2

Very Delectable, Highly Respectable

Grace left the kitchen a quieter place than she had found it. Only the usual clatter of pots and the chatter of María and her scullery staff followed her out. The cook had gone back to basting the beef roast with his secret blend of herbs and oils. Now and then he poked it with an ivory chopstick to test its doneness.

His name was Wing Ang, although everyone called him Chinito, Little Chinaman. He was built like a wren and just as excitable, but Grace had learned not to take his flights of fury too seriously. As she strolled back toward the ballroom she hummed a tune from Gilbert and Sullivan.

Chinito’s pidgen English had that affect on her. Conversations with him could set her to singing tunes from The Mikado for the rest of the day. Thanks to her music-hall parents, she knew by heart every song that Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Sullivan had written.

In the restaurant she found the waiters, their heavily laden trays held high, performing their nightly ballet collision-free. On the dance floor couples waltzed to the tunes of the musicians she recently had hired. Normally she would have checked with Luís, the cantinero, too, but tonight she passed by. That new captain was probably in there playing cards with friends. If she thought about it she could still feel a tingle in her fingers where he had kissed them. That flustered her, and Grace didn’t like to be flustered.

In the past two years she had met plenty of young officers at the Colonial. Most of them were from Mexico’s bureaucratic or aristocratic classes, the upper middle class known as los correctos. The boys were gallant and full of fun and they had affectionately dubbed her Mamacita. But they had little on their minds except drinking, gambling, fast horses, pretty women, and outrageous pranks. Captain Martín might be more polished than most of them, but he didn’t fool Grace. Besides, he must be at least six or seven years younger than she.

After talking with the night clerk at the front desk, she had one more task. She always made sure the pair of parrots had returned to their roost in the jacaranda tree. As she headed for the courtyard she softly sang a tune from the Gilbert and Sullivan opera, Bunthorne’s Bride. “A very delectable, highly respectable, threepenny ’bus young man.”

She jumped when someone started pounding on the Colonial’s massive front gate. Whoever he was, he must have been using a sledgehammer to make such a racket. Grace didn’t know much Spanish, but she recognized words that mule drivers employed when they passed the hotel on their way to the nearby market. Her chambermaids always advised her to cover her ears when mule drivers were in the vicinity.

Socrates hurried to open the gate. Grace would have been hard-put to define Socrates’s position, other than do-all. If the Colonial had a mayor, Socrates would occupy the office. Grace wasn’t sure she could manage the hotel without him and his wife María.

As the shouting crescendoed, Grace suspected that the culprit was Colonel Rubio. She had been expecting him to arrive tonight. Now that she heard him, she wished she had refused the governor’s request to billet Rubio and his staff here, but saying “no” to the governor would have been foolish. Staying in his good graces was essential for her business.

“Our commanding officer has arrived.”

Grace whirled and found Captain Martín standing behind her. Something about his stance gave her the notion he had come to protect her. She wondered if protection would be necessary.

“Is the colonel always this loud?”

“Only when he drinks.”

“And how often does he drink?”

“Only when he is awake.”

Rubio strode into the courtyard, but stopped short when he saw Grace.

“Señora Knight…” He bent into a bow that looked likely to end nose-down on the tile mosaic. To Grace’s relief he hoisted himself vertical again. He was short and round and bald. He wore a uniform crusty with gold braid and brass buttons. His epaulets looked as big as the business ends of two push brooms. He had the air of a man with a high opinion of himself and a low opinion of everyone else.

He beckoned to Captain Martín for a conference.

“The colonel wants to know when breakfast will be served,” the captain said.

Looking into Captain Martín’s dark eyes, the words “very delectable” showed up in Grace’s mind again. She elbowed them away.

“I take breakfast in the courtyard at eight o’clock, if the colonel would care to join me.”

“He says it will be his pleasure. And he wonders if the plums that grow in Cuernavaca’s orchards are available. He says his good friend, General Huerta, recommends the stewed plums you serve here.”

“Yes, of course. And please ask the colonel to give my regards to General Huerta when next he speaks to him.”

Huerta had billeted here last summer. At least, Grace thought, Colonel Rubio won’t be a patch on General Victoriano Huerta when it comes to a temper of the volcanic sort.

Huerta looked like a bulldog wearing a monocle. He had always been polite to her, but some days Grace imagined she could see steam coming out of his ears and nostrils. The day President Madero called Huerta back to the capital Grace had celebrated with champagne.

General Huerta had served during former president Porfirio Díaz’s regime, and President Madero retained him along with the rest of the federal army. Francisco Madero had come to the Colonial on several occasions. Grace admired him, but she could not understand why that genteel, intelligent little man had put his former enemy, Huerta, in charge of the military.

Colonel Rubio bowed again with the exaggerated aplomb of the inebriated. “Entonces, hasta la mañanita, señora, y muy buenas noches.”

“Buenas noches, Coronel.”

“May I ask which room is the colonel’s, Señora Knight?” asked Captain Martín.

“Upstairs, room twenty on the left at the far end of the corridor.”

Colonel Rubio started unsteadily up the curved sweep of marble steps to the gallery overlooking all four sides of the courtyard. Captain Martín followed.

On his way up, the colonel rapid-fired Spanish at the captain. The only word Grace recognized of it all was garrapata, louse. Rubio repeated it several times.

Dear God, she thought, I pray the man is not infested.

She did not notice the worried look on Captain Martín’s face when he glanced back over his shoulder. She did not notice his relief when he realized she hadn’t understood Rubio.

Drawn by the ruckus, the Colonial’s day-manager, Lyda Austin, appeared. Her accent was distilled Texan. “I see Colonel Fatso found his way home. More’s the pity.”

“Now, Lyda.”

“Gracie, the man has eyes like cold gravy.”

Lyda and Grace watched Captain Martín climb the stairs behind Rubio. He looked ready to stop the colonel’s momentum should he decide to topple backward.

“I see you’ve met Captain Martín,” said Lyda.

“We spoke briefly.”

“I registered him this evening. He’ll be staying in the room next to Rubio’s.”

Captain Federico Martín would be living here. Grace’s heart gave a desperate flutter, like a butterfly caught in a spider’s web.

“He’s a charmer, he is,” said Lyda. “And you know what we say in Texas about charm.”

“What do Texans say?”

Only when Captain Martín’s muscular rear echelon had turned the corner at the top of the stairs did Lyda shift her gaze to Grace.

“Charm is as obvious as a barn fire.” Lyda paused. “And Captain Federico Martín is a barn on fire with hay stacked to the rafters.”