Dancing with the Tiger Page 28

  “Viernes por la tarde.”

  Anna thanked him, turned, stopped cold. Salvador was leaning against the fence, wearing a gas station shirt embroidered BOB.

  He sized her up, gave her a half smile, as if he found her both charming and despicable. “You are a good liar.”

  “So are you.”

  “Me?” He reached for her hand. Anna spun away. Salvador followed her to the street.

  “I came to apologize,” he said. “I have a bad temper. I can help you sell the mask to a good place for a reasonable price. We can work together, if you let me help.”

  Anna wasn’t ready to relinquish her anger.

  “You’re too late. The mask is locked in Thomas Malone’s chapel, but we’ve got a plan to get it out.”

  “We?”

  “The looter and I.”

  “What looter?”

  “Christopher Maddox. He’s a twigger, a rather famous twigger in some circles.” Seeing his confusion, she added, “A meth addict who digs relics.” Salvador looked horrified. “But he’s straight now and he’s digging a tunnel under the chapel. It’s almost done.”

  “You think that is safe?”

  “The tunnel?”

  “The twigger.”

  Anna shrugged. “I trust him. He hasn’t lied to me yet. You could have told me about your girlfriend, or is that how things roll with cool Mexican painters? Everything easy. Todo azul.”

  She’d picked up this expression somewhere. Everything’s cool. All blue.

  “What girlfriend?”

  “The fresa.” Anna fluffed her hair. “Strawberry” was a disparaging term for a spoiled Mexican woman.

  “My sister?”

  Anna scrunched her face. “C’mon. Your sister?” She imitated his accent. “I was once asked to be a father, but I declined. One must know his limits.”

  “Híjole.” He looked down the road after a chicken. “You drove here?”

  “I took the bus.” This, too, seemed to be his fault. The heat was his fault. The Tiger was his fault. He had not helped her in any way.

  “I need to show you something,” he said. “After that, if you still want to go, you can.”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “Uncle Emilio is a good man, but he can’t keep a secret.”

  Anna kept her eyes on the fence, debating. She wanted to believe in him, in someone, and she really didn’t want to take the bus.

  They walked to his car. The seats were scalding. He fished up a CD. “Since we are fighting, we will listen to music.”

  Mercedes Sosa sang “María, María” as they drove out of town. Anna’s father had this CD. As a girl, Anna decided it was the world’s saddest song. María deserved to live and love like other people but couldn’t. She didn’t have the force, the dreams, the desire, the grace . . . Anna ticked through her own shortcomings, one for each telephone pole. I am impatient. I drink too much. I want to be the most beautiful woman in the room. I pretend to be happier than I am. I want to believe in God, but don’t know where to start. I love to travel, but have no sense of direction. I can’t imagine being a mother. I am careless with everything but words. I hate to spend money, and worry I will run out. I don’t listen when people tell me their names. I sleep with men I don’t like because I don’t want to hurt their feelings. I’d rather be unhappy than cause someone else unhappiness, but then I resent people who make me unhappy. Sometimes I look at people I love and feel nothing at all.

  To be Anna. To be loved. To be loved as Anna.

  It would require a fucking saint.

  —

  He took her to a bank in the city. Miss Venezuela was helping a customer. She wore a navy blue suit and her hair was piled into a crown, fallen strands artfully framing her face.

  When her customer left, she came around her desk to greet them, kissing Salvador’s cheek. In that instant, Anna hated them both, for being Mexican, for having more in common with each other than with her, for leaving her out of the cheek-kissing world of colonial Mexico with its church bells and picturesque decay.

  “Victoria, this is Anna, the friend I mentioned. Anna, this is Victoria.”

  He said this in English. The implication was clear: Victoria’s English was better than Anna’s Spanish. Victoria had it all working. Victoria was Mexican and beautiful and spoke English and was pregnant with Salvador’s child. Victoria probably stuffed her own tamales. She offered Anna her hand, soft as a bird. Her femininity made Anna want to howl.

  “Anna observed you were pregnant.” Salvador’s voice had an edge.

  Anna glared at him. Heat fanned down her body.

  “She wants to know if your baby is mine.”

  Victoria tilted her head, confused. Salvador clarified. “She saw us in the zócalo last week. You were crying and I was holding your hands. She thinks you are my girlfriend.”

  Victoria gave a sympathetic tsk-tsk, as if to remind Anna that any Mexican woman has more in common with any American woman than with any Mexican—or American—man.

  “Oh no, Anna.” Victoria shook her index finger. “This is a mistake. Salvador is not my boyfriend. The father of my baby is an even bigger cabrón than my brother.”

  —

  For dinner, they ate rice and beans, and avocados sprinkled with cilantro and lime. Anna could not stop touching him, his hands, his shoulder, his lips. They discovered a scorpion the size of Anna’s pinkie climbing the wall. With a piece of cardboard, Salvador tipped it into a jam jar filled with rubbing alcohol. The creature floated to the surface. A snow globe. Deadly. Clear.

  Victoria had considered an abortion. The day Anna had seen them, she’d asked Salvador to drive her to Mexico City, but he had urged her to wait a few days, and in that time, she had changed her mind. Telling her mother had been difficult, but a grandchild was coming, and the excitement of this fact overshadowed their mother’s contempt for the baby’s father, whom she called “the rhinoceros from Monterrey.”

  Anna and Salvador agreed to start over. She told him about her father’s collection, the looter, the Tiger. He told her stories about art disappearing in Mexico, none more egregious than the theft of Lord Pakal’s death mask, which disappeared from the National Museum of Anthropology, along with one hundred other artifacts, on Christmas Eve in 1985. No alarm. No fingerprints. Almost four years later, the jade mask was discovered in an abandoned house in Acapulco. The thieves were two vet school dropouts who had climbed through an air-conditioning duct.

  “Your looter friend is part of the problem. He steals from the dead.”

  “He was an addict. He’s getting better.”

  “A drug addict does not change day to night. You put too much trust in him. One day, he will pull a gun.”

  “You have a better idea?”

  Salvador looked away.

  They couldn’t agree on a course of action. Practically. Morally. In the United States, the mask would be safe, but Salvador was adamant that Mexican art should stay in Mexico. “Once objects are taken from their context, history is lost.”

  “You’re saying we shouldn’t have museums?”

  “We need museums for the same reason we need zoos, but animals still need to live in the wild. Ancient people were buried with treasures. Should you dig up every grave when there is no money and no place to care for these things? We don’t have to see everything. We can imagine them. We can wonder. We can leave them for someone else.”

  “But the mask was already dug up.”

  He stood, started to pace. “Right. That is the problem. Now it has to belong to someone. It used to belong just to itself.”

  Anna was getting irritated, too. There was no right answer. “Okay. Let’s leave it with Thomas Malone. He’ll watch over it.”

  Salvador laughed sharply. “I can ask around, see if any of my museum contacts would
accept it.”

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “Would you want to be on duty when Reyes arrives to take back his treasure?”

  Anna frowned. “Until we have the mask, it’s all moot.”

  “Moot?” Salvador scowled. He was in no mood to learn new words. He stood up, sat down again, took her hands. “Forget the mask,” he said. “Tell me more about you. Tell me how your mother died in Mexico—”

  “I’ve forgotten so much.”

  He said tell me what you remember.

  —

  Her father was ill with a stomach bug. Rose had taken Anna to La Esperanza to pick up some masks. It had rained all day, but her mother was cheerful. Every time Rose popped back in the car, her flushed face looked younger. Anna sat with a bag of chips, licking chili off her fingers, eyeing a cardboard box holding several scary masks they’d bought earlier that day. Anna had asked her mother why the carvers never made princess masks. Her mother had promised to find her a mask she liked, and now this promise had escalated into a challenge. Rose looked all afternoon without success, and her expression tightened with each disappointment.

  “Let’s go home,” Anna had whined. “To the hotel with Daddy.”

  “You mean the bar?” Her mother’s eyes snapped. She touched Anna’s knee. “Sorry. I’m going to find you a nice mask.”

  Eventually, she gave up, headed back. The road narrowed to barely two lanes. It was raining. Anna drew hearts in the misty windows.

  “Be careful,” Anna said. She was pretty sure she’d said that.

  Her mother flexed her fingers over the wheel. “I am. Very careful.” Or maybe she’d said, “Don’t worry. I’ve got it.”

  Anna’s eyes closed. She was cold and wanted to be back at the hotel, eating a quesadilla, watching dubbed cartoons.

  “How much longer?”

  “Halfway. Take a catnap.”

  There was no quicker way to kill the desire for a nap than to be told to take one. Her mother pressed the brakes, cursed softly. “Someone’s slid off the road.”

  A van had skidded perpendicular, blocking their lane and half the opposite one. Its hazard lights blinked red.

  “Don’t stop. You can get by.”

  “We’ll fall into the ravine.” Her mother shifted into park. “Wait here. I’ll see if they can move. If not, we’ll have to turn around.”

  “I don’t want to go back.” Anna pouted.

  Her mother looked into Anna’s eyes. “Me, neither.”

  Those were her mother’s last words to her: Me, neither. Anna had been complaining about a situation her mother could not change, and her mother had reminded her that she didn’t like it, either, that neither of them wanted to go back to the village, a place where you couldn’t find a beautiful mask no matter how hard you tried. Years later, Anna read more into those words. Maybe her mother didn’t care much about masks. Maybe she was exuberant that day because she liked having a quest of her own, instead of traipsing behind her husband.

  Her mother opened the car door and ran. The van’s driver lowered his window. Her mother gestured to their car. Her pants were getting wet. Rain was such a crazy idea, if you thought about it—clean water falling from the sky. The van started up. Why had it stopped if it wasn’t broken down? Why hadn’t the driver righted his vehicle and driven on? Her mother was still talking, practicing all those verbs she’d memorized. They’re like a song. You have to sing them. How many verbs did a mother use in a day? Eat, sleep, work, want, dream, listen, teach, thank, hold, hope, comfort, be.

  They could have left earlier. They could have driven around.

  Five minutes earlier or later and her mother would not have been standing in the road when a drunk man in a dented truck swerved around the Ramseys’ car and lost control. Five minutes earlier or later and her mother’s soul would not have flown over the mountain on the back of an eagle.

  —

  Salvador massaged her temples, and the sound muffled his voice saying he was sorry.

  Anna said, “I saw then how a family could disappear in an instant. The more you have, the more you can lose.”

  “Children at a distance.”

  “Everything at a distance. That’s my problem.” Her head was hot and achy. “I don’t even like masks. I helped write that book and I don’t like them. I like one or two, the plain ones, but the Ramsey Collection can go to hell.”

  “Now you are blaming the masks.”

  “Okay, should I blame Mexico? This country made my family and destroyed it. I said I was never coming back here, and here I am.”

  “Where was the accident?”

  “The highway to La Esperanza. My father put a cross in the ground there, the kind Thomas Malone likes to collect.”

  —

  That night, she borrowed a green T-shirt to sleep in. Its boyishness pleased her. How cool it would be to wake up and find a note inside its pocket. Someday, she would do that for him. Put a note in the pocket over his heart. He tucked her in with great care, like she was another artifact he wanted to save.

  —

  Anna woke first, made coffee, crawled back into bed. Salvador pulled her close. His body felt tense. A church bell tolled, one, then another. “The plan is no good,” he whispered into her scalp. “Why is he inviting you to his house? He’s going to kill us all and dump us in the chapel.”

  “You just don’t want to wave the American flag again.”

  “Go U-S-A. Go Disneylandia. Go bomb—”

  “If you hate the U.S., then screwing over the American should cheer you up.”

  “I don’t like your country, but I like some of its people.” He kissed the part in her hair. “But he will be suspicious. Why go see a man who attacked you?”

  “He’s so crazy he probably thinks I liked it.”

  Her phone bleeped. She reached for it. David. So the wedding is off?

  She hesitated, her stomach tightened with dread. She hated to cut strings. Never commit to anything you can’t take back, never reject someone you might want later.

  Salvador pulled her arm. “What?”

  Anna passed him the phone.

  “May I write him back?”

  “If you let me see it first.”

  “He asked you a question. A stupid question, but a question. ‘The wedding is off?’ So you write back. ‘Yes.’ What’s his name? David. ‘Yes, David, the wedding is off.’ Because he is a burro and may not understand, you add this.” He passed her the phone. “This is what you say to a liar.”

  Te he visto la cara.

  I have seen your face.

  “He doesn’t speak Spanish.”

  Salvador nodded. “Good.”

  They drove back to San Juan del Monte to see Emilio Luna. The second mask was not idéntica, but was convincing enough, they hoped, to fool a tiger. And just in case it wasn’t, Salvador borrowed his cousin’s gun.

  eight THE GARDENER

  Monte Albán looked majestic in the moonlight, the stone platforms, the ball court, the palace, each rock a gravestone of a fallen culture. He dug and gazed down at the two valleys of Oaxaca—Tlacolula, Zimatlán. He dug and the night spoke to him, murmuring in Spanish, in Nahuatl, rattling prognostications of doom. When he slept, he dreamt he was awake. Awake, he dreamt of the Aztecs. He did not feel safe—at home, in bed, on the street. Trees pointed their branches. Squirrels smelled his stink. He’d killed Pedro, the old woman. (Accidents, or were they?) The girl, he feared, was next. Mexico, Mother Mexico. Take me in your arms. His breath against his mask warmed his face.

  The grass rustled. He spun around with a cry. A strange creature with four legs and two heads was sauntering toward him. Llama or mythical beast. A two-headed creature. He gave a stifled cry of fear. The seventh omen. The demons had followed him here. As the beast approached, it pulled apart, morphing into a man and
a woman. The American and a Mexican, though he had told the girl to come alone. The Tiger touched his machete. They stopped ten meters from him, uncertain.

  The Mexican called out, “Trajimos la máscara. We trade it for the ashes.”

  “Have the girl bring it to me.”

  The man stepped forward. “We don’t want problems.”

  “Her, not you.”

  She walked forward, set down a bundle before him. He caught her arm, threw her down, pressed his machete against her bare neck.

  “Don’t touch her,” the Mexican yelled.

  The Tiger swung the knife, marking time. “I am keeping her until I see it.”

  The Mexican produced a gun.

  The Aztec voices grew louder, interrupting, overlapping. The Tiger cut a lock of the girl’s hair, let it float to the ground. The Mexican widened his stance, gun nippy in his hand. The Tiger squeezed the girl’s wrist. She was sobbing. “Déjame. Let me go. I am close to Reyes. We have relations.”

  This was either a lie that sounded true or a truth that sounded like a lie. It was true Reyes had no taste. He bedded the daughters of the Mexican elite. He bedded transsexuals from Tepito. If stranded in the desert, he’d put his dick down a snake hole.

  “Estás mintiendo.” You are lying.

  “Look at me.” The girl pushed forward her ruined face. “If you hurt me, he will kill you.”

  “¿Es verdad?” the Tiger called back to the Mexican, who held still for a moment, then lowered his gun.

  The girl bit the air, doglike, feral. “Part of his right ear is missing.”

  The eyeholes of his tiger mask let in two fallen moons of light. It was hard to breathe with the heat and the voices. Only one omen remained—the burning temple. He was a sick animal. He had not understood this before. Did the papershop girl love him, or was he simply the evil she preferred? He lifted the machete over his chest. To die in sacrifice to the gods was the highest honor, the Aztecs believed—a guarantee you would be reborn and live in the house of the Sun. The sins of this life mattered little. What mattered was how you died.

  “Don’t do that.”

  The girl rose, yanked his arm. The machete fell. She grabbed the urn, ran to her boyfriend. The Tiger slashed the plastic. Turquoise. Shell eye. Warts. Looter to Reyes to Pedro to crone to girl to Tiger.