God's Favorite

  “No weapons,” Scar reported after frisking him.

  “Where are the girls?” asked Tony.

  “They to disappear,” said the American. “Here are only one, she is.”

  “What’s going on?” Nachman asked in English.

  “All the GIs have been called back to their bases,” said the American. “In fact, I’m one of the few gringos around. The embassy told me that all nonmilitary personnel were supposed to leave the country. But I don’t give a shit about politics, man. I’m on a spiritual journey—drivin’ from Fairbanks, Alaska, headed for Tierra del Fuego. I mean, how’m I gonna avoid Panama? War or not.”

  Tony smiled thinly and wondered whether to have the American killed. That might pick up his mood.

  Presently Naomi appeared. When she recognized Tony her nostrils pinched together involuntarily. “I thought you were supposed to be retiring to Monaco,” she said.

  “I would go, but my friends all beg me to stay.”

  “Really?” Naomi said flatly. “These friends?”

  Nachman and Dr. Demos shrank in their chairs.

  Six months ago she would not have felt so free to mock me, Tony thought. Now it was all she could do to keep from sneering.

  “We came for some relaxation, not for politics,” said Tony wearily.

  “You picked a bad night. We’ve only got one girl tonight and she’s with a client.”

  “What about you?” said Tony. Naomi was middle-aged and a little formidable, but still. . . .

  She looked at him as if he were a fly that had just landed in her food. “I’m retired, like you ought to be. You can go over to Aquarius, but it’s the same everywhere. No soldiers, no girls.”

  Were they all part of some female conspiracy? Tony was getting desperate.

  “Hey, man, you can take my place in line,” said the helpful American. “It’d be a fuckin’ privilege.”

  Tony acknowledged this gesture with a cold stare. As if he was going to wait in line!

  “One girl? Doesn’t give much for us to do,” said Dr. Demos. But he didn’t say it very loud. Tony’s frame of mind was a little frightening, even to his psychiatrist.

  Naomi went back into her office, leaving the men to watch a soap opera on TV. Ten minutes later, an obese college student sauntered down the hallway, rubbing his glasses on his filthy shirt. When he put them back on his face, he recognized Tony and his mouth fell open. Then he bolted for the door.

  The idea of following such a cretin was so disgusting that Tony nearly got up to leave. But then the girl appeared, and he kept his seat.

  She was his type, thin but with nice full breasts like welcome baskets. She obviously knew who he was, but her face registered no reaction. She fluffed her hair and looked around the room and yawned.

  “What’s your name?” Tony demanded. He could take only so much insouciance in one evening.

  “Gloria.”

  “Gloria, it’s time for you to do something for your country.”

  She shrugged and led Tony down the hall.

  Because of his pitted complexion, his narrow shoulders, his short stature, and his inclined-to-be-rotund figure, Tony had always felt an extreme sense of physical inadequacy; and yet, with all his shortcomings on display, nothing made him happier than stripping naked. It was liberating and decisive. Somehow, when he took off his clothes with a woman, especially a woman he didn’t know, he also took off his self. Being with a whore was even better in some ways than being with Carmen. With a whore, there was no history and nothing to explain. Whores were so forgiving, so accepting of who he really was. If only God could be so merciful! With Carmen, he longed to dissolve in her arms and merge into a single egoless being; but he could never quite reach her. There was some final membrane between them that he could not penetrate. (If he did, he’d be in heaven!) But with a good whore he always felt he was on the edge of something—an explosion!—blowing himself to kingdom come!

  Gloria gave a pitying little smile when Tony was undressed, which he accepted as the inevitable toll on the road to pleasure.

  “What do you want?” Gloria asked.

  “I wouldn’t mind if you hurt me a little bit,” Tony admitted.

  “You want to be punished?” She stood up and her breasts moved in a slow rhythm, as if they were constructed of some heavy element. Her waist was tiny, but when she slipped off her pants her ass swelled up admirably. Tony loved it with all his heart. Her ass was a place of mystery and his hope for glory, the very reason he had been born. God was in there, he knew it.

  Gloria took a pair of handcuffs from a drawer. Tony compliantly placed his wrists around a bar on the brass bed. The cold metal click signified his surrender. He was helpless now, hers to do with as she wished.

  Gloria studied him, like a doctor doing an examination, and with the same aura of authority. She ran a sharp green fingernail down Tony’s torso. He quivered in pleasure, verging on pain. “You’ve been bad,” she said.

  “I’ve been very bad,” he agreed.

  “Someone needs a spanking.”

  Tony crossed his handcuffed arms and rolled over onto his belly, presenting himself for punishment. He could hear Gloria rummaging in the drawer again, and then he felt the touch of a leather strap being drawn across his buttocks.

  “Whap!”

  Oh, my God! It really hurt!

  “That’s too much!” he cried.

  “Don’t complain, you little weasel!” She lashed him again, much harder. His whole body levitated. His internal organs huddled together in a defensive knot. “Somebody ought to pay you back for all the harm you’ve done.”

  Tony groaned. “I didn’t mean it!”

  The lash did its work. Again and again. Then she stopped.

  “Don’t look,” she said.

  She was back in the drawer. In a moment Gloria ordered him to spread his legs. As soon as he did, he felt a lubricated dildo being shoved up his ass, only it was way too long for a dildo! Tony screamed, but she kept pushing, and there was nothing he could do to resist, she was going to shove it all the way through him! This was the end! Impaled in a whorehouse! Explosions rang in his ears. Then the entire room bounced as if the house were going to leap into the sky. What was happening? A mirror blew off the wall and shattered in the air. Gloria screamed. Everything was exquisitely strange and painful.

  And then suddenly the door opened and Nachman stood there, looking at Tony handcuffed to the bed with a broomstick up his ass. Nachman was dazed and covered with a dusting of ceiling plaster. “Shit, Tony—it’s the Americans! They’ve invaded!”

  CHAPTER 23

  WHERE ARE THE goddamn keys?” Nachman said after he had removed the broomstick. Gloria had vanished with the first explosion.

  “There’s a drawer,” said Tony. “Look in there.”

  “I can’t see a damn thing.” The power was blown. Aircraft were roaring five feet overhead. Bombs going off right and left. “Fucking whore was probably in on the whole thing,” said Nachman. “Wait, this may be the ticket.”

  As soon as he unlocked the handcuffs, Tony curled into a fetal ball.

  “Get up, Tony. We’ve got to make a run for it. What’s your plan?”

  “My plan?”

  Another explosion rattled the room. “Yes, your plan! You’ve got a contingency plan, don’t you? The goddamn gringos are blowing the shit out of this country. Where are you supposed to be? Where’s your remote command headquarters? Who’s the contact with the civil defense squad?”

  “There is no plan,” Tony admitted.

  “No plan? Tony, you got the fucking United States knocking down your door, and there’s only one thing they want. You.”

  But Nachman’s words were drowned out by the screeching of jets overhead and the awesome sound of a 105-millimeter howitzer blowing holes in the planet.

  Tony started to put on his uniform. He was having a little trouble making his legs work.

  “Wait!” said Nachman. “You can’t wear that! Eve
ryone will know who you are. You need a disguise.”

  Just then Scar came into the room, pushing the longhaired American ahead of him. “He was trying to run off,” said Scar. “I thought maybe he knew something.”

  “No sabe nada! I’m a fuckin’ hippie, man!”

  “You’re an American,” said Nachman. “Your goddamn army is blowing the shit out of this country.”

  “Like, I’m highly aware of that, dude. I was just tryin’ to get the fuck out of Dodge.”

  “First, give the General your clothes.”

  The flash of a nearby explosion illuminated Tony in his red silk underwear.

  “Okay,” said the American reluctantly as he stripped off his Bermuda shorts, “but what am I gonna wear?”

  “Put on the General’s uniform.”

  “I don’t know, man. That could be unwise.”

  “I can’t find my ribbons,” said Tony.

  “We don’t have time for that,” said Nachman. “You got to get dressed and out of here—now!”

  The men rushed outside, cursing Dr. Demos, who had taken the Mercedes, along with a suitcase of cash that Tony kept in case of emergency. The only car left in the lot was a tiny white Hyundai covered with bumper stickers. Save the Whales. Visualize World Peace. Onward Through the Fog.

  “See if the keys are in your pocket,” said Nachman.

  Tony found the keys in the Bermuda shorts just as the American came racing out of the whorehouse, wearing Tony’s uniform. “Hey, don’t steal the car, dude!”

  “It’s not stealing,” said Tony. “It’s war.”

  “But it’s still my car!”

  “And it stinks,” said Nachman as he got into the driver’s seat, which was draped with a seat cover of wooden beads. “Tony, roll down the window.”

  “What about me, Chief?” asked Scar.

  “We’ll meet at La Playita,” said Nachman.

  “No, they’ll know about that,” said Tony. “Our friends will help us. Check with Señora Morales—she’ll know where we are.”

  Nachman spun the Hyundai onto the highway. “I should have guessed that they would wait for the full moon,” he said. The city was in a yellow twilight of fires and tracer bullets. The air churned with half-seen aircraft. Noise fell on them like an avalanche.

  “My God—look!” cried Nachman. All around them, paratroopers were landing and pulling in their billowing parachutes, and above them the sky was filled with thousands more. The undersides of the silken chutes glowed from the reflected explosions.

  Nachman swerved and jammed the car into reverse. “Tony, pull your hat down!” The paratroopers were close enough for Tony to see the camouflage on their faces. He crammed the Yankees hat down over his eyes.

  Nachman drove through the luminous night without his headlights. When they arrived on the airport highway leading out of town, they saw people scattering everywhere, racing for home or looking for cover. Nachman navigated through the disoriented mob. Cars passed indiscriminately on both sides of the highway. Tony had never seen such madness.

  “Look—they’re fighting back!” Tony cried excitedly. An antiaircraft battery fired into the sky from the barracks at Tinajitas, on a hilltop above the Río Curundú. “The men are still with me!”

  Nachman shook his head in soldierly admiration. Tracers flew out of the fort like a fireworks display.

  “Do you want to go up there and give the men some courage?” asked Nachman. “They need leadership.”

  “As an officer, I agree,” said Tony. “On the other hand, I am also the leader of the country. I think my first duty is to protect myself.”

  Above them, the immense black shadow of an aircraft Tony had never seen before suddenly darted into view and then roared low overhead like a passing Death Star. In its wake, the mountain flew into the air in a blinding red-orange flash. Everything was gone—like that! The armory ignited in a secondary explosion. The guts of his defense! Gone!

  “Jesus,” Tony muttered.

  Nachman drove quietly through the chaos.

  Ahead of them was a queer sight—the baseball stadium was filled with people in the stands and on the field. They were staring into the sky, watching the war. Whenever a new explosion shook the fundament, they cheered.

  “They think they’re at a rock concert,” said Nachman. “It’s crazy, completely fucking crazy.”

  “They’re cheering for the Americans,” Tony said glumly.

  “Maybe you better lie down in the backseat.”

  FATHER JORGE WAS awakened by what sounded like surf crashing against the walls of Our Lady of Fatima. He sat upright in a panic. A tidal wave? he wondered. But then he heard the sound of the helicopter hovering directly overhead. He threw open the window and looked outside. The backwash from the helicopter blades blew the curtains off his wall.

  It was midnight, and the rest of Chorrillo had never gone to bed. The apartments across the street were brightly lit. Father Jorge could see the silhouettes of his neighbors standing on their balconies. They were looking into the sky and waving and shouting, but their words were drowned out by the powerful mechanical drone. Then came an even louder sound, the accented voice of an American soldier broadcasting in Spanish from an immense amplifier on Ancón Hill. “Soldiers in the Comandancia! You must surrender! We have you surrounded.”

  There was no answer until the defiant sound of a machine gun erupted from the Comandancia. The helicopter abruptly swerved out of the line of fire. Instantly three aircraft converged on the Comandancia from different angles, firing rockets into the center of the structure. Father Jorge had never seen anything so sudden and frightening—and exciting. Then the lights of the city abruptly went out.

  Father Jorge groped in the dark for his clothes and sandals. By the time he was dressed he could see that dozens of refugees were already headed toward the parish, many of them carrying children. He rushed downstairs to let them in.

  Nuns entered the sanctuary in bathrobes and immediately set to work attending to shrieking babies. The orphans from the parish house wandered around in their pajamas, wearing dizzy expressions of amazement. When Father Jorge opened the patio door another river of people flowed inside.

  “Why are you coming here?” he asked.

  “The gringo soldiers told us to come,” a woman in a flowered housecoat said.

  Father Jorge muttered a quick prayer and then stumbled into the kitchen. Two harried nuns were making coffee and tamarind tea by candlelight. “Sisters, have we enough food for these people?” he asked.

  “We don’t even have enough water, Father,” one of them replied. “The utilities are dead. We have no milk for the children. And we were supposed to go to the market this morning, so the pantry is virtually empty.”

  An explosion rattled the walls and sent spices flying off the shelves. Father Jorge heard screaming coming from everywhere in the parish complex—from the orphanage, the dining room, the sanctuary, the basketball court, the home for the elderly—hundreds of voices from every room and corner. He pushed his way through the frantic hordes. All around, mothers were crying out, seeking their lost children. Elderly people vomited in panic. Fear was transforming itself into illness and passing through the crowd in a sudden contagion.

  “Father, come here!” a voice cried. “There are wounded people here!”

  The priest pressed his way toward the jammed patio between the orphanage and the sanctuary. Overhead the voice in the helicopter was again calling for surrender. Father Jorge could make out the shapes of hundreds—perhaps thousands—more people massed outside in the street, pushing to get in. The confusion was multiplied many times by the darkness. Near his left ear a match was struck. Terrified faces stared at him, looking for him to tell them what to do. At his feet there was the body of an old man whom Father Jorge knew as a beggar he often encountered outside the Economic Café. The front of his shirt was soaked in blood, which appeared black and full of bubbles.

  “The gringos have killed him,” someone
said.

  “But I’m not dead!” the beggar protested.

  “No, no, it was the Digbats who killed him,” another person said. “They’re in the streets, everywhere, firing into our apartments. It’s crazy! No one is safe out there.”

  “I’m not dead!”

  “Take him into the dining room,” Father Jorge said. “It will serve as our hospital.”

  He started to follow them, but he noticed a little girl with a red bow in her hair.

  “Renata, where’s your mother?” he asked. Even in the dimness he could see that she was pale and frightened. She looked at him but couldn’t respond. “Have you seen her?” he asked.

  She shook her head no.

  “Do you think she may be looking for you?”

  Renata burst into tears and clung to Father Jorge’s side.

  “Don’t worry, little one, I’ll find her for you,” he said.

  He knew it was wrong to leave the parish when so many depended on him, but he couldn’t do otherwise. He was drawn by a force he couldn’t resist and hesitated to name. The streets were filled with a strange yellow light. The sound of small arms and machine-gun fire erupted nearby. He heard glass breaking and footsteps skittering over the cobblestones. A huge flash suddenly turned the world into a yellow afternoon, and then it went dark again—even darker, it seemed. Father Jorge blindly pushed his way through the tide of refugees who were coming to the parish from all directions. Some of them looked at him as if he were mad. “They’re killing people, Father! Where are you going?” But he scarcely heard them. He ran through the shadows calling Gloria’s name.

  He could smell the fire in Mariners Street even before he saw it. There was a bright glow coming from one of the apartments. The fire had gotten onto the balcony and was creeping along the sagging timbers. For a moment, it seemed to rest there, faltering, but suddenly another flame appeared in the upper story of the apartment building next door. There was nothing to stop it now. Chorrillo was made of matchsticks. Glimmering cinders flew into the air—tiny emissaries of destruction.