Across the street, the madam opened her notebook.
I have no ruby! the Red Song cried.
But across the street the madam smiled, reached into her stony bosom, pulled out a cigarette, a shining cigarette.
Then the Red Song swayed and said: Give me a million in silver and gold.
The boy grasped her fiercely. — You swear?
I swear I'll show you my ruby. But I'll never show you my mind.
The idol was not gone. The idol was the tooth in the dark ceiling, the little child at table whom others must serve. The next night was as dark as the inside of a woman's skirt. Behind wide yellow crosswalk-lines the Red Song stood waiting. The musicians blew their silver trumpets; other whores breathed the Red Song's breath, hoping to steal beauty's luck. Already he'd leaped the cemetery wall, and his new friend, his old friend, brought the spade and was gone. (The idol was not gone. The idol was young earrings in an old woman's face.) Now the boy dug deeper than fungus and urine-smelling dirt. Guided by the light of scarlet worms, he opened sleep's barred windows. His shoveltip rang! He'd struck her mother's skeleton, sounded the long curve of the silver bird's neck veined with shadows, spangled with light!
He boiled the money clean: gray coins, yellow coins, he scraped out their maggoty marrow. A million pesos! — smooth and wet, incised with numbers and naked women. As soon as he'd heaped them into the Red Song's arms, the soda girl screamed with envy and stabbed herself in the breast, the musicians played all their tunes at once, the madam sprouted new teeth to lengthen her grin; and then the Red Song took the boy's hand. They went off together.
Now she let him touch the flowers that fringed her underchemise. He undid white ribbons and lace, white sashes like weeds around her ankles. Ruffles struggled at her shoulders like wings. He touched the buttons that went down her back. Each rang with its own note. Slender like a candle, she began to let down her hair. Then she pinned it up again. That much the madam had taught her — oh, the madam had a mind! — I ask but a thousand more, the Red Song said. The million is for the madam. The thousand, ah, the little thousand is for me.
The next night was as dark as the dirt beneath a corpse's fingernails. Her mother having now been stripped, he went to his mother and sang to her of his death, squeezed a thousand pesos' worth of tears from her eyes. His mother wept: All for your amiga, your little amiga — how she's stolen your mind!
Outside the house the Red Song stood waiting. The madam was not there, but one man in red livery beat the silver drum. The boy came running out with liquid silver scalding his cupped hands, and the drummer smashed the drum in a single stroke of triumph. Now the boy baptized the Red Song with those tears which cooled and became sacred as they rolled down her hair, becoming not pearl but mother-of-pearl — shell-coins engraved with numerals and mermaids. Once she was thoroughly studded with these precious beads, she sat herself up on a wall so that her face was as high as his face. He put his hands on the wall, one on either side of her. (Already up her dress, his fingers were families advancing on their knees across the Basilica's marble floor, the little children not knowing how to balance themselves.) Rending the calm gold darkness, he played her breast like a dark hand stroking a guitar as she locked her legs around him. His head fell forward into his dreams. Her hands stroked his back; her arms pulled him closer. Their kisses rang beneath their heels as they hurried to the idol's altar; their kisses were tiles like cream, tiles like cream in coffee; tiles like custard. — But I'll beg you for a hundred more, she whispered. The thousand is for new ribbons. The hundred, ah, only the little hundred is for me.
The next night was as dark as an Indian woman's hair. For the little hundred nothing attended her — not even the spastic grin of a redfaced trumpeteer. The boy no longer knew how to appease her demands, but another skull gazed into a skull-shaped pot still faintly spiraled with ocher; the other skull was his new friend, his old friend, who served him lust on spiderwebbed plates of black slate. The Red Song waited. He tiptoed past the sorrowful shadow of her tanned cheek, past the softly resigned look of the sleeping woman's mouth.
