She went to the bedside and lit two candles and then turned off the lamp. He stood in the room with his hands at his sides. She reached to the back of her neck and undid the clasp of her gown and reached behind and pulled down the zipper. He began to unbutton his shirt. The room was small and the bed all but filled it. It was a fourpost bed with a canopy and curtains of winecolored organza and the candles shone through onto the pillows with a winey light.
There was a light knock at the door.
Tenemos que pagan she said.
He took the folded bills from his pocket. Para la noche, he said.
Es muy taro.
Cu++nto? He was counting out the bills. He had eightytwo dollars. He held it out to her. She looked at the money and she looked at him. The knock came again.
Dame cincuenta, she said.
Es bastante?
S', s'. She took the money and opened the door and held it out and whispered to the man on the other side. He was tall and thin and he smoked a cigarette in a silver holder and he wore a black silk shirt. He looked at the client for just a moment through the partly opened door and he counted the money and nodded and turned away and she shut the door. Her bare back was pale in the candlelight where the dress was open. Her black hair glistened. She turned and withdrew her arms from the sleeves of the dress and caught the front of it before her. She stepped from the pooled cloth and laid the dress across a chair and stepped behind the gauzy curtains and turned back the covers and then she pulled the straps of her chemise from her shoulders and let it fall and stepped naked into the bed and pulled the satin quilt to her chin and turned on her side and put her arm beneath her head and lay watching him.
He took off his shirt and stood looking for some place to put it.
Sobre la silla, she whispered.
He draped the shirt over the chair and sat and pulled off his boots and put his socks in the tops of them and stood them to one side and stood and unbuckled his belt. He crossed the room naked and she reached and turned back the covers for him and he slid beneath the tinted sheets and lay back on the pillow and looked up at the softly draped canopy. He turned and looked at her. She'd not taken her eyes from him. He raised his arm and she slid against him the whole length of her soft and naked and cool. He gathered her black hair in his hand and spread it across his chest like a blessing.
Es casado? she said.
No.
He asked her why she wished to know. She was silent a moment. Then she said that it would be a worse sin if he were married. He thought about that. He asked her if that was really why she wished to know but she said he wished to know too much. Then she leaned and kissed him. In the dawn he held her while she slept and he had no need to ask her anything at all.
She woke while he was dressing. He pulled on his boots and crossed to the bedside and sat and put his hand against her cheek and smoothed her hair. She turned sleepily and looked up at him. The candles in their holders had burned out and the bits of wick lay blackened in the scalloped shapes of wax.
Tienes que irte?
S'.
Vas a regresar?
S'.
She studied his eyes to see if he spoke the truth. He leaned and kissed her.
Vete con Dios, she whispered.
Y toe.
She put her arms around him and held him against her breast and then she let him go and he rose and walked to the door. He turned and stood looking back at her.
Say my name, he said.
She reached and parted the canopy curtain. Mande? she said.
Di mi nombre.
She lay there holding the curtain. Tu nombre es Juan, she said.
Yes, he said. Then he pulled the door closed and went down the hall.
The salon was empty. It smelled of stale smoke and sweet ferment and the fading lilac rose and spice of the vanished whores. There was no one at the bar. In the gray light there were stains on the carpet, worn places on the arms of the furniture, cigarette burns. In the foyer he unlatched the painted half door and entered the little cloakroom and retrieved his hat. Then he opened the front door and walked out into the morning cold.
A landscape of low shacks of tin and cratewood here on the outskirts of the city. Barren dirt and gravel lots and beyond them the plains of sage and creosote. Roosters were calling and the air smelled of burning charcoal. He took his bearings by the gray light to the east and set out toward the city. In the cold dawn the lights were still burning out there under the dark cape of the mountains with that precious insularity common to cities of the desert. A man was coming down the road driving a donkey piled high with firewood. In the distance the churchbells had begun. The man smiled at him a sly smile. As if they knew a secret between them, these two. Something of age and youth and their claims and the justice of those claims. And of the claims upon them. The world past, the world to come. Their common transiencies. Above all a knowing deep in the bone that beauty and loss are one.
THE OLD ONEEYED CRIADA was the first to reach her, trotting stoically down the hallway in her broken slippers and pushing open the door to find her bowed in the bed and raging as if some incubus were upon her. The old woman carried her keys tied by a thong to a short length of broomstick and she wrapped the stick with a quick turn of the bedclothes and forced it between the girl's teeth. The girl arched herself stiffly and the criada climbed up onto the bed and pinned her down and held her. A second woman had come to the doorway bearing a glass of water but she waved her away with a toss of her head.
Es como una mujer diab-lica, the woman said.
Vete, called the criada. No es diab-lica. Vete.
But the housewhores were gathering in the doorway and they began to push through into the room all of them in facecream and hairpapers and dressed in their varied nightwear and they gathered clamoring about the bed and one pushed forward with a statue of the Virgin and raised it above the bed and another took one of the girl's hands and commenced to tie it to the bedpost with the sash from her robe. The girl's mouth was bloody and some of the whores came forward and dipped their handkerchiefs in the blood as if to wipe it away but they hid the handkerchiefs on their persons to take away with them and the girl's mouth continued to bleed. They pulled her other arm free and tied it as well and some of them were chanting and some were blessing themselves and the girl bowed and thrashed and then went rigid and her eyes white. They'd brought little figures from their rooms and votive shrines of gilt and painted plaster and some were at lighting candles when the owner of the establishment appeared in the doorway in his shirtsleeves.
Eduardo! Eduardo! they cried. He strode into the room backhanding them away. He swept icons and candles to the floor and seized the old criada by one arm and flung her back.
Basta! he cried. Basta!
The whores huddled whimpering, clutching their robes about their rolling breasts. They retreated to the door. The criada alone stood her ground.
Por quZ est++s esperando? he hissed.
Her solitary eye blinked. She would not move.
He'd brought from somewhere in his clothes an Italian switchblade knife with black onyx handles and silver bolsters and he leaned and cut the sashes from the girl's wrists and seized the covers and pulled them up over her nakedness and folded the knife away as silently as it had appeared.
No la moleste, hissed the criada. No la moleste.
C++llate.
GolpZame si tienes que golpear a alguien.
He turned and seized the old woman by the hair and forced her to the door and shoved her into the hallway with the whores and shut the door behind her. He'd have latched it but those doors latched only from without. The old woman nevertheless did not enter again but stood outside calling that she needed her keys. He stood looking at the girl. The piece of broomstick had fallen from her mouth and lay on the bloodstained sheets. He picked it up and went to the door and opened it. The old woman shrank back and raised one arm but he only threw the keys rattling and clattering down the corridor and then slammed the door shut again.