Free Orientation by Daniel Orozco

Republic.” Sullies! That’s what the papers have said! And Stroessner is no fan, either; otherwise he wouldn’t let them write that shit. But Stroessner has extended his protection. And Stroessner has been well paid. But they do hate him here.
    Well, fuck them. He hates them, too.
    He works on his grapefruit, browses the paper. There is a full-page ad with the banner headline DO YOU RECOGNIZE THIS MAN? It offers a reward for information on the whereabouts of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele. The Presidente-in-Exile snorts, flips the page. Sully my balls! Dignity of the Republic, my ass! Hideout for Nazis, haven for cocaine kings. There is an opinion piece by an undersecretary of the Ministry of the Interior railing against the feral dog population and concluding with an appreciation of the dictator Francia, who in 1840 ordered every dog in Paraguay killed. And there is an item buried in Business Briefs, a report on unanticipated delays with a hydroelectric project down on the Argentine border, involving work stoppages and a cement embargo. Bettinger’s little venture—some kind of deal with the unions that will work to his financial advantage. Leave it to Bettinger: The bitch is prone. The Presidente-in-Exile lets El Diario ’s pages spill to the ground. He looks at his watch. He spoons the guts of his egg onto the cottage cheese, picks up the Ry-Krisp, and pushes it all into his mouth. He licks his fingers and wipes them with the napkin. He tosses back the orange juice and smacks his lips. “Ahhh!” He stands up, tucks the Times under his arm; it is air-expressed from São Paolo every morning and delivered to the villa from the airport by taxicab.
    He strolls across the patio, then stops short. Something flits into the edge of his vision, and he turns. He spots it, hovering, then alighting upon the ground. He approaches. It is some kind of insect, a big one. Thin, translucent wings spanning half a foot shimmer and iridesce in morning light. Perpendicular to these, a thorax over seven inches long inscribes in the air a slender and delicate arc of the deepest red—the red of arterial blood, of crème de cassis and rubies and the juice of roasted meat. It is a helicopter damselfly, the rarest of the order Odonata in all the world, and far from its range in southwest Brazil. The Presidente-in-Exile would not know this. He bends down, eyes narrowed. “What the fuck,” he mutters, for he has never in his life seen anything like it. He peers intently, seemingly making a study of this rare and exquisite creature—a trembling scarlet wound against the gray slate tiles. He pivots his left foot and moves the thin leather sole of his bespoke shoe centimeters above it. He taps. There is a sound like a burst of static, and the insect is squashed like a bug. The Presidente-in-Exile proceeds across the patio, dragging his foot once to scrape off the gore. He cuts through the west garden, along a flagstone pathway that circles toward the front of the villa. Behind him, the discarded pages of his newspaper trip and tumble across the grounds in a zephyr that has come from nowhere on this still and windless day.
    In the courtyard, Gallardo has moved the Mercedes out from under the tree. The Mercedes is an armored vehicle custom-equipped with hardened steel body panels, 1.5-inch-thick windows of polycarbonate ballistic glass, and Kevlar-lined gas tanks. Gallardo has just finished the washing, and the car glistens all dewy in the light. He is struggling with the water hose, trying to coil it without getting his dress shirt dirty. Ten yards away, outside the gate, on Avenida España, a red Datsun blocks the driveway to the villa. Three men loll on the car, smoking cigarettes. They call to Gallardo: “Maricón, chuparosa, marica chingada.” They blow him kisses. They tell him they have hoses for him to handle, if he wishes. These men are the Paraguayan bodyguards assigned by Stroessner to protect the Nation’s Esteemed Guest. Gallardo