THE NATURAL STRANGER :: BOOK 1, "THE AEON" :: CHAPTER 10, EPISODE 2

Well, Carlo had his Top Cat foibles too. Money... when he had it... he'd blow on gifts for neighborhood children; toys and marbles, dolls and crayons, and American magazines, especially one with the "what's to worry?" man. And more... a hundred fifty pesos, more than thirty dollars at the time, part of the pot contributed to a girlfriend of one of the rich young blades among Nine who was, despite his name, neither rich nor gallant. After some men changed the mind of young Lothario and they were married, after all, Carlo was too ashamed to ask for his money back, so he wrote his name and the sum and put it in an envelope, the most expensive of wedding gifts.

The groom's father, mistaking Carlo for a man of plenty, invited us out to Comoril near the coast south of Salamanca for a post-nuptial debauch... a brutal weekend of drinking and abuse of the man's peons who were, in every respect, worse off than slaves. The cousins of the bride competed: whose husband was vilest... lowered bodices to compare bruises, lost in the voluptuousness of suffering, come as a balm to the God of Harry Stone.

Now? Well, Comoril's patron was among the first of those who fled when the dictatorship collapsed.

"If you could have seen Zamora's face!" Bert remembered yesterday at Casa Miel. "Arcilla and his gang had just flown off from Montserrat to Panama, extending their "vacation", Junior had been cooling heels in New York City all through the first of the old man's two funerals because somebody next to Jimi Carter told him that justice would be done. And then to whom is he introduced? Only the biggest fix-upper in Washington, who has been Arcilla's patron. Pendejos! So Junior flew back to be sworn in to his hero's welcome and empty cupboard."

"And Arcilla?" Korbel prompted, though he knew exactly what had happened... Ralph and Alice have a most tenacious memory, nobody remains hidden for too long.

"Him?" Berto winced. "Panama was inhospitable, too many flying insects," and he cocked his thumb and forefinger, "and too many Cubans, to whom he owed money for Florida. So most of them went to the Old World to be nearer their money... don Jaime chose London, winters in the Balearics." At the Mallorca games, I could have taken the ferry to Ibiza to piss on his grave, but didn't. "That ugly daughter of his married some shiftless Lord without a shilling," the publisher continued, "and they are now the problem of Belfast which, let us pray, will blow them all to bits..." He settled back, raising his cocktail of bad intent. "And now that I have told you something, won't you please reward me with a small scrap... a crust... how our tiny country fared in this exchange which, I am given to understand, has ended quite satisfactorily. Oh... nothing for La Prensa, of course, merely for my own education and the safety of Kara and our children. One wants to know if there is any future here..."

Michael let his rat-teeth curl in a smirk, glancing downward into his drink to see if any counsel floated up from melting ice. Have I said there was a seance at that ugly Comoril reception? A Pythoness, contacting JFK's ghost, who assured us his assassin was indeed sent by Castro... his only regret being that LBJ hadn't nuked Cuba thoroughly and often, clearing the island for that clumsy interval Blake and Milton describe, between stages of evolution... Shapeless Rocks, Retaining only Satan's Mathematical Holiness.

When Korbel looks up again it's as if he's put on long ears and some plastic scars to play Boris Karloff's part in one of those cheapo rubber mask monster flicks... Billows thinks Harry Stone was the model for Dr. Strangelove in that movie, though conventional wisdom holds it to be Herman Kahn, or maybe Teller. My vote's for Lionel Atwill, the policeman Krogh in "Son of Frankenstein". Mike's not quite so compulsive, cunning rather... everyone in the Zone loved Zorro... next to, of course, the Honeymooners and Star Trek. "You know what we Americans say... first the good news, then bad..."

"Of course," Humberto allowed. "Didn't Evie tell you that I was almost three years myself in Los Angeles?" He says this with pride... pride! and so I concur... "it's true, Mike. Bert was a screenwriter!"

"Congratulations," Korbel says. "Well, good news is that the neutrality of Costazul is judged sincere by the United States to a factor of 91%. The respect shown by Soviets is not so clear, only 87%."

So cunning and free... is he...

"It was La Grua!" howls the publisher. "Evie, you must introduce me to these Russians, convince them we are a fine and hospitable place, fine and neutral... victims of imperialism, even. Your advisers never exceed their instructions in conveying advice. So... and there is bad news?"

Maybe it's weather, humidity, or little umbrella drinks... Mike's losing focus. He takes off his glasses, waving them round between his fingers as if remembering why Billows let him go - a little bird fallen to the Zone.

Dr. Ventura made such a gesture discussing Paul, so the doctor who examined our once Olympic hope, Rudyard Hayes, also looked like Mike when he declared his diagnosis. Roj must have understood, but Hayes was such a hero that Aquino continued holding back his pace to let Rudyard keep winning, keep up his confidence. He would not let his own glory occur as the result of another's misfortune.

By the time final trials were to held, determining who would go to Tokyo... had to be Tokyo, now that I think of it because... well, Rudyard was having cramps and headaches too. A course had been plotted from Salamanca's plaza to the Malecon, ending not far from the hotel district. Perhaps a thousand people were on hand to wish their champions on... the Spanish-speaking whites and a few mixtos for Roj, blacks and English, including the Asiatics, for Hayes. The Uay applauded one or the other as the spook of the moment took them.

By prearrangement, Aquino always took the lead... it was Rudyard's preference to hold back, shadow his competitors, then run them down over the last hundred meters. But Rudyard seemed even slower than during the trials, his legs galumphing like cinderblocks, and Roj slowed his own pace, so as not to draw too far ahead.

The multitude began to whistle. Some with stopwatches frowned, they knew what time the Olympians should be making.

As Rudyard's arms began to flail and mouth sag open, a mop-haired janitor from Saltamontes, Pablo Ruiz, made a desperate lunge to overtake both Roj and Rudyard. Three hundred meters from the finish, he drew four lengths ahead of Aquino, still looking back, over his shoulder. Two hundred... and he was six lengths in front.

Roj turned his head back and began to run. Rudyard had fallen back to fourth place, those who had come to cheer him now chanting "Pab-lo! Pab-lo!" (As you may well imagine, Egg, serious money rode upon the outcome.)

A hundred meters remained. Aquino, always a pacesetter, finally set his sights on the back of Pablo Ruiz. He closed to four lengths, three, two...

After Zamora and others put heads together, Dr. Kitigawa was summoned hastily to brief Rogelio upon how one conducts himself in Japan. To have disqualified Pablo Ruiz would have caused public outrage, but the janitor knew well that he was no match for Rogelio in fair competition and, so, was given the sendoff of a hero to Tokyo, to which city Aquino's family paid his way as Costazul's alternate. As arranged, Pablo contracted an infection and selflessly stepped aside... Roj ran the race of his life and earned the bronze medal.

He returned to Salamanca as a hero while Rudyard became forgotten, soon to be left on the beach to be carried off and drowned. The American gold medalist set a world's record, a full four tenths of a second faster than Rudyard had ever run; at best he would have taken home only silver.

"But we'll never know, will we?" Humberto says. "Through illness, Rudyard made a place for himself in legend that needs never be subject to question - the certain victor denied his gold by a Godly fist that always has and always will be raised against Suelans for the abominations of their ancestors.

"Such legends only grow stronger when the principles are dead... preferably by tragedy," the publisher added. "Rudy went to the Heaven of the Kennedys and King, Jesucristo, Elvis and Alejandro Canul..."

"You almost make it sound as if Junior would have been done a favor without Palin's intervention..."

"I said no such thing!" But Berto looks suspiciously down the block before shaking out his silver cigarette box... it takes three strikes of the match to get him lit; the happiest endings those played out before the angriest mobs.