Don Verdugo laughed and shook his head. “I tell you, de la Vega, women say they want one thing but what they really want is everything else.”
Alejandro sighed deeply. “You don’t know Elena…”
“You must show her who wears the pantalones in the family,” chided Don Diaz, gesturing down at his shrunken, soaking lower region, “get in touch with your manhood!”
“A fine idea,” complimented Alejandro, “if I want my manhood chopped off with a machete.”
“Think of this as a vacation from the shackles of matrimony…’’offered Don Robau.
Frowning, Alejandro ran his hand through his sweaty scalp. “Isn’t it possible our wives married us because they want to spend time with their husbands?”
Great gusts of laughter burst from the dons. Alejandro waved away their good-natured ridicule.
Don Verdugo’s shoulders fell suddenly. His gaze was forlorn. “My wife hates me.”
“Mine too,” Don Robau remarked stoically.
Don Diaz thrust a white-knuckled fist in the air. “Mine’s a life-sucking beast who lives only to humiliate me!”
Alejandro gripped the tub’s warm side. He hauled himself up, squinting as he scrutinized the faces of his companions. “So let me understand this…if I take your advice, I can look forward to spending my days pruning in a tub of naked men?”
The dons nodded, smiling sagely. It was little wonder that they had accepted their misery as a necessary evil. Loveless arranged unions had long been the way of maintaining prosperity in their homeland. Most of these men took comfort in the arms of mistresses, even had second families by them whom they regarded more admiringly than their own.
He would not sink into the steaming morass that had swallowed up their spirits. He would not share their fate.
Alejandro sloshed a fellow don as he climbed out of the tub. “Thanks for the advice.”
“Where are you going?” asked Don Verdugo, one eyebrow raised.
Alejandro had done enough business with this man to understand his tone. No matter how wonderful a performance Alejandro delivered in his role as a fellow don, he had been unable to completely fool Don Verdugo. Sensing the danger early in their relationship, Alejandro had concocted a tale of modest roots and a conflict between the gentle breeding of his mother and the barefisted call of his soldiering father. A sudden inheritance when he was but a boy explained which side won, but Alejandro maintained that the earth and grit had never fully been cleaned from his boots, thus his desire to make his own fortune.
Acceptance by this circle of men was a necessary part of his disguise, a way of keeping anyone from suspecting that he was Zorro. But he was always something of the outsider, or so it felt.
To hell with whether or not they think I have cajones, he thought. I’ve been led around by my foolish pride—among other things—long enough.
Alejandro looked Don Verdugo in the eye. “I’m going to beg Elena’s forgiveness,” stated Alejandro firmly.
Don Verdugo offered a dismissive shrug and returned to his game. The other dons followed his lead.
Wrapping a towel around his waist, Alejandro spun and smacked into a pinstriped stick with two foggy lenses perched atop and a fistful of matted sweaty brown hair sticking out at all angles. Stepping back, Alejandro frowned at the out-of-place visitor. Why would anyone wear a suit or expensive loafers here? Did he want them to be ruined?
Fah! What business was it of his? Alejandro eased to one side of the man, trying to slide past him, and the gentleman swayed and wobbled right into his path as he withdrew his thick, steamed up spectacles, his feet nearly slipping on the floor. Alejandro grabbed the man’s arm and steadied him, accepting a polite and reedy “thank you” for his trouble. The man wiped off his glasses with his tie and squinted as he slipped the round wire-frames back over his ears. The other dons glared at Alejandro and the stranger.
“Goodness me,” cried the thin, bespectacled man. “Might one of you be Don Alejandro de la Vega?”
His brow furrowing with suspicion, Alejandro said, “Yes?”
The newcomer fished about absently for something in his jacket. He tried one breast pocket, then the other. Scowling, he patted his outer pockets, then those in his trousers. “Phineas Gendler, Attorney at Law,” he murmured. “I’m here on behalf of your wife.”
Alejandro’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. Elena? There must be some mistake.
Gendler sighed with relief as he whipped an envelope from his back pocket and handed it to Alejandro. Adjusting his glasses, Gendler added, “If you should have any questions, my address is on the letterhead. Good day, sir.”
The slight man saw himself out. Alejandro wandered closer to the bath, tearing open the envelope and yanking out a sheet of paper. His face glazed with shock as he took in the official-looking letterhead and read its neatly printed words. He tottered for an instant, standing as if he had just been shot and hadn’t yet had the sense to fall. Instead, the paper slid from his hand and fluttered to the water.
The dons leaned in gravely.
The first line of the letter read, “ISSUANCE OF PROCEEDINGS FOR DIVORCE.”
In seconds the ink began to blur, but the dissolution of the printed text could not take away the pain and heartbreak that nearly brought Alejandro to his knees.
From Joaquin’s Confessions
Mama? Papi? They don’t understand. They can’t understand.
At school, the others laugh at me because my father doesn’t come home any more. They say he is in the doghouse for good this time. What do they know, we don’t even have a dog!
Papi is like a stranger. I guess that is nothing new.
He comes around from time to time and pokes his nose in my business. I know he only does it to make himself feel better.
And the Padre says I should not be so hard on him!
Everyone says this.
Maybe I could manage that a little easier if he were not such a baboso all the time.
Ah, yes, Padre. One hundred Hail Marys and a promise that I shall never call my Papi a drooling idiot again. I can just hear him scolding me now.
Yes, Padre, yes, God be with you, gotta go.
Chapter 5
Morning light burned Alejandro’s eyes. Squinting, he stirred from the blissful depths of sleep as something exploded against the door, the sound driving a sharp spike into his skull. He pictured a brace of soldiers smashing a battering ram against the hard wood.
“Joaquin,” he mumbled, attempting to rouse his brother, with whom he’d been out thieving the night before. “Joaquin, the Federales, they’ve come for us…”
His hand clawed the cool sheets for his weapons and came up empty. Heart thundering, he scoured the room with his gaze. Joaquin was not here, and he had no pistol, no sword.
The sound came again. His head cleared a little and this time he registered that it was only a slight tapping.
He had no idea where he was, but with crushing certainty he recalled that Joaquin, for whom his son was named, was long dead. The realization ground broken glass into his belly.
“Señor de la Vega?” a woman called from the other side of the door. “Housekeeping!”
He mulled the word over. Housekeeping? Was he in a hotel of some kind? His flickering gaze swept from the dried mud adobe brick walls past the heavy wooden dressers to his bed and armoire. He took in the fine linens, silver and clayware, and the spiderweb of heavy wood beams overhead leading to the high thatched roof. Yes, a hotel room, certainly.
The lock rattled, the door swung open and a vision in white chemise glided into the room, her flowing chestnut hair trailing her attractive form. Her eyes and smile sparkled as she swept near the bed.
Elena! Yes, it was his beloved, they must have put up here for the night and she was playing a little game—
Alejandro felt steel scrape along his teeth as the curtains were flung open, their hooks whipping across their rod with an ear-piercing shriek. Far worse than the sound was the curs
ed light. Alejandro flinched, squinted and screwed up his features in alarm as he raised his hand to shield himself from the blinding rays streaking in from outside.
Oddly, his visitor stood serenely beside the window and drew in a pleasant breath as she gazed outside at the swaying trees, flowering succulents and citrus planted in the garden. Lovely shimmers of crimson, amber and blue reached from a nearby stained glass window, stealing along the bare flesh of her beautiful arms.
Had Elena taken leave of her senses? Did the searing, blinding light not bother her? Perhaps the woman would be unmindful of the heat if she stood in the heart of the sun!
No, Alejandro realized. It’s not her…it’s me. My head is a mess.
And it’s not Elena who’s come to visit. I recognize this one, now.
Alejandro forced a smile as Lupe the chambermaid spun toward him, diminutive, yet buxom, her eyes the color of glittering jade. Other than possessing long dark hair, she looked nothing like his wife. And she was so young. A woman, yes, perhaps even of an age to marry, but a child in the ways of the world, surely.
Settling back, Alejandro wondered why he was in this terrible state.
With a gentle laugh, Lupe crossed to his dresser. She bent over the messy nest of papers sprawled there and sniffed at the mouth of an open wine bottle. Smacking her lips, she playfully winked at the bad, bad boy who’d ignored his work to finish off the drink. Alejandro quickly looked away from the voluptuous sway of her bosom, fixing instead on the ornate gold-plated candelabras and crucifixes lining the pale wall opposite his bed.
Bringing a grimy hand to his mouth, he smelled his own breath. Acid snaked up his nostrils. A grenade burst in his skull. “By all the saints and their mothers!”
The details came crashing back to him. This was the Edinburough Mission Inn. For three miserable months, this little room and a succession of such bottles had been his life. Ever since the divorce…
“I’m sorry, señor,” Lupe said softly, “but you told me to make sure you didn’t sleep past two today.”
Alejandro grunted appreciatively. A question slowly formed in his addled mind. “What is today?”
“Wednesday.”
An image sprang in his mind: his laughing son racing toward him, arms outstretched. “Of course, I have to pick up Joaquin,” Alejandro said brightly. “Gracias, Lupe.”
Without thinking, he hopped out of bed, onto the cold clay-tiled floor.
He was stark naked.
Lupe glanced away demurely, but not before her gaze ranged freely over his body. Her tongue flicked across her upper lip and a low throaty rumble of desire escaped her.
Alejandro felt a rush of heat rise to his face—and a very cool breeze steal lower. He snatched the first thing he could find to cover himself down there, sheepishly holding the long, tall candlestick before him. It didn’t help particularly.
Lupe giggled.
“Eh…what happened to my clothes?” asked Alejandro. His face had blossomed into a bright crimson.
Lupe raised an eyebrow and indulged a private smile as she closed on the bed. “I removed them last night,” murmured Lupe as she stripped the pillows from his mattress, “so you wouldn’t catch pneumonia.”
Alejandro pivoted as the lovely young woman swept around the bed, the breeze she created whipping across his bared flesh.
“You removed them?” he gasped.
She bent over the bed, arching her back perhaps more than she needed to, providing Alejandro with a look at how tightly her dressing gown cleaved to her well-rounded backside as she tossed another pillow aside and yanked at the bed’s remaining sheets. “After you returned from the cantina, you…went for a swim.”
His gaze darted frantically about the room, seeking his trousers, as he willed the fog in his brain to dissipate.
It defied him.
“In my clothes?” asked Alejandro, his voice strained.
Lupe finished with the bed. She spun around and gazed fully at him. Her smile was unapologetic, inviting. “Si, señor.”
“But this hotel doesn’t have a pool.”
“We have a fountain.”
“I see,” said Alejandro. And, unfortunately, so did she. “Thank you, Lupe. Perhaps you could turn around?”
“We are all naked before God,” cried a thunderous voice from the hallway.
Fray Felipe rushed inside, his gaze locked on Lupe. “I’ll see you at confession, child.”
Her face turning a deepening hue of shame, Lupe shrank from the room, closing the door behind her.
Alejandro tossed the candlestick away, snatched up his clothes from the floor and dropped heavily to the bed.
A mistake.
The world spun and his stomach lurched as he bent forward to stab one foot into a pant leg.
The wrong pant leg. His head was blurry and stupid from drink. He caught Fray Felipe glaring at him disapprovingly.
Alejandro rolled his eyes at his visitor as he yanked on his pants. “Don’t look at me like that. I know what you’re gonna say…”
“I’m here to lift your spirits, not dampen them,” said Fray Felipe, an edge of impatience creeping into his words.
Alejandro bounded to his feet and felt his head throb. His tongue was as dry as a cat’s. Fine for a feline, not fine for a fox.
“Who says my spirits need lifting?” he asked, his face turning scarlet as he struggled to match the buttons of his topshirt with their eyeholes.
Fray Felipe’s open palm smacked a dresser like a disobedient bottom.
The thunderclap toppled Alejandro. He sank to the bed and grasped the mattress to keep from sliding off its side.
“You’re being a pigheaded fool, Alejandro,” Fray Felipe said hotly. “Just go to Elena and tell her you were wrong!”
“Hey, she was the one who wanted me to live a lie—stop being myself!” Alejandro slapped his chest. “As if California could live without me!”
Felipe rolled his eyes. “Wake up, Huevon. We haven’t had to ring that bell in three months. You should be rejoicing!”
“I am rejoicing!” boomed Alejandro. Wincing, he brought his shaky hands to his aching head. Perhaps he should be rejoicing just a little less.
“Alright,” snarled Felipe. “You can’t rot in this room forever. A new vineyard’s opening tonight and you’re coming to the party with me.”
“My whole life’s a party,” Alejandro ground out between gritted teeth. “Thank you,” he added with a bullfighter’s final flourish of his hand, “no.”
“Be in the lobby at eight, or don’t bother coming to confession,” fumed Fray Felipe, “because I’ll never forgive you!”
Alejandro blinked with astonishment. “You’d blackmail my soul?” he accused.
“Hell, yes!” spat Fray Felipe.
Alejandro winced as his friend stomped out of the room, slamming the door. He sat alone, holding his head in his hands, wondering if cursing a holy man, even one whom he loved so dearly, would nudge his soul past the point of redemption.
He did it anyway.
Joaquin de le Vega’s thoughts had also turned to the tortures endured by doomed souls. Leaning back in his chair at the Alvarado Academy for Children, surveying the tide of frightened faces staring back at the spectacle of Father Quintero once again plunging the cone-shaped “dunce” cap on the head of poor chubby, helpless Ricardo, Joaquin pictured imps with pitchforks dancing about Father Quintero’s robes.
It was a happy thought.
“Now, would anyone else like to interrupt my lecture by asking to go to the bathroom?” demanded Father Quintero. “No one? Good. Now then…”
Joaquin felt a cool inviting breeze call to him from a nearby window. He turned his gaze from the rivers of hard wood desks with iron wrought supports, looked beyond the blazing colors of flags pinned on the walls and billowing from metal stands—Mexico, the California Republic, the United States—and gazed at the bustling streets beyond the school’s rear court.
Freedom, he thought hazi
ly. Sweet, sweet freedom…
Joaquin could be a very good student—when the subject interested him. Only ten scant minutes ago, he had listened with rapt attention as a fellow student reported on a subject near to his heart. A small chalkboard perched atop a nearby easel bore a list of events that would have gone very differently had El Zorro not intervened: The rescue of Pio Pico; the secret history of the Gold Rush; the battle of the 20-mule freighters; the alliance with James Beckwourth, Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians; the Mexican-American War and the Bear Flag Republic…
One thing was for certain: no one could accuse Señor Zorro of lazing about during these critical years of California’s fight for freedom…unlike Joaquin’s Papi, that is.
Rueben Belasco, a tall, grinning fourth-grade devil, passed Joaquin a drawing of a don in fancy dress grinning stupidly and pointing to a small wooden doghouse that bore a crooked sign proclaiming, “Home Sweet Home.” The name “Alejandro de la Vega” hovered above the image of the demented and drooling don.
Joaquin crumpled up the drawing and tossed it away. He knew that if he made too much of it, the ridicule would never end. Those measured thoughts did nothing to keep the blazing scarlet from stealing across his neck and spreading to his ears as he clenched his jaw and tapped his quill pen to a mad passionate rhythm only he could hear.
At the rear of the classroom, Father Quintero threaded his way among the rows of students, his stick a python ready to strike. It grazed a lock of hair here, brushed the nape of a neck there. Boys and girls shivered as it sliced the air, hissing past them. Though the room was swept through with bracing sunlight, shadows somehow found the Father’s long, thin face and crept into the crevices beneath his sunken and predatory eyes and cheeks. His chin looked sharp enough to slice open envelopes and his raven’s hair was coiled so tightly that even the strong wind gave up hope of rustling it.
Father Quintero reached the head of the class. He whirled on the blackboard, his stick thwacking against it. The stick’s tip held there, pointing to a word the teacher had scrawled earlier:
The Legend of Zorro Page 8