Dancing with the Tiger (7 page)

“Just as a girl.”

“No car, no Spanish, no experience. Oh”—he nodded with fresh understanding—“so it's a guide for tourists.”

Anna felt compelled to defend her nonexistent book. “No, I hate tourists.”

This was a ridiculous claim, and Anna blamed the painter for driving her to it. She looked like the quintessential tourist, with her flowered dress and margarita, an authentic drink turned cliché, ruined yet delicious. Anna liked to see herself as a traveler, not a tourist, but this was like claiming you were spiritual, not religious.

“With beginner Spanish, how can you ask good questions—about the soul of their animals, how God enters the wood, what it feels like to dance the dances of their ancestors? Or will you just ask everyone out for a margarita?”

He had a point, though it was rude of him to make it. Her father had complained of this very thing. Carvers were shy. They mumbled. Some spoke only Nahuatl. They didn't trust Americans, didn't want their pictures taken.

Two waifs in dusty clothes approached, selling gum. The painter brushed the girls away. “
No,
niñas
. Tell your mother you should be in school.”

He pulled in his lips, as if something were hurting him. Anna softened.

“Maybe you're right,” she conceded. “But before I hire a guide, I'd need to check his credentials.”

He sat up. “Of course.”

“How well do you know San Juan del Monte?”

“I was born there.”

“Do you have a car, or just a motorcycle?”

“I have a car.”

“Do you speak Spanish?”

“Me defiendo.”

“What's the most beautiful place in Oaxaca?”

“If I told everyone, it would no longer be beautiful.”

“Last question. Do you know Thomas Malone?”

The painter set down his cup. “Thomas Malone?”

“The art collector.”

“Never heard of him.”

The painter flagged the waiter, who produced his check on a tiny tray. The painter's mood had abruptly shifted, teasing replaced by irritation. He didn't look at Anna, not even through his shades. Anna was surprised she cared, but she did. She saw the ball around his neck was a globe. She wanted to unclasp it and slip it in her pocket.

“You're leaving?”

“I have work.” The implication was clear: He had real work and she didn't. The painter plunked down a gold ten-peso coin.

“Wait,” Anna said. “Do you have a card? I'm going to Mexico City, but I might need a guide after.”

“I usually work with professional tour companies.”

“You just said . . .”

“Try Dolores on the square. She's cheap.”

“Maybe I don't want cheap.” Anna understood his ploy: Now that he'd convinced her she needed his services, he would have the pleasure of denying them.

“Really? Where is your hotel?” He touched his temples, a soothsayer summoning mystics. “Let me guess. The Puesta del Sol?”

Anna folded her arms. “It's a lovely establishment.”

“My aunt is the
dueña
.”

Anna didn't know what to say. To confirm the hotel's shabbiness would be to denigrate his aunt. To defend its merits would prove her foolishness. The painter laughed at her predicament. “Don't worry. I know it's ugly.
Pobrecita.
That hotel is all she has.”

Pushing back his chair, he spoke in the punctuated Spanish of Chapter One.
“Buena suerte con tus aventuras.”

Good luck with your adventures. Anna caught the double meaning.

She threw down her last card. “Tepito should be an adventure.”

He stopped. “Tepito? In Mexico City? Don't go there. It's not safe.”

“That's why I'm going.”

He met her eyes. She had scored a point in whatever game they were playing. But then his phone rang and she lost him.

“Dígame, cariño.”
Tell me, loved one.

Coddling the phone, Salvador waved a distracted good-bye and made his way out to the street. His motorcycle hacked a smoker's cough before disappearing around the bandstand; then, oddly, he circled back. A victory lap. Or maybe he'd forgotten something. And then, definitively, he was gone.

Anna considered the empty chair. Loneliness blew through her. She was furious with herself and with him. Of course, she knew a danced mask was more valuable than a tourist mask for the same reason an English armoire was more valuable than a coat rack from IKEA, for the same reason old love was more valuable—and rare—than new.

She knew the back side of a mask was as important as its face: serious collectors sought a rich patina, wear marks built up from dirt
and dancers' sweat. She could have lamented the persnickety powderpost beetle (a critter that drilled pinholes into masks) and discussed methods for fumigation. She could have talked about the African mask's influence on Picasso. Or discussed the James Ensor painting
Masks Confronting Death
and recited the artist's observation:
“The mask means to me: freshness of color, sumptuous decoration, wild unexpected gestures, very shrill expressions, exquisite turbulence.”
She could have explained that her life was an exquisite turbulence she never managed to still. She could have told him she had come to Mexico to bury her mother and resurrect her father. She knew the fucking verbs to say this in Spanish, if he'd stopped speaking English long enough to listen.

She lit her 199th cigarette, scoped the patio for eligible men, but the place was filled with tourists fiddling visors and fanny packs. Screw it. He thought she was an idiot, and she was, for letting him think so.

A text rang into her phone. David.
We need to talk. Drink @ Charleys @ 6
.

Anna dropped her phone into her bag headfirst. On the corner, a shopkeeper hung stuffed toys from his awning. Bug-eyed Bart Simpson dangled from a hook. Yes, that was how she would leave David, twisting in the wind.

She flagged the waiter.
“Señor, otra margarita, por favor.”

A second margarita was a mistake, of course. The kind of mistake Anna was used to making. Her signature mistake. The one that always called her name.

“
Madre María
, mother of us all, it's Soledad. I have news. Señor Thomas sent me down to the English library this morning to check on the ad. I hate that place. The Americans all stare at you like you're going to steal their purse. The ad was buried by other notices, so I put it back on top. It's been weeks and they still haven't found a replacement. If the
señor
had treated Señorita Holly better, she wouldn't have left. Jealousy, that's what it was. The
señora
misses Holly terribly, though she's too proud to admit it. Another postcard arrived yesterday from California and it set her off again. All afternoon, she stomped around the garden snipping rosebushes, pricking herself, taking it out on me. It's a shame, because Holly was such a loving person and she kept the
señora
company in the afternoons, wearing that funny crown she made from a blue scarf and dried flowers. She hung it next to the
señora
's coat and put it on before work. ‘The
princess has arrived,' she would say, and laugh. Yesterday, I caught the
señora
standing in the hallway, touching the empty hook. She hung a black umbrella there, but we all know what's missing.

“But oh,
Virgencita
, there's more. Yesterday I found a heart-shaped locket in Hugo's pants pocket. There was no picture inside. If I ask him, he might lie or he might tell the truth, and I don't know which would be worse. My heart is an empty locket. The red light in the chapel glows nearly every night. I am carving a hole in the window with a nail, each night, a little wider, making sure the glass does not break. Long past midnight, the
señor
works. Doing what, I cannot imagine. I hear water sloshing and a strange hum. Once I saw him carrying a bag of garbage to his car, but he quickly drove it away. This from a man who won't pick up a fallen napkin. Nothing is normal here. Everything is a secret in a closed mouth. Beloved Virgin, I remain your watchful servant. Even in my sleep, I keep my eyes open.”

Hugo stared out the car window at the passing countryside, dreaming of his yellow girl. Pedro, the pool cleaner, was driving, slurping orange soda and biting his nails like a starving man. The car smelled like the coffee they'd downed for breakfast and the cigarettes they'd smoked for lunch and the licorice Pedro chewed after his cigarette, red sticks dangling from his mouth. Despite such annoyances, Hugo enjoyed these road trips. This was their first pick-up for Reyes, but they'd made many for Thomas Malone. It was good to be paid to drive, stay in a hotel, a perk of working for the rich, touching what they touched, being the one to deliver what they coveted. On overnights, he and Pedro drank hard, letting out the ghosts, staying clear of women and their confusions. They were runners, men for hire, men willing to drive to Tepito.

Pedro was picking his nose.
No hay remedio.
There is no hope for a guy like that. “Say something,” Hugo said. “Your silence is killing me.”

“I am focusing on the road.”

Nothing was before them except a straight line of cracked pavement framed by six lifetimes of cactus and dust.

“You are not focusing on the road. You are picking your nose and thinking.”

“You still seeing that girl?”

Again, Hugo regretted spilling his secret. “I still buy a lot of paper.”

Pedro shook his head. “She's a child.”

“Who isn't?”

“Your wife knows?”

“No, gracias a Dios.”

“That's what you think. She knows. Without a doubt.” Pedro cackled. “Women may not say anything, but they always know.”

“Soledad thinks we're moving to the North. I promised her.”

“Instead you're spending cash on the girl.”

“The girl is a girl. She's not expensive.”

“Pussy is always expensive.”

“I need some real money before I decide which way to go.”

Pedro checked his side mirror. “Listen, my Tiger:
Better a rich man's dog than a poor man's saint.
”

Hugo smiled to hear his old nickname. “That's an expression?”

“Commit it to memory.”

“You are getting so cynical. You used to be sweet. Our little angel, Pedrito. When we were boys, you'd cry over a stray cat. If you got a bad grade, you'd drop your homework in the arroyo. What happened to you?”

Something hardened in Pedro's face. With his index finger, he wiped his nose, horizontally, a gentle saw.

“I changed,” he said.

—

They parked in the outskirts,
locked the wheel boot, wove through the
tianguis
that stretched for blocks, selling handbags, boom boxes, and bongs. Most of the stuff was stolen or pirated, even the electricity, which vendors tapped to fuel tiny televisions blaring soap operas and soccer. Hugo had never been to Tepito, but he'd heard news reports compare it to Mumbai, heard people there were so poor and crazy from drugs they worshipped Santa Muerte, the Angel of Death, though the news footage didn't paint the whole picture. It was the difference between 2-D and 3-D, between watching sex and having it. Thin women sold used clothing for ten pesos. Rats darted between stands of child pornography. The air smelled of weed and incense and garbage. A banner across the street read:
BEING MEXICAN IS A
PRIVILEGE
,
BUT
BEING
FROM
TEPITO
IS
A
GIF
T
OF
GOD
.

People here had nothing but pride.

The pick-up was scheduled for four. With an hour to kill, Pedro suggested, then
insisted
, they visit the famous Romero shrine to Santa Muerte. Hugo was reluctant but agreed. You didn't have to believe in God or the devil to be nervous about seeing the Angel of Death. It was a circus outside the Romero house. Hugo pushed forward until he was looking right at her. What he saw disgusted him: a human skeleton dressed like a tacky bride in a white nylon dress. A jangle of crosses dangled from her bony neck. Her skull reminded him of a greyhound. Deep eye sockets, too many teeth.

Around her, a parade of the miserable whispered love names:
White Lady
,
Black Lady
,
Lady of the Shadows
,
La Flaca
(
Skinny One
),
Sweet Death
. Scarred men blew cigar smoke, spat tequila, offering her delights
boca a boca
. Shirtless machos flexed Santa Muerte tattoos. One mess of a woman crawled on her knees, hauling a baby on her back, her mascara smudged like someone had erased her face. Bums slid folded bills into the collection box to curry favor. Pedro was transfixed, mumbling prayers like a fiend.

Hugo grabbed his arm. “Asshole, she's not listening. She's dead. Let's go.”

The pool cleaner crossed himself, kissed his fingertips.

As they pushed through the hot city, Hugo's courage returned. Pedro was right:
Better a rich man's dog than a poor man's saint.
The streets around Tepito were named after professions:
Pintores
,
Plomeros,
Mecánicos.
This struck Hugo as funny.

“Mamá, I moved into an apartment on Prostitutas.”

Pedro pulled a paper scrap from his pocket. “We're looking for Fifteen Jardineros. Some restaurant.”

“Gardeners. Like me. It's a sign.”

“Sign of what?”

Hugo shrugged. “I'm trying to figure that out.”

“Get serious.” Pedro snapped his fingers just in front of Hugo's nose. “You want money for the girl, stop fucking around.”

Hugo didn't appreciate Pedro's tone. Hugo had a few years on little Pedro from the village. Hugo had gotten him hired as a pool cleaner for Thomas Malone and now as a part-time runner for Reyes. They were friends, nearly brothers, stepbrothers or half brothers, whichever was less. They joked around, pissed in Malone's pool, but here was Pedro,
slapping his back like some rich uncle, saying, “If we do this right, we each take home half a grand.”

“Why so much?”

“El Pelotas didn't tell you?”

“You call Reyes that?”

“Not to his face.” Pedro pulled out a black face mask, held it over his mug. “What do you think?”

Hugo laughed, nervous. “It's Subcomandante Marcos. Where's your pipe?”

Pedro lifted his shirt. A pistol was wedged against his gut.

Hugo swore. “It's just a pick-up. What's with you?”

Pedro dropped his head. Pity. Exasperation. “The guy we're meeting stole this mask from Reyes. We're taking it back. Reyes is pissed. The guy is as good as dead.”

“How does Reyes know he's here?”

“Gonzáles.”

“Gonzáles is coming?

“Gonzáles never comes.”

“You know a lot about this. How—”

“Reyes told me. It's complicated.”

Hugo pushed Pedro's shoulder. “Since when do you talk to Reyes?”

“Easy,
cabrón. No manches.
” Pedro made eye contact, but barely. “Here's what is happening. This part is simple. I'll go up. You stay on the street. Something doesn't sound right, you howl.”

“Since when are you the boss?”

“I am nobody's boss.” Pedro spat over his shoulder. “And nobody's donkey.”

Pedro glared, like the world owed him an apology, which it
probably did. Still, Hugo was surprised little Pedro had noticed. Hugo had assumed his friend was content to pour chlorine in rich people's pools. He'd never viewed Pedro as a man of ambition, but the cartels offered power, protection, a family. A way up, but never out.

For ten blocks, they walked in silence. Hugo counted backward. What did Pedro mean, it was complicated?

A boy in plastic sandals biked past them, legs so skinny his kneecaps stuck out. Hugo wanted to chase after the kid, warn him, tell him to ride out of Tepito and never come back.