Ybon had passed out again (after giving him a long speech about how they had to give each other ‘space,’ which he’d listened to with his head down and wondered why she insisted on holding his hand during dinner, then). It was super late and he’d been following Clives in the Pathfinder, the usual routine, when some cops up ahead let Clives pass and then asked Oscar to please step out of the vehicle. It’s not my truck, he explained, it’s hers. He pointed to the sleeping Ybon. We understand, if you could pull over for a second. He did so, a little worried, but right then Ybon sat up and stared at him with her light eyes. Do you know what I want, Oscar?
I am, he said, too afraid to ask.
I want, she said, moving into position, un beso.
And before he could say anything she was on him.
The first feel of woman’s body pressing against yours—who among us can ever forget that? And that first real kiss—well, to be honest, I’ve forgotten both of these firsts, but Oscar never would.
For a second he was in disbelief. This is it, this is really it! Her lips plush and pliant, and her tongue pushing into his mouth. And then there were lights all around them and he thought I’m going to transcend! Transcendence is miiine! But then he realized that the two plainclothes who had pulled them over—who both looked like they’d been raised on high-G planets, and whom we’ll call Solomon Grundy and Gorilla Grod for simplicity’s sake were beaming their flashlights into the car. And who was standing behind them, looking in on the scene inside the car with an expression of sheer murder? Why, the capitan of course. Ybon’s boyfriend!
Grod and Grundy yanked him out of the car. And did Ybon fight to keep him in her arms? Did she protest the rude interruption to their making out? Of course not. Homegirl just passed right out again.
The capitan. A skinny forty-something jabao standing near his spotless red Jeep, dressed nice, in slacks and a crisply pressed white button-down, his shoes bright as scarabs. One of those tall, arrogant, acerbically handsome niggers that most of the planet feels inferior to. Also one of those very bad men that not even postmodernism can explain away. He’d been young during the Trujillato, so he never got the chance to run with some real power, wasn’t until the North American Invasion that he earned his stripes. Like my father, he supported the U.S. Invaders, and because he was methodical and showed absolutely no mercy to the leftists, he was launched—no, vaulted—into the top ranks of the military police. Was very busy under Demon Balaguer. Shooting at sindicatos from the backseats of cars. Burning down organizers’ homes. Smashing in people’s faces with crowbars.
The Twelve Years were good times for men like him. In 1974 he held an old woman’s head underwater until she died (she’d tried to organize some peasants for land rights in San Juan); in 1977 he played mazel-tov on a fifteen-year-old boy’s throat with the heel of his Florsheim (another Communist troublemaker, good fucking riddance). I know this guy well. He has family in Queens and every Christmas he brings his cousins bottles of Johnnie Walker Black. His friends call him Fito, and when he was young he wanted to be a lawyer, but then the calie scene about all that lawyering business.
So you’re the New Yorker. When Oscar saw the capitan’s eyes he knew he was in deep shit. The capitan, you see, also had close-set eyes; these, though, were blue and terrible. (The eyes of Lee Van Cleef!) If it hadn’t been for the courage of his sphincter, Oscar’s lunch and his dinner and his breakfast would have whooshed straight out of him.
I didn’t do anything, Oscar quailed. Then he blurted out, I’m an American citizen.
The capitan waved away a mosquito. I’m an American citizen too. I was naturalized in the city of Buffalo, in the state of New York.
I bought mine in Miami, Gorilla Grod said. Not me, Solomon Grundy lamented. I only have my residency.
Please, you have to believe me, I didn’t do
The capitan smiled. Motherfucker even had First World teeth. Do you know who I am? Oscar nodded. He was inexperienced but he wasn’t dumb. You’re Ybon’s ex-boyfriend. I’m not her ex-novio, you maldito pariguayo! the capitan screamed, the cords in his neck standing out like a Krikfalusi drawing.
She said you were her ex, Oscar insisted.
The capitan grabbed him by the throat.
That’s what she said, he whimpered.
Oscar was lucky; if he had looked like my pana, Pedro, the Dominican Superman, or like my boy Benny, who was a model, he probably would have gotten shot right there. But because he was a homely slob, because he really looked like un maldito pariguayo who had never had no luck in his life, the capitan took Gollum-pity on him and only punched him a couple of times. Oscar, who had never been ‘punched a couple of times’ by a military-trained adult, felt like he had just been run over by the entire Steelers backfield circa 1977. Breath knocked out of him so bad he honestly thought he was going to die of asphyxiation. The captain’s face appeared over his: If you ever touch my mujer again I’m going to kill you, pariguayo, and Oscar managed to whisper, You’re the ex, before Messrs. Grundy and Grod picked him up (with some difficulty), squeezed him back into their Camry, and drove off. Oscar’s last sight of Ybon? The capitan dragging her out of the Pathfinder cabin by her hair.
He tried to jump out of the car but Gorilla Grod elbowed him so hard that all the fight jumped clean out of him. Nighttime in Santo Domingo. A blackout, of course. Even the Lighthouse out for the night.
Where did they take him? Where else. The cane-fields.
How’s that for eternal return? Oscar so bewildered and frightened he pissed himself.
Didn’t you grow up around here? Grundy asked his darker-skinned pal.
You stupid dick-sucker, I grew up in Puerto Plata.
Are you sure? You look like you speak a little French to me.
On the ride there Oscar tried to find his voice but couldn’t. He was too shook. (In situations like these he had always assumed his secret hero would emerge and snap necks, a la Jim Kelly, but clearly his secret hero was out having some pie.) Everything seemed to be moving so fast. How had this happened? What wrong turn had he taken? He couldn’t believe it. He was going to die. He tried to imagine Ybon at the funeral in her nearly see-through black sheath, but couldn’t. Saw his mother and La Inca at the grave site. Didn’t we tell you? Didn’t we tell you? Watched Santo Domingo glide past and felt impossibly alone. How could this be happening? To him? He was boring, he was fat, and he was so very afraid. Thought about his mother, his sister, all the miniatures he hadn’t painted yet, and started crying. You need to keep it down, Grundy said, but Oscar couldn’t stop, even when he put his hands in his mouth.
They drove for a long time, and then finally, abruptly, they stopped. At the cane-fields Messrs. Grod and Grundy pulled Oscar out of the car. They opened the trunk but the batteries were dead in the flashlight so they had to drive back to a colmado, buy the batteries, and then drive back. While they argued with the colmado owner about prices, Oscar thought about escaping, thought about jumping out of the car and running down the street, screaming, but he couldn’t do it. Fear is the mind killer, he chanted in his head, but he couldn’t force himself to act. They had guns! He stared out into the night, hoping that maybe there would be some U.S. Marines out for a stroll, but there was only a lone man sitting in his rocking chair out in front of his ruined house and for a moment Oscar could have sworn the dude had no face, but then the killers got back into the car and drove. Their flashlight newly activated, they walked him into the cane-never had he heard anything so loud and alien, the susurration, the crackling, the flashes of motion underfoot (snake? mongoose?), overhead even the stars, all of them gathered in vainglorious congress. And yet this world seemed strangely familiar to him; he had the overwhelming feeling that he’d been in this very place, a long time ago. It was worse than deja vu, but before he could focus on it the moment slipped away, drowned by his fear, and then the two men told him to stop and turn around. We have something to give you, they said amiably. Which brought Oscar back to the Real. Please, he shrieked, don’t! But instead of the muzzle-flash and the eternal dark, Grod struck him once hard in the head with the butt of his pistol. For a second the pain broke the yoke of his fear and he found the strength to move his legs and was about to turn and run but then they both started whaling on him with their pistols.
It’s not clear whether they intended to scare him or kill him. Maybe the capitan had ordered one thing and they did another. Perhaps they did exactly what he asked, or perhaps Oscar just got lucky. Can’t say. All I know is, it was the beating to end all beatings. It was the Gotterdammerung of beat-downs, a beat down so cruel and relentless that even Camden, the City of the Ultimate Beat down, would have been proud. (Yes sir, nothing like getting smashed in the face with those patented Pachmayr Presentation Grips.) He
