Kirstin Valdez Quade - Night at the Fiestas - Stories

“God, it’s hot,” said Frances. She couldn’t stand it a minute longer. She took off her cardigan and clamped her armpit shut.

“I know.” Nancy licked chile from the heel of her hand. “What’re you doing wearing a sweater, anyway?”

“I met someone on the bus,” Frances said. “A painter. And not like your friend Sally’s painter with the dog food. This guy is famous. He has shows in Paris and London, all over.”

“So?” said Nancy, still sulking.

“So? So he’s rich.” Frances couldn’t have been more indignant if she’d been telling the truth. “And he asked me to dine with him tonight.”

“To dine ? What is he, an aristocrat?” But Nancy was looking Frances up and down, impressed.

“Of course I told him I couldn’t. He must be nearly thirty. Still, it’s never fun disappointing someone like that.”

“Nancy!” somebody called, and Nancy brightened. Suddenly they were flanked by boys. They introduced themselves politely to Frances, and one even asked what Raton was like, but soon they turned back to her cousin. They jostled each other and joked about people Frances didn’t know, and Nancy sat glowing in their midst.

For a while Frances made a point of smiling and nodding along, but that got old, and no one was looking at her anyway. She felt unbearably dull. Two of the boys started slapping at each other, and one boy put the other in a headlock, all for the benefit of Nancy. What was it about boys? Frances thought angrily. Couldn’t they keep still for a minute?

“So? Isn’t Mike a doll?” Nancy asked when they’d gone.

Frances put her hand on her cousin’s arm. “Just be careful, okay? I’d hate to see you getting into trouble.”

Nancy snorted. “You should talk, with your middle-aged painter. Anyway, you have a hole in your armpit.”

“BURN HIM! BURN HIM! BURN HIM!” The crowd was chanting, and Frances chanted along, but self-consciously. Her own voice seemed flattened, droning in her ear.

It was night at Fort Marcy Park, and the baseball field was crowded with cars and trucks, spread blankets, abandoned picnics. Zozobra, the looming white marionette, bellowed as the flames climbed his gown. His face, with its scowling eyes and gaping mouth, flickered orange against the black sky; when he swayed, sparks rained down over the crowd. Above, fireworks whistled and exploded.

Nancy had Frances by the wrist and was dragging her through the press of people at the barricade. Here the bonfire’s heat was a solid, smothering presence, pulsing under her skin like a sunburn. The sweaty seams of her dress were tight and chafing. Frances held tight to her purse and her swimming bag.

“They said they’d be here!” called Nancy. “Would you hurry?” She was looking for her friends, the boys from the Plaza among them, but Frances couldn’t imagine how they’d ever find anyone in this mass of people. The air was weighted with the smell of gunpowder and sweat and toxic, chemical smoke.

Zozobra bawled, arms flailing uselessly, body rooted in the flames. The people’s excitement seemed sadistic, medieval. Frances had a sudden vision of the painter stepping from the flames like Satan to collect his due, and the thought made her sweat still more.

“Can’t we just watch from back there?” asked Frances, but Nancy didn’t hear her over Zozobra’s moans.

When the flames reached Zozobra’s face, the crowd cheered. His head was stuffed with paper, records of divorce proceedings and legal wrangling and failed exams and paid-off mortgage documents. And now all those troubles were being burned away. It seemed these people really felt released, but Frances kept glancing all about, her shoulders aching under the strap of her bag. Zozobra thrashed and wailed in anguish, shaking off flaming paper that drifted around him.

In no time at all, Zozobra collapsed with a cascade of sparks, gloom defeated once again, and the cheer of “Viva la Fiesta!” rose from the crowd. You could already hear the music from the Plaza, rousing and joyful. Everyone streamed through the streets to join it.

The crowd in the Plaza was even louder and denser than in the park, people spinning and writhing to the mariachi band playing from the lit bandstand. The dark crush was thrilling and terrifying, unlike anything Frances had ever experienced. Nancy whirled, laughing, sipped from an open bottle of beer handed to her. She handed it to Frances, and no sooner had Frances taken a sip than another bottle was passed to her.

They hadn’t found Nancy’s friends, but it hardly mattered; everyone was friends on the Plaza. The gaiety swirled about them, but though Frances tried, she simply couldn’t find her way into it. She danced and laughed, but her rhythm was off, her voice false and harsh. She gulped the beer until she felt the disembodied sensation of drunkenness, but the feeling only made her less a part of the crowd, untouchable and remote.

She tried to spin a story about one of the boys from earlier — the one in the leather vest, say — who couldn’t get her out of his mind, who’d been looking for her all night, waiting to lift her chin, but the scenario was hollow and unsatisfying.

Maybe if Frances had a costume she’d be feeling it all more. She wished she had a Spanish shawl, black embroidered with red and gold chrysanthemums. She wished she could buy something — anything — now. What a joke, to have all this money in the middle of Santa Fe and nowhere to spend it. Mostly, Frances wanted to put her bag down. But it was still strapped to her, cumbersome, banging into everyone every time she moved.

Next to her a fight broke out, two sweaty men lunging at each other, their teeth bared, their rage clumsy and grunting. Frances gaped, but Nancy just rolled her eyes and pushed her deeper into the crowd.

By one in the morning, the bands had changed. Drunk men commanded Frances to dance! Dance! “Why so gloomy?” one asked and flicked her nose.

Nancy’s dress had slipped off her shoulder, exposing a dingy bra strap. She weaved among the men, pinching one on the bottom. He retaliated by squeezing her breast. Another reached for Frances’s breast, but she batted his hand away.

“S’okay,” he said. “Not much there anyway.”

Those men, their hands were everywhere, and Nancy couldn’t stop laughing. Laughing with abandon, Frances thought. She was so envious it hurt.

Someone grabbed her upper arm and spun her around. “If it isn’t Smarty-Pants.”

The painter. Frances gasped. But he didn’t strike her and he didn’t throw her to the ground to be crushed. He was dancing, feet stomping, fingers snapping. “Enjoying yourself, I see.”

He was drunk, unfocused in the eyes, slack around the mouth. His shirt was unbuttoned, his bolo tie gone. At his sweat-glazed temples, his hair was curling. Frances’s hand tightened on the strap of her bag.

“And you?” she shouted over the noise. “Are you enjoying yourself?”

“More now.” He swigged from his bottle, held it aloft. “To the kindness of strangers.”

Could he know? He couldn’t possibly. All those people on and off a bus; any number of people could have taken the sack. It might have remained on the bus, to be discovered by someone in Las Vegas or Watrous or Springer. Her father might have picked it up during a trash sweep, and, knowing him, thrown it away without looking inside. The fact was that Frances would have overlooked the sack if she hadn’t been so angry. Little whore . But angry wasn’t quite the word. She was shocked, yes. Hurt. Embarrassed.

And also — strangely — released. She stood a little straighter and swung her bag by the strap, and for the first time in hours her smile didn’t feel forced. All around her people were fighting and kissing and dancing wildly. The music soared and slipped under her skin. Her feet found the beat.