Read Online Dancing with the Tiger by Lili Wright - Free Book Online Page A

over his head, knotting the legs under his chin. For Carnival, dancers bundled their heads with scarves, but the effect was the same. Darkness. Claustrophobia. His rising panic reminded him of the one time he’d put his head underwater.
    The carver paced the terrace, picking up speed and adrenaline. He breathed in what he exhaled. Animal in, animal out. With a broom, he whacked the hanging laundry. His wife’s enormous bra fell to the ground, and he hooked the strap and helicoptered it around his head until it soared into his neighbor’s front yard. Emilio Luna whooped and chased the cat past the woodpile until the animal leapt over the wall to safety. He stabbed the bushes, jousted the unsuspecting hammock until he caught sight of a wicker chair sitting defenseless in the sun. He bludgeoned the innocent straight through its straw heart.
    Everything stopped. Quiet in an instant.
    Dizzy and depleted, the carver ripped off his mask and fell into the injured chair, waking from a dream he was already forgetting. The cat inched back, wound crazy eights around his legs. Emilio Luna buried his fingers deep in its fur.
Dumb animal, so quick to forgive.
    Maybe this new tiger mask had a strange power, or maybe he was just a light-headed old man on a warm day. He could make no sense of his feelings but was certain of this: When his wife asked how her bra had ended up in the neighbor’s yard, Emilio Luna would blame the cat.
    â€œBuenas tardes, Emilio Luna.”
    The carver looked over cautiously. Good news seldom came unannounced. Sure enough, a drunk man was leaning on his gate. The
borracho
was short, sallow, unshaven. His faded pink T-shirt was streaked with gray stains. A half-empty Corona swung from his meaty hand. The man seemed pleased, enjoying a private joke.
    Emilio Luna was about to tell the stranger to move along, when he spoke in a clear voice: “Why do you not greet me today, my friend?”
    The carver recognized the mashed-up features and laughed. “Ah,
patrón
. That’s a good one.”
    It was rare to see Reyes in the village, but the drug lord showed up once a season, a reminder or warning, and bought a dozen masks with crisp bills. Emilio Luna didn’t like to sell his art to the detestable El Pelotas—it was like promising your sweet daughter to a pedophile—but what choice did he have? The carver had his pride, but he also had a belly—and a wife, a cat, a donkey, a half-dozen children, and too many grandchildren to remember their names. Every man, woman, and child came to Emilio Luna with a hand open wide.
    He stood, wiped his callused hands clean. Compromise was its own sort of courage.
    â€œ
Buenas tardes, patrón,
come in.” He beckoned his guest with a smile and a lie. “It gives me much happiness to see you in our village today. I have finished a mask that is perfect for you.”

eleven ANNA
    A muscular housekeeper with a string of earrings led Anna in to see Lorenzo Gonzáles. The dealer was an enormous man, whose faint goatee struggled to cover his flabby jowls. He was nearly bald and his skin looked anemic against his white guayabera shirt. Dusty books and withered plants cluttered his office. A chessboard rested on a precarious pile of paper. He was playing against himself, winning and losing. The only sign of modernity was a calendar of Garfield, grinning with pointy teeth.
    Gonzáles offered Anna a warm, pudgy hand. “It is a pleasure to meet you after our phone conversations.” His English was perfect. “Please sit down, Miss Ramsey. Your father is coming.” He glanced past her.
    â€œNo, he’s not here.”
    â€œHe’s coming later.”
    Anna shook her head.
    â€œHe sent you to Mexico alone.”
    â€œI sent myself.”
    â€œYou do not collect masks.”
    Anna hated when young people turned basic statements of fact into questions, hiking their voices at the end of sentences, even when