Monotony, though, might be the jungle’s stealthiest killer. Day after day, Josefina traces an endless ribbon of water beneath expanding spirals of mist. One day Strickland glances upward to find a large black bird like a greasy smear across the blue sky. A vulture. Now that he’s noticed it, he finds it every day, making lazy loops, anticipating his demise. Strickland is well armed, a Stoner M63 assault rifle in the hold and a Model 70 Beretta in his holster, and he itches to shoot the bird down. The bird is Hoyt, watching. The bird is Lainie, saying good-bye. He doesn’t know which.
Sailing is treacherous at night, so the boat anchors. Usually Strickland chooses to stand alone at the bow. Let the crew whisper. Let the índios bravos stare like he’s some kind of American monster. The moon this particular evening is a great hole carved through nightflesh to reveal pale, luminescent bone, and he does not notice Henríquez creep up on him.
“Do you see? The frolicking pink?”
Strickland is furious, not at the captain, but himself. What sort of soldier leaves his back exposed? Plus, he’s caught gazing at the moon. It’s feminine, something Lainie would do while asking him to hold her hand. He shrugs, hoping Henríquez will go away. Instead, the captain gestures with his logbook. Strickland looks into the distance and sees a sinuous leap and silver spray.
“Boto,” Henríquez says. “River dolphin. What do you think? Two meters? Two and a half? Only the males are so pink. We are lucky to see one. Very solitary, the male boto. Keeps to himself.”
Strickland wonders if Henríquez is playing games, mocking his offish proclivities. The captain takes off his straw hat, and his white hair glows in the moonlight.
“Do you know the legend of the boto? I suppose not. They teach you more about guns and bullets, eh? Many of the indigenous believe the pink river dolphin is an encantado, a shape-shifter. On nights like this, he transforms himself into a man of irresistible good looks and walks to the nearest village. You can tell him by the hat he wears to hide his blowhole. In this disguise, he seduces the village’s most beautiful women and leads them back to his home beneath the river. Wait and see. We will find very few women along the river at night, so afraid are they of encantado kidnap. But I think it is a hopeful story. Is not some underwater paradise preferable to a life of poverty and incest and violence?”
“It’s coming closer.” Strickland didn’t mean to say it aloud.
“Ah! Then we should definitely rejoin the others. They say looking into the eyes of an encantado curses you with nightmares until you are driven insane.”
Henríquez pats Strickland on the back like the friend he isn’t and ambles away, whistling. Strickland kneels beside the rail. The dolphin dives like a knitting needle. It probably knows what boats are. It probably wants fish scraps. Strickland unholsters the Beretta and takes aim where he estimates the dolphin will emerge. Fanciful fables don’t deserve to live. Harsh reality, that’s what Hoyt seeks and what Strickland must find if he hopes to get out of here alive. The dolphin’s shape becomes visible beneath the water. Strickland waits. He wants to look it in the eyes. He’ll be the one to deliver nightmares. He’ll be the one to drive the jungle insane.
6
INSIDE THE SECOND apartment, a happy horde greets her: beaming housewives, smirking husbands, ecstatic children, cocksure teenagers. But they’re no realer than the roles being played at the Arcade Cinema. They’re characters in advertisements, and though these original paintings are executed with terrific skill, not a single one is mounted. Easy-to-Remove Waterproof Lashes is being used to block a cold-air crack. Soft-Glo Face Powder props open a drafty door. The Hosiery Woes of 9 Out of 10 Women has been repurposed as a table to hold paint tins for works in progress. This lack of pride depresses Elisa, though all five cats disagree. The strewn canvases make fabulous plateaus atop which they scout for mice.
One cat preens her whiskers against a toupee, spinning it upon a human skull named, for reasons Elisa can’t recall, Andrzej. The artist, Giles Gunderson, hisses and the cat bounds away, mewling of litter-box revenge. Giles leans into his easel and squints through tortoiseshell glasses dappled in paint. A second pair of glasses is propped above his overgrown eyebrows, and a third is perched on the bald peak of his head.
Elisa rises to the toes of her Daisys to look over his shoulder at the painting: a family of disembodied heads hovering over a cupola of red gelatin, the two children jawing like hungry apelings, the father pinching his chin in admiration, and the mother looking satisfied about her rhapsodic brood. Giles is struggling with the father’s lips; Elisa knows that men’s expressions bedevil him. She leans farther and sees him shape his own lips into the smile he’s trying to paint and it’s so adorable that Elisa can’t resist: She swoops down and gives the old man a kiss on the cheek.
He looks up in surprise, and chuckles.
“I didn’t hear you come in! What time is it? Did the sirens wake you? Gird yourself, dearest, for new heights in pathos. The radio says the chocolate factory is on fire. Could anything be more dreadful? I wager children everywhere are tossing in their sleep.”
Giles smiles beneath a fastidious pencil mustache and holds up, in each hand, a paintbrush, one red, one green.
“Tragedy and delight,” he says, “hand in hand.”
Behind Giles, a shoe-box-sized black-and-white television on a wheeled cart pulses static through the guts of a late-night movie. It’s Bojangles tap-dancing backward up a staircase. Elisa knows it will cheer up her friend. Quick, before Bojangles has to slow down for Shirley Temple, Elisa makes the two-fingered sign for “look.”
Giles does, and he claps his hands together, mashing red paint with green. It is beyond belief what Bojangles does, which is why Elisa is ashamed to feel a burst of ego: She could have kept pace with him better than Shirley Temple, if only the world into which she’d been born had been wholly different. She’s always wanted to dance. That’s why all the shoes: They are potential energy, just waiting for use. She squints at the television and counts off the beats, ignoring the competing music from the cinema below, and launches into a tap dance in time with Bojangles. It’s not bad—whenever Bojangles kicks the face of a step, Elisa kicks the nearest thing, Giles’s stool, which makes him laugh.
“You know who else could hotfoot down a staircase? James Cagney! Did we watch Yankee Doodle Dandy? Oh, we should. Cagney’s coming down a staircase. He feels like a million bucks. And he starts flinging his legs around like his ass is on fire. Complete improvisation, and talk about dangerous! But that’s true art, my dear—dangerous.”
Elisa holds out the plate of eggs and signs, “Eat, please.” He grins sadly and takes the plate.
“I believe without you, I would be a starving artist in the least figurative of senses. Wake me when you get home, won’t you? I’ll do the buying: breakfast for me, supper for you.”
Elisa nods but points sternly at the Murphy bed locked in its upright position.
“When viscous fruit molds call to Giles Gunderson, he answers! Then, I promise: dreamland for me.”
He cracks an eggshell against The Hosiery Woes of 9 Out of 10 Women and slides one pair of glasses past two others. His face resumes mimicking the smile he’s trying to paint: that smile is a little bigger now, and Elisa is glad. Only the crashing fanfare of the downstairs movie’s final frame jars her back into action. She knows what happens next: The words The End materialize on the screen, the list of featured players rolls, the houselights rise, and there is no more hiding who you really are.