lines appeared at the corners of Elena’s mouth, her eyes went cold.
‘I think it would be fun,’ she said, thin venom in her tone. Ramon shrugged. It was her bed he was sleeping in. He’d always known there was a price for its use.
‘I’ll get dressed,’ he said and swilled down the last of the coffee. ‘I’ve got a little money. It can be my treat.’
They skipped the Blessing of the Fleet, Ramon having no interest in hearing priests droning mumbo-jumbo bullshit while pouring dippers of holy water on beaten-up fishing boats, but they’d arrived in time for the parade that followed. The main street that ran past the Palace of the governors was wide enough for five hauling trucks to drive abreast, if they stopped traffic coming the other way. Great floats moved slowly, often stopping for minutes at a time, with secular subjects – a ‘Turu spacecraft’ studded with lights, being pulled by a team of horses; a plastic chupacabra with red-glowing eyes and a jaw that opened and closed to show the great teeth made from old pipes – mixing with oversized displays of Jesus, Bob Marley, and the Virgin of Despegando Station. Here came a twice-life-sized satirical (recognizable but very unflattering) caricature of the governor, huge lips pursed as if ready to kiss the Silver Enyes’ asses, and a ripple of laughter went down the street. The first wave of colonists, the ones who had named the planet São Paulo, had been from Brazil, and although few if any of them had ever been to Portugal, they were universally referred to as ‘the Portuguese’ by the Spanish-speaking colonists, mostly Mexicans, who had arrived with the second and third waves. ‘The Portuguese’ still dominated the upper-level positions in local government and administration, and the highest-paying jobs, and were widely resented and disliked by the Spanish-speaking majority, who felt they’d been made into second-class citizens in their own new home. A chorus of boos and jeers followed the huge float of the governor down the street.
Musicians followed the great lumbering floats: steel bands, string bands, mariachi bands, tuk bands, marching units of zouaves, strolling guitarists playing fado music. Stiltwalkers and tumbling acrobats. Young women in half-finished carnival costumes danced along like birds. With Elena at his side, Ramon was careful not to look at their half-exposed breasts (or to get caught doing so).
The maze of side streets was packed full. Coffee stands and rum sellers; bakers offering frosted pastry redjackets and chupacabras; food carts selling fried fish and tacos, satay and jug-jug; side-show buskers; street artists; fire-eaters; three-card monte dealers – all were making the most of the improvised festival. For the first hour, it was almost enjoyable. After that, the constant noise and press and scent of humanity all around him made Ramon edgy. Elena was her infant-girl self, squealing in delight like a child and dragging him from one place to another, spending his money on candy rope and sugar skulls. He managed to slow her slightly by buying real food – a waxed paper cone of saffron rice, hot peppers, and strips of roasted butterfin flesh, and a tall, thin glass of flavored rum – and by picking a hill in the park nearest the palace where they could sit on the grass and watch the great, slow river of people slide past them.
Elena was sucking the last of the spice from her fingertips and leaning against him, her arm around him like a chain, when Patricio Gallegos caught sight of them and came walking slowly up the rise. His gait had a hitch in it from when he’d broken his hip in a rock-slide; prospecting wasn’t a safe job. Ramon watched him approach.
‘Hey,’ Patricio said. ‘How’s it going, eh?’
Ramon shrugged as best he could with Elena clinging to him like ivy on brick.
‘You?’ Ramon asked.
Patricio wagged a hand – not good, not bad. ‘I’ve been surveying mineral salts on the south coast for one of the corporations. It’s a pain in the ass, but they pay regular. Not like being an independent.’
‘You do what you got to do,’ Ramon said, and Patricio nodded as if he’d said something particularly wise. On the street, the chupacabra float was turning slowly, the great idiot mouth champing at the air. Patricio didn’t leave. Ramon shielded his eyes from the sun and looked up at him.
‘What?’ Ramon said.
‘You hear about the ambassador from Europa?’ Patricio said. ‘He got in a fight last night at the El Rey. Some crazy pendejo stabbed him with a bottle neck or something.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. He died before they could get him to the hospital. The governor’s real pissed off about it.’
‘So what are you telling me for?’ Ramon asked. ‘I’m not the governor.’
Elena was still as stone beside him, her eyes narrow in an expression of low cunning. Ramon quietly willed Patricio away, or at least to shut up. But the man didn’t pick up on it.
‘The governor’s all busy with the Enye ships coming in. Now he has to track down the guy that killed the ambassador, and show how the colony is able to keep the law and all. I’ve got a cousin who works for the chief constable. It’s ugly over there.’
‘Okay,’ Ramon said.
‘I was just thinking, you know. You hang out at the El Rey sometimes.’
‘Not last night,’ Ramon said, glowering. ‘You can ask Mikel if you want. I wasn’t there all night.’
Patricio smiled and took an awkward step back. The chupacabra made a weak, synthesized roar and the crowd around it shrilled with laughter and applause.
‘Yeah, okay,’ Patricio said. ‘I was just thinking. You know …’
And with the conversation trailing away, Patricio smiled, nodded, and limped back down the hill.
‘It wasn’t you, was it?’ Elena half-whispered, half-hissed. ‘You didn’t kill the fucking ambassador?’
‘I didn’t kill anyone, and sure as hell not a European. I’m not stupid,’ Ramon said. ‘Why don’t you watch your fucking parade, eh?’
Night came on as the parade wound down. At the bottom of the hill, in a field near the palace, they were putting a torch to the pile of wood surrounding Old Man Gloom – Mr Harding, some of the colonists from Barbados called him – a hastily cobbled-together effigy, almost twenty feet tall, with a face like a grotesque caricature of a European or a norteamericano, green-painted cheeks, and an enormous Pinocchio nose. The bonfire blazed, and, wreathed in flames, the giant effigy began to swing its arms and groan in seeming agony, a somehow eerie sight that sent a chill up Ramon’s spine, as if he had been given the dubious privilege of watching a soul being tormented in the fires of Hell.
All the bad luck that dogged people throughout the year was supposed to be burning up with Old Man Gloom, but watching the giant twist and writhe in slow motion in the flames, its deep, electronically amplified moans echoing off the walls of the Palace of the governors, Ramon had a glum presentiment that it was his good luck that was burning instead, that from here on in he was headed for nothing but misery and misfortune.
And one glance at Elena – who had been sitting silently with her jaw set tight and white lines of anger etched around her mouth ever since he had snapped at her – was enough to tell him that it wasn’t going to be very long before that prophecy started to come true.
CHAPTER TWO
He hadn’t intended to go back out for another month. Even though they’d fucked passionately the night before, after one of their most vicious arguments ever, tearing at each other’s bodies like crazed things, he’d decided to leave before she could wake up. If he’d waited, they’d only have had another fight, and she probably would have kicked him out anyway; he’d taken a swing at her with a bottle the night before, and she would be outraged at that once she’d sobered up. Still, if it wasn’t for the killing at the El Rey, he might have tried staying in town. Elena’d probably calm down in a day or two, at least enough that they could speak to each other without shouting, but the news of the European’s death and the governor’s wrath made Diegotown feel close and claustrophobic. When he went to the