“See anything?” Dr. Hicks asked.
“They all look the same,” said the colonel. “No… wait. There. That one there.”
On the screen was a photograph of a lizard whose shape resembled the one that had been haunting the colonel’s hotel room.
“Norops bicarum.” Dr. Hicks punched the keys and the photo vanished, then reappeared magnified several times over. “One of the anoles.”
Reading the information printed beneath the photo, the colonel was disappointed to learn that norops bicarum grew to lengths of only five inches.
“The one I saw was considerably larger,” he said. “Eight or nine inches long. And it was indigo in color.”
“Solid indigo?”
“Yes… except for some black markings around the face.”
Dr. Hicks tapped the side of his keyboard. “Well, I’m stumped. If you can catch it, I’d love to have a look at it. There are thirty-six known varieties of anole in this part of Central America. Who knows? Maybe you’ve found number thirty-seven.”
He gestured toward a chair on the other side of the desk, and the colonel took a seat.
“What do lizards see?” the colonel asked.
“They have excellent vision. They see colors… it’s very much like human vision. This fellow here is monoscopic. His eyes are set so that he sees in different directions. Two distinct visual fields. Some chameleons are able to see both ahead of them and behind them at the same time. But some types of anole have stereoscopic vision. They see a single image.”
Disappointed that he had not resolved the mystery, the colonel thanked Dr. Hicks, promising to bring the lizard to him if he could catch it, and returned to his hotel. He plumped up his pillows and lay on the bed, opened the book he had been reading, but his mind would not fit onto the page, and after a few minutes he set the book down. Loneliness at that moment struck him as less a passing condition than as an environment in which he was trapped. The sounds of life from without—traffic, the cries of vendors—seemed to arise from a great distance, and he had the thought that if he were to shout, no one would hear him. For an antidote, he picked up his cell phone, a recent acquisition that he rarely used, and called his father’s house in San Pedro Sula.
His sister answered in a strained voice. “Dígame!”
“Hola, Teresa!”
“Oh… Mauricio.”
“How are things?”
“Fine,” she said.
In the background he heard a commotion.
“It sounds as if you’ve got company.”
“Is that how it sounds? Like I’m entertaining?” Teresa scoffed at the notion. “That’s right. I’m always entertaining. Fabulous guests. Champagne brunches. You don’t know what you’re missing.”
“Is there something wrong?”
A brief silence. “How can you ask that question? Oh, I forgot. You’re never here. You don’t know the unending joy of our life.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“Where shall I start? Your father. Do you know he’s running around with a twenty-two-year-old woman? Una puta sucia! He brings her here. To our mother’s house. He carries on in front of your nephews. And your nephews…” She moved the receiver away from her mouth and shouted at someone to be quiet. “Your nephews. They’re doing wonderfully. Here. I’ll let them tell you themselves.”
A second later, a sullen boyish voice said, “What do you want?”
“Emilio?”
Silence.
“Are you being difficult with your mother?”
“Fuck yourself,” Emilio said.
Immediately thereafter, Teresa said, “Do you see how well he’s doing? He’s a drug addict, Mauricio! He’s like you. He’s hardly ever here. And when he does come home, it’s only to steal money for his cocaine! And your other nephew… your precious Pepe! He told me the other day that it is his ambition to become a homosexual. His ambition! God knows, I do not judge those people, but I don’t believe that homosexuality should be an ambition!” A pause during which he heard her breathing hard; then, her voice sugary, she asked, “So how are you? Where are you?”
“Puerto Morada,” he said. “Listen, Teresa. I’m sorry things aren’t going well. I’ll try to get back home soon.”
“No, please! Not on our account. It would be criminal to interrupt your world tour.”
“You know I’m not doing this by choice.”
“You’ve been away twenty years, and you say it’s not by choice? That’s a lifetime, Mauricio. Twenty years. I married, had children. My husband died. Mother died, and our father grew old. You don’t know any of it. Just the dates. The birthdays, the funerals. Now and then you get lonely and you’ll call or drop in for a visit and pretend you’re part of our family. But you’re not… you’re a stranger. A ghost who haunts us at Christmas and Easter.”
“You know why I’m…” he began.
“Don’t tell me it’s the business! It can’t be just the business that’s kept you away so long.”
Resentful, yet at the same time knowing there was some truth to Teresa’s words, that his own indulgent nature had been in play, the colonel said nothing.
“I have to go. I have things…” Teresa broke off; then she said, “I love you, Mauricio. But I hardly know you. I… I’m sorry.”
After hanging up, the colonel sat on the edge of his bed, unable to clear his sister’s words from mind. A ghost. It was an apt image. While struggling with this new conception of his relationship with his family, he noticed the indigo lizard on the wall above the bathroom door; he was so depressed, he could not rouse himself to attempt its capture. The light dimmed; scattered raindrops began to fall. He lay down and let the seething of the rain on the palmetto fronds lull him to sleep. Shortly before three o’clock that afternoon he was wakened by a pounding on his door. “Who is it?” he called.
“Maury! Let me in!”
When he opened the door, Jerry Gammage piled into the room, followed by Margery Emmons. They both began talking at once.
“Man, I need your help…”
“I’m sorry to intrude…”
Margery succeeded in outvoicing Gammage. “Jerry’s in some trouble.”
“I think they mighta spotted me on the beach,” Gammage said.
“Who spotted you?” asked the colonel.
“Carbonell’s men. They’re trying to kill me.”
“What possible reason…”
“I’ll explain everything, I promise,” Margery said. “Will you let us stay here for a while?”
“I know I got no papers on you, Maury,” Gammage said. “But I’m in the shit.”
The colonel closed the door and indicated that they should sit; they perched side-by-side on the foot of the bed, gazing at him like anxious children.
“Why does Carbonell want to kill you?” he asked.
“Battalion Three-Sixteen.” Gammage twisted his mouth into a gloomy shape. “I got tape, pictures… everything.”
Margery shot the colonel a guilty look, but did not speak.
“Somehow they got wind of it,” Gammage went on. “They been beating the bushes for me since yesterday afternoon. I can’t risk the airport. I’d never get past the checkpoints on the highway. Basically, I’m fucked.”
“You have this material with you?” asked the colonel.
Gammage nodded.
“Perhaps if you surrendered it…”
“I got pictures of Carbonell doing horror movie shit with men, women, little kids. He’s twenty years younger, but you can tell it’s him. He posed for the shots. The guy’s fucking Dracula. He’s not gonna let me bounce.”