"I'd like a color shot of each, and his or her name and how he or she died," said Joseph. "It would be an amazing, an ironical book to publish. The more you think, the more it grows on you. Their life histories and then a picture of each of them standing here."
He tapped each chest, softly. They gave off hollow sounds, like someone rapping on a door.
Marie pushed her way through screams that hung net-wise across her path. She walked evenly, in the corridor center, not slow, but not too fast, toward the spiral stair, not looking to either side. Click went the camera behind her.
"You have room down here for more?" said Joseph.
"Si, senor. Many more."
"Wouldn't want to be next in line, next on your waiting list."
"Ah, no, senor, one would not wish to be next."
"How are chances of buying one of these?"
"Oh, no, no, senor. Oh, no, no. Oh no, senor."
"I'll pay you fifty pesos."
"Oh, no, senor, no, no, senor."
In the market, the remainder of candy skulls from the Death Fiesta were sold from flimsy little tables. Women hung with black rebozos sat quietly, now and then speaking one word to each other, the sweet sugar skeletons, the saccharine corpses and white candy skulls at their elbows. Each skull had a name on top in gold candy curlicue; Jose or Carmen or Ramon or Tena or Guiermo or Rosa. They sold cheap. The Death Festival was gone. Joseph paid a peso and got two candy skulls.
Marie stood in the narrow street. She saw the candy skulls and Joseph and the dark ladies who put the skulls in a bag.
"Not really," said Marie.
"Why not?" said Joseph.
"Not after just now," she said.
"In the catacombs?"
She nodded.
He said, "But these are good."
"They look poisonous."
"Just because they're skull-shaped?"
"No. The sugar itself looks raw, how do you know what kind of people made them, they might have the colic."
"My dear Marie, all people in Mexico have colic," he said.
"You can eat them both," she said.
"Alas, poor Yorick," he said, peeking into the bag.
They walked along a street that was held between high buildings in which were yellow window frames and pink iron grilles and the smell of tamales came from them and the sound of lost fountains splashing on hidden tiles and little birds clustering and peeping in bamboo cages and someone playing Chopin on a piano.
"Chopin, here," said Joseph. "How strange and swell." He looked up. "I like that bridge. Hold this." He handed her the candy bag while he clicked a picture of a red bridge spanning two white buildings with a man walking on it, a red serape on his shoulder. "Fine," said Joseph.
