She brushed his hands aside and moved away, straightening her skirt. Even though he was half hidden in shadows, she thought he had a cheeky look on his face.
There was a taste of salt on her lips from the sweat she’d licked off his skin. It flustered her and she wiped her mouth, frowning.
“Don’t start being smug,” she told him.
“I couldn’tstopbeing smug if it killed me,” he replied, and the way he spoke, the grin that spread across his face, was a lovely thing to behold. He gave her a soft, lazy kiss before sauntering away.
—
Maybe her spine was of a softer substance, after all, for on Sunday morning she struggled to mix the ingredients for the sleeping potion. Manufacturing poison had been easier. The sleeping potion challenged her. She knew its basic components: floripondio, the angel’s trumpet, brewed with a couple of other ingredients into a tea would quickly induce sleep. But how quickly and how many flowers to use remained a mystery. In the end, she concluded that if it killed Cándido on the spot, that wouldn’t be a bad thing after all.
They had decided against procuring chloroform because it seemed too complicated a task. But then there was the problem of brewing the tea. This being Sunday, and on top of that a day of feast and merriment, meant the servants had left the house early and would return on Monday. Inés had the kitchen to herself. Still, she must work quickly, and the constant fear of being found out made her fingers clumsy; she barely had time to ready herself for midday mass and rushed down the stairs as the church’s bell began to clang.
Breathless, she reached the front door, where Perla and Ulises were waiting for her.
“You can never be on time, can you?” her aunt chided her. “Where’s the mantilla?”
“Right here,” Inés said, and quickly adjusted the piece of lace around her hair. It was falling out of fashion, this custom of the mantilla, but on special days like these all women complied with ceremonial requirements, and she put on her gloves as fast as she could.
Perla looked at Inés with a critical eye, and seemed to find no fault in her appearance. They hurried out of the house and arrived at church before the last bell tolled.
No sooner had Perla, Ulises, and Inés seated themselves in the pews than the altar boy rang a handheld bell, and everyone stood up as the priest walked in.
Most of the attendants didn’t care much for that day’s sermon—which was practically the same each year—but instead waited eagerly for the parading of San Fidel de las Cumbres, which would take place later that evening. Yet the mass must be held if the closing celebrations were to take place, and everyone submitted themselves to the priest’s long-winded speech.
After church services, the congregation quickly dispersed to ready themselves for the night’s revels.
Seven o’clock was the magic hour, and Inés, Perla, and Ulises were already sitting at their table at the café when the bells began to clang again, this time to announce the parading of the saint. Then the bells went quiet. Voices were hushed inside the café and in the streets, as if everyone were holding their breath.
Four attendants carried the statue of San Fidel, which was balanced atop a palanquin, out of the church and walked it around the plaza.
The statue was carved in wood and had been carefully painted to give the illusion of soft flesh and curly hair. Something about its eyes had always made Inés uneasy, for they seemed to follow her. As the statue was paraded by the windows of the café, she quickly looked away and found Cándido’s sardonic gaze.
The attendants went around again with the statue, and then a third time. All the while half a dozen men in their tiger masks trailed the statue. When the attendants began walking back into the church, the tigers dropped to the ground and removed their masks, playing dead.
Throughout the plaza and the streets, all the other men dressed as tigers ripped their masks off and cries of joy echoed across the town while fireworks began to streak the sky. It was the culmination of the festival.
Inés clapped mechanically.
—
The guests reached their rooms by ten, before the doors of the guesthouse were locked, and by the time midnight rolled around Aunt Perla was snoring in her room and the house had grown quiet.
Ulises and Inés tiptoed out of the premises, then made their way twoblocks down the street. Ulises hid against an enclosing wall that was blanketed by a luxurious bougainvillea. The lamppost there had long been out of commission, which was why she had told Cándido to meet her there.
It was also a quiet, seldom frequented street. The owner of the house with the enclosing wall and the bougainvillea was Mr. Galindo, who was hard of hearing and lived with a single servant. His property was large, one of those relics from a previous century that survived in Puerco Ahogado but might have been torn up somewhere else; the casona took up most of the block. On the other side of the street there were other houses, smaller, more modest in design. The lights were off there. Either the owners had retired for the night, as the more sensible, exhausted citizens did after a whole weekend of rejoicing, or they were still outside and would not return until dawn.
Inés waited, with her purse dangling from her shoulder, clutching a hip flask in one hand, while Ulises pressed himself against the wall, into the shadows. At last, a car rolled down the street and stopped. Cándido motioned to her. Inés stepped into the vehicle and clutched his arm.
“Can you give me a minute before we go?” she asked.
“What’s the matter?”
“I need a minute.”
“You’re going to change your mind?” he asked, frowning.
“I need to pray, that’s all. It’s a sin, what we’re about to do.”
