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As Fidelio enhanced his standing and reputation in the small world of the Workshop, Felipe Cedro suffered a more than equivalent loss of standing in the larger social complex of Cuernavaca. Fidelio, sitting on his heels beside the red bus when it was parked near the public market, contributed to Felipe’s decline by telling the interested loafers of Felipe’s fiasco. “I would have little to do, Felipe said. Merely to stand and catch the small man when he fell. And I would be rich. It was a vast success. When I awakened, sick and bleeding, I was forty-one pesos poorer.
Ai
, Felipe is a clever man.”

In his forays into town to check on his various business enterprises, Felipe detected the new lack of respect, the derision, the dwindling of fear. It became very difficult for him to enforce his orders. Everyone knew of his grotesque failure. In the bull ring he had been a figure of fun. The laughter had made him want to kill himself. Now the world was laughing again. The little man with the stone fists had removed an alarming percentage of Felipe’s working capital. And his plan to
recoup hastily was frustrated by the unexpected appearance of the bright brass hasps and sturdy padlocks on the doors of all the occupied rooms at El Hutchinson.

One night in a small cantina near Los Canarios he attempted to regain through an act of violence the fearful respect he had lost through gossip. They took his knife away from him and snapped the blade, hurled him in a high, punishing trajectory onto the cobblestones, and then jammed the doorway, hooting and whistling at him while he picked himself up and walked slowly away into the night. The empire of Felipe Cedro was crumbling before it had begun to achieve its expected dimensions. Fading in the remote distances of his mind was the golden vision of the land and vehicles and silken actress companions of the powerful Don Felipe.

While Felipe was becoming a subject of gossip in one stratum of the local culture, Gloria Garvey had become the subject of much wonderment in other areas. She was no longer a morning fixture at her sidewalk table outside the Marik, with the Dos Equis and the Mexico City
News
. She was sometimes seen there in the late afternoons, accompanied by the short, wide and powerful-looking little man named Shane. He wore a look of sleepy indifference, and seemed almost unaware of her presence. Gloria seemed full of tensions and an alert nervousness. She had lost weight. There was a drawn look about the handsome face. Her hair was beautifully cared for, her clothing smart, fresh, crisp, and immaculate. As she sat there with Shane, drinking little, there was a look about her that was reminiscent of a racing greyhound which waits in quick-eyed, chop-lapping tension on the weighing platform with its handler, waiting for the prolonged clang of the bell which signals the beginning of the race.

It was noticed that when Shane was ready to go, he got up without warning and left. Gloria would hasten after him and catch up with him. It was common knowledge that the little man had moved in with her, and so invitations were extended to include both of them. At parties Gloria was unexpectedly subdued. She hovered close to Shane, and spoke very little. The neat and tailored Gloria had lost that air of casual magnificence, and had become merely another pretty woman. When it was discovered that Shane was quick to take offense at imaginary slights, and that when he took offense he knocked people down with brutal efficiency, the invitations were fewer.

As it was known that Shane was an acquaintance of Margot Tazely-Jones, attempts were made to pump her for additional facts. But aside from saying that his real name was, she believed, Shanelli, she would say, “Just a veddy horrid little type, dears. Terribly selfish and domineering. Not really nice at all. He joined our party one day in Vera Cruz because he took a fancy to me and I really couldn’t discourage him the slightest bit. Do let’s talk about something more pleasant.”

One American resident, more enterprising than the others, remembered that her cook was related to Amparo, the maid at Las Rosas. She requested a report from the cook. She thus learned that when the small American señor had become the guest of the Señora Garvey, there had been several beatings, and it had been possible in the upper hall to hear the whimperings of the señora. But now there were no more beatings. The señora kept the apartment very clean indeed, and much care had to be taken over the food of her guest.

When this report was circulated, a man managed, at a party, to have a few moments of private conversation with Gloria.

“We’re all worried about you, dear,” he said. “We wonder if that little spook is blackmailing you or something. We old hands down here should stick together. All you have to do is say the word and …”

“Oh, no! Please! Shane is … a very good friend. Really! I’m not in any kind of trouble, honestly! I’m perfectly happy.”

The friend reported that she had turned slightly gray around the mouth and had looked quite haunted.

On a few occasions, residents driving up to Mexico City had passed Gloria and Shane in the blue Jag, with Gloria at the wheel. Such conservatism was worthy of comment. There were few who had not experienced the shaky sensation of having Gloria ram noisily past them like a big blue bomb.

Paul Klauss was another whose habits were altered by that portion of the fiesta which affected him alone. He ceased attending classes immediately. Though he retained his room at El Hutchinson, he occupied it no oftener than one night out of three. When he ate at the hotel he took a table by himself. Miles ate with him once and, after enduring Klauss’s silent rudeness, did not attempt it again. He arrived and departed by taxi, a remote and silent man with a look of busy preoccupation, a climate of belligerent haste.

Gil and Jeanie Wahl reported seeing him one evening on
the terrace porch of the Bella Vista, sitting at a party for two by the railing with a small, pale, rather pretty but rather worn-looking woman in a pink suit. Jeanie reported that they were looking into each other’s eyes with great intensity, Klauss smiling fondly and the woman responding with a sort of jittery, nervous delight, like a sparrow at a feeding station.

Monica, Harvey, Mary Jane and Gam saw him not long afterward at Sanborne’s in the lower level of the Del Prado when the four of them had gone up for the
novillero
bullfights. Klauss was at a table for two against the wall, with a dark-haired, tiny, rather sallow and quite pretty woman in a rust-colored suit. Klauss was looking into her eyes and smiling in a sad, wise way. He held both her hands in his across the table. She was looking back at him and trying to smile. Her mouth was trembling and tears were running down her cheeks.

The defection of Klauss saddened Margarita. Instead of the gay clumsy trot, the oversized red shoes clopped slowly. There were minor-key dissonances in the bright, piercing voice. While serving she began to sigh heavily and audibly from time to time, and the rollicking swing of her hips as she walked was muted to a motion that involved not more than three inches of weary sway. And, as though there was some subparagraph of the law of conservation of energy which required that there be a certain minimum of excess motion required, as Margarita’s walk and carriage became more subdued, Esperanza’s prim and undeviating stride began to take on a supple flexion that seemed more pronounced when Fidelio was within visual range.

Agnes Partridge Keeley suffered a barely detectable but desirable personality change as a result of the fiesta. She became warily civil to Gam Torrigan. She was willing to admit, when thoroughly cornered, that she was not completely infallible. She had less to say about her sales record, her investment properties and her hundreds of loyal, successful ex-students. Gam was bemused by the sudden wilting of the opposition. He guessed that such an alteration could have come only from a chastening experience, and he wondered what it possibly could have been.

Gil and Jeanie Wahl were not as they had been before the party. They were less frequently absent from meals and classes. Jeanie expanded her volume of outgoing mail. Also, when they were with the group, they were more involved with and responsive to the group. There was considerably less of that humid
and hypnoid and heavy-eyed awareness of each other which had closed out all the rest of the world. And, to the unspoken relief of many, they ceased entirely to feed each other small choice morsels while at the table. They were pulling themselves free of the swampy lubricity of the present, and beginning to think of the future, of home and work and kids.

Gam Torrigan felt the uncomfortable ferment of change within himself, accompanied by an irritating and unwelcome objectivity. He began to work, almost with diligence, on his own painting in an effort to forget that, when this session ended, for the first time in his life he had not even the slightest clue as to where he would go and what he would do. His helpful contacts had given up trying to aid him, having tired of his abuse of their efforts. He had sent out a lot of letters all over the country, but had received alarmingly few answers, and those so noncommittal that he had begun to feel a little white, hot patch of alarm on the lining of his stomach.

He had set himself up to use the last of daylight one day and was annoyed at the way the painting was going, and scared of the future. Mary Jane stopped to watch him and when he quit and began to clean his brushes she said, “Where will you go from here, Gam?”

He turned on her and yelled, “How the hell do I know!” He heard his own shrillness and knew he had told her more than he intended to.

“Blow me down!” she said softly. “Like that, huh?”

“Like what?” he said sullenly.

“You know like what, old Torrigan. Worn out all your welcome mats, I bet.”

“Shut up, child.”

“You are the child, my hairy friend. Your painting, Gam. How about it? Do you really think you’re any good at it?”

He did not look at her for a long time. He turned slowly and said with unanticipated honesty and humility, “I don’t really know, Mary Jane. I used to think I knew. Now I don’t know.”

“I’m not picking on you.”

“I know that, too.”

“And you haven’t a soli-damn-tary place to go when this hassle folds.”

“Something will turn up.”

“How much cash money will you have left?”

“I haven’t tried to figure it out. A hundred dollars.” He
pulled himself together. “The way of an artist, my child, is a hard road in our mechanistic, opportunistic culture, and I can only say …”

“Come down off it, Gam. Stay human another couple of minutes.”

“How will that help?”

“When Bitsy and Park come back through, I’m leaving too. You know that.”

“So?”

“I’d just like to find out if that stuff you do is worth a damn. All that functional symmetry and functional balance and dynamic whosis. So I’ll make a deal. If you don’t find any place to light, you come to Forth Worth. Check in at Daddy’s office. Rixon Elmore. You’ll find him in the book. I’ll set up a deal for you, if you want to try some straight painting for a change.”

“I don’t adjust comfortably to charity, Miss Elmore.”

“Stop bristling your beard at me. Daddy’s got some scrubby land down in San Saba County. I know there’s a range cabin on it that you can get to by jeep. It isn’t in use. There’s good water and no electric. Out of my allowance I’ll set it up so if you stop at the office you’ll be taken down there and staked to a used jeep, and a line of credit for supplies over in Brady. You’ll have to take in all the painting supplies you’ll need, because it won’t be so easy to go out and get them once you get in there and settled.”

“I don’t want …”

“
Will
you hush up, Torrigan? The offer is good only if you agree to stick it out one full year. Just you and the painting. No house guests. At the end of the year somehow, I don’t know how yet, I’ll set you up for a one-man show, in some New York gallery. And I’ve got friends who can make sure the critics at least take a fast look. If nothing sells, you’ve found out something and I’ve found out something. If they sell, Torrigan, I get back my expenses. Maybe I only get a part. But if I get them all back, and more money comes in, we split that right down the middle. Is that charity?”

“Uh … no.”

“Could you stand a year of yourself?”

“I don’t know. God, the idea of a show is terrifying!”

“You don’t have to tell me a thing. If you want to do it get yourself up to Fort Worth and go to the office and you’ll find that everything will be set for you.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I guess maybe I want to be a patron of the arts or something. And you saved my life, didn’t you?” She slid off the wall and dusted the seat of her shorts. “When you get cleaned up there, I’ll buy you a drink.” She walked off. His mouth felt dry and his hands trembled. So far it had all been a big poker game and he had been running a bluff. He hadn’t ever looked at his hole card. They had been sweetening the pot for him. But now all the cards had been dealt, and through the offices of a surprisingly tough-minded blond kid, the world was about to call him. If something else turned up, he could fold his hand without ever looking at the hole card, and save the expense of that last big bet. But if something else did turn up and he took it, he had the feeling that he would be forever lost.

Of all the staff and students, Monica and Harvey had been most changed by the fiesta. Had not Torrigan bribed Felipe to load the drinks, it was entirely possible that Monica would never have acquired the courage to acquaint Harvey so vividly with her state of mind. And he was too much in awe of her to have made any advance. Love would have hidden behind the awkward shyness and restraint of two chronically lonely people. He would have gone back to Philadelphia, miserable at the thought of never seeing her again, but grateful that such an unattainable goddess had been nice to him. And she would have gone sadly back to Kilo to the energetic treadmill of her days, and perhaps gone on to other summers where her special shame awaited her.

They had spent most of their free time together before the party, but after the party they were inseparable. They talked incessantly. For each of them it was a delicious experience to have someone to talk to who would really listen, who did not get that glazed look of polite agony, who actually followed every word with avid interest. They decided they would be married in Kilo. They talked seriously about whether an artist as dedicated as Harvey should accede to the dull formats of their social order by going through a marriage ceremony. But, in spite of their rebellious talk, they were deeply conservative at heart. They said that because of the danger of risking Monica’s position through unorthodox behavior, they would go through the legal motions of marriage, meaningless as such motions were compared with the unshakable texture of their love.