Kirstin Valdez Quade - Night at the Fiestas - Stories

She leaned over the seat, snatched the sack. She was so angry she was trembling.

When Frances looked inside, there was no sandwich wrapped in waxed paper, no apple or jelly jar of milk, no food at all. Inside the bag was a fat stack of bills.

She walked stiffly down the aisle and submitted to her father’s kiss goodbye. She flushed, hot and ashamed, as if her father somehow knew what she’d done, knew what the painter had called her.

“Be safe, Francy. Be good.” He pulled her in for an extra hug, and Frances, with the paper sack stuffed in her purse, responded, “Of course.”

Then Frances was down the bus steps and into the arms of Nancy and Aunt Lillian, who shrieked and clung and jabbered at her. They each took an arm and waved gaily with their free hands as her father’s bus pulled into the Water Street traffic, then dragged her along the crowded sidewalk between them. “The Plaza’s already full!” cried Nancy. “I thought you’d never get here.”

“She’s been beside herself all day,” said Aunt Lillian. Behind her, the painter was still reading the paper. Every once in a while he scanned the street.

“Wait,” said Frances, stopping. “I’d like to drop my things at your house.”

“We can’t go home!” said Nancy. “Everything’s already started. Plus, I’m starving. The Elks Club is selling hot dogs and Frito pies!”

Frances felt she was walking strangely. Her purse was barely heavier, but it had tipped her off-balance and her gait was self-conscious and labored. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

The bus depot restroom was vile, the floor wet around the toilet and dirty with footprints. Ordinarily, Frances would have hovered over a toilet like this, and even then only in an emergency. Today, though, she sat right down.

One hundred and forty dollars. An enormous amount of money, all in ones and fives and tens. Nearly what her father was paid every two weeks, more than she could hope to make in a year of babysitting. Enough to fund her escape.

Strange that he should keep it in a paper sack. Perhaps he’d just sold a painting or had intended to buy something, something illicit that required a discreet handoff. Drugs, stolen goods. She wondered if the painter was still outside, waiting to twist her arm and throw her onto the sidewalk and wrench her purse away.

Someone knocked on the bathroom door, and Frances sat still. The person knocked again. If she were the kind of girl to cry, she might now. But why? She’d had a tremendous stroke of luck. She was glad she had the money, glad she’d taken it. She needed it. He owed it to her, calling her what he had.

Frances smoothed the bills and slipped them into her wallet. But the stack was too fat and the wallet wouldn’t close. Also, she’d be a draw for criminals with that kind of cash spilling out. So she removed all but twenty dollars, folded the rest of the money back into the sack and stuffed it into the bottom of her swimming bag.

The thought — the foolish, embarrassing thought — crossed her mind that maybe the man was an angel, but that was idiotic, something her mother would say. Frances was now pretty certain the man wasn’t even a painter. His nails were one clue. And if he were a painter, what would he be doing in Wagon Mound? No one lived in Wagon Mound. And no one kept money in paper bags. More likely the man was a grifter who’d come to Santa Fe to spend his ill-gotten gains and cheat others. Unless he really was just a hardworking ranch hand and Frances was now holding his entire life’s savings. But no: if there’s one thing she knew, it was that even before he’d opened his mouth, there’d been something sleazy about the man, something underhanded and insinuating.

When Frances emerged from the depot into the sunlight, the painter was gone. She smiled at Nancy and Aunt Lillian, slung her purse over one shoulder, swimming bag over the other. “I’m starving,” she said.

THE PLAZA WAS SWARMED with people and packed with booths, everything buzzing and festive. Banners rippled in the hot breeze, and the grass was sun-dappled through the tall cottonwoods. The costumes! There, drinking a Coke on the bleachers was the Fiesta Queen in her frothy white lace, her mantilla and high comb, surrounded by her court. And there, Don Diego de Vargas with his crested helmet and cape. Conquistadors and Mexicans and bandidos, Indians, nuns, cowboys. Fringed vests and enormous sombreros, Spanish shawls and elaborate headdresses. Several people wore lush Navajo velvet, big blouses for the men, long skirts for the women. Frances most admired the fiesta dresses, though, silver-trimmed gauzy cotton the color of ice cream: pink, turquoise, green, yellow. She would buy one herself, she decided.

A large white-haired man came up behind Aunt Lillian and lifted her off her feet. “George!” she cried, and he kissed her on the mouth. When he set her down, Aunt Lillian patted her updo, and Frances thought of her mother’s verdict: featherbrained .

Aunt Lillian’s friend George was a cowboy, complete with leather chaps and lasso. “In real life I’m a banker.” He pulled his card from his pocket and gave it to Frances. Then, back in character, he roped Nancy and pulled her to him. “Git along little dogie.”

“Get off!” Nancy yelled. She wriggled free of the rope and threw it back at him, then yanked Frances away and marched her across the crowded grass. Behind them Aunt Lillian laughed.

“I hate him,” Nancy said. “He’s always ogling me.”

Well, of course he was, Frances thought. Everyone was always ogling Nancy, and Nancy intended that they should. Look at her today, for instance. Her soft light hair, low-cut dress, silver rickrack glinting in the sun, the long strand of turquoise beads caught in her cleavage. So like Nancy to make herself look that way and then complain when people noticed. Frances squared her shoulders and touched her own hair; her curls had fallen completely. So what? If she cared about those things, she’d get her hair done professionally at the beauty shop. She could afford it.

As they walked the periphery of the Plaza, Frances looked in every window for a valise. No luck. The money stuffed in her bag seemed such an obvious presence, banging at her side. It marked her, and Frances couldn’t believe people weren’t staring. It would almost be a relief to spend it, to transform it into clothes her size, items that reflected who she was. But it wasn’t to be spent, not yet, anyway. She pictured herself at college, opening a new notebook in the hum of a full lecture hall.

“Banker,” spat Nancy. “Ha. Works in a bank, more like. He’s a creep. I really don’t know what she sees in him.”

Frances shrugged. “Well, she’s always been a little man crazy.”

She paused to look in the plate-glass window of the Trading Post. Several kids about eleven or twelve also clustered on the sidewalk, peering in. There, surrounded by tooled-leather saddles and woven blankets, a Navajo girl in traditional velvet skirts stood stock-still, an enormous silver belt in her frozen outstretched hands.

“She is real,” insisted a boy. “She blinked. There!”

The Navajo girl was remarkably good, stone-faced and flat-eyed.

The kids started banging the glass. “There! She did it again!” A few made faces and wagged their tongues.

“She’s probably going to marry him,” said Nancy bleakly. “I’ll probably have to live in the same damn house with him.”

At the Elks’ booth, they ordered cold Cokes and Frito pies. Frances rifled through the bills in her wallet, but Nancy wasn’t even paying attention.

“My treat,” said Frances.

Nancy shrugged. “I won’t say no.”

They ate sitting on the back of a park bench, feet on the seat. It felt good to put down her swimming bag. Her dress was dark with sweat where the strap had pressed against her.