D. B. by Elwood Reid

Author:Elwood Reid
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307275080
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2005-07-12T00:00:00+00:00

AT FIRST COOPER tried to play it off, pretend he wasn't worried that he'd not seen Inez since revealing his true identity to her. But after a few days he couldn't take it anymore and went looking for her. He stopped by her apartment and knocked but there was no answer, no shifting of the curtain or thumps from inside to suggest she was hiding from him.

He went by the cantina and asked the owner, a short, balding man who scowled a lot and kept a cotton towel tucked in over his belt in a sanitary manner, if he'd seen her. The man shrugged his shoulders and said that she'd missed her shift and he'd been forced to wait tables—something he was mucho infeliz about.

After lunch Cooper swung by the Blue Dolphin hotel, where Rosa, a friend of Inez's, cleaned rooms and did a little catering on the side. She had terrible acne and long, beautiful hair that she kept in a braid. But all Rosa could do was shake her head and mention something about family and point to the mountains. He thanked her and nicked a pack of matches off her service cart. He was thinking of taking up smoking again.

At night he walked the beach, half expecting some piece of her to wash up at his feet, but there were only dead fish and chicken bones covered with crabs and farther up, where two massive rocks stood in the surf, some teenagers had built a bonfire. They were dancing around it, shooting off firecrackers, and running along the surf with giant sparklers, oblivious to his busted heart.

He spent the next day at the cantina with Ernesto, and rather than tell him about Inez's disappearance, Cooper let him drunkenly plot their petting zoo. By noon Ernesto had stubbornly latched on to the idea that they would import some tapirs from Panama and have a room where the tourists could watch them rip up live chickens and maybe a few of the stray dogs lurking around the village. He said it would be cathartic for people who'd been trapped on buses all day. “Takes care of our trash removal problems too,” he said.

“The tapirs?”

“I've seen them eat the tires off a minibike. And they like motor oil too.”

“Petting zoos are for kids. How in the hell are you going to have carnivorous pigs running around?”

“Details, details, details,” Ernesto said.

“Impossible to insure.”

“Have you ever seen a tapir?”

“That's not the point.”

Ernesto shrugged and changed the subject, talking about his royal lineage while Cooper kept an eye on the street, hoping he'd spot Inez and stop the worried trembling in his gut.

“My weak chin's a dead giveaway,” said Ernesto. “I've always been fond of purple and I make fists when I sleep.”

“Horseshit,” Cooper said.

“A very small country, perhaps a tribal king. Can you see it?”

“No, I do not see it.”

Ernesto struck a Roman coin pose and pointed at a small, grimy Indian huddled in the corner under a heavy wool blanket, rubbing his mouth with nicotine-stained fingers.

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