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year, the city planned to present eleven bull-related events in its 150-year-old ring, which is in the center of town near the train station. On the card were eight corridas (bullfights of full-grown animals and matadors), two
novilladas
(bullfights of aspiring matadors and young bulls), and one
corrida de rejones
(Portuguese-style bullfighting in which a torero confronts the bull on horseback).
    Fran was to appear in the fifth spectacle of the cycle. By the day of his bullfight the
feria
was in full swing, and the brass bands marched along the wide avenue beside the bullring in a thunder of music, accompanying the swaying processions of women in their peasant skirts, their hair rolled up like cinnamon buns on both sides of their head. The sound of small firecrackers was constant, and at noon each day the city sponsored a thunderous fusillade of fireworks designed purely to generate as much noise as possible. The streets were filled day and night. There were many tourists in evidence, but most of the crowd was composed of well-dressed Valenciano families out for a drink, a bite to eat, or just to show themselves off. Here and there, in back streets and alleys, people built wood fires and cooked massive flat black pans of saffron-colored paella, the rice dish that was perfected in Valencia.
    The scene outside Fran’s hotel was a mess at bullfight time. The paparazzi and television crews were out, hoping to glean a few new tidbits from the ongoing Fran-and-Eugenia saga and get his reaction to his mother’s latest comments. There was also a mob of little old ladies and adolescent girls angling for a pre-corrida kiss from the best-looking matador in the country. Fran walked out of the hotel with less than twenty minutes to go before the corrida was set to begin. He was dressed in a light blue and gold matador’s costume and had his game face on as his associates led him through the crowd and piled him into the minibus and rolled down the street to the bullring.
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    The ring was damp and the sky gray when the toreros crossed the sand to start the corrida. Fran was the matador with the least seniority that afternoon, and so was appearing with the third and sixth bulls of the lineup. The other two matadors were stars, but not superstars. Without a major draw on the card, like the number-one matador of the moment, Julián López, El Juli, the bullring was half empty, the gaps especially evident in the cheap seats. The bulls were from the Jandilla ranch, bred in southernmost Andalucía, and the program said each bull weighed around twelve hundred pounds. The newspapers the following day would agree that the bulls had been good—charging with passion and offering opportunities for the matadors to create emotional passes with them. But the first two matadors couldn’t seem to do anything special with their animals. Perhaps it was the lack of a crowd, or the cloudbursts that poured over the ring at intervals throughout the afternoon.
    A ring attendant opened the heavy door to the bullpens and Fran’s first animal came out, shiny black, rippled with muscle, built along the lines of a small pickup truck. The bull was terrifying and freakish. It belonged in the forests of an earlier age or in someone’s bad dream, not in the middle of a city at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The bull stopped for a moment, raised its head, looked around and sniffed the air, and the great pot roast of muscle on its neck rose and twitched with fear. Without warning, the bull galloped stiff-legged across the sand, a rope of drool spilling from its black mouth. As it approached the wooden barrier, it lowered its head and chopped hard with its right horn, flicking the horn up and taking out a hefty chunk of wood, leaving a white scar in the red paint. Then the bull sauntered back to the center of the ring and waited to be challenged.
    Fran slipped through a small opening in the wooden fence. He spread his purple and