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.
. . . 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.
