Twenty “Let's go, let's go,
let's go,
to the Atayde Brothers Circus Show! There’s EXCITEMENT, there’s FUN for the whole family…!”
Adolfo burst into his sister’s room jumping up and down with a maniacal smile. Although it was Saturday, Lucía was lying on her bed watching TV. It was after 9 pm, and she was wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Adolfo shook her as if she were a ragdoll.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“Spruce yourself up, we’re going to a partay.”
“Where? It’s almost ten, Fito.”
“To Luis’. A Day of the Dead shindig.”
It wasn’t a bad idea to go out. Since her confrontation with Ricardo, she had no one to go out with. He hadn’t called her in a week, and she was not going to call him, mainly because she didn’t know what to do. She still had his ring, but she wasn’t ready to return it yet as that would force her to make a decision. Gabriel seemed willing to do anything for her. He was the true love of her life. And you cannot let your true love go, because according to what she’d heard, there’s only one. What if she lost him forever? While she decided, she had started saving money from her allowances and just in case, asked her dad for extra funds with the excuse of final projects for school. In any case, one couldn’t live worrying about what people thought. Too bad if it was scandalous: it wasn’t her fault that everyone was so narrow-minded. It would be nice to dance a little, have a little weed, and do some coke to distract her from her terrible dilemma for a while.
“Okay. But I have to take a shower and blow dry my hair and everything.”
“Yay!” exclaimed her brother. “Hurry up.”
She lathered up with her sensitive skin gel, getting excited about smoking and drinking a lot, maybe even taking some molly to let loose. She chose a lingerie set of a black push-up bra and lace string bikini she had bought in Paris, black leather pants, a tight black semi-sheer t-shirt with a plunging neckline, and stiletto booties. “Only the whip is missing”, she thought. She vamped herself up with smoky eyeshadow, lots of mascara, red lips. She dabbed two drops of Opium behind her earlobes and one between her breasts, and decked herself out with earrings, rings, and bracelets.
“Steady, Fido,” she amused herself, coming down the stairs. She swung open the kitchen door as if she were about to sashay down a runway, anticipating Gabriel’s reaction when he saw her dressed like a femme fatale.
Zenaida and the maids were fixing their own dinner, but Gabriel wasn’t there. She realized she had dressed up for him.
“Where’s Adolfo?” she asked.
“They’re waiting for you in the car, Señorita,” said Zenaida.
She didn’t realize that her brother wasn’t driving until she sat in the front seat and saw a pair of rat-colored pants in the seat beside her.
“Sit with me here in the back, my little Lulu,” said her brother, patting the back seat. “Unless you want to sit in the front with the driver”.
Lucía moved to the back. She felt like throwing up.
“Gabriel will take us to the party and wait for us so we can get plastered in peace. Am I a genius, or what?”
Gabriel stared out the window, so he didn’t have to accidentally make eye contact with the siblings.
“Fito,” Lucía spoke, choosing her words carefully, “isn’t it a bit too much to ask Gabriel to wait for us? We can ask someone for a ride back. He needs to get up early tomorrow.”
“If I am not mistaken, tomorrow is Sunday, and my pal here doesn’t have to work. It’s his day of rest. Right, bro?”
“That’s correct,” Gabriel replied.
“Well, I don’t think it’s right that we use the driver to take us to parties. Besides, you didn’t even ask me. You should have asked me first.”
“You bought him? How much did you pay?”
“Don’t be a moron, Fito, you know he is my driver, and you have no right to tell him what to do. At least ask me first, dammit.”
“I thought you would love the idea,” said Adolfo.
Before Lucía could continue betraying herself, Gabriel interrupted them.
“Where to?” he asked.
“To Bosques de Pirules, in Bosques de las Lomas,” said Adolfo.
“Do you know the way?” asked Lucía.
“No, Señorita.”
Adolfo snickered.
Lucía tried to feign indifference and gave Gabriel directions. Adolfo gazed at one and the other as if he was following the ball at a ping-pong match.
“Stop it, Fito. What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing, I’m just admiring how stunning you look tonight. You’re on fire. Isn’t my sister a beauty, carnal?”
“We’re not there yet and you’re already high. Just shut up.”
“I have never been more sober in my life, sweetheart.”
The block near Luis’ house was lined with cars, some parked on the sidewalks.
“Don’t park too far away. We don’t want to have to go looking for you,” Adolfo ordered.
“I’ll see you inside,” said Lucía, rushing out of the car.
The terracotta flagstones that led to the main door were lit by votive candles and lined by cempazúchitl flowers and little sugar skulls. Two huge moth-eaten doors, almost as big as a church’s, stood wide open. Lucía prayed she wouldn’t run into anyone she knew, but she immediately bumped into Luis and several of her brother’s friends with their respective girlfriends. She had to stop and air kiss everyone. She looked over the vast hall. Luckily, it was dark.
She needed a drink to steady her nerves. She felt as if a magnitude 7.8 quake on the Richter scale had shattered her meticulously built facade. Her knees were shaking.
The bar was not hard to find. A barman wearing a black t-shirt with skeleton bones served drinks under phosphorescent black light. Lucía downed a shot of tequila in a split second, no salt, lime, or sangrita. The alcohol made her eyes well up. She had to calm down and plan a strategy. Perhaps this was a sign that it was time to leave with Gabriel. She could look for him, pack her bags and escape with him in the car, never to see anyone ever again.
She locked herself in the guest bathroom. Votive candles bathed the room in a warm glow. Mounds of sugar skulls stared at her mockingly. How pretentious, pinche Luis, she muttered. She looked at herself in the mirror. Despite the benign lighting of the candles, she looked like a ghost. Her face was out of order, her eyes swollen, her lips twisted in an anguished grimace. She felt dizzy, no doubt because of the tequila. Someone tried to open the door.
“Occupied!” she shouted in a panic. She flushed the toilet and ran the faucet. She tried to fix her face.
Meanwhile, Gabriel drove around the block and found a spot a block and a half away from the party. He hadn’t dared to glance at Lucía through the rearview mirror. He managed to see her from behind as she ran out of the car. Adolfo had asked him for the ride to the party as an urgent favor an hour earlier. “I have to ask my dad,” he had responded, but Adolfo assured him he had already spoken with Agustín, and it was fine. He never mentioned that Lucía would be joining them until he got in the car and said casually that Lucía would be ready shortly. He should have left right after their fight.
I’m not going to sit around here como un pendejo.
He drove towards Avenida de los Bosques. He slowly pressed the pedal, aware of the patrol cars he had seen marauding on the empty avenues, listening to the roar of the engine as the car sped up to seventy, eighty, ninety kilometers per hour. He turned on the radio at full blast, opened the sunroof, rolled down the windows and stepped on the gas. The needle reached 100. He didn’t see the bump with faded stripes. The car went flying and bounced off the asphalt. Though terrified, Gabriel confirmed that nothing serious had happened to him or the car and the adrenaline rush soon gave way to euphoria. For the first time since he had arrived at that fucking house, he felt he was in possession of his own fate.
The avenue narrowed and turned into a two-lane highway. Gabriel did a u turn, wheels skidding. He sped down the wide avenue lined with mansions protected with guardhouses, alarm systems, and dogs that are trained to maul intruders to shreds. Several side streets had been turned into private streets with security gates. He took an open side street and saw mansions that looked like spaceships, with round windows and triangular doors, haughty colonial haciendas boasting colossal walls and pyramid-shaped tile roofs, fairytale castles, houses made of glass, some one story high, others as high as four. He felt like setting fire to them all and incinerating everyone inside them.
Rich people do whatever they please. They don’t want anyone to go down their street, they have it closed. And they install a security gate with two starving morons whose job is to not let the raza in, unless they’re there to fix the garden or do the laundry. We’re a bunch of cowards.
He drove around the residential streets, poisoning his conscience with the memories of the afternoons he spent with Lucía. He was sick of those two spoiled brats bossing him around. And he didn’t like that his woman was going to marry that prick and he was going to have to be at their beck and call and get to fuck her once in a blue moon.
I’m going to give you one last chance, cabrona. Either you come with me when I say vámonos, or you’re fucked.
Lucía opened the restroom door and ran into Ximena. They exchanged awkward glances, unsure whether they should speak to each other or not.
“What’s up?” said Lucía.
“What’s up with you?”
“I’m good and you?” Lucía replied, her voice breaking.
She gripped her friend by the wrist. She felt an immense need to lock herself in the restroom with Ximena and let it all out.
“Excuse me, but I need to go in there,” Ximena said, breaking free and closing the door.
Feeling abandoned, Lucía went looking for Gabriel. She walked the length of the street but failed to find him. Her heart sank, but standing in the cold night air, she thought it was for the best if Gabriel disappeared with the car and never came back. Upon returning to the party, she spotted Ricardo ordering a drink at the bar. Confusion swirled inside her like the sand mixed with saltwater she once swallowed after she was knocked over by a wave. She went towards him, pushing through the crowd like a shipwreck survivor who swims furiously toward a piece of driftwood.
“Hello, Ricardo.”
“What’s up, Lucía.”
“Can I talk to you?” she pleaded.
“I have nothing to say to you. I’m here to have a good time.”
Lucía cried like she hadn’t cried in years. She didn’t know exactly why. She cried because of how she had hurt her poor boyfriend. She cried because she could not find Gabriel. She cried because her brother wasted all his energy on petty nonsense, she cried because no one understood her, because she didn’t know what to do, because she was selfish, because all she really wanted to do in life was to fuck, because she did want a pretty wedding with lots of guests.
Some people stared at her as she bawled. Ricardo led her to a quieter corner, pushing her softly by the shoulders.
“Let them see me cry, I don’t give a fuck,” she babbled.
“Shh,” whispered Ricardo, moved by his beloved’s cascading tears.
“I know I hurt you,” Lucía told him, swallowing her snot.
He didn’t answer.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
She was convulsed by another wave of sobbing. Ricardo strived not to forgive her instantly. The banner of pride he was forced to fly to safeguard his own dignity seemed like a hindrance to him.
“Yeah right, Lucía,” he said stoically, handing her a tissue.
“I swear, Ricky. I rushed into things without being sure if I wanted a serious relationship with you. I should have told you.”
Lucía blew her nose.
“You treated me like shit. You said horrible things to me. You can’t treat me like this.”
“I didn’t return the ring because I wanted to think it over and patch things up, I swear.” Lucía explained.
Ricardo stroked her cheek and held her to his chest so tightly he almost crushed her. Lucía allowed him to kiss, caress, and console her, hoping that her brother would walk in on them and understand that he was wrong.
However, at that moment, Adolfo was in the restroom of the master bedroom on the second floor, getting ready to snort a welcome bump, even though his initial intention had been to keep an eye on his sister all night. The Lombardos, owners of one of Mexico’s largest car dealership chains, had an imported toilet from Japan with a heated seat that also sprayed your ass clean. Adolfo pushed all the little buttons on the toilet while Luis was cutting lines with his American Express Onyx with the skill of an experienced taquero.
Surrounded by mirrors, Adolfo ran the jacuzzi, which could comfortably fit four people. While the Roman tub filled up, he rummaged through the medicine cabinets and drawers, inspected the prescriptions and the cosmetics, found Xanax, stole several pills, and undressed. They snorted their lines and got into the hot tub.
Adolfo explained the reason for his euphoria:
“Lucía is fucking Agustín’s son.”
“No way! She stole him from you!” laughed Luis.
“Indeed, mon cher Luis. And tonight, I am going to fuck them both over.”