They moved in their bodies for a moment, adjusting their bones under their skins. Then they stood perfectly still in the picture that was the picture before it was taken. The last rays of the sun faded from their attentive faces, shadows falling in complex patterns among their gestures and expressions, and I could read parodies of stories and engagements in their postures, the way they touched and turned toward each other. Only Arthur, the chauffeur, stood alone and uninvolved. Then I saw the eyes in the skull face opening below his chin, the last remnants of lips pulled back from the white teeth, and I wasn’t sure whether this was the man still alive or the calavera awakening for the dance.
I saw the yellow chihuahua, stretching in the man’s lap, and I thought I saw the bare finger bones of a skeletal hand, stroking her vibrant body as she turned and settled down on her haunches on the soft white sheet and faced the camera. A dull thud of explosive then and a brief white light, and for a moment all their faces were illuminated skulls, eyes empty in dark sockets, but their teeth in those perpetual and wise grins. They had joined the vibrancy of the living to the dead’s parody, as if the photographic image were an etching, or an engraving, and was fashioned in homage to the great Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada.