The Tortilla Curtain

such an occasion as this, reading Anaïs Nin's erotica or paging through one of the illustrated sex manuals she kept in a box under the bed--waiting, and eager. There was something about the little tragedies of life, the opening of the floodgates of emotion, that seemed to unleash her libido. For Kyra, sex was therapeutic, a release from sorrow, tension, worry, and she plunged into it in moments of emotional distress as others might have sunk themselves in alcohol or drugs--and who was Delaney to argue? She'd been especially passionate around the time her mother was hospitalized for her gallbladder operation, and he could remember never wanting to leave the motel room they'd rented across the street from the hospital--it was the next best thing to a second honeymoon. Smaller sorrows aroused her too--having a neighbor list her house with a rival company, discovering a dent in the door of her Lexus, seeing Jordan laid low with the flu or swollen up with the stigmata of poison oak. Delaney could only imagine what the death of a dog would do to her.
    He came into the room with his shirt unbuttoned to the waist, ready for anything. She was there, just as he'd pictured her, the pillows fluffed, the silk clinging to her breasts, her eyes moist with desire as she lifted them from the page. “How was the meeting?” she whispered.
    He watched, transfixed, as she swung her smooth tanned legs over the side of the bed, set her book down on the night table and snapped off the reading light, leaving only the sensual flicker of a scented candle to guide them. “The meeting?” he echoed, and he was whispering too, he couldn't help himself. “It was nothing. The usual.”
    And now she was on her feet, her arms encircling his shoulders, her body straining against his. “I thought”--her voice cracked and tiny--“I thought they were... debating the... gate and all?”
    Her mouth was warm. He pressed himself to her like a teenager at a dance, oblivious of gates, coyotes, dogs and Mexicans. She moved against him, and then she pulled away to perch again at the edge of the bed, her fingers busy at his zipper. After a long pause, he whispered, “That's right... and you know how I feel about it, but--” And though his pants were down around his ankles and they were kissing again and he was caressing her through the black liquid silk, he couldn't help thinking about that car and the low rumbling menace of it and how that modified his views vis-à-vis gated communities, public spaces and democratic access... He lifted the silk from her thighs. “I guess I'm not sure anymore--”
    She was wet. He sank into her. The candle sent distorted shadows floating up and down the walls. “Poor Sacheverell,” she breathed, and then suddenly she froze. Her eyes, inches from his, flashed open. “He's dead, isn't he?”
    There'd been movement, warmth, a slow delicious friction, but now all movement ceased. What could he say? He tried to kiss her, but she fought his mouth away. He let out a sigh. “Yes.”
    “For sure?”
    “For sure.”
    “You found him, didn't you? Tell me. Quick.”
    She was clutching him still, but there was no passion in it--at least not the sort of passion he'd anticipated. Another sigh. “A piece of him. His foreleg, actually. The left.”
    She drew in a sudden sharp breath--it was as if she'd burned herself or been pricked with a pin--and then she pushed him aside and rolled out from under him. Before he knew what was happening she was on her feet, rigid with anger. “I knew it! You lied to me!”
    “I didn't lie, I just--”
    “Where is it?”
    The question took him by surprise. “What do you mean?”
    “The”--her voice broke--“what's left of him.”
    He'd done all he could. He would have had to tell her in the morning anyway. “In the freezer,” he said.
    And then he was standing naked in the kitchen, watching his wife peer into the palely glowing depths of the freezer, her negligee derealized in the light of a single frigid bulb. He tried to nuzzle up against her but she pushed him impatiently away. “Where?” she demanded. “I don't see anything.”
    Miserable, his voice pitched low: “Third shelf down, behind the peas. It's wrapped up in a Baggie.”
    He watched her poke tentatively through the bright plastic sacks of vegetables until she found it, a nondescript lump of hair, bone, gristle and meat wrapped like a chicken leg in its transparent shroud. She held it in the palm of her hand, her eyes