The Origin of Species by Nino Ricci Read Free Book Online Page A

Miguel’s own sister, María. Alex had picked her out at once: she was almost a caricature of voluptuousness, dark-skinned, full-lipped, long-haired, with just a slight excess of flesh, which she did not bother to rein in, that made it seem obscene merely to look at her, so much did his thoughts turn at once to the carnal. It had been a struggle getting through classes with her there, so nonchalant, so seemingly oblivious to her effect on him, though hardly ten seconds went by without his eye going to her. For her sake, Alex had incautiously welcomed Miguel’s advances to him, though he was clearly someone looking for a main chance and even the other Salvadorans seemed to steer clear of him. But he was María’s brother, and from what Alex knew of Latin culture he figured it would be suicide to try to do an end run around him. Not, of course, that he had a chance in hell with someone who could make his knees melt at twenty paces.
    Normally, Alex’s taste ran decidedly to the blond-haired and the blue-eyed. Liz, Russian Mennonite on her mother’s side and Danzig German on her father’s, had fit that description, as had Ingrid. Alex’s childhood, when he’d been surrounded at every party and social event by mustache-lipped Italian girls, had apparently been enough to put him off the Latin type. But with María he seemed to have reverted: it was as if there had been some gene inside him just waiting to be clicked on at the sight of a María, and now every hormone and sexual instinct in him was directed toward his possession of her. This might not have been a problem if he hadn’t actually liked her, but the fact was that she was as unaffected and no-nonsense as her brother was untrustworthy and slick, making up for Miguel’s eagerness to get in with the teacher by making a point, it seemed to Alex, of giving him no special regard and indeed of virtually ignoring him. Unlike her brother she was friendly with the other Salvadorans, particularly the women, for whom she’d become a sort of spokesperson against the Iranians, getting off good ones that had thewomen laughing behind their hands and the men slapping their knees and that left the Iranians grim-faced with defeat. And unlike her brother she had an impeccable fashion sense: next to his Latin dancer’s white shirts and black pants she wore faded jeans and loose-fitting blouses and flouncy sweaters, so that on the street it would have been hard to tell her from a native.
    When Alex came into class today he found Miguel slouched in his usual place at one of the flimsy tables that served as desks. María’s place, however, was decidedly empty, and María did not come hurrying in from the washroom or some appointment to fill it as the class got underway. Alex couldn’t believe the sense of desolation he felt at her absence when he had barely exchanged half a dozen words with her and knew almost nothing about her except what he’d gleaned in class through the scrim of a foreign language.
    He’d been planning to wing some conversation practice by starting up a discussion on Chernobyl, but right from his garbled introduction he saw the thing was going to be a disaster.
    “Is very bad,” one of the Iranians said. “Is close to Iran.”
    He saw a smirk appear on the faces of a couple of the Salvadorans.
    “Gorbachev, is bad,” the Iranian said. He was looking right at the Salvadorans now. “The Communists, always liars.”
    Alex didn’t know where he’d imagined this could lead. Nowhere good, it seemed.
    “What about nuclear power?” he said, foolishly carrying the thing on just beyond the point where he might have passed it off as casual conversation rather than an actual lesson plan. By then people were staring at him with squint-eyed, baffled looks, their notebooks spread expectantly. Alex was terrified at the chunk of unstructured class time still stretching before him. In a panic he resorted to a paired conversation exercise he used at Berlitz, but he