Other Voices in the Zozobra Incident (A Reprint)

Last week, we learned a little more about the protagonist of THE ZOZOBRA INCIDENT, BJ Vinson, so I’d like to take the liberty of another re-post to take a deeper look into some of the other voices in the novel, starting with Hazel Harris, BJ’s office manager and surrogate mom.

                                                                                             

*****

At the time ZOZOBRA takes place, Hazel, a retired teacher and best friend of BJ’s deceased mother, is sixty-three-years-old. She stands 5’5” and weighs 150 pounds. She is plump, rather dowdy, gray-eyed, and considers it her responsibility to be a stand-in mom. Although he tweaks her nose now and then, BJ puts up with Hazel’s smothering because he is truly fond of her. Besides, she runs the office—and sometimes him—efficiently and makes sure the clients pay their bills… something BJ wouldn’t be nearly as proficient at doing. Plump, capable, and nosy, Hazel reminds him of that sassy maid of the same name in the comics and on TV who runs the fictional Baxter household. She doesn’t approve of his gay lifestyle but loves him like a son. We meet her throughout the series.

Delbert David Dahlman, known as Del to his friends and associates, is a slender, blue-(sapphire) eyed, blond with an athletic build (obtained in a gym). He stands 5’11” and weighs 160 pounds. Del possesses an eternally youthful appearance that seems to defy aging. A Chicago boy who attended the UNM Law School, he’s practiced mostly corporate and tax law in Albuquerque ever since 2001. He is an associate attorney with a large local firm named Stone, Hedges, Martinez, Levishon, etc.… or the Blahs, as BJ calls them. He is thirty-two-years old in 2006 when he comes to BJ and asks for help running down a blackmailer. He had met BJ in the line of duty, and when they were attracted to one another, they ended up living together in BJ’s home on Post Oak NE until BJ was seriously wounded in the right thigh by a bullet from an accused murder’s gun. During the long recovery, Del wasn’t able to handle the home nursing and allowed himself to be seduced by a handsome gigolo named Emilio Prada. The manner of the split-up makes it hard for him to come to BJ when he assumes Emilio is handing around some raw pictures. Nonetheless, he swallows his pride and asks BJ for help. Del also lives on throughout the series.

Emilio Prada is a twenties-something legal immigrant from Durango, Mexico. He is handsome in that way some Hispanic juveniles are prettier than their girlfriends, although “Milio” never grew out of it. Rather than work for a living, he uses his looks and slender, wiry build to make his money. He is amoral more than immoral. He sees nothing wrong with selling himself to men or women. In fact, he enjoys the seduction. When he meets Del Dahlman, he figures he’s found a goldmine… the answer to his dreams. Here is a handsome, successful man wealthy enough to take care of him for the rest of his life. Besides, the sex is good. But Milio likes to dominate his marks (and that’s what Del is) and oversteps the bounds of their relationship. When Del sends him packing, he takes some very graphic pictures of the two with him, the genesis of Del’s belief that Milio is behind the blackmailing.

But things are not as simple as they seem.

*****

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New Posts published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.

Another Look at The Zozobra Incident

Screwed up again, folks. Set it for PM, not AM, sorry.

This past Friday (August 29), the Burning of Zozobra described in my novel, The Zozobra Incident, took place in Fort Marcy Park in Santa Fe. This year, the puppet was larger, bare-chested, and went to his doom on the Friday before the opening of The Santa Fe Fiesta rather than the traditional Thursday night conflagration. The authorities used drones to overfly the park and take a count of the crowd. They came up with a record figure of 40,412. And that didn’t include some 2,000 police and other law jurisdictions. We’ve had a pretty good monsoon season, so the monster burned and fireworks lit up the sky without too much worry about resulting wildfires.

Martin Brown Publishers have been promoting the book on Facebook recently, and that plus this year’s burning made me take another look at the novel.

The following is the beginning of Chapter 2. BJ, our intrepid investigator, decides to look for Emilio Prada, the male escort believed to be attempting to blackmail Del Dahlman, at the place Del first met the gay gigolo.

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     A little after ten that night, I squeezed my anonymous white 2003 Chevy Impala between two extended-cab pickups in the overflow parking lot across the street from the C&W Palace. The C&W on East Central Avenue was Albuquerque’s biggest country and western boot-shuffling joint. This was where Del originally met Emilio, so it was a good place to start after a database search failed to turn up current information on him. That was no surprise; the kid probably lived around town with friends and johns.

      I pushed through the heavy door and ran into a wall of cigarette smoke, deafening music, and shrill conversation that turned the interior of the nightclub into a health nut’s worst nightmare. Bluegrass doesn’t go down well with many opera fans, and I was no exception. My parents, both of whom had been teachers, had exposed me to plenty of Offenbach, Mozart, and Verdi, and it took. The Tales of Hoffman and The Magic Flute and La Bohéme had preserved my sanity during the long convalescence after the shooting. A country-western band was a world away from those old masters—maybe even a galaxy or two.

     My snakeskin cowboy boots and white Stetson were sufficiently western to allow me to skip the mother-of-pearl studded shirt and the tight denim pants. It was a matter of comfort, not snobbery. Cowpoke duds, especially trousers, were too restrictive for my taste.

     After buying a vodka-rocks at the long bar, I circled the massive barn-like joint, stopping occasionally to talk to acquaintances. The C&W was a hetero place, but there was enough eye contact to spice up the evening, even though I had no intention of making a connection. One slender, athletic guy twirling a pretty coed around the dance floor caught my attention. I invested a few minutes in watching him as I tried to figure out where I’d seen him before. Eventually, I gave up and resumed prowling. After an hour of jostling by clumsy drunks and out-of-control dancers, I was ready to call it a night when—bingo. There he was.

     Emilio Prada wasn’t making much of an effort to hide. He looked like a million dollars dancing with a well-stuffed woman who could have been his mother. That roomy bosom was probably where he intended to rest his head for the night. I thought of Emilio as a kid but knew from his APD jacket he was twenty-two. He’d come up legally from Durango, Mexico and had a record for petty stuff, nothing that would get him deported. He didn’t seem to be married, and it apparently didn’t matter to him which way he swung, just so long as the swing was profitable. I guess that earned him a “bi” rating.

     The handsome shit was dressed all in black, including a ten-gallon hat shoved rakishly back to expose dark, unruly curls. A scarlet hatband, a red belt, and a bit of crimson on his alligator boots added the only traces of color to his outfit. On him, it was dynamite. He danced easily, confidently; the same way he’d behaved while he was living in Del’s room in my house. If Emilio harbored doubts about anything, it wasn’t apparent. He counted on charming his way out of any trouble hovering over the horizon.

     When the number ended, he gave his partner a hug and a peck on her plump cheek before leading her away through the crowd. I scrambled straight across the dance floor as a twang of guitars and a bang of drums announced the next song. Trying to elude the grasp of cowgirls bent on dancing—or more likely desperate for a companion for the night—I lost the odd-looking pair for a moment before spotting Emilio holding out a chair for mamacita, like the gentleman he was not. Then he took one of two vacant chairs across from her at a long table filled with Hispanics.

     Now, I’ve got bushels of Latino friends and don’t admit to a prejudiced bone in my body, but just as there are whites and then there are whites, there are Hispanics and then there are Hispanics. These guys were the latter. Nonetheless, I took a deep breath and slipped into the vacant chair beside Emilio.

#####

We’ll leave BJ walking into a dangerous situation. Hope he comes out of it okay.

Thanks for reading, and let me hear from you.

Don

New posts are published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.