"Gustavo, the son of an American mother and a Mexican father, killed a bad man in self defense after he had actually tried to kill him in earnest, but lost the will to do so. It is a very long story and well known -- we don't need to go at it again. Gustavo spent three years in the jail next to the Jardin. Being a great reader and solver of mathematics equations he did not entirely dislike his time spent locked up. His elderly Aunt would bring his evening meal to the jail and he would eat it quite slowly, reading Edger Cayce or metaphysical mathematical esoterica while the songs of the various mariachi bands playing on the square drifted in through the open windows. Luck or providence did not desert him. Every year on a certain saint's day a name is drawn and a prisoner is set free. This happened to Gustavo after only three years of a twenty-year sentence.
"He usually brings an obsidian-and-alabaster chess set to the parties. He refuses to play with the Nice Gentleman. Although, also being a very gifted mechanic, he has repaired the Nice Gentleman's old Mercedes a couple of times at a reduced rate. He cannot bring himself to fully forgive the Nice Gentleman for his transgression with Becky. Gustavo's Aunt chides him when he speaks ill of the Nice Gentleman, reminding him that he too has been forgiven and saying, 'The poor child had nowhere to go, God will take care of the wicked, that is not your job, as you have learned mi hijo.' Chuy will play chess with Gustavo.
"Chuy is the son of a famous Mexican writer, a ridiculous golf pro and an alcoholic. He is a ridiculous golf pro not because he is not good; because he is so good, and usually so drunk that every round with him is generously laced with extravagant joy -- quite unlike a typical golfing experience. His family owns land along the river. Chuy's best friend is a very poor, mostly Indian, man that he saved from drowning after the man had spent an entire Sunday in a local Pulqueria and then decided to bathe in the river in anticipation of a night of passion with a recently widowed neighbor. He cannot swim and, although the river is shallow, he fell in a hole and panicked. Chuy happened to be practicing his chip shot along the riverbank, heard the man's pitiful cries, jumped in and saved him.
"Now Chuy and his Best Friend can be seen driving around town in his battered Jaguar sedan or along the Rio Laja; Chuy, shouting endearing obscenities, driving golf balls into the cane along the river and his best friend shagging them, stashing them in a multi-colored plastic child's backpack that he wears tight across his shoulders. When they are seen driving around in Chuy's Jaguar it is usually his Best Friend doing the driving; decked out in full white-cotton peasant regalia and a filthy straw sombrero -- Chuy drunk, loudly singing Jose Alfredo Jimenez rancheros out of the broken passenger window. Amelia has always had a great crush on Chuy but he has never been interested in having an affair with a lesbian.
"Amelia will show up at the party with Bill, her current boyfriend. Bill proudly wears a Knights of Columbus pin on the lapel of his perfect silk sport coats. Amelia is a lesbian, or so she tells everyone; however no one in San Miguel has ever seen her in a relationship with a woman. Bill doesn't care whether she is a lesbian or not. He is not aware that he has ever personally known a lesbian and is really not sure what it means. Bill moved to San Miguel after his wife of thirty-two years died of cancer. He sold his electrical-contracting business in Baton Rouge, gave his son enough money to pay off his student loans and put a down payment on a house, and got on a plane for Guadalajara -- his very first night in town he made the fateful decision to eat tacos from a street vendor. He spent his first week, in a fantastic hotel, in Mexico either in the bathroom or in bed. Guadalajara lost its appeal. A fellow young English hotel guest suggested that he visit San Miguel de Allende because the climate and the food were better. Bill loves the churches in San Miguel and goes to Mass every day, which is how he has come to be such good friends with Manuel, an ex-bullfighter and gigolo. Manuel always shows up at the Wolf Lady's fiestas with a bottle of good tequila and couple of tourists that he has enchanted in the Jardin with his tales of past glories.
"Manuel does not thrive without an entourage. Manuel is also a deep, truly spiritual Roman Catholic. He is Deputy Grand Knight of the Council of Guanajuato of the Caballeros de Colon (Knights of Columbus) in San Miguel. He is a fourth-degree Caballero de Colon. Bill is a third-degree Knight of Columbus. He tells everyone that he has much to learn from Manuel. Manuel's grandfather was one of the martyred ones in Dolores Hidalgo during the anti-ecclesiastical pogroms of the Revolution. Bill frequently sits with Manuel on a bench in the Jardin and prods him to tell the story of his grandfather to spellbound tourists. Manuel would rather speak of bullfighting. He carries in his breast pocket his bullfighter's pigtail that was ceremonially cut after his very last corrida. He doesn't bring it out as much as he used to -- now that he is a retired gigolo. The effectiveness of this potent talisman to his sexual vehemence is no longer really needed. Folks still love to touch it though. Brenda, a young artist from Houston who moved to San Miguel as a teenager to escape an abusive father, has based an entire body of work on Manuel's pigtail. She will come to the party with Epifanio, a native musician and part-time policeman whose brother is the local Mafioso and a generous provider of food and clothing to the orphanage.
"Axle, who claims he is a member of the Knights of Malta and is a pot and Mexican-curio seller, will also be there as will Pat and Trammel Washburn -- a very successful professional couple, both architects and Unitarian/Buddhists. They are founding members of the Wolf Lady's Thursday canasta group. Andy, a retired, Marine Corps Sergeant Major and sculptor, died recently, but his partner, Armando, will attend. The list goes on and varies from time to time.
"The Wolf Lady once wrote a letter to Alice, a longtime local expatriate that moved back to the states to assist in the raising of her grandchildren. The last paragraph of the letter read, 'So, my dear, you are truly missed. I don't know what this life would be like without my parties and all the odd souls that my existence here is built upon, mine most probably being the oddest. I have never told anyone this. I am not Polish. I am Ukrainian. My father and his brothers were Nazi sympathizers during the war. That war and those insane, destructive ideologies ruined my family. Not because we were destroyed, because we survived. I could not live among people that had soiled and traded their humanity. I lost that family but have found another here. Please come back and visit. You know Mexico, the smoke and flies are dreadful now, but the celebration of us continues on.'"
From 'The Wolf Lady,' a story by Franklin Cincinnatus
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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