Dead of Night

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Solaris thought of her as “Snake Woman” because the first time she asked to see him, he thought she’d pointed at a crate just arrived from South Africa that contained leathery eggs and baby snakes.

He’d said, “Of course. You are the buyer, I am the seller. It is your right.”

He wasn’t the seller. Solaris was nineteen years old, lived with his family in Vinales, west of Cuba, eight people crowded into a shack near the village baseball diamond and communal fields where he’d plowed behind oxen until the Chinaman hired him as labor for his smuggling operation.

The Russian, whose name was Dasha, was blond, tall. Good teeth and skinny hips like women he’d seen in American magazines. Still aiming her finger at him, she’d smiled. “No. It’s you I want to see. We’re alone, aren’t we?”

She’d come into the barn where the Chinaman had organized the unloading of seventeen crates of African reptiles, parasites, spiders, and South American fish recently delivered in an old Soviet freight helicopter, a Kamov. It was a barn for drying tobacco. It smelled peppery and sour. Good, like the inside of a whiskey keg. Dusty light leaked through the wooden siding and roofing shingles. The interior seemed brighter when she pulled the door closed and slid the wooden bolt.

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