The Hidden Light of Mexico City

by Carmen Amato

  “Hugo?” Graciela opened the door to the study.

  “What?” He belched, a hot bubble of brandy searing his throat.

  “Señor Vargas to see you,” Graciela said crisply. “I’m going out.”

  His wife wasn’t as pliant and retiring as she used to be. Graciela had bought new clothes and was out of the house more than she’d ever been, fooling around with some charity. When she was home she texted constantly or was on her computer.

  The fucking detective he’d hired hadn’t found Arias. Hugo threw him out, drank the rest of the bottle of brandy and passed out in his chair.

  Chapter 55

  Luz sold La Señora de los Angeles for 900 pesos an hour after she got to Jardin del Arte. A few minutes later she sold two sketches and a small canvas of Santa Clara she’d done long ago. Cash sales.

  The monochromatic seascapes and pictures of girls and donkeys were still there. The regular artists watched her with a mixture of annoyance and admiration. She caught one of the old men looking at her with a set expression. Luz lifted her water bottle to him in a sort of salute. He just pursed his lips but Luz didn’t care. 1660, 1660 pesos sang around and around in her head. She was wearing Juan Pablo’s Santa Catalina sweatshirt and the peso notes crackled in the big kangaroo pocket.

  Luz sat on the low rock wall with her sketchpad and watched the crowd. She hadn’t missed being in Mexico City, with its millions of people, thin air, and stifling contaminación. No, she certainly hadn’t missed la sopa. But there was a vibrancy about the huge dirty city, a sort of stubborn hopefulness that was like a shot of positive energy.

  Nearly everyone who passed said something about La Virgen de las Lágrimas. One man stood in front of it for a long time. When he asked her how much it was she said “3000 pesos.” If he came back Luz was prepared to go as low as 2000 pesos. Maybe 1500.

  An hour later she was bent over her sketchpad when something dry and gentle stroked the back of her neck just there. Luz flinched at the unexpected touch and sucked in her breath.

  She smelled leather and soap and citrus.

  Chapter 56

  Eddo knew it was her, despite being at least 20 meters away and approaching her from the rear. It was as if he’d memorized the nape of her neck and the shell of her ear and the way her hair looked pulled back into a ponytail. She had on a navy blue sweatshirt that was too big for her. The hood hung down her back and there were some white letters on either side. She was sitting with her sketchpad in her lap, staring at it intently, just like she’d done in front of the Tamayo.

  She jerked when he touched her and the chatter of the crowd carried his words away. He ran parallel to the wall, looking for a way to get to the other side. There wasn’t a break and so he simply vaulted over the wall, banging into canvases and nearly kicking over an easel with some monstrous ocean on it.

  The owner of the easel yelled at him and Eddo had to stop and say a few soothing words of apology and then he took off again, half running, half walking down the sidewalk. He was ready to start pitching people out of his way, when suddenly he was in front of Luz.

  It was simple good luck that he was the one to find her. All of his friends who knew what Luz looked like had taken turns prowling around Jardin del Arte and the Tamayo Museum on Sundays since the army raid. Diego, still guilt-ridden at the way Luz had left the hospital right under his cappuccino-loving nose, had been at Jardin del Arte the previous weekend. Ana and Tomás had gone the week before.

  “I can’t believe I finally found you,” Eddo blurted.

  Luz looked dumbfounded. Opened her mouth but didn’t say a word. She stood up with her left arm clamped against her side and shoulders hunched like a small broken bird. He thought wildly that whatever was wrong, it didn’t matter what, he would fix it.

  “This one is the best. How much is it?”

  Luz’s stunned eyes drifted past Eddo’s face and he spun around. A man and a woman, both expensively dressed, were looking at the pictures hung on the tree trunk next to Luz. There were two oil paintings on the tree, one of a fish mercado done in her unmistakable humorous style, with the red snapper and salmon grinning and swiveling their eyes as they lay on the ice slab. But the other painting was the one that the people were talking about and he immediately saw why.

  It was a painting of Luz as a Madonna. The colors were pale, almost frosty. It was much better by far than the sketches and drawings he’d seen in October. Powerful and wrenchingly painful at the same time. It was hard to look away from.

  Luz didn’t say anything, just slumped back down on the wall as if her legs wouldn’t support her. Her eyes were still wide with shock.

  Eddo took down the painting. The couple clustered around him and admired it in low voices. There was a card on the back. La Virgen de las Lágrimas. The sorrow permeating the self-portrait tore at his gut.

  “The asking price is 10,000 pesos,” Eddo said.

  Chapter 57

  He was dead, Luz had known it for weeks. But he wasn’t. Eddo was alive and had just sold La Virgen de las Lágrimas for a fortune.

  They didn’t speak as they got into a big boxy tank on wheels, a different SUV from the one he’d had in October. The engine hummed throatily. As Eddo backed the car out of the space Luz started to shake.

  He looked the same and yet different. There was the same taut energy, the same self-control. The difference was a thick streak of silver above his left ear. It contrasted sharply with the dark brown of the rest of his hair and Luz thought distractedly that it was good he wore his hair short, it wasn’t as noticeable.

  He wore khaki pants, a black sweater that clung to his chest, and a simple black leather coat that came halfway to his knees. A white tee shirt showed inside the V neck of the sweater. He looked quietly wealthy and strikingly handsome, even more so than she remembered.

  Luz squeezed her hands between her knees and stared out the side window. The tint made the world outside look dark and stormy. She wondered if the windows were bulletproof. There was a huge lump in her throat and Luz blinked to keep her tears in check.

  Eddo wove the big vehicle through the small streets around the park. They crossed Reforma and turned up a side street into the Zona Rosa. The Sunday traffic was light in the city’s famous touristy web of restaurants and shops. He finally pulled the car up to the curb in front of a fancy antiques shop.

  Eddo got the unsold canvas and the remaining sketches out of the back seat and led her to a residential doorway next to the shop. He unlocked it and they went up three flights of stairs before he stopped and unlocked another door. He held it open and Luz walked past him into a large apartment decorated with angular black leather furniture and abstract art.

  “This is my friend Vasco’s place. I’m using it while he’s away.” Eddo gestured stiffly toward the living room. “Go on and sit down. Would you like a glass of wine?”

  Luz managed to hold it together until she sat down on the black sofa. Then her tears came hard. Her body was wracked by sobs, her shoulders heaved. She cried because she had loved him, she cried because she had killed him, she cried because nothing could ever be the same between them. She cried because she had known he was dead, because she had been so unhappy for so long, because she couldn’t believe he was alive.

  She wept wildly into her hands, unable to stop, her body bunched and shaking. The constant ache in her ribs flared into heat.

  “Luz, Luz, please,” Eddo sat down on the bare coffee table and tried to pull her hands away from her face. His voice came from a hollow distance. “Don’t do this.”

  Luz couldn’t look at him but wept as she’d never done before, all self-control abandoned, her sorrow flooding around them. She had put him in danger. Her grief and shame were bottomless.

  “I’m sorry,” Luz sobbed out. “I’m sorry.” She repeated it over and over, hysterical with remorse. She was caught in a burning river of tears and couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t think of anything besides the need to tell him she was sorry. Her
chest was on fire, the intensity scraped her throat raw, and soon she was gasping for air.

  “Luz.” Eddo’s voice was coming from farther and farther away. “Stop it. You’ll make yourself sick.”

  As if to prove him right, Luz started to gag, her body rebelling against the wracking sobs. She stood dizzily, her hand to her mouth, and looked around. Eddo jumped up, caught her arm, and together they stumbled into a small bathroom.

  Luz slid to her knees in front of the toilet and retched into the bowl, tears streaming down her face. Her stomach was empty and the retching produced nothing except dry heaves. The spasms shook her again and again as she continued to cough and cry. The room cartwheeled and she held onto the cool porcelain, embarrassment piling on top of everything else.

  Slowly, slowly, the horrible retching subsided, the room righted, and she found Eddo sitting on the floor beside her, holding out a damp towel.

  “I’m sorry,” Luz said brokenly. His kindness only made it worse. “It’s my fault. I led them right to you. I’m sorry.” She pressed the towel to her face and started to cry all over again, her body trembling.

  “Stop it, Luz!” Eddo said harshly. “Stop it!”

  The sobs stilled in her throat as his voice reverberated off the tile walls.

  “I’m the one who ought to be saying ‘I’m sorry.’ It’s my fault, Luz.” Eddo grabbed her arm. “It was my job to take care of you.”

  He had her by the shoulders now, shaking her. Raw emotion filled the small room.

  “Do you understand me, Luz? I should have been there.”

  Luz dropped the towel. Grief contorted the lean handsome lines of his face and tears streamed down his cheeks.

  “Don’t cry, Eddo,” Luz whispered. “Today’s my birthday.”

  “Ah, mi corazón,” Eddo said and his voice was suddenly gentle and full of sadness.

  He gathered her into his arms. They stayed quietly on the bathroom floor for a long time, Eddo’s back braced against the wall, Luz’s head against his chest, until neither had any tears left.

  Chapter 58

  Listening to Luz talk about the attack was the hardest thing Eddo had ever done. The tile was cold but he couldn’t move, couldn’t let go of her. She told him about being fired and her mother’s death and why she’d thought he was dead. The tears flowed again when he told her that he’d settled all her hospital bills--nothing had been paid by the Vegas--and that he’d been looking for her for weeks. He told her about Panama, trading the CD for El Toro’s withdrawal of protection from Hugo’s coyote and drug muling operation, and the odyssey that followed. And about the traitor inside Los Hierros. She listened, wiping her eyes from time to time, and he felt guilty as hell at what he’d put her through.

  They were both limp with exhaustion and hunger by the time they got off that bathroom floor. The closest place open on a Sunday evening was Vips. They walked there in silence.

  Eddo gestured for Luz to precede him as the hostess showed them to a booth in the back. Luz moved slowly, with her left arm clamped to her side, her shoulder tipped a little. As when he’d first seen her at the park, Eddo was reminded of a broken bird.

  The restaurant had Formica tables, orange vinyl upholstery, and laminated menus with photographs of salads and enchiladas suizas. They ordered chicken sandwiches and bottled water and made stilted small talk about how every Vips was the same.

  He could have been eating cardboard for all that Eddo actually tasted the sandwich. He was halfway through when a woman at a nearby table gave them a disapproving smirk. Eddo glared back, letting the old bruja know that it was none of her business, even as he realized how incongruous they must look and what conclusions were likely. Luz’s eyes were red, and she looked pretty rough in faded jeans, sneakers, and a worn man’s sweatshirt. Luz saw the silent exchange and tears rolled down her face even as she chewed.

  “Hey,” Eddo said softly. He reached across the table and wiped her cheek. “Doesn’t matter.”

  Luz nodded.

  “I have a new job,” Eddo said, wanting to distract her. “I’m working for Arturo Romero’s campaign. In Oaxaca.”

  “Oh.” Luz attempted a watery smile. “I guess you didn’t want to keep your old job.”

  “No.” Eddo returned the smile. “If Arturo wins I’ll be his Attorney General. If he loses we’ll set up a law practice together.”

  The tears spilled over again, which was not what Eddo had intended at all.

  “I can make a difference, Luz,” he said.

  She sniffed. “I know.”

  “I don’t ever to see again what I saw that day in the desert.” Eddo remembered Miguel’s headless body and exhausted people blinking in the sudden light. “That huge warehouse full of kids.”

  “Children?”

  “That’s right. I didn’t tell you the worst of it. They recruited families to cross the border. Wanted ones with kids about 7 years old. Big enough to be able to gag down a condom full of coke and pass it later, too young to fight real hard when somebody shoved it down their throats. I’d run into one of their recruiters a couple of months before in Anahuac but didn’t realize what was going on.”

  Luz put down the remains of her sandwich. “That’s awful,” she whispered.

  Eddo nodded. “The money was for Lorena’s campaign. If she won, El Toro could pretty much run the country. We still don’t think Betancourt believed it. He just let Hugo resign. Lorena is technically still a candidate but she doesn’t have any money.”

  “Dios mio.” Luz wiped her eyes with her napkin.

  “Are you working?” Eddo asked. “A job you need to get to?”

  “No.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Eddo said.

  “Yes, I’m done.” Luz put her napkin on the table.

  “No. I mean out of this damn city.” Eddo stretched his hand across the table and touched hers. “Let’s go to San Miguel de Allende tomorrow. Find a nice hotel. Stay the week.”

  “What?” Luz blinked at him as if he was crazy, which he probably was with the need to touch her, hold her, make her whole again.

  “We’ll get up early. Jump in the car. Go see art.” Eddo slid his fingers between hers and laced their hands together.

  “I can’t go to San Miguel for a week,” Luz said, staring at their hands. “I have a family.”

  “Your sister is how old?” Eddo asked. “Your brother’s grown. They’ll get by for a week.”

  “I don’t have anything with me. No clothes. Nothing.”

  “We’ll go shopping in the morning,” Eddo said. He rocked their clasped hands. “I owe you a blouse, remember?”

  “It’s just . . . not done,” Luz said. Her cheeks were red.

  “We need some time to figure out where things stand between us, Luz.”

  She didn’t reply, just kept staring at their clasped hands.

  Eddo took a deep breath. “You can see stars in San Miguel,” he said.

  Chapter 59

  Luz’s emotions swirled as they walked through the Zona Rosa back to the apartment. Her hand was threaded through Eddo’s crooked elbow, the same as in October, and his forearm continually rubbed against her scar. By the time they got back to the apartment she knew she couldn’t go to San Miguel with him.

  “Coffee?” Eddo asked once they were inside.

  “Not too strong,” Luz said and slipped into the bathroom.

  When she came out the television was on. Eddo was in a chair holding a mug. There was another mug on the coffee table. Luz perched on the sofa and took the mug. It contained a thin milky liquid that smelled like bark. “You made tea?”

  “It’s coffee,” Eddo said.

  “Oh.”

  “Give it back.” Eddo set his own mug on the coffee table.

  “It’s fine,” Luz said, a little too loudly.

  An old episode of El Chavo del 8 came on. It was a ridiculously funny show, but tonight the antics of the man pretending to be a boy were just foolish.

  “I can�
��t go to San Miguel,” Luz said into her mug. “You’re going to be Attorney General and I’m some muchacha.”

  “I thought we worked that out, Luz,” Eddo said. “Nothing’s changed for me.”

  “I’ve changed.” Luz was suddenly fighting tears again. “I’ve changed a lot.”

  “Is there someone else?” he asked. “Someone from home?”

  “No,” Luz said. “Eddo, please.”

  “Tell me what’s changed, Luz.”

  Luz bit her lip. Eddo waited. El Chavo del 8 spun another ridiculous plot.

  “I have a scar,” she said finally.

  “A lot of people have scars, Luz.”

  “Not like this they don’t.” She shook her head and then, in spite of herself, the words spilled out in a strained croak. “It’s horrible. And red. There’s an empty space where the rib used to be and when I touch it . . .”

  “It’s numb,” Eddo supplied.

  “How do you know?”

  In response, Eddo pulled off his sweater and tee shirt then sat on the end of the coffee table.

  The muscles of his chest were as hard and smooth as Luz remembered. He raised his left arm and showed her a red scar a third of the way down his side. It was about as big as Luz’s thumbprint. He took her hand and ran her fingers over the puckered flesh, then turned so that his side was to her. She saw where the bullet had come out through the wide flare of his lateral muscle.

  “It just hit fat and muscle,” Eddo said. “Not like yours.”

  “You haven’t any fat on you,” Luz murmured.

  “I have plenty here although I think the term you used was concrete.” Eddo leaned toward her and tapped the line of silver hairs on the side of his head.

  Luz ran her fingers along the silver line, parting the hairs. The scar on his scalp was a thick red jag. “Why did all the hair near the scar turn gray?”