Dancing with the Tiger

by Lili Wright

  The door flattened the weeds enough to let her slip in. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and she saw that Thomas had lied again.

  His chapel was not a storage room for art, but a congregation of ghouls.

  Masks, dozens of masks, lined the wooden pews. Masks of jackals, wolves, and tigers hung from the walls, mouths frothing. Every inch of space was covered. Startled Moors squeezed next to ashen Christians. Toothless geezers leered at beauty-marked whores. Creepy wooden figures the size of children, some missing forearms or feet or hair, crowded the aisles, their chipped eyes begging for rescue or deliverance. A headless woman supplicated. Amputees wept. On the ceiling, bones were glued in decorative patterns, medallions and flowers, light as lace. On the altar, a long table lined with twelve skulls, fists of stale bread and chalices, forming a Last Supper of the dead. Presiding over this macabre centerpiece was a life-size skeleton in a wedding dress and flowered garland. In one bony hand she held a scepter and, in her outstretched palm, the death mask of Montezuma.

  Santa Muerte was Thomas Malone’s new religion.

  Take the mask and run.

  Anna staggered forward past glass eyes, painted eyes, empty sockets. No sign of the looter; the floor was pristine. A video camera was perched on a tripod. A security camera? Or was Thomas Malone another inspired director? Anna stopped. Another surprise. Grasshopper masks. A dozen identical to the one she and her father had featured in their book lay in a pile. Nearby, long sheets of silver metal leaned against a wall with half-finished Centurion masks. It all made sense now. Constance was not Thomas Malone’s sole source of income. He was manufacturing bogus masks, fobbing them off on trusting collectors, like her father. Daniel, I see a real opportunity here, a find. The men’s friendship had been a ruse, a con job. The crafty opportunist dances circles around the well-funded drunk.

  Take the mask and run.

  The Angel of Death was even more unnerving up close, not some cheap replica, but a model that med students would use, anatomically correct, each bone fastened with wire or nylon string. The human skeleton has 206 bones. A fact Anna had checked, remembered. The only bone not attached to another bone is the hyoid, which facilitates speech. Each truth reassured her. Science was a safe refuge in this cauldron of perverse religion, just as religion was a safe refuge when science— Anna froze. The bride’s garland, she recognized it. Dried flowers spun around a blue silk scarf. Holly’s tiara from the photograph. Thomas had pinched it for his sick memento mori. Anna touched the skeleton’s arm. It was smooth, almost waxy. She tapped it with her knuckle, felt herself go weak. Real bones. The remains of some poor woman from Juárez, no doubt, the creation of a covert Santa Muerte factory. Even in death, Thomas Malone procured the rare and remarkable. Even in death, the collector put his own desires above another person’s soul. Anna steadied herself against the table, silence loud in her ears. This was somebody’s child. She focused on the turquoise mask, whose lopsided expression seemed more kindly than usual. Take me and run.

  Anna lifted the mask, expecting alarms to ring, but the only sound was her own jagged breath. Fumbling, she wrapped the mask in her sweater, stuffed it in her pack, turned to leave. Her legs and lips had swelled. Objects swayed and dulled. She felt drugged. It didn’t seem possible that a house filled with people she knew lay beyond the chapel door.

  “C’mon, Morocco, Honduras. Keep me company.”

  Thomas.

  Anna slid under a pew, making herself small and quiet. What would Thomas do if he caught her? Shoot her. Laugh it off. Claim the chapel was an art installation, and they could both pretend to believe his lie, pretend this wasn’t fetishism, the occult. The chapel door opened. A dull light went on. Anna’s heart was a crow, flapping, cawing, out of her chest. Fear played visual tricks. Everything shattered into multiple images. The pews, the cracks in the tiles, the dust. Already, she was willing to surrender. Let the worst happen now. His orange aftershave met her nose. Anna prayed to the only dead person who loved her. And she thought: Fish never close their eyes.

  “Where shall we put you, my lovely? A woman as grand as you needs an escort. Sit next to the mendicant.”

  Anna held still, held on.

  His footsteps approached. She stopped breathing. A hand touched her shoulder. “What are you doing here?”

  Anna did not move or speak.

  He repeated the question.

  She whispered, “I wanted to see the collection.”

  “For God’s sake, get up. You look ridiculous.” Anna rose, steadying herself on the pew. Thomas was smiling, furious, bashful, proud. Maybe he’d secretly wanted to show off his creation. This could be another dark secret they shared.

  “What do you think?” he asked. “I left the door open for you.”

  “It’s amazing. Scary, of course.” She was slurring. She didn’t feel right. “All these faces. That’s what you wanted, right? A haunted house, performance art.”

  Thomas’s face went blank. “I’m not mad.”

  “You believe in Santa Muerte.” Each word took effort.

  “Of course not. A religion for paupers and thieves. The saint of last resort. You might want to give her a shout.” Thomas grabbed her wrist, twisted it.

  Anna fell back into the pew, too weak to stand.

  “I am going to take back the death mask now.” He reached into her pack. “I can see you’re tired. You should sleep soon.”

  He had drugged her. Anna understood, but could do nothing to stop the chemicals easing into her bloodstream.

  “I had high hopes for our collaboration, but your editorial skills were lacking. I am ready to enjoy you this time. I feel comfortable here in the chapel.”

  He sat beside her on the pew, marking her veins with a finger.

  “You are mad,” she said softly.

  “I told you I am not mad.”

  “I am not having sex with you.”

  She was ill beyond speaking. Where was the looter? Where was Salvador? Thomas fetched a rope, tied her arms and legs. Anna watched this happen. She tried to scream but heard nothing. The chapel had bloomed into a cathedral, arches of light soared above her, and she floated, warm and remote.

  “I will tell the others you fell ill and took a taxi home. Would you like to pick your mask tonight, or are you too tired? I am losing you, my dear. You are lost. Stay here with Holly while I dispose of our guests.”

  Anna whispered the name. Holly. Sickness rose up her throat. She understood now. Yes, at last.

  “Marvelous woman. Laugh like a bird, pout like a pin-up. I’d have given her anything, left all this, but she denied me. The more I begged, the harder she laughed. I’d rather run away with Constance. So many games. You can touch me here, but not there. Her little mouth. Her dogteeth. She wore my masks.”

  He had forgotten Anna entirely. His voice thinned to a pitiful whine.

  “I don’t ask for much. A little relief. A moment of pleasure. But each time, it gets harder. I paid her, but still she tortured me with her flirtations. Think how much you’ll miss me. Nothing would change her mind. I brought her here. She wanted to see inside. They all do. But she wouldn’t be quiet. She wouldn’t obey. She was lovely. Blue scarf. Silly, vain crown. But she is lovely now, too. It took so much water to clean her, but I did it joyfully. She’s a saint now. The center of attention, just like she always wanted.”

  “You killed her.”

  Intoxicating Holly with her tart smile and feather earrings was now a skeleton, festooned, hung up, revered in a perverse mix of religion and sex and obsession. The Grim Reaper. Lady Death. La Flaca.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Thomas scolded, with a burst of charm. “I’m a collector. I live for my collection, and I live with it.”

  Thomas tugged each sleeve at the wrist, bowed before the altar, and left her. The chapel door clicked shut. Anna fought to hold on to consciousness. She picture
d Salvador’s face, marveling: You Americans all come to Mexico to lose your minds. Anna had not buried her mother’s ashes. She had not told Salvador how happy he made her. Her father was drinking again, unattended. She was forever leaving things undone.

  seventeen THE HOUSEKEEPER

  Soledad was rinsing plates in warm dishwater when Señor Thomas returned, letting the screen door slam, his eyebrows low and ugly over his eyes. The señora wanted to know where he had been, that much English Soledad understood, and she could tell by the señora’s coiled body and tense voice that she was livid. “Where’s Anna?” The señor stood at the end of the table, a corrupt senator, making a speech. Soledad caught only a few words. Anna. Hotel. Taxi. Sick.

  The señora was drunk, her jaw hanging like a car door, while the guests sat straight as cactuses, napkins folded, ankles crossed. The turnip one reached for his wife’s hand under the table and gave it a squeeze.

  The señor poured himself a brandy. The guests started talking, all but the Mexican, who looked like someone had punched him in the panza. Soledad caught his eye, telling him, wordlessly, that Thomas Malone was a liar.

  “Soledad, make us some tea, por favor,” the señor said.

  She filled the kettle, lit a match, watched the orange flames jump to life. The simple force of fire. Elemental. Purifying. Farmers knew this. Fire could clean a field or an entire city. Sodom or Gomorrah. She thought about Hugo. How pathetic he looked, thinner with his chest wrapped, the first gray hairs peeking over his bandage, how he had been weeping, like a man who wasn’t a man at all, just a small boy who’d lived for decades. She fixated on the window, the mullions, crosses, the long sill. Timeline. Tightrope. Arrow. The housekeeper studied the window until she made up her mind.

  —

  Her hands fumbled the key in the moonlight. She looked back at the glow of the big house. At any moment, the señor might appear. At any moment, the señora would summon her. The key had a tag saying CAPILLA, but she couldn’t make it work. She had never dared use the key, never admitted to anyone she had it left over from the previous señora, the cheap one, who counted bananas. Soledad closed her eyes. “Querida María, Madre de Dios y de todos nosotros . . .”

  The key turned. She lifted the gas canister.

  Inside, the chapel was even more terrifying than the glimpse she’d seen through the peephole. She kept her flashlight trained to the floor, afraid to look around, look back. The girl was laid out on a pew, a maiden in a fairy tale. She was pretty, even here. Soledad had a pang of envy that the girl lived in the United States and had the freedom to travel, trade lovers, spend her dollars wherever she pleased. Americans cared little for family, which is why this Anna had wound up drugged in a chapel, reliant on a Mexican housekeeper for rescue. She could leave the girl here. There was no good reason to save her. And yet, of course, there was every reason. Faith, without works, is nothing.

  Something creaked. Soledad turned sharply. Devils, dragons, whores, lecherous Spaniards leered. The bones on the ceiling hung like poisonous mushrooms. Heart hammering, she lifted the girl by the shoulders, dragged her down the aisle. She was heavy, dead weight. Breathing hard, she set the girl down, then chastised herself for wasting time. She lifted her again and pulled her through the door, collapsing on the threshold. It was dark. She was alone. He will shoot you, too. A second voice inside her, which was her, another version of her, the brave Soledad who was on speaking terms with the Virgin, whispered, He who knows the right thing and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

  She counted to ten. This was her new habit. Many good things could happen between one and ten. Water boiled. The butcher took her order. She remembered how much she loved her husband, how lonely she would be without his touch. She could decide to forgive him for falling in love with a girl who sold paper.

  A chill swept over her shoulder blades.

  Someone was walking toward her. In the distance, somewhere in the hills of Oaxaca, a dog began to howl.

  eighteen THE GARDENER

  Hugo sat at the kitchen table of the cottage and pulled out the stationery he’d purchased from the paper shop so many months before. He lit a single candle. He picked up his pen.

  Mi niña de amarillo,

  Though much has happened since you left for Veracruz, my love for you has never wavered.

  He touched his bandage. The doctor at the public hospital had asked no questions. He knew how such things happened. Hugo knew he was lucky to be alive, and though Thomas Malone thought he was dead, Reyes did not, and the drug lord would not stop until this task was completed. Hugo had no right to put the girl in danger.

  But I must let you fly away, little bird. I am too old for you. Too poor and too old. You will sing for a better man. Stay strong, my papershop girl. Remember me in your dreams as I remember you. The Aztecs chose the most beautiful young girls to be sacrificial maidens. I read this in your book. The girls would sing and care for the men chosen for sacrifice, making sure their final hours were blissful. You are such a maiden. I am that happy man.

  Con gratitud,

  Hugo

  The gardener put down his pen. If you were sacrificed, how long would your heart beat for me? He would find out soon enough.

  He thought of Soledad. His brave wife had gone to work that morning, weeping faked tears, confiding to the señora, who later told the señor, that Hugo had disappeared, run off with a younger woman. The cabrón had comforted her with soothing lies and rum in her tea while Hugo hid in the cottage, callado como un muerto. Silent as a corpse. They could not leave until he regained his strength. All day, hatred in her heart, Soledad had cooked and cleaned and fixed the Americans special coffee made with water from the toilet, brushing shoulders with a killer. But now it was past midnight, and where was she? The party had ended thirty minutes before.

  The door burst open. Soledad stood before him, her expression ethereal, formidable. He quickly covered the letter.

  “Where were you?”

  “Doing God’s work.”

  “It’s late. God is working overtime.” Hugo unfurled his hand, teasing out the story. “So tell me.”

  “It’s a secret.”

  Hugo frowned. “It’s dangerous out there.”

  “The Virgin watches over me.”

  “And what does the Virgin think about this work of yours?”

  “She says, ‘Buen trabajo, Soledad.’”

  “The Virgin sounds like a nun.”

  “No. The Virgin is a rockstar.”

  Hugo shook his head. “You know nothing about music.”

  “I sing.”

  “You are a beautiful woman blessed with a terrible voice.”

  “A broken heart makes beautiful music.”

  “Don’t say that. It hurts me.” He reached into his pocket and removed a silver chain. A locket hung from the end. “This is for you.”

  Soledad opened the locket, saw his picture inside. She smiled. His wife smiled upon him.

  Hugo wrinkled his nose. “You smell gas?”

  Soledad pushed her hands in her apron pockets, shook her head. No.

  “Listen,” Hugo straightened in his chair. His body hurt all over. “I have memorized a poem. It’s from the Huehuetlatolli, the lessons Nahua elders gave young boys. I have been studying them.

  “The mature man:

  a heart as firm as stone,

  a wise countenance,

  the owner of a face and a heart

  who is capable of understanding.”

  He meant the words as a prayer, a promise. His wife wiped her tired eyes. “I want that man.” She held out a hand.

  Hugo hobbled to take it.

  nineteen ANNA

  Anna woke up inside a car. Her head hurt. The digital clock said one in the morning. Someone was holding her hand. She snatched it back, then heard Salvador’s soothing voice. “Gracias a Dios, estaba tan preocu
pado.” She fell into him and they held each other, tight as a planet, a circle of rock with its own weather and delicate clouds, light-years away from all they knew or who they had been.

  “What happened?” It took effort to speak.

  Salvador whispered the story, how he’d left the Malones’, snuck back to the chapel, saw Soledad dragging her. Together, they carried her to the car.

  And the looter?

  Salvador shrugged.

  And the mask?

  “Still in the chapel, I guess.” He was caressing her forehead. “You don’t want to . . .”

  “No, I don’t want to . . .” She sat up, kneaded her face, trying to think. “But Thomas can’t have the mask. Anyone but him.”

  “So we go de ramate?” That meant all the way.

  Anna closed her eyes. She pictured the holes that scarred her father’s living room walls, where the hooks had hung, the masks. She pictured her mother standing under an umbrella outside the van on the highway from La Esperanza, chatting in the window, pointing back to Anna. The car windows had filled with warm condensation, enough for Anna to draw hearts. She pictured a gallery with her mother’s name, their collection, an homage to Mexico, to this amazing death mask, ferocious as God’s spirit, resilient as man’s spirit in a godless world. Don’t give up, the mask told her. Or maybe that was her mother’s voice. So far away now, difficult to hear. Anna breathed in, put a name to what she’d committed to. She was risking her life to save her father, to honor her mother, to protect the mask. She was risking her life to screw over Thomas Malone. Each reason was reason enough.

  “Vamos de ramate.”

  Salvador grinned. “A todo dar.” We give it all up.

  Anna narrowed her eyes. “A toda pinche madre.”

  The whole fucking way.