The Dragon Griaule (37 page)

‘Bet you used to be an emo girl,’ said Snow. ‘Then you hooked up with some Goth guy and crossed over to the dark side.’

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Come see me and I’ll introduce you to him. He loves to meet new people.’

‘Sure thing. Give me your address.’

Her face emptied and her eyes lost focus, as if she were hearkening to an inner voice. She was silent for so long, Snow waggled a hand in her face and said, ‘Hello!’

She turned abruptly and strode off without another word – a man passing in the street gave her a wide berth.

‘That was weird,’ Snow said.

‘Yara.’ The kid fingered a tube of glue out of his pocket and began squeezing it into the paper sack.

Snow said, ‘What?’

‘Her name is Yara. She’s crazy.’

‘How’s that make her different from anyone else?’

Snow thought he would have to explain his view that human beings were no more than a collection of random impulses bound up in a net of societal constraints, but the kid may have had an innate awareness of this, because he asked for no clarification and said, ‘Yara’s not monkey-crazy. She’s snake-crazy.’ He started to bury his face in the fume-filled sack, but then offered it to Snow, and Snow, moved by this unexpected display of etiquette, accepted.

II

Excerpted from
He Lives With Expectation
By Craig Snow

. . . Ex kicked me out of the house again. It was for the usual reason, an inability to balance her radical politics with having a boyfriend who espoused no political view more complex than ‘Yeah, America sucks, but so does everywhere else.’ As usual I checked into the Spring Hotel, so Ex would know where to find me once she had time to rethink her position, and spent the next few evenings playing video games in an arcade off Avenida Seis and drinking at the Club Sexy, a gay bar frequented by the wives and girlfriends of right-wing military types, women notable for their hotness and the monumental triviality of their conversation. You could hang out there all night and not hear a serious concern mentioned, though now and then things would get heated when the talk turned to hairstyles.

The club was a great place to go should you want to commit suicide-by-babe – a big room with frigid air conditioning and subdued lighting, round tables of bamboo and glass, and a childlike mural of a tropical beach with a starry indigo sky and coco palms painted on the walls. Most afternoons this old daisy in a tux would totter onto the bandstand and play Latinized arrangements of Beatles tunes and similar shit on a Casio, his silver-gray head nodding to the whispery samba beats. If you qualified as a cute guy, the women would have sex with you, no problem, but then you risked winding up in a basement with a Col Noriega look-alike clamping electrodes to your dick. To be on the safe side I would sit at the bar, blending in with guys who
were fans of the owner of the club, Guillermo, a pale youth of approximately my age with exciting hair and the look of a male ingénue.

About four p.m. each weekday, ‘
La Hora Feliz
,’ the ladies would come breezing in, all bouncy in their low-cut frocks, sunglasses by Gucci and make-up by Sherwin-Williams. If you stared at them through slit eyes, it looked as though a couple of dozen spectacularly vivid butterflies had perched beside the little round tables. They were two-fisted drinkers, mainly tequila shots washed down with orange juice, and before long they’d be gabbing away happily, their chatter drowning out the Casio. I had an on-again, off-again relationship with one – Viviana, a perky blond with fake tits – and on the Thursday after Ex kicked me out I met her in the rear stall of the men’s room for a quickie. It wasn’t that I was eager to die. We’d begun our relationship before I fully understood the situation and after I became aware of what was going on . . . well, I had a self-destructive streak and a corresponding nonchalant attitude toward personal safety, and these qualities, allied with my American sense of entitlement, were sufficient to make me lower my guard. The thought of all that available pussy was too tempting to resist. Early on during the affair Viviana and I were caught exiting the women’s john by her boyfriend, a typical death-squad-loving psycho army captain. She leaped to my defense, screeching at the bewildered young sociopath, demanding that he stop beating me, claiming that I had been helping with her hair and saying, ‘Can’t you tell he’s a faggot?’ Thereafter I felt relatively secure in bending her over the toilet, though afterward I would have to re-establish my gay bona fides by acting femme and flirting with Guillermo.

That Thursday, once we had finished our business in the ladies’ room, she joined me for a drink at the bar. I told her about Ex giving me the boot – she offered sympathy, stroking my hair and murmuring encouragement, though she did so without much sincerity. Her gaze drifted about the room and locked onto a table close to the stage.

‘That filthy cunt!’ she said venomously.

The Goth girl who had insulted me on my stoop the week before, Yara, was talking to a woman named Dolores for whom
Viviana had a thing (her infidelity was by no means gender specific – she had explained that many of the women, like her, felt imprisoned by their relationships and would fuck anything that moved so as to express their frustration and cause psychic damage to their significant others – Club Sexy provided them with a perfect cover). She started up from her barstool. I caught her arm and asked what was wrong, but she shook me off, beelined for the table and proceeded to chew out Yara, who regarded her with an impassive expression. When Viviana paused for breath, Yara spoke briefly. Whatever she said must have been potent, for without further ado Viviana went off to sulk at a corner table. I watched the girl for a while. Her gestures were slow, calm, languid, as if she were explaining a serious matter, taking her time, being patient. Several women at other tables watched her as well – dotingly, I thought. Intently. The way you’d stare at a movie star. This girl had a definite presence. In a room full of beautiful women, she was the one who stood out, who drew your eye.

‘Oh, Guillermo!’ I beckoned him over. ‘Could you make one of your elegant mango mojitos for Viviana?’

‘Of course.’

I put my elbows on the bar and interlaced my fingers, using them as a chin-rest, watching him prepare the drink.

‘I believe I’ll have one, too,’ I said. ‘Extra sweet.’ Then, leaning close, I added in a whisper, ‘Why’s Viv so upset?’

‘She thinks La Endriaga is hitting on Dolores.’

‘You mean the girl in black? She’s La . . . what was it? La Endriaga?’

He poured lime juice. ‘Aren’t you familiar with the story? La Endriaga’s supposed to be a creature part snake, part dragon, part female. The girl’s real name is Lara . . . or Mara. Or something. You know how I am with names. But people call her La Endriaga because she lives in the jungle, near the skull.’

‘I thought that was just a story . . . the skull.’

‘I’ve never seen it myself.’ Guillermo gave his hair a toss. ‘But Jaime Solis . . . you know, the boy who dyes his soul patch all different colors? He told me it’s real. He offered to take me to see it, but I said, “Why would I want to look at some nasty
old bones? There are better ways to impress me.”’

I had drained the larger part of my mojito when Dolores passed Yara a fat envelope, the kind that in the movies often contains a payoff. Yara stuffed it into a straw market bag, presented her cheek to be kissed, and headed for the exit. Curious, I followed her outside. It was almost eight o’clock and the sidewalks were crowded, the street dressed in neon, choked with clamorous traffic, the night air steamy and reeking of exhaust. Music from radios and storefronts contended with the crowd noise and the squeal of arcade games. Grimy children, mainly pre-teen girls of the sort Aurora House was purported to help, plucked at my sleeve, held out their hands and made pleading faces. I surrendered my pocket change and shooed them away. Yara had been swallowed up by the crowd, but I spotted the psycho army captain’s Hummer, its hood decorated by red and purple smears of reflected light. He was hunting for a parking place, leaning on his horn – instead of a honk it produced a grandiose digital fanfare. We had long since made our peace, but I thought it best to move on. I went west along Avenida Seis, uncertain of my destination, pausing to look in shop windows, and caught sight of Yara in an otherwise empty electronics store, talking to a clerk, her black figure as slim and sharply defined as an exclamation point under the bright fluorescents. The clerk – a tall, stringy guy with a shock of white in his forelock – appeared upset with her, making florid gestures, but he cooled off when she passed him the envelope Dolores had given her. He inspected the contents, glanced about as if to ascertain whether anyone was watching, then removed a few bills from the envelope and handed them to her. She stuffed them into the hip pocket of her jeans and headed for the entrance. I turned my back and pretended to be studying a window display of cell phones, but she walked up to me and said cheerfully, ‘I wondered when we’d meet again.’

Put off by the dissonance between her tone now and that she had employed during our first encounter, I said, ‘You wondered that, did you?’

‘Don’t you want to know how I knew we’d meet again?’

‘Sure. Whatever.’

‘I always know that sort of thing.’

I waited for a deeper analysis and when none was forthcoming I said, ‘Well, this is nice, but I’ve got to be stepping.’

‘Don’t go.’ She linked arms with me and did this little snuggle-bunny move against my shoulder. ‘There’s something I want you to see.’

‘Whoa!’ I disengaged from her. ‘Last week you treated me like I was a fucking STD and now . . .’

‘I’m sorry! I was in a terrible mood.’

‘And now you’re coming on to me in this retarded way. What’s that all about?’

She took a backward step and said soberly, ‘I’m not sure we’re going to have a relationship. You’re an attractive man, but I think it’ll just be sex with us.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Enough crazy talk. I’ll catch you later.’

She gave me a pouty look. ‘Don’t you want to see where I live?’

‘Why should I? What do you have in mind?’

‘Americans are so paranoid,’ she said. ‘I guess you’ve a right to be. There’s a lot of anti-American feeling down here. A girl might invite you to dinner just so she can chop off your head.’

‘Damn straight.’

‘You could take preventive measures,’ she said. ‘Notify a policeman. Give him your name and destination. That way if you go missing they’d come after me. I’d be forced to control my murderous impulses.’

‘Now I really want to go with you,’ I said. ‘Because you saying that, wow, it makes clear what a paranoid asshole I am for thinking your invitation is suspicious.’

Four boys wearing designer jeans and polo shirts, expensive watches on their wrists, rich kids just into their teens, came pounding into the entranceway of the electronics store from the street, laughing and breathless, as if they had just played a prank on someone and made a narrow escape. One of them noticed Yara and said something about whores. For some reason, this infuriated me. I told him to fuck off. The boys’ faces grew stony, all the same face, the same soulless, zombie stare, and I had a shocking sense of the seven-billion-headed monster
of which they constituted a four-headed expression. I spat on the sidewalk at their feet and took a step toward them. They cursed us and scooted off into the crowd, re-absorbed into the body of the beast.

Amused, Yara said, ‘You were really angry with those kids. You hated them.’

I became aware of the street sounds once more – radio music, car horns, the gabble of shouts and laughter – as if the curtain had been raised on a noisier production.

‘What’s not to hate?’ I said. ‘They’ll grow up to be fascist dicks just like their daddies.’

She seemed to be measuring me. ‘I think you’re a nihilist.’

I laughed. ‘That’s way too formal a term for what I am.’

She didn’t reply and I said, ‘You have a thing for nihilists, do you?’

‘You should come with me. Seriously.’

‘Give me a reason.’

‘You’ll like what I’ve got to show you. If that’s not enough of a reason . . .’ She shrugged. ‘You’ll miss out on the fun.’

‘What kind of fun are we talking about?’

‘The usual. Maybe more.’

Yara leaned against me, her breast nudging my elbow, and, though I remained paranoid, my resistance weakened.

‘Come with me, man,’ she said. ‘If you die, I promise you’ll die happy.’

We took a taxi to the rain forest. If we walked, Yara explained, if we went down through Barrio Zanja, we would have to traverse almost two miles of jungle terrain – this way we would only have to walk for fifteen or twenty minutes. The taxi whipped us around Plaza Obelisco, past the unsightly concrete monument to Temalaguan independence, some despot’s idea of a joke, and past the Flame of Liberty, which had been installed to memorialize the overthrow of the very same despot, and before long we were bouncing along over a dirt road that grew ever more narrow and dead-ended in the isolated village of Chajul on the verge of the jungle, set beneath towering aguacate trees. Yara gave the driver the bills she’d received from the electronics
store clerk. I asked if the money had been a pay-off and she said, ‘They’re contributions. Funding.’

‘Funding for what?’

‘I’m not certain,’ she said.

Away from the city I could see the stars and the glow of a moon on the rise behind hills to the east, but once we entered the jungle it was pitch-dark. Yara shined a flashlight ahead and held my hand, warning me against obstructions. Insects chirred; frogs bleeped and tweedled. Rustlings issued from every quarter. Smells of sweet rot and rank decay. Mosquitoes whined in my hair. It felt hotter than it had in the city and I broke a sweat. Shuffling along in the dark, passing among unseen things, twigs and leaves poking, brushing my skin – I imagined vines forming into nooses over my head, spiders scurrying up my trouser legs, vipers uncoiling from branches above, pointing their shovel-shaped heads and darting their tongues. Yara may have sensed my apprehension because she told me we’d be there soon, but I didn’t buy it, I knew she was leading me into a trap. I gave thought to taking her hostage in order to forestall an attack by whoever was lying in wait, but I glimpsed a ruddy glow through the leaves and caught a strong fecal odor and shortly thereafter we emerged into a clearing the approximate length of a soccer pitch, though narrower, overspread by a dense canopy and bounded by walls of vegetation – you could have fit the upside-down hull of a mighty ark into the space described by those walls and that canopy. Among tree stumps and patchy underbrush lay a jungle squat that spread out across the clearing, a settlement combining the harsh realities of Stone Age life with those of brutal urban poverty. Lean-tos, tents, thatched huts, and a handful of shacks with rusting tin roofs. Campfires generated a smoky haze and as we passed through the settlement I saw shadowy people stirring, all moving about with what struck me as an excess of caution. Some acknowledged Yara with a wave, but no one called out her name. I estimated that several hundred souls lived in the squat and would have expected to hear a conversational murmur, the odd laugh or shout, music and such, yet the place was as hushed as a church and there was a corresponding air of pious oppression, one comprehensible
when you considered the enormous reptilian skull, yellowed with age, illuminated by torches, that occupied the entire far end of the clearing, looming high into the canopy.