Alvarez Book Page
The Long Vietnam of My Soul, Part 4
Writer Rafael Alvarez's serialized fiction continues today.
"Does the world really need another Spanish painter?" — Gerda Taro Late May, 1989. Harbinger or just another shimmering square on the calendar? Basilio never figured it out but it sure seemed galactically ordained when Nieves landed on Macon Street the afternoon of his 30th birthday. He and Grandpop had waited by the rotary phone on the kitchen wall all day, waiting for her to call from the airport. Instead, she left a happy cabbie at the curb outside the house, a fat tip exchanged for info on the closest corner where a stranger could buy dope, the number of his pager scrawled across her left palm. Had she asked him the same question, Basilio would have said, “Throw a rock …” Before summer turned to fall, he’d be screaming in her face: “…
