skeleton and whistled.

“He's a real freak. Dressing the dead up like dolls. To think, all those afternoons, Daniel Ramsey sat on that patio, chattering away.
You know, I found my notes. Those Grasshopper masks, the Centurion, I'd bought them because—”

“Lorenzo Gonzáles told you to.”

“How did you know?”

“Thomas made them. Gonzáles peddled them. Gonzáles probably tipped off the Met himself. He sells you junk, humiliates you, then offers to bring you back from the dead.
Daniel Ramsey will buy Montezuma's death mask.
You or Reyes. Only, his plan backfired: the death mask was real.”

Her father pressed his temples. “Folk art used to be so innocent, but money ruined it. I ruined it. Thomas ruined it. Your mother always said I had an addictive personality.”

“You do—”

“I prefer to call it ‘passion.' But I had no business chasing masks when I hadn't taken care of the small decent thing.”

“The ashes?”

“The ashes. You. Me. The house. Your mother would have been horrified by my drinking.” He held up a hand to stop Anna from piling on. “I've been dry for six shaky days. Give me some credit, please. My head is killing me.” He looked around, his righteousness collapsing. “You know, I've always pictured your mother resting under a tree.”

Anna nodded. “A pine tree would be good.”

The city lights pulsed beneath them. The cathedral glowed. Anna felt her mother was close.
I was seeing things through her eyes, as she had seen them. She had given me her eyes to see.
Rose's spirit had never left this proud, magical country, where the frogs yakked and the stars sighed, where tigers danced and the dead lingered, where each night the white lilies closed their petals against the dark.
Pobre México, tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos.
Poor Mexico, so far from
God, so close to the United States. An old joke. Really, of course, it was the reverse.

Though she finally had the death mask, Anna didn't feel victorious. Here at the pool, as the Mendez children ran in circles, astounded at their luck to be out of bed, as the firefighters conferred, Anna watched the floating skeleton, keeping vigil. She felt the weight of objects, her obligation to the dead, to the past.
We destroy so many things with our touching, starting with the things we love most.

Something shifted in the pool. The skeleton's foot dropped below the surface. Then a shin, then a knee. Holly was sinking. Weighed down by the legs, the pelvis hovered, then submerged, followed by the rib cage, until all that remained was the skull, two sockets, deep and black as life's unanswerable questions. Anna took her father's hand. He whispered something in her ear. She watched. She listened. For once, the dogs were silent.

No one ever asks me how I do what I do. My genius is another miracle people think they deserve. Like the miracle of a newborn child. Or the miracle of ocean tides. When people die, I put their bodies back together, sew them up, patch their wounds, paint them, polish them, pump their veins full of life until they are themselves again, dead but on their way to the village. That's all a saint can do. If I have time, I pack them a lunch.

I am an aesthetician, a seamstress, a coroner. I am the Frida Kahlo of the underworld. Coco Chanel with a golden sewing machine. I do more heavy lifting than the Virgin Mary, her royal chasteness, her hands idle and white. Once, I was a beautiful woman. Men got on their knees for me. They begged to slip their hands under my satin dress, snap my black garter, bury their faces in my breasts. I opened their presents, parakeets in tin cages, oleander soap, saffron.

Now there is nothing but the work.

I begin with the eyes. The embroidery is taxing and can't be rushed. It takes hundreds of silk stitches—brown, blue, emerald, overlapping—to make eyes that endure for eternity. They let you speak without saying a word. You could say “I love you” and you could say “Screw you” and you could say “Pass the
bolillos
and butter.”

With a warm sponge, I wash limbs, scrub skin until it gleams like marble. At first, I dreaded the heavy ones, all that fat to work around, but I have become a person of greater sympathy, softening as I age. The children make quick work. So beautiful, so small.

After I drain the blood, I fill the body with an elixir of mint leaves and pomegranate, sprigs of basil, lemon juice, cinnamon, a dash of ouzo. The flesh regains its color, its heat and sensation. My hand pump keeps a steady pace. Each limb I massage in turn. I allow myself the occasional break. Smoke a cigarette. Why not? I am already dead.

The final touches—nails, lips, tongue. I sprinkle the hair with marigold oil and henna until it shines. The feet are often disastrous. I have seen toenails as gray and brittle as shale, and every kind of fungus. If it's bad enough, I pour myself a drink. I can work well high. I am the Pancho Villa of Purgatory. I am the Edith Piaf of Paradise. Some people do not recognize themselves. They say, “This isn't me at all. You have confused me with another.” But death cannot remedy what life has spoiled. Each day, you make the face you live and die with. A saint is not a magician.

Go and live now. Use yourself up.

I'll be here waiting. The handmaiden of humanity. The auntie of the afterlife. The bitch of the great beyond. I will darn your eyes and scrub your teeth and water your mouth and hem your belly and perfume your earlobes with lilac.

Don't thank me. No one does. I am just a skeleton paying for her sins.