Alana had told me to stay at her house while waiting for her. I was supposed to construct a working model relationship for Ilka and I by the time Alana returned home. But it seemed as feasible as planting corn on the hot asphalt. When I ask for a clean towel at the cabina I’m staying at, I’m not sure, even then, if my point is not misconstrued. How could I defend a position to Ilka when I wouldn’t even understand her accusations?

On top of that, I’m scared of the beast. I have this image of Ilka out there in the deep down jungle, underground like one of those bloated death toads that wait for their meals to walk by their huge mouths. But I am supposed to, at the very least, sleep at their house this evening, so Alana can wake me with her mouth, biting my lips when she arrives before sunrise. The thought pushed me out into the jungle this morning to scope her house, so I’ll be able to find it tonight in case I actually ended up there. I’m sure I will. But maybe not.

Her house lies in the jungle on the right side of the road between the small pier and the big pier. I decided to walk out and inspect her house as well as the piers. On the un-watered road, a different bulky truck crunched by every few minutes and the dust clouded everything and I would have to stop, stand still until I could see again, so I wouldn’t walk off the shoulder, step into the barbed wire, or through it and down the 8-foot incline, into someone’s yard. There are hidden yards down there in the jungle where it is almost dark (there’s no realescape from the sun here) and I wondered if Alana’s dead dad contracted his skin cancer while nailing the walls and roof together.

The yards are intermittent blocks apart, and customized for utility. Each yard hosts scrappy structures designed with the purposes of the individual family in mind; structures for bee-keeping, storing kayaks, extraction of coconut oil, but more often than not, functions I can’t discern because I know nothing about anything.

Ilka was either gone or impregnating the belly of the house, so I was free to stare down at it, soak it in. Upon first impression I thought of the Tex-Mex chain restaurants in the U.S. that rust their gates and chip their stucco in an over-exaggerated attempt to look authentic or antiquated. I had always accused those restaurants of hokiness. But they actually do a pretty good job, in some cases, of capturing the aesthetic of utilitarian living, where haphazard things are stored where there is room, then barely protected from the elements. I’d always thought the restaurants looked false because, though they were born of rust and junk, they were still sturdy per North American building codes. But the houses along the road, down there in the Costa Rican jungle, were also stout and in-destructible, while at the same time, somehow fragile.

From where I stood on the precipice above the main house in Alana’s yard, the ribbed and rusted tin roof was level with my feet. In the back left corner of the roof was a small white bicycle with pink trim and training wheels, laying dead on its side. Many of the walls were made of the same rusted tin, others were made from anomalous material; one wood wall, one chicken wire, one cement, one palm frawns.

Scattered in the yard were other high, gray walls that held up nothing. Despite the heat, the ghost walls reminded me of childhood winters in Indiana when my dad would stand wide, tall slabs of wood, like garage doors, a foot parallel from each other, then fill the middle with snow, like a snow sandwich, then pour water in, and when the wood was removed there were huge, free-standing walls of ice, for no good reason; just something big and white to hide behind.

Around the main house in Alana’s yard were three smaller, one-room houses, not exactly the same but born of the same materials and purposes. The small houses looked to be following the big house through the jungle like baby ducks after their mama. Alana’s house rested on the opposite side from the baby houses, with a fence surrounding it, declaring its autonomy. I walked on to the beach.

(THEN IT’S THE PART ABOUT WALKING TO THE BEACH TO FIND THE OCTOPUS. THEN HE MEETS THE AUTHOR, MILTON CHAPMAN. THEN HE’S SCARED OF THE "SNAKES" AS HE WALKS BY THE SOCCER FIELD. THEN HE’S ATTACKED BY THE SWANS AS HE SNEAKS INTO ALANA’S HOUSE TO SLEEP, AND WAIT FOR HER TO ARRIVE IN THE MORNING…)

This morning there were kittens, orange baby tabbies, as soft and compelling as the teenage daughter of the woman who owns the cabina where I stayed those five nights before waking in Alana’s house, with a bed full of kittens. I was on my stomach. My cheek dug into my pillow as, over my shoulder, I counted five of them curled in perfect circles, equal distance apart on the bed like well-placed Easter eggs or land mines.

But the sun was almost up, and there was still no Alana.

"Gatita," I hummed to the kitten sleeping between my legs with its fist-sized head in the small of my back, its thin, orange neck supported by the hill of my rear end. I remembered when my hair was that same orange. I reached back at an awkward angle and, with the backs of my first two fingers, thumped the kitten’s broad forehead, between its sleeping eyes. She was disturbed. She rustled. The other four slept as if drugged as she slid a dime-sized paw under the bottom lip of my shirt, touched the tips of her claws to my skin and retracted and extended them - retracted and extended - retracted and extended. The tickling woke me up a bit and I rocked my body hoping she’d stop. Instead she scurried in slow motion under my shirt and up my back; an unbearable tickling that made me want to scream. But I forced silence, thinking of ilka somewhere in the house, asleep like a mountain.

I’ve always been rough with cats. Cats are as tough as those iguanas that jump around in the trees trying to get closer to that hard ass sun. Cats prance like they don’t want you to be rough, but they respect you when you see through that game and give them the business the same way you would a dog. So, I slowly rolled over onto my side, the kitten still under the back of my shirt. I watched her over my shoulder, under the cotton, scooting to the higher altitude of my side as I rolled further onto my back, pinching her under like a tube of toothpaste. When I was almost on my back, she had migrated around to my chest, squirming faster. The tickle was painful but it also stimulated my morning hardness; straight in the air. Where was Alana?

Then the kitten let out a too-human whimper, like a pre-schooler who’d scraped her knee on the playground, and I stopped rolling. The kitten still scrambled under my shirt, looking for a way out, but her original entrance through the bottom of my shirt was now pinned under my back. So I stretched my shirt collar away from my throat, showing her the way out. She saw the light and scrambled up my chest and I cried with laughter until I was face to face with a face-full of humming, buzzing freckles on a background of brown skin; a face like Raphael’s. That was when I really woke, and knew I was in bed with Alana’s sisters.

But I didn’t move; it was my first instinct, but I didn’t move. There was panic, I felt guilty for my erection; the girl under my shirt rested her folded legs against it, purring in her sleep. She was delicate and ghostly. They all were; so dark but still almost translucent. I stayed still. They were small too, even for 14-years. I tried to figure out what to do, but first how to feel. Should I wake them up? Should I feel bad for this? Is this illegal in Costa Rica? The pot lingered from last night and I had already slept at least 10-hours and I was hung-over with a head full of ephemeral thoughts and scorched, heavy lungs. I lay in bed formulating. The sun was very much up. I stared at the ceiling, which supported a thick, colorful rug. I drank Alana’s mismatched walls and wondered where my other pet octopus had slimed off to back at the cabina. I pictured the soft, compelling daughter who cleaned the rooms finding the creature dried up like jerky under the bed. Where’s Alana? I was there, in her room, but she was not. Before I could formulate a plan, I fell back asleep under the weight of the kittens.

I’m not sure when Alana came in the room as loud as a lawnmower, but when she did, the kittens scrambled up and out like the startled chickens on the road when a dusty truck runs through the village. Alana stood above me, not happy. But I shined on her. Finally. God, finally, there she was.

"Why you sleep in the bed with my sisters?" She asked. She was ready to fight. I liked that she often seemed ready. She continued, "My bed is right there." And pointed down behind her back. The bed’s exposed metal frame rested against the backs of her brown calves.

I didn’t want to talk yet. I definitely didn’t want to fight. Yet. I wanted dolphin love; squeaks and laughs and nothing more. I rose to my knees, hobbled across her sisters’ bed, grabbed the tops of Alana’s perfect shoulders and pushed her back onto her bed. There was a thunder of metal and Alana grabbed the back of her head. She didn’t cry out.

"Oh, are you O.K?" I asked, following her down and slipping my hand behind her head, between the pillow and her rising lump. "Oh, Alana, baby…" I shuddered upon hearing myself call her baby. I had a roommate in college who participated in violent phone arguments with his long distance girlfriend. I only ever heard his side of the screaming, but when he wanted to get off the phone he’d attempt to calm her by saying softly, "Baby…baby…I know, I know…just…baby." And it always sounded antagonistic, he was still fighting with her, secretly telling her she was a baby. Baby was the last word and he was having it. He beat her down with that last word. I don’t know what made me call Alana baby. Panic maybe, when her head slammed the metal. Maybe I was thinking of her fontainelle.

But I didn’t apologize. I’d learned that much. I just rubbed her lump, and tried to change the subject.

"I didn’t know it was your sisters’ bed." I said without hearing myself. I saw and heard only her face and her lump. There was nothing else; finally she was here. I said, "I can’t believe they all share one bed?"

"No, no." Alana said. "They have three beds that they share over in the other house. They sleep in here because they say it smells like me." She scrunched her nose as if she found her sister’s love distasteful. I hadn’t noticed her smell in the room. I wasn’t sure I knew it yet.

She laid her head on my chest and I sniffed her hair and said, "But no, it was dark when I got here. I just woke up and there they were. They really are beautiful."

I had harmless intentions. But she reached down fast and squeezed my testicles like an electrical shock. Then she lay her hand flat next to her head, as my balls throbbed at her elbow. The pain kept me in silence for solid minutes. In the silence I wondered what I was doing here. I could get out before I even knew her smell. But she ran her fingers under my shirt and eventually I regained my glow, then she asked, "You fixed things with mami?"

"No, not at all," I announced in a stern tone as if my testicles weren’t pulsating with fear of another attack. I thought about that dog on the beach. I said, "Alana, I don’t speak Spanish. I can’t communicate with her, I can’t explain my side of this. Our side, or whatever. Nothing I could say would help."

She wasn’t as mad as I suspected she’d be. She wasn’t even nut-grabbing mad. She said, "People don’t have to explain things to each here. They can tell when you are a good person." She removed her hand from under my shirt and ran the backs of her fingers over the crotch of my shorts, but the area was still too shocked to harden. She continued, "I understand that you’re not used to that way. But if you just be around her, she will forgive you because she will know if you are a good person."

That scared me. Do they all have sonar here? I’m not sure I could pass a character x-ray.

She leaned up and bit my lips for the first time in days. She was still gracing my zipper, but it didn’t distract me from our conversation. It was only the second time I’d lied down with her. She seems so much older when she’s lying down; older than her age, older than other women I’ve been with, some almost twice her age. With my other girlfriends, talking seemed like something to do between sex. Not with Alana.

"So when did you start to sleep here?" She asked, She ran her hand from my zipper, up my body, and cupped my face. Things are different with Alana.

I stroked her hair and admitted, "Last night was the only time so far that I slept..."

I felt the metal bed frame shake almost before she reached to squeeze my balls again, and I caught her electric hand by the wrist and said, "Seriously, Alana, don’t fucking do that."

She didn’t respond so I grabbed her chin and forced her eyes up into mine. I didn’t know where all my guts were coming from. I felt like I hardly knew her. "I like the fact that you’re rough. It’s fun," I said. Then I stared into her like a branding iron. "But seriously, not my balls. It hurts."

She just said, "I don’t know." That’s what she always said at PIZZA DIVE when she couldn’t express herself. Sometimes it made whoever was talking to her feel stupid and small. And sometimes, like now, it made her 17 again.

"Did you come into my room O.K.?" She asked, reaching up and cupping my face again.

I went with her subject change. I said, "Well there was some difficulty. I was attacked by your swans. I thought at first they were giant chickens."

I’d thought she would laugh at that. But Alana was silent.

"You never told me you owned swans…I mean, I assume they’re your swans since they were inside your gate…"

As my sentence faded to an end Alana was looking up at me like waiting for a punchline she surely wouldn’t understand. There was more silence.

"What?" I asked.

"Did they hurt you?" She asked.

At the foot of the bed, my shins heard their cue and throbbed to attention. I hadn’t surveyed the damage yet either so I pulled them up for me and her to inspect. She touched the green and purple bruises and it hurt. I didn’t respond, not wanting her to think I am a pussy; don’t grab my balls, it hurts, don’t touch my bruises, they hurt. I just bit down. Then she pressed at them like numbers on telephone. It really hurt. Eventually she stopped. Then laughed long and mean.

As the pain simmered in my legs, I didn’t like her laughter and I said, "Well, I smacked one of those fuckers on the side of its head, too. So ha!"

Alana stopped laughing. "My father found those swans." She said. "He saved their lives and gave them to me after he built the house."

It was not a good morning so far. I said, "Well, it was an accident. I didn’t like…punch it or anything. They were fucking me up and I just swung into the empty air and accidentally…you know."

Alana rose from the bed though we’d only kissed once so far. I couldn’t tell if I was forgiven for hitting her swan.

"You stay in bed a while longer, baby." She commanded. I’d never realized that she always called me baby and it never reminded me of my roommate. "I am going to go out and visit with mami and make things good for you," she said. "Come out in an hour and mami will smile with you."

I’d been in her bed for almost a day. I wanted to move around. Go swimming with her, do all the things I didn’t enjoy doing by myself. "Let’s sneak out the back and take a walk to the pier or something?"

"No. Lay down." She said. "Wait for me to come in and get you. When I come get you, things are different."

She leaned over me and kissed me and I felt better. She stood and turned away and ran her long fingers along all the textures of wall on her way out the clanging metal bedroom door. I noticed that she’d cut her hair. Minutes after, I was dreaming again.