Free Death and the Sun by Edward Lewine

picador had injured it. Fran gave the animal a few seconds to catch its breath. Then he offered the cape and shouted. The bull struck. But this time it didn’t charge in a straight line. Instead it took its eye off the cape for a moment and made straight for Fran. Without hesitation Fran spun, twirling in a circle, wrapping the
muleta
around his leg, bringing the bull’s head around with a snap, forcing the bull to wrench itself after the cloth, stopping it cold. Fran had solved the problem presented by the bull with courage and artistry, and Valencia loved it.
    â€œO—LÉ!”
    Someone in the crowd yelled “
Maestro
,
musica!
” and the band began to play. The audience quickened, focusing its will on the sand. Fran moved the
muleta
to his left hand and began to work
naturales
, luring the bull with the small square of cloth hanging lifelessly from the stick. The series worked, as did the next, and the next, building up and up in emotion, and then Fran made his way to the fence and traded the light sword for the steel death sword. Fran lined up in front of the bull, in profile, and ran forward, leaning over the horns and sinking the sword into the bull’s back. The hilt was a little below where it should have been, according to the textbooks, but it was good enough. The bull staggered around for a few seconds, mouth gaping, tongue hanging out. Then it walked over to the wooden fence and folded its legs underneath its body. Dead.
    The audience waved white handkerchiefs and the president of the corrida awarded Fran an ear, the only ear awarded that day. Yet the reviews in the papers were unenthusiastic. Fran had done a passable job, the critics agreed, but it had been a bull that was willing to cooperate. “Rivera Ordóñez was good with his first bull,” wrote Javier Villan, of the newspaper
El Mundo
, in a review that was typical of the rest, “although he could have been, and should have been, better.”
    Â 
    It was night by the time Fran stabbed the final bull of the corrida and killed it. Then he and the other two matadors and their assistants walked out of the ring to their vans. Fran got back to the hotel in less than ten minutes, went up to his room, stripped, and took a quick hot shower. Then he wrapped a white hotel towel around his slender waist and settled into the couch in the sitting room of his suite to entertain the stream of guests that always come to visit a matador after a bullfight.
    Fran seemed to be pleased. He hadn’t taken Valencia by storm, but he had done well, especially considering what had been going on in his life. The season had begun and the first result had been positive. Maybe this was what he needed to get his head in shape for the all-important weeks to come. The next two months would bring with them the two most prestigious
ferias
of the year: Sevilla in April and Madrid in May. If he was going to get back on top, he’d like to start with triumphs in those places.
    The first person to show up at Fran’s door was a bull breeder from the province of Salamanca. Then came the president of the Rivera Ordóñez fan club, up from Granada with her boyfriend. Next came a bullfighting photographer who had shot Fran many times over the years. After the group had chatted for a few minutes, there was a knock at the door and the most popular matador in Spain walked in. Julian Lopez, El Juli, was a small, slender twenty-year-old boy with a half-moon horn scar running out from the side of his mouth. El Juli had just arrived from his ranch outside Madrid. He was performing in Valencia the following afternoon. The air in the room shifted a bit, as it always does in the presence of white-hot fame.
    The breeder from Salamanca turned to face him.
    â€œAh, Maestro,” said the breeder. “Good evening.”
    Then the breeder looked around. He had just called one matador a maestro while in the hotel room of another matador. That was like