Dancing with the Tiger Read online

  I whistle for you. Te pito. Tepito.

  Anna repeated the word in a whisper. She was going to Tepito, where no one would save her if she put her lips together. She typed an e-mail to her father, knowing he wouldn’t read it until morning.

  Stay home. I’ve gone to Mexico. I’ll bring you back the mask.

  eight THE LOOTER

  The looter dreamt it was raining and woke up curled around a fountain in Chapultepec Park, a cop’s boot pressed to his nose. “Váyase andando, patrón.” The cop whapped him twice with his bully stick. Get going, boss. The looter sat up, stretched his stiff legs. Bile circulated in his stomach, a toilet of acid. He thought about toast, the normalness of two buttery squares, but wasn’t sure they’d sit well. Something better might be found in his satchel. He remembered the mask, panicked that he’d been robbed, but old blue-face peered out, all grimace and attitude.

  Buenos días, amigo. What the fuck is for breakfast?

  Pico’s stash was also safe. Ditto the remains of Reyes’s payout and his phone, which had two new texts. First, Gonzáles: Found buyer. Tuesday 4 pm Tres Perros Feroces, 15 Jardineros. Wait there. $10,000.

  He blinked, counted the zeroes.

  The second text, Reyes. Three words. Consider yourself dead.

  The disparity was too much for the Maddox Theory to reconcile. The looter downed one of everything in Pico’s bag that didn’t require a needle or pipe. He stared into the bushes. The spaces between the bushes. Reyes could be anywhere. He could be selling pretzels. He could be running for president. The looter took off, careful not to leave footprints. He stuck to the shade, where he left no shadow. A scrawny African was selling stuff on a blanket. The looter bought a baseball cap that said I ♥ D.F., the Distrito Federal. Mexico City. The guy was hawking shades, too, but had only three pairs left.

  “That’s all you got?”

  “More later,” the vendor answered. “This now.”

  The looter brought a pair of “this now.” The cap. The glasses. He was working his way to invisible. The shrooms kicked in. The grass fluttered. The sky was a blue balloon. The carousel spat out white horses. He shoved his hands in his pockets, anchoring himself to the ground, and thought: I am a wanted man.

  nine ANNA

  Anna got off the airport bus in Oaxaca and did her best not to look lost. Head pounding nasty jazz, she clutched her backpack and the box containing her mother’s urn and waited for the driver to unload the cargo hold. She felt disoriented and exhausted from the multiple flights, the sudden heat, the Spanish, the hassle maneuvering the ashes through security—out of urn, into plastic container, through scanner, back into urn, carefully back into carry-on. When the bus driver finally produced her suitcase, she marched out of the station, hoping for an air of efficiency and resolve. Discarded snack bags, mango sticks, and cashew wrappers clung to the curb. The smell of roasting corn hung in the air, mixing with wisps of cigarette smoke. Round women sat on benches like salt and pepper shakers. Hungry men paced. Strangers brushed past Anna, almost touching. A thin guy selling roasted peanuts tracked her movements like a gambler with a bet on a filly. His eyes followed her shifting breasts, a gesture she considered doubly pathetic given that she was so flat-chested. “Güerita,” little blonde one, he taunted. Anna sped up. The fact that she wasn’t sure where she was going did not hamper her enthusiasm for getting there fast. Besides, she needed a drink.

  —

  The taxi wove through the ugly outskirts of the city, past cement factories, tire shops, empty lots of scrap metal. Small fires burned in forlorn fields and barbecue pits. It seemed incredible the mecca for Mexican folk art lay inside this clot of debris. Oaxaca. Population: 250,000. Altitude: 5,100 feet. Chief industries: Mining, manufacturing, and tourism. Visitors flocked to Oaxaca for its mild climate and colorful colonial buildings, for its hot peppers and weak peso. They came to tour Monte Albán, a pre-Columbian archaeological site, former capital of the Zapotec. They came to buy artesanía—tin mirrors, painted gourds, fantastical carved wooden creatures called alebrijes. Homely girls came to nibble torta de la soltera, a yellow cake, which if eaten every Sunday ensured a timely marriage.

  The cabdriver thumped his horn—“Pendejo.” Anna relaxed, a wave of optimism surging through her. Aggressive cabdrivers made her feel invincible, confirming her theory that misfortune seldom struck people in motion. She tapped out three aspirin, swallowed them dry. She’d fact-checked a piece on hangovers once. Ancient Romans prescribed a breakfast of sheep lungs and owl eggs. Assyrians ground up bird beaks and tree sap. She could use some fucking sap.

  She straightened, rallied her Spanish. When traveling, she liked to chat up taxi drivers, waitresses, clerks. Men sometimes misconstrued her openness for promiscuity, but this was a risk she was willing to take. In her experience, fleeting connections were easier and often more satisfying than intimacy.

  “Disculpe, señor. Which direction are the towns where they carve masks?”

  The cabdriver shifted lanes, watched her in the rearview mirror, then pointed west. “San Juan del Monte, Santa María, the others, are half an hour up the ridge. You can buy masks directly from the carvers.”

  “And torta de la soltera?”

  “Panadería El Alba, near the zócalo. Why? You are in the market for a husband?”

  “No,” Anna said. “Only cake.”

  They passed a church, a paper shop, a chicken joint called Pollo Loco Loco. Anna touched the urn. It seemed amazing that her mother’s remains lay inside, reduced to an object she could carry with one hand.

  “Another question,” Anna leaned forward. “In your opinion, what is the most beautiful place in Oaxaca?”

  “Monte Albán is very popular with visitors.”

  Anna hid her disappointment. She’d been hoping for a secret place, not a guidebook four-star attraction. The driver swept his hand across the horizon. “From the top, you can see the whole valley. Go in the morning, before it gets too hot. How long are you staying in Oaxaca?”

  Anna sank into the ripped seat cushion. “I don’t know exactly. Depende . . .”

  She let this word trail off. She had noticed this custom. Mexicans understood implicitly that the fulfillment of every commitment depended on a host of factors too personal, intricate, or uncertain to catalogue. It was enough to say “Depende”—a one-word euphemism for all the contingencies and obstacles that stood between the speaker and happiness.

  The cab swung into the old part of the city, jostling under soaring jacarandas, past a chamber of commerce billboard of a grinning devil mask: OAXACA, SHOW US YOUR TRUE FACE. The driver slammed the brakes at a red light. Radio voices from other cars filtered through the window. DJs blabbing about contests. A mural painted on the side of a motorcycle shop depicted a life-size skeleton dressed in a hooker’s silk robe and spike heels. The skeleton was whipping two thugs who knelt before her like penitent dogs. Anna held up her phone, took a picture.

  “What’s that mural about?”

  “That’s Santa Muerte. Saint Death.”

  “Yes, I know, but what’s she doing?”

  The driver accelerated with a frustrated exhale. “She is the patron saint of gangs and drug dealers. The mural is a joke. A fantasy. Santa Muerte will rid Mexico of the narcos by giving them a child’s spanking.”

  More than sixty thousand people had died since Calderón declared his War on Drugs in 2006. In the newspapers every day—killings, dismemberments, mass graves. In the most besieged areas, people were so desperate that vigilante groups had taken up patrols. Autodefensas. Anna checked her door lock, though she wasn’t much worried about drug lords. They were distant, an abstraction. The people most likely to hurt you were the ones you knew best.

  “What do you think would work?” she asked.

  The driver sliced the air with his hand. “Clean house. New president. New government. New police. Start all over with hono
rable people. But that is never going to happen. The corruption is complete, from beggar to priest. How many honest people do you know?”

  “Fewer every day.” Anna checked her phone. Nothing from David. She found her water bottle, drank, drizzled warm drops down her cleavage. “Some people seem good but are actually bad,” she said. Good people. Bad people. She sounded like a comic book. To add a bit of nuance, she said, “Sometimes good people do bad things. And . . .” She had no idea how to say “the other way around.” She fudged with: “And the opposite. It’s confusing, no?”

  “You need a brújula.”

  “What’s that?”

  The driver illustrated a compass needle with his finger.

  Anna gave a short laugh. “Sounds like ‘bruja.’” A bruja was a witch. “You need a brújula to tell who is a bruja.”

  The driver exclaimed, “Eso mero.”

  “But I still don’t understand,” Anna pressed. “Why do narcotraficantes pray to Santa Muerte?”

  The driver threw his hands up—both, before lowering his left back to the wheel. “They see her as their mother, their saint. Maybe the Angel of Death is a comfort if your life is a wreck. They want her power. Her protection. She’s the new Virgin of Guadalupe. Sometimes it’s better to be a bad girl than a good one.”

  The driver’s eyes locked with Anna’s in the rearview mirror. With a single glance, Anna agreed with his statement and declined his offer. The driver settled back down with a huff and a grumble. “When old religions don’t work anymore, people make up new ones.”

  —

  The hotel lobby was air-conditioned, but not enough to do any good. A large woman sat sprawled in a fake-leather love seat, buttocks overtaking the space designed for a suitor. Anna set down her suitcase, pack, and box, fanned her hangover. This was her second attempt to secure lodging. The hotel where she thought she’d made a reservation had no record of an Anna Ramsey. The owner apologized, but had no vacancy. Most hotels were full at this late date, she’d said, but there might still be a room at the Puesta del Sol. Anna knew better than to ask why.

  The young clerk turned from his soap opera. He was an effeminate man, gold hoop earring, Peter Pan collar, polka-dotted hairband. She was surprised that such a songbird could exist in this macho society without being crushed, his bones snapped in the fist of a punk or a priest. The clerk pressed his boyish face into the day.

  His Spanish was soft, like flannel. “How can I help you?”

  “Necesito una habitación para una persona.”

  Mariposa. Gay man. La terraza. The terrace. Hay una mujer gorda sobre un sofá. There is a fat woman on a sofa. Spanish vocabulary emerged from her subconscious, like old lovers who appeared in disjointed dreams. Some days, Anna couldn’t remember whether she’d slept with a man or only dreamt she had. Some days, she wasn’t sure it mattered.

  “We have one available.”

  “Do the rooms have desks?”

  The clerk nodded.

  “Is it quiet?”

  The clerk tipped his hand. “We have a room facing the garden. It has a desk and an old typewriter.”

  “Ice?”

  “There is a machine in the kitchen.” The clerk scrutinized her. Women weren’t supposed to care about ice. Women were supposed to care about full-length mirrors, sewing kits, the hours of Mass.

  Anna smiled. “How much would you charge for a week?”

  The clerk looked dubious, as though this question didn’t come up much and if she’d been his friend he would have advised against it. With a pompom-topped pen, he punched numbers into a calculator. His mouth thinned. Money did this to the nicest people.

  “Thirty-five hundred pesos.”

  Anna playacted her disappointment. The usual dance. “That’s a little expensive. I am a student.”

  The clerk looked away. He’d heard this lie before. Anna remembered the single most important word in Spanish: descuento.

  “Is there a discount for longer stays?”

  The clerk fluttered, a blizzard of helplessness. “There is no discount this time of year. It’s high season. My boss would murder me.”

  Anna squinted into the blinding sun, momentarily unable to remember the time of year. Time had little traction in Mexico. The air smelled like smoke. The mangoes were two weeks from ripening. The peso was tumbling against the dollar. The governor was a bully. The teachers were on strike. The police chief in Juárez had been gunned down without a single witness. It was Mexico. Any year, any day, was high season when Americans inquired.

  “It’s Carnival?” she said, hoping to God it wasn’t.

  “It starts the end of next week.” The clerk slid gloss over his lips. “Each pueblo has a celebration. Parades and parties. Fireworks. People dress in wild costumes and dance in the streets. You should stay. You like to dance?”

  The question startled her. She had been thinking about money and masks and whether the man she was meeting in Tepito would be carrying a gun. On TV, a blonde woman in a tight dress wept. Maybe her fiancé was sleeping with Clarissa, too. The clerk’s face pinched with concern. It seemed the right moment to press harder.

  “Would you take twenty-eight hundred?”

  Anna found the clerk’s eyes, forcing him to turn her down at close range. He shrugged, as if to say, Money only matters to little people. He slid her the register. Anna printed her name, nationality, had to ask him the date. She signed her name in large letters. She needed to take up more space in the world now that she was alone.

  “Why is the hotel called the Puesta del Sol?” After saving seven hundred pesos, Anna was ready to be friends. “Can you see the sunset from here?” She glanced over her shoulder, as if the sun might be hiding in the utility closet.

  The clerk picked up a nail file. “Hombre, if you could see the sunset, the rooms would cost more than twenty-five dollars. In Mexico, the sun only sets for the rich.”

  —

  Wrought-iron furniture. Bedraggled geraniums. A waterless fountain, a cherub with a broken wing. The hotel’s patio was pretty in the same way Anna liked to think she was pretty: enough that she didn’t have to try too hard, enough that if she had tried hard, she would be very pretty, and knowing this was reassuring enough that she seldom bothered to try.

  The guidebook had described the Puesta del Sol as “spartan,” but Anna opened her door to decrepit. The bed was a crushed cereal box. The stucco had cracked into spiderwebs. A cross stood sentry over the door. A faded poster of the Pyramid of the Sun had buckled in its plastic frame, as if attacked by the deity it worshipped. The air smelled like cinnamon and dust.

  Anna chained the door and, finding no safe, stuffed the urn, the journal, and the envelope in the back of the closet and covered them with her coat. A manual typewriter sat on the desk. She rolled in a sheet of paper and typed, ANNA IS HERE, then added: WITH HER MOTHER. She fell back on the bed, exhausted. Overhead, the ceiling fan shimmied, as if it might decapitate her in her sleep. She rose, poured a duty-free shot of tequila, downed it, felt her mouth turn golden and swampy. She got up to pee. The bathroom smelled like cherry aerosol. A disposable razor lay on the tiles. A faint hairball covered the drain. It was hard to imagine getting clean in such a place. More likely, you’d wind up dirty in some new way.

  She showered. Under a thin stream of scalding water, she lifted her breasts into cleavage. She liked her small breasts. She could maneuver. She could run. Departures were her forte, though she had planned to stay with David for a lifetime. Perhaps this seedy hotel was the apt setting for an exorcism. Invite a tall, dark stranger from the zócalo back for sex in this rancid shower. He’d speak no English. She’d forget her verbs. They’d parse body language. Hard and wet. She wondered if she still had the nerve for such exploits. She’d like to think she was young enough to be daring, and mature enough to know better.

  Anna dried herself with a stiff
towel, slapped her cheeks for color, pulled on a dress, then emptied her backpack, refilling it with a notebook, pen, water, Swiss Army knife, dictionary, key. This reduction felt good. She reviewed the next twenty-four hours: meet Lorenzo Gonzáles, take the overnight bus to Mexico City, get a cab to Tepito, buy the mask, be back in Oaxaca, margarita in hand, by tomorrow evening.

  Then she’d bury her mother.

  Anna sat on the bed, momentarily overwhelmed. The cross glared like a hex. Back in New York, David was screwing Clarissa with the lovely underwear. She was poring over press coverage, tweeting his Twitter, feeding his ego, feeding his face. She’d fix puttanesca. Blow his job.

  Anna counted her money. Two grand for Gonzáles in one envelope. Given that her father had already wired the looter two grand, she owed the digger only eight. She put that in a second envelope. An extra two grand remained. Her father’s travel money. A slush fund for masks. She slid the bills into her wallet. The money felt filthy and sensual. Like David. She checked her phone again. No calls. No texts. Sadness pressed the roof of her mouth, singed her nostrils, rose into her eyelids. She fought back. She would fight back. She poured half a shot, downed it. Revenge was a dish best served cold. Well, forget about it. This was Mexico. The journey to purchase the greatest pre-Columbian archaeological find of the modern era began with a single step. Anna got up, wobbled. On the threshold, she lowered her shades.

  At the cupid fountain, she dragged her hand along the frayed edge where the concrete had crumbled. The baby’s plump face was serene, his innocence made ironic by amputation. An angel with one wing was headed in one direction. The only question was how fast.

  ten THE CARVER

  Emilio Luna rose from bed and felt, though his furrowed hands attested otherwise, that he was still a young man. The mask carver made coffee, padded onto the concrete patio of his home in San Juan del Monte, a hill town outside Oaxaca. His tools lay strewn in yesterday’s wood chips. The air smelled like cedar. He bent to touch his toes, came close, reached toward the sky, came close, hiked his pants, sat down on his tree stump, propping a pillow behind his back. He picked a chunk of wood, then measured the customary thirty centimeters and saw he had a problem.