Aug 7, 5 PM, Quarry Heights Officers Club,
Southern Command Headquarters
For some reason, Mercedes has decided
to drive me to the Officer's Club. The food is good,
you will like it, she says, as she swings the huge, '68 silver Electra
past the startled sentries. The club is dark, cluttered with tables.
It is just after the invasion. There are Airborne all around us.
She says to me, Here, have some more frankfurters,
they are good, no? And then she suddenly darkens,
My brothers attacked me last week, in a letter,
in La Prensa, they say I've disgraced
the name of our family, that Fabricana and I
are like merchants, that we buy and sell like Jews.
There are knives and razors everywhere.
I ask her what she will do. Nothing, she says,
I answered them yesterday, in La Prensa,
but I did not crawl in the gutter
as they did. I answered them nobly,
in the name of my father.
They no longer exist.