The Island Cow was neither the name of a cantina, nor the vulgar nickname of some prostitute. She was a flesh-and-blood cow, beefsteak and milk, left to graze every morning except Mondays, on the grassy island that divided the ave-nue.

• • •

Marina Dosal, vendor of tropical juices – Juicy Marina to some, Cool Marina to others – had decided to expand her business. She acquired a modern hot dog machine that would warm the bread and heat the sausage simultaneously, and she added four stools to the bar, placing upon it a red catsup bottle, a yellow mustard jar and a small tumbler filled with sliced chilies, carrots and onions. A green flower vase with two white carnations did double duty, in celebration of her new opening, and as a good luck charm (she was, after all, a simple woman). Out in front, on the road divider, her cow grazed peacefully.

• • •

For those who were familiar with the modest hole-in-the-wall, the invitation, "Let’s go by the Island Cow," meant a spicy hot dog and a fresh watermelon, cantaloupe, or guava drink. It also meant a conversation, as short as that might be, about health, well-being, and the future of the cow. But, fundamentally, it meant a chance, as slight as that might be (rather more likely than winning a lottery prize), of obtaining the favours of Juicy Marina.

Marina Dosal’s favours were two in number: her caresses (her love) and her secrets.

• • •

Courting the juice vendor’s caresses was not what one might call an easy task. Actually, it was not even a task: who knows what Cool Marina’s tastes or intuition were based on? She would suddenly choose her lover and confidant without winking, compliments, smiles, or any other influence. Even if Lollipau, the banker, got all dressed up in a silk suit, it could well be that Monkey, his employee, would be the one to receive her favours.

• • •

Juicy Marina’s secrets, shared with the chosen one in the heat of her embrace, were always given up in the most natural way, without there being any agreement as to their value other than that conferred by other people’s stories about them.

Also quite naturally, it would be the chosen confidant who would begin by relating incidents of his life until, unwittingly trapped by his own secrets, his desire would diminish to the point of his wanting to flee. Nevertheless, a strange sensation common to all would keep him there, a starving child, avidly seeking to learn the secret that would make him enormously rich in the eyes of the others. Probably in the eyes of the banker himself, of other employees and, with luck, in the eyes of Marina Dosal, since someday – she had announced it; everyone knew it – she would tell about her own life.

• • •

 

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