Chapter 14

THE STREET LIGHT in front of the cantina flickered, then burned out as night fell. Finally, customers began to arrive from the grocery markets, from the fields, from their fried banana kiosks and souvenir stands. Outside, an old woman had set up a roast pig over a barbecue drum. She used an acetylene blowtorch to scorch off the pig’s bristles.

Inside the cantina, rowdy patrons filled the tables, seemingly lost in the mirror maze of the walls. On stage, protected behind the chicken-wire barricade, the band played out of tune, to no one’s surprise.

The drunken knife-throwing man still sat at his small round table, somewhat conscious now. During the afternoon he had finished skewering all the black scorpions in the place and had eliminated most of the cockroaches as well. Now he held his knife in one hand, impatiently looking for a new target. He eyed the band members, considering.

“Where’s Yaquita?” the knife man demanded, then skewered an ant on the tabletop with the tip of his blade. The other customers glared at the stage and echoed the question. The band kept playing, somewhat skittish.

The fat manager waddled out from behind the bar and climbed onto the stage, working his way through the protective fishnets and chicken wire. He mopped sweat off his brow and held out his hands, sputtering excuses and trying to quiet the audience.

The crowd started throwing margarita glasses and brown cerveza bottles at the band. Patrons banged their glasses and rum bottles on the tables in rhythm to their chant. “We want Yaquita! We want Yaquita!” The angled mirrors on the walls multiplied their images infinitely.

The manager gave up and raced away from the stage. Puffing for breath, he headed across the floor as bottles and glasses smashed against the mirrored walls, following him in his flight. A large knife thunked into the narrow gap between mirrors, quivering near the manager’s ear. He gawked at the deadly blade, then scuttled along faster, rushing for the stairs.

The music stopped as the band members surrendered. The chant continued.

Red-faced from climbing up to the balcony room, the manager stopped outside Yaquita’s door. He wrung his hands, glanced down at the crowd below, as if weighing the two types of danger. Someone hurled a beer bottle that arced up, then crashed down at his feet.

The manager timidly opened the door, swallowing hard. “Yaquita? Please, señorita?” The room was dark inside. “Yaquita?”

“Out! We’re busy in here. Out!” The brass headboard rattled against the wall again.

A huge white olla flew out of the dark, and sailed past the balcony rail to drop down into the crowded cantina. The wide pot bombed the knife thrower’s table in an explosion of fragments and water. The knife thrower stood up, blinking and confused, then went to retrieve his knife from where it still quivered in the wall.

“Sí, Yaquita.” Obsequiously, the manager shut her door, backing away before she could throw anything else at him. “Whenever you are ready, señorita.”

From the balcony rail he looked down at the crowd and spread his hands in resignation. “There is nothing I can do, my friends,” he said. “She is . . . Yaquita.”

The crowd, still seated, spread their hands just as expressively in resignation, all in unison. They were also familiar with Yaquita’s unpredictable behavior.

“Perhaps if you would just listen to the band?” the manager suggested.

But when the musicians started playing again, striking up a disco tune this time, they were forced to flee the stage under a storm of smashed bottles.