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The Big Stupid Review

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01-07-2010
Injustice for All by D. E. Fredd
The Polysyllogistic Curse by Gary J. Shipley
How It's Done by Anjoli Roy
Ghost Dance by Connor Caddigan
Two in a Van by Pavlo Kravchenko
01-04-2010
Uncreated Creatures by Connor Caddigan
Invisible by Anjoli Roy
One of Us by Sonia Ramos Rossi
Storyteller by Alan McCormick
01-01-2010
Idolatry by Robert Smith
P H I L E M A T O P H I L I A by Traci Chee
They Do! by Al Po
10-15-2009
Love Fwd'd On by Chris Vaughan
The The Theft of the Magi by Gregory Anthony Schneider
Sam Edwine Gets That All-Important Publishing Contract, and Decides What the Key Word of His Book Shall Be by Tom Bradley
07-01-2009
Notes on a New Financial Year by Chris Vaughan
The Diddling of the Immensity by Thor Garcia
The Right Woman by Roger Castle
07-01-2009
Mawlawchee by Ben Drinen
06-01-2009
Successful P's by Chris Vaughan
Excerpt from Dear Vito by Mickey Z.
As the Song Goes by Ryan McBride
05-01-2009
Menage a Deux by Hugh Fox
Maybe I'm Stupid by Steven Schutzman
04-01-2009
Americans vs. Aneurysms by Eli Richardson
Application For The Chaparral Writers Society by John-Ivan Palmer
03-01-2009
Swearing: A Bedtime Story by John Grochalski
Excerpt from Dear Vito by Mickey Z.
01-01-2009
Two Pauls by Warren Buckles
Moments by Christopher Hart
12-01-2008
The Waiting by Brian Alan Ellis
Symphony #1: Roger Castleman by John Grochalski
11-01-2008
A Splinter from the Devil's Mirror by Bryn Greenwood
Between You and the Man-Sized Prophylactic with the Zipper by Tom Bradley
Chief by Warren Buckles
09-01-2008
Routine by Felipe de Oliveira
Automatic Transmission by Warren Buckles
08-01-2008
The Axiom of Choice by Jim Chaffee
07-01-2008
A Pleasure Jaunt with One of the Sex Workers Who Don’t Exist in the People’s Republic of China by Tom Bradley
Making the Switch by George Sparling
06-01-2008
The War Prayer by Mark Twain
05-01-2008
About the Dog by Robert Aqunio Dollesin
04-01-2008
The Coup by Peter Schoenau
03-01-2008
Art School by Zach Plague
Consitutional Puppies by JR
02-01-2008
Selection from The Vicious Circulation of Dr. Catastrope by Kane X. Faucher
Party Pooper from Make Me by Eli Richardson
Una Noche Perfecta para Sanguijuelas por Jim Chaffee (tr. Sonia Ramos Rossi)
01-01-2008
A Night in Cameroon by Kelly Jameson
Missile by Jason Jordan
Full TEX Archive
Side Photo for The Big Stupid Review

The Coup

By Peter Schoenau

anole face off

The day began with a hazy morning. He had been able to see the ocean most days from his room on the twelfth floor, a view restricted by the uneven, jagged line of rooftops. This morning he peered in vain beyond the sea of houses. He could only make out a grey band that marked the horizon.

His right arm was badly swollen. Each movement of the fingers on his right hand was intensely painful. The rectally administered antibiotics which he took morning and night had not halted the blood poisoning. His mind felt strangely muddled, and he tried but failed to put his thoughts in order. Every time he tried, he returned right away to the beginning of whatever thought he had held, and it was impossible to think something through to its conclusion. Somewhere in between the line disconnected. Eventually he gave up, and stared out of the window without a thought.

The apartment on Malecón was in a dilapidated building behind a crumbing neo-classical facade, its pastel blue paint blotchy where the stucco crumbled. The bare spots were taking over.

The apartment consisted of a bedroom, living room, bath and kitchen. Two miniature pictures looked out from the sideboard in his bedroom. They depicted two of his ancestors—Pedro Bandejas, the pirate, and Camilo Bandejas, his great-grandfather who had fought on the side of the Mambists during the war for independence.

He had rented the apartment fully furnished and paid the rent three months in advance in US dollars, at the insistence of the landlord, a small, unsavory bureaucrat who managed the buildings for the Interior Ministry. There was no written rental agreement. The only exchange between them was money and the keys.

All the same, he knew the landlord would make inquiries regarding the tenant. During the investigation, the long arm of the Interior Ministry would discover that his Peruvian passport was false. But who was to say what the landlord would do about it? He wasn't planning to stay at the apartment more than two weeks. No stranger to the long administrative process at the Ministry, he felt relatively certain the risk was minimal at this time.

He had awakened on his first morning at the apartment covered in sweat, feeling leaden. He stared at the floor where a fly circled in its death throes. Reluctantly and with great effort, he rose and went to the window and pulled the curtain in one swift move.

Thick grey clouds covered the horizon, merging with the ocean so that no clear line separated the sea from the sky.

A battered old Fiat 600 took him to Plaza José Miguel Cérrez. The stink of urine lingered between the statues, and the ground and walls were covered in graffiti. He looked for a sign. When they had parted, Federico and he arranged that whoever was first to return would leave a sign of life hidden somewhere between the declarations of love and the wise-cracks painted on the walls.

He had found the message next to large letters declaring, True love needs no pay, it is free. "Every Friday night at 10."

The square in front of the cathedral was lit by two spotlights. Deserted, it looked remarkably like an empty stage. A few guests lingered at the tables in the palm court of the patio. From the piano metallic evergreens tinkled into the night. Two skinny tabby cats snoozed beneath an empty table, periodically opening their eyes and peering in the direction of the only occupied table.

A bored waiter sat in a corner waiting for the last guests to leave. The bird inside the cage above the chilled wine case had tucked its head under its wing. The lone waiter looked relieved when one of the last remaining patrons asked for the check in an authoritative voice. Life pulsed through the white and black clad figure. Several minutes later, the sounds of laughter and chair legs scraping the floor confirmed that the guests were leaving. When the last of the crew left the stage, the lamps that had lit the palm court went out and the two skinny cats departed, disappointed. Perhaps the kitchen had left them scraps. Maybe they'd get lucky.

He stood in the shade of Palacio del Segundo Cabo before he crossed Calle Mercaderes to Plaza de Armas. Before entering the restaurant La Mina, he surreptitiously eyed the few guests on the patio and surmised they were ordinary tourists, as ordinary as he was hoping to appear. He took a seat at a table for two by the wall and caught the last of the current fashion show at La Mina. Four models pranced around, two women and two men passing in alternating sequence. Light-footed and twirling, they skipped by, their dark skin contrasting with the white linen dresses and suits they paraded. The men looked arrogantly past him while the women smiled at the parrot screeching in delight from the cage above his head.

He knew why the men didn't smile. In their centuries-old code a smile could evoke doubt as to their masculinity and provoke the ugly epithet Maricón among the patrons.

Federico was late.

anole face off