Free Dancing with the Tiger by Lili Wright Page A

she’d found him passed out in his chair, sodden with pee.
    â€œI’ve been sober two years now,” he said, irritation lining his voice. “Don’t worry. We’ll celebrate the mask of a lifetime with sparkling water and low-fat Triscuits.” His tone switched to concern. “Call me when you have the mask.”
    Anna promised to text.
    He sighed with this new burden.
    â€œI showed you, remember? It’s easy.” She explained it again.
    Before they hung up, her father told her he loved her. Anna said the same back. They didn’t usually say this. Instead of comforting, the words reminded Anna how far she was from home.
    Outside the
papelería
, a pretty girl twirled her hair. She had perfect skin. Anna tried to imagine being sixteen, innocent still, wearing a yellow dress in the sunlight, waiting for adult life to begin.
    â€”
    Water. Coffee. A margarita. Anna needed three drinks to get where she wanted to go. She was gathering momentum, smoothing the ragged edges left from turbulence and translation, bracing herself for the night bus to Tepito.
    Her café seat afforded a full panorama of the
zócalo
. She could see how her parents had been so completely seduced. Rose gardens encircled the bandstand. Older gentlemen on wrought-iron benches flexed their newspapers. A shoe shiner beckoned on bended knee.
Zócalo
, the word rolled off the tongue like music. One table over, a Mexican family chattered over Cokes. No doubt they mistook her for a tourist, a woman fretting about the exchange rate, the safety of ice cubes. How couldthey know she’d traveled all over Mexico as a girl, riding cheap buses with her father, snoring elfin women tipping, tipping into her lap.
    A motorcycle pulled up and parked. Its driver scanned the café, chose the table next to Anna’s and sat down. He was tall for a Mexican, his features strong but irregular, a jumble of spare parts. With jeans and a frayed T-shirt, he carried himself with a bohemian nonchalance Anna coveted and resented. An elastic cinched his chin-length hair. He looked distracted, as if his body had arrived a few minutes ahead of his thoughts.
    There is your tall, dark stranger. Now wrestle him into the shower.
    The man ordered an espresso, lit a cigarette, opened a notebook. Anna pretended to watch some children by the cathedral who were lobbing giant cigar-shaped balloons. He was studying her. Her skin tingled and she tried to convey
no
even as she knew that with a second margarita the answer would be
maybe
. Chastity, like abstinence, was a virtue best begun tomorrow.
    â€œThe children are beautiful,” the man said in English.
    Anna took in the particulars: his sideways smile, his shirt rumpled from wind, the dark circles under his eyes. Blue paint had dried in his arm hairs. On one thumb, he wore a silver ring, and on a chain around his neck, a small sphere.
    â€œI like children at a distance.”
    â€œYou are not ready for motherhood. I was once asked to be a father, but I declined. One must know his limits.” He snuffed his cigarette. “You are American?” His presumption annoyed her. She’d like to pass for Swedish on a good day. German, on a lesser one. “You’re on vacation,” the man said, unfurling his hand. He knew her story by heart. “To see the museums, Monte Albán, buy souvenirs from indigenous children?”
    â€œActually, I’m working.”
    â€œWorking?” He glanced at her margarita.
    â€œI’m writing a book on Mexican masks.” This lie came out smoothly. Her father had said the same thing at every
rancho
they’d visited. Years later, it sounded only slightly less convincing in English.
    The man twirled his coaster. “A book about carvers?”
    â€œCarvers, masks, the history of folk art . . .”
    â€œYou are here for Carnival.” The man curled his hands into claws. “To chase the Tiger?”
    Anna tilted