by Rita Indiana
Thanks to the establishment of this lab, he thought, Said’s government will have something to help regenerate part of what was lost. This lab is the altar I’m going to build for Olokun, in which I’ll turn Omicunlé’s Yoruba prayers into an environmental call to action. His work was finished. Elizabeth was making the dancers grind out on the floor with the Chemical Brothers’ “Out of Control”; a huddle formed in the center, where something was happening. Giorgio got up to see, proud and happy. He peered between the heads of his guests and saw a young man breakdancing. He was going in circles at a breathtaking speed, posed on the axis of his back while holding a fetal position. In Giorgio’s dilated pupils, his figure seemed to become a lotus flower in a cloudscape. Without slowing down, he froze, his elbow on the ground and a fist under his defiant chin while his other hand went to his waist, as if waiting for a photo. It was Said Bona, now twenty-two years old.
The victory odes Giorgio had been singing to himself came to a dead halt. He was terrified. The flashes from the disco ball made everything move in slow motion. Here was the person responsible for the deplorable state of the sea a few decades from now. Here was the reason for his initiation. All that for this. Quickly and overwhelmingly, he had before him the real goal of his mission: to give Said Bona a message—as president, to avoid accepting biological weapons from Venezuela. To tell him that, in the future, when he was elected president, he needed to reject them: Giorgio had to convince him. But just as quickly, he began to think about the other consequences of that decision: if Said Bona followed his advice and there was no chemical spill after the tsunami, would Esther Escudero go looking for him? Would Eric Vitier find him among the hustlers at El Mirador? Would he be crowned in that shanty in Villa Mella and allowed the life he’d come to so appreciate? Would Giorgio disappear? He imagined Linda covering her head with her hands, out of her mind when her seas turned into a shit shake, while here, in the past of those seas destined to disappear, she was dancing happily with the prospect of the new lab next to a young and charming Iván. Giorgio walked toward the cliff. A little group was sitting on the rocks, smoking a blunt while looking at the stars. In his mind, he reviewed all he’d experienced and accumulated, then sat down among those passing around that giant joint. He felt the intense pulse of his three lives at the same time and the weight of the sacrifice his little game was demanding of him now. The pot had given the ecstasy a second wind. He went back to the house to talk to Said, who was hanging out with Elizabeth behind the turntables. She was clearly enchanted. “This is Said,” she said, introducing him. “He’s a graffiti artist and does spoken word. And he’s great.”
“I know who he is,” said Giorgio, immediately capturing the attention of the future president, who was all ears when it came to flattery.
Saltpeter
The lion-paw bathtub sat in the center of the circular bathroom, under a meter-wide skylight made from crushed beer bottles and through which the sun came in a soft emerald color. Linda Goldman listened as the last guests drove away. She figured Giorgio must have seen them off. Malagueta, Elizabeth, and Iván continued the rumba at a supposed after-party in some villa in Cabarete. Her house was finally free of everyone; she was free of complaints. She rubbed her body from head to toe with an orange blossom essential oil and put on a terry cloth bathrobe to go out on the terrace and look for her husband. She wandered over to the studios. There she found lizards that ran from her steps and hid noisily among the dry leaves. She walked to the edge of the cliff. Later, she looked out at the beach, to no avail. Hidden behind a sea grape tree, Giorgio listened to her call his name. When Linda got close enough, he grabbed her from behind. He had a gallon of grapefruit juice in his hand and laughed when Linda punched him in the gut as a reaction to his scaring her. He looked for cups, ice, and vodka, but Nenuco and Ananí had already cleared everything away. He found half a bottle in the freezer and made two drinks. They sat on the couch, under the Lam painting.
Giorgio closes his eyes and noisily chews on some ice. He sees the sleeping pills stolen from old Iván and which Acilde is now popping in his mouth. Lost, because the Taíno has snuck away in the night, Roque and Engombe run from the helmeted squad that splashes toward them, getting closer and closer. Acilde swallows the last of the pills with a drink of water from his sink and sits back on his little bed. The weight of his eyelids closes Giorgio’s access to the cell in which his original body has lived. He feels that someone very dear to him is dying and discovers tears in his eyes. The squad falls on Roque, who doesn’t wipe away the tears and instead lifts the arquebus defiantly to speed up the dénouement. The shot that takes him down leaves Giorgio completely dark inside. After chatting about rap and politics, he’d said goodbye to Said without a word about his future. He could sacrifice everything except this life, Giorgio Menicucci’s life, his wife’s company, the gallery, the lab. Linda rests her head on his lap and, with a finger, he moves a strand of wet hair that has fallen on her face. In a little while, he’ll forget about Acilde, about Roque, even about what lives in a hole down there in the reef.
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