The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

can see that La Inca’s doubts were not entirely wasted: wanted to know when he was going to bring her to his house. Hija de la gran puta, would you stop jodiéndome! We’re in the middle of a war here! He stood over her in his wifebeater, waving a pistol. Don’t you know what the Communists do to girls like you? They’ll hang you up by your beautiful tits. And then they’ll cut them off, just like they did to the whores in Cuba!
    During one of the Gangster’s longer absences, Beli, bored and desperate to escape the schadenfreude in her neighbors’ eyes, took it upon herself to ride the Blue Ball Express one last time—in other words, she checked in on her old flames. Ostensibly she wanted to end things in a formal way, but I think she was just feeling down and wanted male attention. Which is fine. But then she made the classic mistake of telling these Dominican hombres about the new love of her life, how happy she was. Sisters: don’t ever ever do this. It’s about as smart as telling the judge who’s about to sentence you that back in the day you finger-fucked his mother. The car dealer, always so gentle, so decorous, threw a whiskey bottle at her, screaming, Why should I be happy for a stupid stinking mona! They were in his apartment on the Malecón—at least he showed you his house, Constantina would later crack—and if he had been a better righty she would have ended up brained, perhaps raped and killed, but his fastball only grazed her and then it was her turn on the mound. She put him away with four sinkers to the head, using the same whiskey bottle he’d thrown at her. Five minutes later, panting and barefoot in a cab, she was pulled over by the Secret Police, tipped off because they’d seen her running and it was only when they questioned her that she realized that she was still holding the bottle and it had bloody hair on one of its edges, the car dealer’s straight blond hair.
    ( Once they heard what happened they let me go .)
    To his credit, Arquimedes acquitted himself in a more mature fashion. (Maybe because she told him first and had not yet grown flip.) After her confession she heard a “little noise” from the closet where he was hiding and nothing else. Five minutes of silence and then she whispered, I’d better go. (She never saw him again in person, only on the TV, giving speeches, and in later years would wonder if he still thought of her, as she sometimes did of him.)
    What have you been up to? the Gangster asked the next time he appeared.

    Nothing, she said, throwing her arms around his neck, absolutely nothing.
    A month before it all blew up, the Gangster took Beli on a vacation to his old haunts in Samaná. Their first real trip together, a peace offering prompted by a particularly long absence, a promissory note for future trips abroad. For those capitaleños who never leave the 27 de Febrero or who think Güaley is the Center of the Universe: Samaná es una chulería. One of the authors of the King James Bible traveled the Caribbean, and I often think that it was a place like Samaná that was on his mind when he sat down to pen the Eden chapters. For Eden it was, a blessed meridian where mar and sol and green have forged their union and produced a stubborn people that no amount of highfalutin prose can generalize. 17 The Gangster was in high spirits, the war against the subversives was going swell, it seemed. (We got ’em on the run, he gloated. Very soon all will be well.)
    As for Beli, she remembered that trip as the nicest time she’d ever had in the DR. She would never again hear the name Samaná without recalling that final primavera of her youth, the primavera of her perfection, when she was still young and beautiful. Samaná would forever evoke memories of their lovemaking, of the Gangster’s rough chin scraping her neck, of the sound of the Mar Caribe romancing those flawless resortless beaches, of the safety she experienced, and the promise.

    Three photos from that trip, and in every one she’s smiling.
    They did all the stuff we Dominicans love to do on our vacations. They ate pescado frito and waded in the río. They walked along the beach and drank rum until the meat behind their eyes throbbed. It was the first time ever that Beli had her own space totally under her control, so while the Gangster dozed restfully in his hamaca she busied herself with playing wife, with creating a preliminary draft of the household they would soon inhabit. Mornings she