Rain Village - Carolyn Turgeon [88]
Mauro drove and I sat beside him. He told me stories about his family and the villa, but I was so nervous that I only heard every few words.
We drove out of the valley and into the city. I had only seen Mexico City in the daytime; at night it was another world completely, with lights draped everywhere and music filling the streets. I loved the little bands of mariachis, squat and bird-like, with their silver-spangled pants and sombreros. They seemed to be everywhere as we pulled the car into the center of the city, near one of the huge plazas lined with restaurants and bars and elaborate buildings.
Mauro looked at me. His eyes glimmered in the dark car.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, smiling up at him, thankful that the nighttime masked the redness of my face, the sweat gathering at my neck. I forced myself to swallow.
He stepped out of the car, then moved around to pull open my door and extend his hand, shutting the door behind me after guiding me to his side. We strolled through the plaza. My skirt swished around my legs. The mariachis gathered around us as we walked.
“Care for a song?” they asked. “Una serenata?”
“Señor Ramirez!” one cried, and began tiptoeing along the ground in a straight line, mimicking Mauro walking over the wire. “A song for your novia?”
Mauro laughed as a small crowd gathered around us. The plaza was full of people: young and old, children and drunks and young lovers and old people singing along to the music. Lights splashed on the stone, and the Mexican flag waved above us. The cathedral bordering the plaza on one side was as elaborate as a wedding cake.
“Por favor,” Mauro said, bowing and laughing to the old mariachi in front of us. The mariachis were all over the place, playing song after song to small groups of listeners. There must have been fifty songs playing at the same time, and the effect was blissful, like a dozen fireworks going off at once.
The old mariachi bowed and stepped back, lifting up his violin. A group huddled around him with their own instruments and suddenly the sweetest, saddest song in the world burst out of them. Mauro pulled me in to him, wrapped his arm around my waist, bending down.
“Dance with me,” he smiled, and I let my body press into his as he guided me in a slow circle.
“Mauro!” some of them shouted. Or, like the mariachi: “Señor Ramirez! I want to join the ceer-kus, too!”
We laughed and laughed and I was dizzy with it.
Later, at the restaurant, everyone knew who we were. The Ramirez family was legendary in Mexico City, and the other patrons kept walking by to look at us, see what we were eating, how we were dressed.
We ordered heaping plates of carne asada and turkey mole, and the waiters kept bringing out beans and rice and guacamole. Mauro ordered us each a tequila cocktail, and I laughed and protested as I drank it down.
“Are you trying to get me drunk?” I asked, flirting, surprising myself. I took a sip of tequila, and the salt stuck to my lips. Mauro reached over and wiped it off, then licked his fingertips, gentle as a cat. He stared right into me. The blush that came up on me must have started at my toes.
The horns and violins and guitarrones and vihuelas enveloped us.
“So, Tessa,” Mauro said, “what do you think of Mexico now?”
“Oh,” I said, “it’s perfect. I love everything about it.”
He smiled. “Dime. Make me see it the way you do.”
I mashed down the beans on my plate. The waiter brought over two new drinks for us in icy cocktail glasses.
“It’s always sunny,” I said. “And the air has perfume in it, with all the flowers. They drape over everything like necklaces, and it makes me think of a fancy woman at a big dance. I love all the buildings and crosses. The music.”
“Sí,” he said. “It suits you here. You look healthy and dark, almost like a mexicana.”
I giggled. “Oh, and everyone is so peaceful and relaxed, not like at home. There it was always worry and looking to the sky for rain. You know, the farm and everyone not getting along. Telling secrets. Hating things. The world.