On the other hand, inside the hotel, one coyote leaps at the throat of the eminent Antillean critic Emilio Domínguez del Tamal at the exact moment he is finishing his habitual lecture with the words The peoples of our nations demand this revolutionary commitment from the writer and is awaiting the usual counter-statement from the no less celebrated South American critic Egberto Jiménez-Chicharra with questions such as what about preterition? And diachrony? And epanidiplosis? But this time the words of the Literary Sergeant are mortally tasted by the coyote’s saw-like canines, since Chicharra decides to express his scorn for del Tamal by skipping his lecture and sinking instead into his bath, which is bubbling with wonderful lemon-colored Badedás bath salts. He leaves his book of structuralist criticism on a book stand next to the tub and leaves the door to his suite open as well, open to chance, danger, and sin, said the eminent critic to himself, even though he was frankly annoyed that homosexuality was no longer a sin for anyone and merely one more practice among so many others, tolerated by all, denounced by none. He wanted homosexuality to be a sin again, that it be the vice that dares not speak its name, not an activity as neutral as brushing one’s teeth. Why did the idea of sodomy as a sin excite him so much and leave the young men cold? he wondered, when through his bathroom door, like a miraculous dream, came, fleetingly and busily, a naked young man, covered in gold dust, his whisk-broom hair covered by a horrid rimless borsalino decorated with bottle caps but oooooh what a penis and what a hard little ass … The Orphan Huerta said not a word; at the same time, he dropped a hair dryer, an FM radio, and an electric mixer (all three plugged into a transformer) right into Chicharra’s bath; he died fried without responding to del Tamaclass="underline" a silent critic, a thankful Angel would sigh, but the same was not to be said for Matamoros Moreno, who violently strode toward the congress, followed by his daughter Colasa, in hopes that he would have his works published by one of the participants, perhaps with a prologue by Sergeant del Tamal and perhaps with an epilogue by Jiménez-Chicharra: father and daughter hear the repeated sound of the song “Flying Down to Vigo” played on a broken phonograph, but it does not rain cotton flakes, here what is coming down is darkness, their blood freezes, and Matamoros says to Colasa:
“If I find out that this opportunity was also stolen from me by that punk Palomar, I swear, Colasa, I swear to you I’ll…”
He had no time to finish; outside, the phalanx of coyotes once again advanced toward the sea, pushing the phalanx of Vogue models toward the water’s edge; the coyotes howled and the models shrieked, and there were no more photographers to be seen.
The symptoms of arsenic poisoning are convulsions and leg cramps, vomiting and diarrhea; the throat dry and closed; unbearable headache; precipitous fall in pulse rate, cessation of breathing, finally collapse of the frozen bodies (snow in Managua, ice in Macondo, refrigerators in Ciudad Bolívar, Flying Down to Vigogogo! Forever/ Forever!), and those on the Fun & Sun Toltec Tour exhibited quite a few of those symptoms. They lay there over the counters, on their backs on the tile floors, clutching a handful of straws in the Coastline Burger Boy; Professor Gingerich, overly absorbed in his theory of frontiers, had eaten nothing and walked out onto the avenue trembling with fear, abandoning the death that had been injected into plastic bottles of Log Cabin syrup: he looks at the desolation around the Tastee-Freez, the Kentucky Fried Chicken, the Denny’s, the VIPS, the Sanborn’s, the Pizza Huts, all overwhelmingly silent while their neon signs finally fall dark and the howls of the coyotes are followed by their almost human laughter, a cross between the laugh of a hyena and an old man, the laughter of clowns and witches.
The coyote’s laugh, if you’ve never heard it, sends real chills down your spine: Gingerich sees groups of the beasts on the hilltops, gathered in circles, as if they are holding a meeting before attacking the lost, helpless gringo tourists in their pink jeeps. The coyotes pour down crags and hillsides; no one on the coast road can move now, the animals are much faster than any old taxi or new Mustang: a knot of silence, no one dares to blow his horn out of fear of attracting their attention, so the traffic jam stretches from the new hotel Señorita Mariposa on the site of the old Navy base of Icacos to Elephant Stone Point on the Caleta peninsula, and at the amusement park the noise of the squirting fountains and hoses and the artificial waves isolate the happy families from the horror around them. Don’t tell me that all this isn’t cuter than the beach, more comfortable and modern, says Reynaldo, who imagines himself in the Cathedral of Amusement for Suburban Man, Eden Regained! Matilde, who is very Catholic, follows him intuitively because in nature it’s just like that, well, you know, that’s where Adam and Eve sinned, right? Our First Parents were chased out of there by angels snapping towels, just like Pepito snapping his towel at the parrot, who now reappears as a bird of ill omen, screaming on top of the slide: Bastards, It’s All Over, All Over, Bastards, which Pepito had taught his little parrot at night under the covers. Soak Your Ass for the Last Time, You’ll Be Drinking Through Your Ass Soon, My God, make him shut up, Rey, what will people say, at least no one knows it’s our son or our parrot either, said Matilde who prefers to look toward the pool, where the waves were beginning to stir again and her Reynaldo, what? Because the parrot from his forest perch is screeching Matilde Rebollo is a Whore and Reynaldo Rebollo is a Faggot, ay ay ay, Matilde starts to faint now for sure, everyone would find out, her husband stopped her, the fat matron gets away from him, falls into the pool, and there she becomes entangled with the insecure bodies of those of her class enjoying their tropical vacation, amusement paid for out of savings, mindful of advertisements, and the considerations of prestige: both of them, Reynaldo and Matilde Rebollo, hugging in the pool, amid one hundred and thirty-two other bodies defined by centuries of monastic pallor or canefield ringworm, and our Pepito, where, for God’s sake, is he? why don’t we see him? why can’t we get out of here? How slippery this is getting, Rey, the waves are getting higher, isn’t it too much now? Why don’t they stop it? Answer me, Rey, but Reynaldo was dragged to the eye of the cyclone along with the other one hundred and thirty bodies submerged by the artificial waves that kept them from moving freely, tossed like corks, less than corks! The pounding of water on their heads, once, again, again, and again and again, the machines manipulated by the Orphan Huerta down in the underground control room, the cascades of broken glass hidden in the slide water, the screams, the astonishment, and once again the silence.
The cockroaches checked out of the hotels of Acapulco that morning, the coyotes moved in to devour the asphyxiated bodies, the bodies with dilated pupils, clenched teeth, foam-covered mouths, and that smell like almonds; and the cadavers with acid guts, burning tripes, metallic tongues, and blue vomit. Behind the pack, the dispossessed from the hillsides reunited by the Four Fuckups along with Angel and Angeles, who told the homeless: Do unto them what they did unto you: Acapulco belongs to two nations, tourism below and squatters above, okay, now come down, and this young fellow here, Hipi Toltec, has been training the same coyotes they used against you.