“It’s the way it’s always been done at High Place,” Francis said blandly.
“The cemetery sounds more lively,” she said. “Maybe we should fill a flask with whiskey and have a party here, under that pine tree. I’ll blow smoke rings your way, and we can try and find those hallucinogenic mushrooms. And if it turns out they do indeed induce a sort of lust or frenzy and you get fresh with me, I won’t mind one bit.”
She was joking. Anybody would have known it was a joke. Her tone of voice possessed the dramatic intonation that takes place when a woman is giving a grand performance. But he took it all wrong, no longer blushing but paling.
He shook his head. “My mother, she would say that’s wrong, to suggest…it’s wrong…”
He trailed off, though it was not necessary that he elaborate. He seemed plainly disgusted.
She pictured him talking to his mother, whispering, the word filth on his lips and both of them nodding, agreeing. Superior and inferior types, and Noemí did not belong in the first category, did not belong in High Place, did not deserve anything but scorn.
“I don’t care what your mother thinks, Francis,” Noemí said as she dropped the cigarette and crushed it under the heel of her shoe with two vicious stomps. She began walking briskly. “I’m headed back. You’re a complete bore.”
A few steps later she stopped and crossed her arms, turning around.
He had followed her and was close behind.
Noemí took a deep breath. “Let me be. I don’t need you to show me the way.”
Francis bent down and carefully picked up a mushroom that she had accidentally trampled over in her mad dash toward the cemetery gates. It was satiny-white, the stem had broken off from the cap, and he held both in the palm of his hand.
“A destroying angel,” he muttered.
“Sorry?” she asked, confused.
“A poisonous mushroom. Its spore print is white, which is how you can distinguish it from an edible one.”
He placed the mushroom back on the ground and stood up, brushing away the dirt from his trousers. “I must seem ridiculous to you,” he said quietly. “A ridiculous fool clutching his mother’s skirts. You’d be right too. I dare not do anything to upset her, or to upset Great Uncle Howard. Especially Uncle Howard.”
He looked at her, and she realized that the contempt in his eyes hadn’t been meant for her, but for himself. She felt awful, and she remembered how Catalina had told her she was capable of leaving deep scars in people if she didn’t watch her scalding tongue.
For all your intelligence, you don’t think sometimes, Catalina had said. How true. There she was, making stories up in her head when he had said nothing cruel to her.
“No. I’m so sorry, Francis. I’m the fool, a court jester,” Noemí said, attempting a sort of lightness in the delivery, hoping he understood she hadn’t meant it, that they might laugh this silly quarrel away.
He nodded slowly, but did not seem convinced. She stretched out a hand, touching his fingers, which were dirty from handling the mushrooms.
“I really am sorry,” she said, this time eradicating any flippancy.
He looked at her with great solemnity and his fingers tightened around hers, and he gave her a little tug, as if to pull her closer to him. But just as quickly he released her and stepped back, grabbing the red cloth he carried atop his basket and handing it to her.
“I’m afraid I’ve dirtied you,” he said.
“Yes,”—Noemí looked at her hand, smudged with soil—“I guess you have.”
She wiped her hands clean on the cloth and handed it back to him. Francis tucked it in a pocket and set the basket down.
“You should go back,” he said, glancing aside. “I still need to collect more mushrooms.”
Noemí didn’t know if he was telling the truth or was still upset and merely wanted her gone. She couldn’t blame him if he was sore with her. “Very well. Don’t let the mist swallow you,” she said.
She reached the cemetery’s gate soon enough and swung it open. Noemí looked over her shoulder and saw a figure at a distance, Francis with his basket, the curling wisps of mist making his features vague. Yes, he must have been the silhouette she had spied in the cemetery earlier, and yet she felt it couldn’t have been him.
Maybe it was a destroying angel of a different kind, Noemí mused, and immediately regretted such an odd, morbid thought. Really, what was wrong