Clouds and Paraguay

The clouds floating above Paraguay are beautiful. Juan loves Emily.

Clouds whisper this in her left ear.

What? Emily loves Juan say the clouds, says Juan in her right ear. The clouds break apart like wet bread and join two adjacent clouds, coupling, parting, strangers, identical, converging, moving on.

The sky is so very blue, says Juan.

I’m pregnant, says Emily.

It makes me want to dance, this sky, like one of Laremo’s victorious fighting cocks!

Juan dances.

Emily tells Juan to stop dancing.

Juan’s smile spreads across his face like the mismanaged web of an opium spider.

Emily gets out the cheeseburgers and they begin eating. They are hungry.

Juan likes ‘cheeseburger americanos,’ warm meat with cold fixings.

Look, says Emily, those two clouds over there, they remind me of when you fucked my sister, and over there, that one looks like a proud moustache resting beneath a sombrero on fire; yes, she continues, those remind me of when I fucked your brother.

Agosto?!?!

No—Laremo; Agosto couldn’t produce a moustache if placed under the prolonged auspices of two Nordic puberties.

Laremo!?!?

I was impregnated by the moustache as it meandered the dusk; I am to grow a man.

You are a veal, wobbly, purblind; the ammonia of your ineptitude makes me squint as if I were staring at the sunny side of a map to some strange land, someplace that isn’t Paraguay.

Laremo!

Laremo, says Emily, to float out my days, refracting sunsets and crimson, the crimson of his mouth...

Juan stops dancing. Across the street is a cat fucking a dog.

That is one-upmanship for you, thinks Juan.

There is a line of men holding their dogs, handing money to a man in a white suit, linen; that is the man who owns that proud cat, thinks Juan.

If you want, Juanito, I’ll loan you 400 centavos if you would like to go stand in line.

Juan balls up his fists and makes cloud noises, hoping for Paraguay to disappear beneath him.

But I haven’t a dog, says Juan.

Emily is rubbing her belly and dancing, twirling, laughing at Juan who thinks he needs a dog to be fucked by an alley cat.

Stop making cloud noises, Juan. It won’t make me stay and love you in here in chapped Paraguay, with the scent of cheeseburgers and dogs and clouds all about us.