Dancing with the Tiger (12 page)

She was living in a city of masks.

No one was watching.

She wasn't Anna Ramsey. She was Anna Bookman.

There was no one to save her and no one to save herself for.

She needed the keys to his chapel. She needed the death mask.

His move was sudden. His arm pulled her waist and he kissed her and his hand crept up her shirt. Her nipples hardened.

“Can I trust you?” he asked her.

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

He scratched her back with his nails. Her hands felt his hip pockets for keys. Nothing. Dropping one hand to her clavicle, she touched San Antonio, patron saint of the traveler. Patron saint of lost people and things. And she thought:
I will write this man's book. I will break into his chapel.

—

When they came down
from the roof, Thomas disappeared behind the swinging door marked
CABALLEROS
. Anna couldn't find their table, circled the restaurant one and half times before recognizing his coat. She sat, drank water, made the room settle down. She tipped a glass. The final drop of mescal fell on her tongue without taste. She reached into Thomas's coat pocket and found his keys. Taking a wild guess, she circled loose a tarnished skeleton key. It fit in her palm and she studied it, wondering what door it opened.

On the papershop girl's final afternoon, Hugo undressed her, cut a lock of her hair, and slid it into his wallet. He stared at her nakedness, searching for something more to take. He had disappointed her. He had not left his wife. He had not punished her father. He had not found Pedro or the mask. Each strand of his story ended in failure.

She asked him:
“¿A dónde vas a comprar tu papel ahora?”
Where will you buy your paper now?

“I no longer need to write.”

“Someday you will come into the store and there will be a girl in a yellow dress who looks like me.”

“No one looks like you. I will come to Veracruz to find you.”

“I am leaving today.”

“I will buy you back.”

“With what?”

“I will buy my paper in Veracruz. I will be there in thirty days.”

“I will hate you every day until you come,” she said, her eyes hard as obsidian. “If you do not come, you will be a stranger to me and I will forget your face. I will let my father watch me through the crack in the door and one day I will let him in.”

Hugo grabbed her hip, hoping to leave a fingerprint any man would recognize. “You have gotten so serious, my little schoolgirl. Look how books ruin a beautiful woman. You do not have the father you claim to have, but I am flattered you take the trouble to lie.
No te preocupes.
In thirty days I will arrive in Veracruz and gold coins will fall from my pockets. God will smile down on us. I will make a great sacrifice for you.”

“What do you know about God?”

“Nothing, but I am learning.” Hugo did not know what he meant by this, but he liked the way it sounded.

—

The next morning,
Hugo stood at the bus stop outside the girl's home. The sky was clear and traffic rushed by, commuters amped with coffee and adrenaline. The family's freshly washed car was parked on the street, an imported SUV with black windows, the kind preferred by corrupt politicians. It was peculiar that a rich man would allow his daughter to work in a paper shop. Hugo kicked the curb. He had never seen the father, and worried they would be the same age.

The front door opened. The mother, squat as a truffle, hobbled into the car. Father and daughter appeared next. The girl wore a yellow dress and lace gloves. She had dressed for him. Though the father knew
nothing of their affair, Hugo sensed the departure was a performance.
This is my family. We are dressed in our good clothes.
When the pair reached the back of the car, out of the mother's line of vision, the father pushed back the girl's forehead and kissed her, lifting her body off the ground. Her feet dangled, untethered, twisting. When the man's grasp loosened, the girl fell back to earth. With wild eyes, the father glared at the passing cars, daring anyone to intercede. It was not the kiss a man gives his daughter.

The father was his age. They could have been brothers.

The father climbed into the car. The girl bent down, tied her shoelaces, her face red with tears. Hugo ran toward her. She held up her gloved hand.
Stop.
When Hugo ran harder, she rushed into the car, slammed her door. The SUV accelerated, leaving Hugo flat-footed, panting. The birds sang. The oranges in the trees were ripe. The church bells would ring at noon.

Hugo fell to his knees, his gut rife with sickness and self-loathing. The girl had not been lying. He stared down the street, the center yellow stripe. Timeline. Tightrope. Arrow. He studied it until he made up his mind.

He would find the papershop girl and marry her. She would not go to university. She would fix his dinner and bear his children, as many as God sent, and have a closet full of yellow dresses. Each day she would wear a different one for him, like the rising of the morning sun.

Hugo stood. Cars zipped past, a blur of colors and chrome. The light changed. Traffic stopped. He stepped forward, froze. In the second car, behind a cracked windshield, the face of a man he'd known as a boy. Pedro. Different car, same asshole, waving,
fucking waving
, doing a little show-off dance, pumping his forearms like a
naco
. Hugo sprinted. The rusted red shit-bucket gunned forward. Hugo lunged at
the door, grazed the bumper, fell heart-first on the pavement. His nose warmed with blood.

Reyes had it right again. Pedro was back.

—

That night,
the stars were unusually bright. Tiger mask in hand, Hugo stood alone in the yard. For years, people had called
him
“the Tiger” because of the scars across his belly where his father had beaten him. For much of his life, Hugo had hated his father, but the old man was dead now and those feelings seemed childish and unimportant.

Vicente had been a small, tough man who worked in the
campo
. One day Hugo asked him why men wore tiger masks at Carnival, and his father had explained that every Aztec god had a
tono
, an animal counterpart. “Like a twin. Your other, worse half.” The
tono
of the great god Tezcatlipoca was the jaguar,
el tigre
. Tezcatlipoca, who had created the world with the beneficent Quetzalcoatl, the winged serpent, had many names and personas:
Night Wind
,
The Smoking Mirror
,
The Enemy of Both Sides
, and
He by Whom We Live
. So immense was his power, so fickle his temperament, Tezcatlipoca could make a man rich or strike him dead.

“Like your mother,” his father had joked. He wiped his hands on his jeans, slick with dirt and sweat. “Sometimes an angel. Sometimes . . . not.”

To keep in Night Wind's good graces, the Aztecs built temples in his honor, and every year a handsome man without scar or blemish was selected to impersonate Tezcatlipoca on earth. For a year, the man was lavished with gold and servants until the grand festival, when priests led him to the sacrificial stone. Five priests secured his head, while the
minister of death cut open his chest with volcanic flint and held his still-beating heart to the sun. The flesh was eaten and the head hung to dry. Immediately, another Tezcatlipoca was chosen.

The story scared the boy. He would never eat someone, not even to save the sun.

“For ice cream?” His father shook his knee.

The boy understood the joke. “If it was chocolate.” He grinned. He seldom spoke to his father like this and so squeezed in another question. “But in San Juan del Monte, do they kill the Tiger?”

Vicente smiled at the boy's worry. “Now Carnival is just a party. It may look like they kill the Tiger, but the guy just rolls over and drinks another beer.” He laughed, tousled his son's hair. “If it makes you feel better, sometimes in dances, the Tiger gets away. That happens in life, too. You do something bad, but only He knows.” He pointed up, his face crafty, conspiratorial. “For good to prosper, evil must be allowed to escape.”

Hugo closed this memory, put a name to what he'd committed to: He would kill a man to save his own skin. He would kill a man to rescue the papershop girl. He slipped the tiger mask over his face. It fit him, as he knew it would.

Amapolas Street was empty and sepia-toned at two a.m. when Anna made her way to the Malones' home on the hillside. Turning on her headlamp, she entered the woods behind the Mendez property, bushwhacking, hands protecting her face. Her biggest worry was waking the dogs. Native American trackers could tell where an enemy had trod by reading broken twigs. Any idiot could have found her; she was leaving a virtual highway of footprints and trampled branches. At the incline, the chapel appeared on the bluff, a two-dimensional cutout, looming. Anna humped up the hill, touched the fence marking the property line.

A dog barked.

A second dog answered the first. A canine a cappella. Anna debated turning around, but instead pushed down the wire fence and threw over a leg. Her jeans snagged. She was stuck mid-crotch, a regular
Three Stooges moment, not that she was laughing. If Constance found her, she'd cock her rifle. If Thomas found her, he'd call the police. If the dogs found her, she'd be supper. Her pants ripped. Her forearm was bleeding, possibly her leg. She kept going.

In the distance, the pink house showed neither movement nor light. Even if the barking had woken them, the Malones surely would stay in bed. Surely, they did not suspect that the ghostwriter of Thomas's guide was breaking into his chapel with a stolen skeleton key.

Anna was thinking in
surely
s, because nothing was sure.

At the chapel door, she studied the dark, the trees, the sickle moon. The pool's quiet wake reflected the security lights. The dogs had slowed to an occasional yelp. She slid in the key. It wouldn't turn. She was bad with locks, could barely open her apartment door. Left, right, out again, back in, right slowly, left hard. She cursed. She'd picked the wrong key.
Surely.
Her hand hurt. She tried again. No. This was the key to the kitchen door or Hugo's cottage or a love shack in Puerto Vallarta.

She could jimmy a window. She tried this now, slamming each window with her palm, but they were all locked. Impenetrable. She swore, looked for someone to help her. A ridiculous idea.
Excuse me, but could you help me break into this chapel?

She prayed to her mother and tried the key again.
Nada.

Having failed completely, she'd leave through the front door. When thwarted, Anna got this way, daring another thing to go wrong. The way beige panties led to an e-mail attachment led to a video led to Clarissa led to Sandra and Fiona. Like that.

She passed the pool, patio, kitchen screen door, where, for once, Soledad was not watching. At the front gate, Anna lifted the latch.
Fucking Thomas and his fucking chapel.
It was
her
mask. Not his. The death mask belonged to the Ramseys. Thomas Malone had all this. He didn't need more. Her anger needed someplace to go. She picked up a rock, chucked it at the front door. She had no arm. The rock fell short, stopping on the welcome mat like an uninvited guest. The rock had the same chance of entering the house as Anna had of breaking into the chapel. A second-story window lit up. A gray silhouette drifted past. It looked like a skeleton, floating.

—

Anna slept fitfully until ten,
then dragged herself to the
zócalo
and ordered her three favorite drinks. If the waiter judged her for drinking a margarita before lunch, he was too polite to show it or too eager for a tip. The
zócalo
was almost empty. A street cleaner swept away yesterday's garbage with a stick broom. A man pushed a bicycle without handlebars. A circling truck broadcast the virtues of a tonic that cured arthritis and depression, constipation and grief.

Uno, dos, tres,
her drinks arrived. She was driving a stick-shift car.
The coffee is the accelerator. The water is the brake. The tequila is the clutch.
Her first attempt at larceny had been futile, which meant Anna Bookman needed to snuggle up to Thomas Malone again, trade the wrong key for the right one. She'd call him after finishing her drinks.

“How is the girl with the masks today?”

Salvador, the painter, the pirate, in shredded jeans and blue bandanna. Anna felt a flutter of attraction, quickly followed by self-rebuke.
He didn't come looking for you.
The painter motioned
May I?
and joined her. Anna breathed in the pleasant aroma of new smoke. She could not
help comparing him with Thomas. Their differences were striking. The collector. The artist. The aristocrat. The bohemian. The married man who wanted her. The single man who did not.

“Terrific,” Anna said, pleased to report how well she'd gotten along without him. “I got a job writing a gallery guide for a collector.”

“Let me guess,” he said, playing soothsayer again. “You found Thomas Malone.”

“I thought you didn't know him.”

“The biggest
cabrón
in Oaxaca.”

“Well, don't hide your feelings.”

“Thomas Malone is a spoiled art collector who throws his money around. The real story is with the carvers. Have you seen the Old Gringo's collection?”

“A few pieces—”

“Of course not. You will have to sleep with him first.”

Anna looked away.

“What? You gave in that easy.”

Anna made a face. “Of course not.”

An espresso was placed between them. Salvador sat back. His cotton shirt blew turpentine past Anna's nose.

“Wait a month,” he said. “His collection goes up in March. The great battle of the Mexican masks. Lucha Libre.
Narco
against
cabrón
. Drug dealer versus art dealer. I place my bet on Reyes. You know, there are a couple books on masks you could read, though the biggest has some errors.”

“
Dancing with the Tiger
. I know it,” Anna said flatly. “The mistakes were not the writer's fault. Carvers misled him and sold him fake masks.”

Salvador looked skeptical. “Why would they do that?”

“Money.”

“Maybe the author did not speak Spanish. What was his name?”

“I forget,” Anna said. “But believe me, I know that book. He trusted the carvers, and the carvers abused that trust.”

“Which carvers?”

“Emilio Luna. Ricardo Rodríguez. Whole pages don't add up. Dances that don't exist. New masks made to look old. Fake rusting. It was all a big game, fooling Americans. They must have laughed and laughed—”

“That would be kind of funny,” he said. “But I don't believe it.”

Anna shrugged. “It's true. Go look. There are Grasshopper masks that supposedly date back to the early nineteenth century, but they are less than ten years old. Supposedly, they are danced at the Harvest Dance in Santa Catarina, only there's no such town. Or rather, there are plenty of Santa Catarinas, but none have a Harvest Dance.”

Salvador stubbed his cigarette. “Do you still need a guide?”

“I never needed a guide.”

The painter looked contrite. “The other day, I thought you were another tourist writing silly stories. Tuesday, there is a Carnival parade in San Juan del Monte. Have you been?”

“To Carnival, but not there.”

“I invite you, then. While we are up there, we can investigate this book. I make you a bet the carvers are honest and the writer is guilty.”

Anna paused, unable to believe what was happening. She was being asked to bet on her father's integrity.

“What are we betting?”

“If I lose, I give you a painting, and if I am right, you will give me . . .”

“A mask.”

“I was thinking a copy of your book.”

Anna looked into her lap. She'd forgotten her book. “That may take a while.”

“That's okay. If you pay for gas, I will introduce the carvers and translate, and chase the dogs, and prove these artists are honest men. Sounds good?”

It did sound good. Who could explain chemistry? She liked his face, his messy rolled-up sleeves, his half-tied shoes. He smelled like paint cleaner. A little toxic, a little edgy.

“Thank you,” Anna said. She meant it. They had broken through wherever they'd started. “Are you sure you don't mind?”

“If you write about a place, you should know it.” He waited a beat, giving her a chance to mock him. When she didn't, he teased again. “Now, as your guide, I need to know: Are you easy to be with?”

“In what way?”

Salvador snaked his hand through the air. “Whatever way we might have to go.”

Her phone bleeped a text. Her father.
were are you#

She had missed an earlier text from David. Same question.
Where R U?

She had nothing to say to David. There was nothing she
could
say to her father. She dropped the phone in her bag, looked hard at the painter, and told him the truth.

“Some men think I'm easy, but they're wrong.”