Read The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos for Free Online Page B

mouth with their tongues, she felt her body respond ardently, with a quickening of breath, an
     acceleration of the heartbeat, a fluttering in the lowest recesses of the belly. But when she examined her heart, she found
     it floating, a seagull on perfectly still waters. And so, on moonlit nights, when her enamorados pressed themselves hard and
     feverishly against her and moved their hands to her breasts, she reached and covered them with hers, entwined her fingers
     in theirs, and pulled them gently away. So tender and apologetic was the resolve with which she repelled their advances that
     never once was the sobriquet
tease
applied in her regard. Which drove her girlfriends crazy.
    “How do you get away with it?” they asked, eyes large with admiration and envy. Lily did not think of herself as “getting
     away” with anything. And although she did not reflect on it at the time, she now supposes there must have been a number of
     boys taking a lot of cold showers.
    In any event, it went on like that until her senior year in college. And then, one dazzlingly bright and crisp spring day,
     at a street café in the sleepy mountain village of Colonia Tovar, a beautiful stranger sat awkwardly across a table from her.
     He leaned in, elbows bent, his hands folded on the red-checkered tablecloth with the diamond-shaped mustard stain. And, as
     Lily observed him staring morosely into his coffee cup, a lock of tousled dark hair hanging beguilingly across one eye, the
     seagull took flight.

    Everyone except Luz agrees that the baby is lucky to have such a poetic storyteller for a mother.
    “You are most definitely your father’s daughter,” says Consuelo.
    “Hah. There is no meat to that story, only bones,” says Luz, taking a long drag off a cigarette.
    “Ay, Luz,” says Marta, “why do you always have to criticize?”
    Luz shrugs her shoulders, ignores both her mother and the ashtray Marta has placed beside her, stands and flicks her ash out
     the window. At which point Dr. Ricardo Uzoátegui, who had examined Lily at the hospital, arrives, examines her again, and
     pronounces her better, but advises continued bed rest.
    After dinner, Carlos Alberto takes up position at Lily’s bedside, stroking her forehead until she dozes off. While she sleeps,
     a young mestizo boy with blindfolded eyes, and a smoldering fat cigar in his left hand appears to her in a dream.
    “Have you seen my mother?” he asks.
    He moves closer, until he is standing only a foot away. He holds the cigar to his mouth, inhales deeply, and blows out an
     enormous cloud of smoke into her face. He vanishes in the smoke cloud, which swirls, condenses, solidifies, and takes the
     form of her childhood friend, Irene. She is wearing the red shoes.
    We had fun, didn’t we, Lily? Gozamos una bola.
    We did, whispers Lily.
    We were fresh and fearless.
    We were.
    What happened?
    I don’t know.
    Lily begins to cry. She cries silently and continuously, with her eyes squeezed shut, a steady stream of saltwater running
     down the sides of her face and dampening the pillow. Stricken, Carlos Alberto asks, “Where does it hurt?” But Lily cannot
     pinpoint the precise location of the wound, which is not so much a wound as a hole through which the remembered enchantment
     of her childhood slowly seeps. Right now, Lily misses Irene more than anybody in the world.
    She can hear Carlos Alberto telling her mother that they should have stayed at the hospital. She can hear him slapping his
     hand against his head, as though her tears are somehow his fault and the fault of everyone on the planet. When Carlos Alberto
     has finally gone, cursing, from the room, and her mother after him, her father brings in some juice and spoons it into her
     mouth.
    After a few sips, Lily finally speaks. “Papi,” she says, “I have a wish.”
    “And what is your wish, my darling?” says Ismael.
    “I wish to find out what happened to Irene. Will you help me?”
    Before her father