by Tom Epperson
“I don’t think Dávila’s been so bad,” says Andrés.
“People think because Landazábal hates him he must be okay,” says Roberto. “But Landazábal hates anybody who’s not an out-and-out lunatic like himself. It’s all words with Dávila. Nothing’s going to change, you’ll see.”
“I think Roberto’s right,” says Franz. “If he was a real reformer he’d be dead already.”
Daniel, smoking a cigarette and gazing into space, doesn’t seem to be listening.
“So Daniel, what’s up?” says Roberto. “Is everything all right?”
He blows out some smoke and shakes his head. “I’m worried about something.”
“What?”
“My penis. I’ve been worried about it since I was twelve or thirteen.”
“What’s the matter with it?”
“I’m afraid it’s too long.”
Everyone laughs.
“Actually,” says Daniel, “I was thinking about some good news I got today. You know that cooking show? Fernanda!?”
“Sure, the crazy blonde with the big tits,” says Andrés.
“I saw some of her show just this morning,” says Roberto.
“So what about her?” says Franz. “You and she have become engaged?”
“She’s written a cookbook, and I’ve been hired to do the photos for it. It’s pretty good money.”
“Great,” says Roberto, “let’s drink to your cookbook!”
They all bump glasses with one another. But Daniel is looking a bit sheepish.
“I know this is a stupid way to make a living. But work has been slow lately, so it’s come at a good time.”
“Teresa loves Fernanda!,” says Andrés. “She never misses it.”
With a sour look on his face, Daniel takes a gulp of his drink.
“Anyway,” he says, “so much for my good news.”
“I have news too,” says Roberto.
“And it’s also good?” says Franz.
“No. Not really. I quit my job today. Because they’re threatening to kill me. I’m leaving the country. I’m going to Saint Lucia.”
His friends just stare at him.
“Shit,” says Franz.
“When are you leaving?” asks Andrés.
“Soon. Within ten days. That’s how long they gave me.”
“Any idea who ‘they’ are?” asks Franz.
Roberto shrugs. “The usual anonymous motherfuckers.”
Andrés sighs. “You’ve pissed off so many people, Roberto. There’s lots of suspects.”
“They can’t bribe you because you have plenty of money,” says Daniel. “So those they can’t bribe, they kill.”
It gets quiet at the table. It’s not the style of the four of them when they’re together to take anything too seriously, so sincere emotion tends to remain unexpressed.
“I’ll bet Caroline is happy,” says Franz.
“Yes. Extremely.”
“So things aren’t so bad,” says Andrés. “When you have a girl like Caroline to go to.”
“You’re right, Andrés. Things aren’t so bad.”
He takes his glasses off. Cleans them with a bar napkin.
“But—you know—one moment I’m sure that going is the right thing to do. And then I think that I’ve been threatened before and nothing happened so why should this be any different? Maybe I’m just panicking.”
“No, Roberto,” says Daniel, “you should go. Why take a chance?”
“Daniel’s right, for once,” says Franz. “We’ll miss you, but we can come visit you in Saint Lucia.”
“Yes,” says Daniel, “better than coming to visit your grave.”
Roberto looks at Andrés. “What do you think?”
“I think it would be very unpleasant for the three of us if they killed you, Roberto. So for selfish reasons, I want you to go.”
Roberto puts his glasses back on as the waitress passes by. She’s young and cute and she smiles at the handsome Franz because waitresses always smile at him.
“Does anyone need anything?”
“More drinks for everyone,” says Daniel. “We’re all going to get shit-faced.”
“Just some water for me please,” says Franz.
Andrés eyes the waitress and her tight black pants as she walks away. “What a beautiful ass. It’s a work of art.”
“You know the girls with the most beautiful asses?” says Daniel. “The ones who live in the slums on the hills. Because of all the exercise they get walking up and down.”
“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Roberto says.
“About girls’ asses?”
“About the political situation. Most countries in South America move to the left at least sometimes, but we stay stuck in the right. Why is that?”
“Electing Dávila,” says Andrés. “That was a move to the left.”
“Yes,” says Franz, “but in a way, things are worse than ever. Look at what’s happening with Roberto.”
“Historically that’s the way it’s always been,” says Andrés.
“Fuck history,” says Daniel. “How can you still believe in that bullshit?”
“When the right wing is in power,” Andrés continues, ignoring Daniel, “they don’t kill people like us. They do their massacres and so forth out in the countryside, but they leave people like us alone because they don’t want to stir up any trouble. It’s when they’re out of power, like now, that they become dangerous.”
Roberto nods. “Landazábal has become this mad old man plotting revenge. Like a character in a novel.”
“I remember he tweeted something about you a few months ago,” says Franz, “what was it?”
“It was after I wrote the story about the psychiatrist who got kidnapped.” The psychiatrist was taken from her office then raped and tortured by unidentified men who wanted her to tell them all the secrets, the more salacious and embarrassing the better, of one of her patients, a liberal senator who happened to be a long-time nemesis of Landazábal. Not surprisingly, Landazábal denied any connection to the kidnapping, and even suggested that it had never occurred but was the invention of a hysterical woman who ought to be under psychiatric care herself. “He said I was like a little scorpion hiding in a shoe. It was kind of weird to read that. To know he knew I existed and he was sitting around in his big house in the country thinking about me.”
“I try never to attract anyone’s attention,” says Andrés. “You can be reasonably safe as long as you don’t do that.”
“Do you think Landazábal is behind it?” says Franz. “The threats against you?”
“Who knows?” Roberto says, as he gazes out on the dancers in the phantasmagoric light; they seem to be made out of light too, with no substance, like holograms. “Who ever knows anything in this fucking country?”
* * *
The four of them emerge from Sparks about three hours later. Roberto and Andrés somewhat drunk, Franz completely sober, Daniel extremely drunk.
“Flower o’ the quince,” yowls Daniel in English, “I let Lisa go, and what good in life since?”
“Oh no,” says Franz. “He’s reciting poetry. I’m going home.”
“But you can’t!” says Daniel, looking stricken, clutching Franz’s shoulder. “It’s so early! We’re just getting started!”
“Blanca texted me, Abril isn’t feeling well, she has a stomachache. She wants to see her daddy.”
“What kind of man are you? Putting your family in front of your friends?”
“So I’ll see you again, won’t I?” Franz says to Roberto. “Why don’t you come to dinner? You need to say good-bye to Blanca and the kids.”
“Yes, I’ll do that.”
“Rico!” he says, motioning to someone. “Let’s go!”
Rico is standing on the sidewalk a few meters away. He’s a big man in a sports coat who is Franz’s driver/bodyguard. One might not always immediately notice him, but whenever Franz is out in public Rico is somewhe
re nearby. Franz has a great and not unfounded fear of being kidnapped. People are kidnapped left and right in this country by all manner of kidnappers—guerrillas, narcos, paramilitaries, cops, soldiers, common criminals, covert operatives from this or that government agency. There is even something called “self-kidnapping,” where you arrange to have yourself kidnapped and then you and your kidnapper split the ransom. A dozen years ago Franz’s elderly Swiss grandfather was kidnapped by the PRM. He was held in the jungle for many months while a ransom was painstakingly negotiated. His wife began to receive messages from him asking her to send him various pieces of her very valuable jewelry. Assuming the guerrillas were forcing him to make these requests, she complied without question. Only much later after her husband had been released did she find out that he had fallen in love with a pretty young guerrilla named Lupita and was giving the jewelry to her. He assured her it was just a passing infatuation but she didn’t believe him and even today she thinks he’s secretly pining away for his lost guerrilla girl; she accuses him of murmuring “Lupita” in his sleep, and if for a moment he’s quiet and pensive she’ll sharply say, “You’re thinking about her again, aren’t you?”
Franz and Rico walk off down the crowded street. Daniel lights a cigarette.
“Poor guy,” he says. “Imagine being married to a bitch like Blanca.”
“I should probably go too,” says Andrés.
“But why?” says Roberto. Disappointed. The alcohol making him feel convivial like Daniel.
“I should get home to Teresa.”
“But she won’t mind.”
“No, but I know her. She’s lying in bed awake waiting for me. When I’m out at night, she can never fall asleep till I come home.”
The neon sign for Sparks is reflected in each lens of Andrés’s glasses. Golden sparks go fountaining up then come floating down. He smiles at Roberto. His smile is gentle and sad, like always.
“You’re coming by to see her, aren’t you? Before you go?”
“Of course.”
“Let’s see, where is my car?” Andrés habitually forgets where he parked his car. “Oh, I think it’s down this way,” and he hugs Roberto and Daniel. “Don’t drink too much, guys. Stay out of trouble.”
Andrés goes one way and Roberto and Daniel stroll off another.
“I don’t understand how you can even consider getting married,” Daniel says, “when you have the horrible examples of Franz and Andrés in front of you. Don’t you see that it’s the end of freedom?”
“Oh, someday you’ll probably walk the plank like the rest of us.”
“I’d rather pull the pin out of a hand grenade and hold it to the side of my head.”
Roberto tends to believe him. He seldom has relationships that last beyond a month or two. “I get tired of a girl after a few weeks,” he once told Roberto. “It’s like eating the same thing for dinner every night. Pretty soon you want a change.”
Roberto wanders through the Pink Zone with Daniel. The cobblestone streets are clean and gleaming. Employees stand out in front of the clubs and bars and discos and restaurants and smile warmly and beckon to them to enter. The sidewalks are thronged with people who all seem young, well-dressed, happy. Even the policemen and the soldiers with their automatic weapons seem happy and young and their uniforms unusually spiffy as they hang out on corners and ogle the girls. The hedonistic Pink Zone is ironically the creation of the moralistic Landazábal administration. This neighborhood used to be quite dirty and dangerous, but Landazábal worked with the now imprisoned mayor of the city to clean it up. What some call the disposable people—beggars, addicts, whores, orphans—were removed, along with hundreds of stray dogs. It’s known the dogs were taken to the pound where they were electrocuted, but it’s not so clear what became of the people. The politicians insisted they were treated respectfully, the orphans put into orphanages, the addicts into rehab facilities and so forth. Most people think they were simply taken to distant slums and dumped. Darker stories circulate. The disposable people never actually left but are living in the sewer system underneath the Pink Zone. The disposable people were transported out of the city and put to work as slave laborers in foreign-owned factories. The disposable people suffered the same fate as the dogs.
“I’m mad at you, you motherfucker,” says Daniel.
“Why?”
“You get yourself in hot water, and now you’re going to take off and leave me here. All by myself.”
“Andrés and Franz will be here.”
“I hardly ever see them anymore. Because of their fucking wives.”
“I’m sorry, Daniel. I don’t know what else to do.”
“So we’ll go no more a roving,” he declaims in slurred English, “by the light of the moon!”
* * *
Roberto and Daniel go to three more places and seem to have gotten exponentially drunker as they leave each one.
“Time to go home,” Roberto mumbles. “Really truly time. Don’t try to talk me out of it.”
“Just one more drink.”
“No.”
“Okay, you pussy. Where are you parked?”
“I walked.”
“I’ll give you a ride.”
“You’re in no shape to drive.”
“You’re in no shape to walk.”
The crowds have thinned out, and there’s a chilly dampness in the air. Roberto follows Daniel down a narrow ill-lit alley to where his car is parked. A yellow Renault Twingo. An old man with a skinny orange cat in his lap is sitting on a wooden box. Now the cat jumps off as the old man rises.
“Hey Esteban, are you having a good night?” Daniel says to the old man; just about anywhere you go in the city Daniel will know people by name.
“Not too bad a night, sir,” Esteban says as he shuffles toward Daniel, and then he smiles as Daniel shoves some money into his hand. “Many thanks.”
Daniel bends down and scratches the cat under its chin. “Hey kitty, what’s happening? Been catching any mice?”
Roberto and Daniel get in the Twingo. As they move past Esteban, he waves a clawlike hand. This little stretch of alley is probably his whole life. Old man, skinny cat, narrow alley.
The radio is playing and Daniel is talking but Roberto isn’t listening to him. This is the drunkest he’s been in quite some time. He closes his eyes, wondering if he can stay awake till he reaches his apartment.
The horn erupts with three sharp honks. “Jesus,” says Roberto, opening his eyes and looking around. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” says Daniel, “it’s the car alarm. Something’s wrong with it. It goes off whenever it wants to.”
Roberto closes his eyes again. The horn honks three times again.
“You should get that fixed,” he murmurs.
The song on the radio becomes faint and ghostly. He can feel the motion of the car but he’s being captured by a different motion, it’s as if he’s slowly drifting around the circumference of a dark, indolent whirlpool, and then he wakes up. He’s not at his apartment building but is entering the underground parking at Daniel’s apartment building.
“Daniel, what are we doing here? You were supposed to take me to my place.”
“Shit, I forgot.” Daniel pulls into his parking space. “We’ll have a quick drink. Smoke a little weed. Then I’ll take you home.”
Roberto doesn’t want a drink or to smoke weed but knows there’s no point in arguing with Daniel when he’s like this. Roberto rides up in the elevator with him. It’s a high-rise building, and his apartment’s near the top.
Big windows give out on views of the city and the mountains. The building is near the bullring, and if one stands on the balcony on the days they’re having bullfights one can look down into the arena and witness the bloody spectacle if one is so inclined. Daniel moved here after he quit the paper and became a commercial photographer. It’s a big step up from the dumps he used to live in.
Roberto sinks down onto the soft maroon sofa
. “What do you want to drink, Roberto?” Daniel calls from the kitchen, and Roberto calls back, “A beer!” Daniel comes in with two beers and sits down next to Roberto. He takes the lid off a wooden box on the coffee table and busies himself rolling a joint. Roberto gazes at him fondly.
“I’m going to miss you, Daniel.”
“Let’s don’t even talk about it.”
“You say I ought to go, but you’re mad at me because I’m going.”
Daniel doesn’t reply. He finishes up the joint, lights it, inhales, and then hands it to Roberto. He breathes in some smoke then quickly coughs it out.
“Shit,” he says.
“Good, huh? It’s called creepy. It’s this new genetically modified Frankenstein kind of weed.”
Roberto hands the creepy back to Daniel. He takes a drink of his beer. He looks at Daniel’s aquarium, at the luminous bubbles trickling up and the bright tropical fish. Daniel would like to have a warm-blooded pet but since he travels a lot feels that it’s not practical. But he loves his fish. Particularly when he’s stoned, he will sit in front of the tank and watch them like television. He recognizes them all individually and thinks they recognize him. He ascribes human thoughts and emotions to them. He will say things like: “The little blue angelfish is in a good mood today. See, she’s zipping all around the tank. I think she’s happy the tiger barb died. It was always nipping at her.”
Daniel offers the joint to Roberto again, and he takes another hit.