Tropic of Orange

Buzzworm yells at the NewsNow team to pull the satellite dish out of the air because it is too big of a target. Buzzworm “gunned the van into action, jammed it between the spreading lanes,” fleeing from helicopters, smoke, and explosions (214). He drives through a “cast of thousands—military and civilian—ran this way and that in an epic disaster” (214). Even though she is bleeding out, Emi still finds the energy to taunt Buzzworm. From the corner of his eye, Buzzworm can see, repeating over and over on the news van’s monitors, himself rescuing Emi from the roof of the van.

The van blows a tire, and Buzzworm forces it up the side of the freeway embankment, “heading instinctively for some palm trees swaying against the wind of helicopter wings in a camouflage of smog” (214). He cradles Emi and they abandon the van, running through the undergrowth.

Emi begins to Speak deliriously, and “Buzzworm held her close. He knew a dead cooky when he saw one” (214) describing a dream she had about being buried in the La Brea Tar Pits, her bones discovered years later. She says, “Here I am in the healing capitol of the nation. You’d think some spiritual force would make its appearance at a time like this. Where are all the Jesuses and Mohammeds when you need them?” (215). She asks where Gabriel is, and Buzzworm replies that he is sure he would be here if he could.

Emi rambles about the movie The Big Sleep, and says, “Maybe the big sleep is a big digital wet dream […] Maybe Gabe can call me up in cyber, and we can do it in my sleep” (216). She tells Buzzworm to ask Gabriel what color blood is in black and white. Buzzworm tells her, “It’s all shades of gray, baby sister. Shades of gray” (216). Emi’s voice sinks, and she whispers, “Abort. Retry. Ignore. Fail” (216).

Rafaela awakens, and though she is still bleeding, she ignores Doña Maria’s concern and goes outside, walking down the familiar garden path that has become “a path disappearing forever northward through a thicket of sunflowers and cactus, and the orange tree a small green speck in the distance” (217). She walks for several hours, until she comes across Bobby. She stretches her arms “across an infinite and yet invisible chasm” (217). Then she sees the familiar line of the Tropic of Cancer. She grabs it and pulls herself forward, into Bobby’s arms. He cradles her, “wanting to protect all the parts of her yet untouched, wanting to heal all the parts of her so tortured” (218).

Rafaela wraps them in the thread “until they were both covered in a soft blanket of space and midnight, their proximity to everything both immediate and infinitely distant” (218). They “came together in a fleshy ball, wrapped and clinging one to the other, genitals pressed in a lingering fire, heart to heart, mind to mind” (218). They are gradually pulled apart, “one peering into a private world of dreams and metaphysics, the other into a public place of politics and power” (218). Rafaela asks Bobby to wait for her on the other side.

Manzanar Murakami stops conducting: The city “had sprouted grassroots conductors of every sort” (218). He sees Buzzworm approaching, holding Emi’s body wrapped in a beach towel. His past comes rushing back to him. The NewsNow helicopter lowers a gurney, and Buzzworm places Emi upon it. He shouts to Murakami to get on with her, and he does. From this higher perch, Manzanar Murakami can see the entire city. All at once, “All the air bags in L.A. ruptured forth, unfurled their white powdered wings against the barrage of bullets, and stunned the war to a dead stop. But Manzanar heard nothing” (219).

One of Arcangel’s voices booms from the auditorium speakers, announcing the start of the match. He makes several jokes and introduces SUPERNAFTA and El Gran Mojado on the big screen. SUPERNAFTA is “a masked man in a titanium suit with a head of raging fire” (220). He is completely serious and never smiles. He announces to the crowd that his fight represents a challenge, not only to El Gran Mojado, but also to the children of the world: He wants them to accept the future and a cut of future profits. He tells them, “Before any one of you can be truly free, you need to have enough money to do what you want. The only way that’s gonna happen is to free the technology and the commerce that make the money go round” (221). Half of the crowd stops booing and starts cheering, and “A lot of people started to think the fire FX from NAFTA’s head was pretty cool” (221).

El Gran Mojado is projected on the screen and states his case. He is wearing “a ski mask of camouflage nylon, blue cape with the magic image of Guadalupe in an aura of gold feathers and blood roses, leopard bicycle tights, and blue boots” (221). He banters with the crowd about his accent. El Gran Mojado proceeds to dismantle SUPERNAFTA’s argument in verse. He announces to the crowd:

The myth of the first world is that development is wealth and technology progress. It is all rubbish. It means that you are no longer human beings but only labor. It means that the land you live on is not earth but only property […] I do not defend my title for the future of starving children or the past of suffering ancestors. I defend my title for life and death. The life of our people or the death of our people (222-23).

Both fighters enter the ring to fanfare. SUPERNAFTA emerges to the Rocky theme song, accompanied by women in swimsuits. El Gran Mojado “appeared by magic in the center ring,” “accompanied by a choral symphony that came from outside the auditorium and slowly swelled to fill it by the people themselves” (223). Everyone in the crowd knows the words, as if they had been singing it for their whole lives, and “Some people jumped up to conduct entire sections of the auditorium. It was very weird” (223). El Gran Mojado is accompanied by Sol, who is holding the orange. Parents in the crowd are worried about the child. Everyone assumes that the orange is a fake.

El Gran Mojado spots Bobby in the crowd. He hands Sol off to him, scolding him, “Where have you been? What do you think I am? A babysitter?” (224). The fight begins. The two competitors beat each other bloody, and when they can no longer flail at each other, “they wrapped each other in a grapple so tight no one could distinguish one fighter from the other” (224). The flames from SUPERNAFTA’s head spread until they are both engulfed. El Gran Mojado holds on until the flames enter the flammable parts of his opponent’s body. He leaps off, sprouting a pair of wings, and flapping them, feeding the inferno inside SUPERNAFTA’s body. SUPERNAFTA implodes, but at the last minute “only Bobby saw SUPERNAFTA’s final weapon, his pointing finger a missile launcher that sent its tiny patriot into Arcangel’s human heart” (225).

The performance is over. For the audience, life goes on, and “Somewhere the profits from the ticket sales were being divided. A new champion was being groomed” (225).

The bursting airbags scared the population into a cease-fire. Buzzworm surveys the wreckage with the Red Cross. He watches a parade of body bags go by. He sees a trio of unhoused people barbecuing baby hearts from scattered plastic coolers.

Buzzworm leaves the freeway valley and takes a detour by the corner where Margarita used to sell fruit. He sees an Indian woman, who for a second he thinks is Margarita. He goes home, takes a bath, takes a nap, sweeps the porch, and waters his palm trees. He tries listening to the radio, but the contents of each channel are jumbled. He stops listening. Time is still dysfunctional. None of his watches work, so he throws them “into a couple of large paper bags and distributed everyone. Went up and down everywhere and handed ‘em all out like candy” (227).

Buzzworm has a lot of work to do. He pauses and takes a breath; it is frightening to him to be without time or radios. He listens as Manzanar Murakami’s “symphony swelled against his diaphragm, reverberated through his veteran bones. Solar-powered, he could not run out of time” (228).

Bobby buys tickets for ringside seats at the wrestling match from a scalper with his American Express credit card. He buys a condom blown up as a balloon. He gets to his seat and sees Sol in the ring with El Gran Mojado. He yells for his son. Arcangel hands Sol to him, then tosses the orange. Bobby lets go of the condom balloon to catch it. He does not know it is the last orange north of the border. The fight begins, and Bobby becomes engrossed in it.

Suddenly, Rafaela is there. She tries to point out the line of the Tropic of Cancer running through the orange, but Bobby cannot see it. Rafaela wants Sol out of here; the match is too violent. It is too late, however; both wrestlers fall. Rafaela has Bobby cut the orange with Arcangel’s turquoise-inlaid knife. Now he sees the line, cut where the blade went through the orange. He grabs both ends of it. Rafaela enters the ring and feeds the orange to Arcangel, who smiles. The crowd rushes in and carries Arcangel away.

Bobby holds onto the line; the slack is gone. He holds on as long as he can as the tension in the line grows. He sees Rafaela pick up Sol: “She’s beat up bad, but she’s some kind of angel. Never looked so beautiful” (229). Bobby reflects on how much time and effort he spent trying to keep them safe. When it came down to it, he was not there to protect her after all. He inches forward towards his little family, “his arms open wide like he’s flying. Like he’s flying forward to embrace” (230). He lets go of the ends of the line.