Kilometer 99 (20 page)

Both Ben and Pelo stare at me, anxious for a response.

“Hold on a minute.” I take a seat beside Ben in the hammock and slow my thoughts. “What's the time line here? We're trying to go on a trip.”

“No worries.” Pelochucho looks inside the chicken box. “We could write this arrangement up for something like a six- to eight-week commitment, then go month to month after that. And once you leave, we can stay in touch through e-mail or phone. Hell, if there's anything that's super important, we'll fly you in from Chile or Peru or wherever. That's a no-brainer.”

Ben and I steal a glance at each other. He raises his eyebrows.

“I'd like to get your input on some other possibilities, too. Have you seen this?” Pelo takes that same old surf magazine out from under his arm and waves it at us. “I want a piece of this Wild East thing. Do you two know anything about boats?”

“No,” I reply before Ben has a chance to. “El Cuco—the Wild East or whatever—it's different.” Ben and I took a hitchhiking expedition out there last Semana Santa. We camped right at the base of one of the points and paid a local family for our meals and water. “There's not much there.”

“There's waves.” Pelo pulls out a chicken breast, takes one bite out of it, then throws it back into the box. “That's good enough for me.”

“It's far away. From everything. They've got serious squatters' rights laws in this country, you know.”

“We'd have to hire a caretaker. Are you guys sure you don't have any capital you want to put into this?” He points at the magazine.

“Pelo, that issue is like six months old.”

“Exactly. From before the quake, right? It's a buyer's market—now more than ever.”

“People lost their homes,” I say. “People died. Can you think of anything else besides how desperate they might be to sell their land?”

“Again with the high-and-mighty routine.” He rolls his one good eye. “You gotta understand, Chinita: Surfing is the new golf. And you can't build a point break in Palm fucking Springs. This is happening. You can watch from the sidelines or get into the game.”

Ben stays silent, still seated in the hammock.

“Shit. I'm not as bad as some of the players,” Pelo mutters. “Have you heard about that Florida kid down in Nicaragua? Dude was dynamiting the reef to give the waves better shape.”

Ben speaks up at last. “Guys, could we maybe stick to the K Ninety-nine thing? That's all that's really on the table right now, isn't it?”

“Absolutely!” Pelo puts the magazine down on the hood of the Jeep. “As usual, Chuck Norris is the voice of reason. The K Ninety-nine surf resort is a green light. Everything else is pie in the sky.”

Both of them turn their eyes toward me.

“What do you say, Chinita?” Pelo takes his bit-into chicken breast back out of the box. He rips off a piece of white meat and sticks it inside his mouth. “Hang around. Make a little jing. Wait for your passport. Hold that hillside together for future generations. Give some free rainwater to some poor families. It's a good deal.”

The two of them stare at me, waiting. Working for Pelo got us into this mess. Ben might not see it that way, but staying here to help him out was where things started to go wrong, the original mistake from which all our other mistakes sprang.

“I don't know,” I say. “It doesn't feel right.”

Ben lets out an exasperated sigh. “I need a beer.” He walks off toward the kitchen, flip-flops slapping extra hard against the ground.

“I'm not into the whole high-end surf tourism thing.” I mean the explanation for Ben, but Pelochucho is the only one left to hear it.

Pelo takes a step closer to me. He raises his sunglasses up so that his one good eye and his cloth eye patch are both exposed. Once Ben is out of earshot, Pelo lowers his voice and says, “Chinita, who is Alex?”

I look up. My tongue turns dry and thick inside my mouth. “He's my ex-boyfriend.”

“Oh yeah.” Pelo giggles. “Little blast from the past, huh?”

I hear the top pop off a bottle. Across the courtyard, Ben stands by the kitchen. He lifts the full Regia to his lips and takes the first big gulp.

“What are you talking about?”

“Your phone call yesterday. I happened to be in Kristy's bedroom at the time.”

I look over his shoulder. Always empty during waking hours, Kristy's tiny bedroom is alongside the office, a few feet from where I stood speaking into the phone.

“Nothing happened,” I say.

Pelo puts a hand up over his mouth. “You got drunk and fucked this guy. You didn't tell Ben.” He squints. “Nothing?”

Over by the kitchen, Ben wipes his lips with his forearm, then starts back toward us.

“Why are you saying this?” I ask Pelo in a whisper.

“I want your help with this resort thing; that's all. It's a good option—for all of us. I'm happy to keep a secret, for a friend. I'm less inclined to do that for somebody who turns her nose up at all my ideas.”

Furious, I stare into his one good eye. He takes a couple steps backward as Ben approaches.

“So,” Ben says. “What do we do now?”

Pelo lowers his shades. A second of tense silence passes.

“I'm in.” I keep my eyes on the reflective surface of Pelochucho's sunglasses. “I can commit to three weeks for now—that should be time enough to get my passport. We can go week by week after that.”

“Yes!” Pelochucho holds his fists up in triumph. He high-fives Ben and me.

I feel decent for a moment or two. Perhaps I can engineer my way out of the errors of the past couple days. I can salvage our budget and rescue our trip. Maybe I can finally save one little corner of El Salvador, too, resurrect a single eroding hillside in a nation densely packed with them. It's no Red Cross, but it's something. Still, I loathe the idea of working for Pelochucho and his investor friends.

“All right.” Pelo grins. “I'll get back online and see what we can hammer out. We should know the details by tomorrow.”

“I'm going to check the surf,” I say.

Still in my embassy clothes, I walk out to the shore and sit on the stone steps. There isn't much to see. The ocean is blown out, no inkling of a swell. Two stray dogs—one white and one dark brown—wade out into the water as if to bathe.

Once I finally turn away from the ocean, I see Crackito limping toward me.

“
Una moneda?
” He holds out his hand and looks as if he doesn't remember me.

The rumors about the burning-foot prank are true. His face bears scratches and a bruise. Black spots and a single red blister cover the favored foot.

First, I think about the spare pieces of cold chicken back at the hotel. But after a second, I reach into my pocket and pull out a handful of coins. For once, I don't care what he does with them.

Before Crackito can take off, Ben comes to join us.

“Do you see that?” he asks Crackito in Spanish.

“See what?”

“Blowfish, right there.” Ben points. “On the beach.”

Both Crackito and I scan the shoreline. Finally, I see it: a bloated purple fish with short, sharp spines extended, lying among the shells and seaweed at the tide line.

“C'mon,” Ben says to Crackito. “Let's throw rocks at it.”

The boy hesitates for a second, the coins in his pocket pulling him to that white-and-red house up the street.

“C'mon!” Ben insists.

The two of them go down to the beach. Ben uses his foot to draw a couple of lines in the sand. He picks up the swollen fish by the tail, drops it behind one of the lines. Both of them gather a handful of smooth black rocks.

I see Peseta making his rounds on the street near our hotel. I turn and whistle, make a motion for him to come closer.

He pauses, perhaps still weary of me after our late-night encounter at the crack house. But in the end, he walks over, his too-big sandals shuffling against the pavement.

“Chinita,” he says. “What's shaking?”

Ben and Crackito begin their game. The two of them take turns chucking rocks from behind their baseline at the blowfish several yards away. Crackito has a furious pitcher-on-the-mound-style windup. Ben's is a smooth and casual underarm throw. The two wet dogs come out of the water and watch, excited by the flying stones. They wag their tails and bark at the impacts.

“You still have that doctor friend?” I ask Peseta.

“Of course,” he says. “You need something?”

“Valium.” I take a bill from out of my Che wallet and hand it to him. “Can you bring it to La Posada?” I can't handle another sleepless night.

“No problem.” Peseta puts the money inside his fist and takes off down the street.

A squishing sound comes from the beach. Crackito giggles in triumph. Ben claps and offers his congratulations, raises the little boy's hand up in the air like a prizefighter's. It's the first time I've ever seen Crackito smile. It makes him look exactly like the child that he is.

*   *   *

Pelochucho disappears for the rest of the afternoon. We guess that he's either at the Internet café or the telephone office.

Peseta never shows up with my Valium. I struggle to get to sleep, while Ben snores at my side. In my mind, I curse Peseta for ripping me off, and berate myself for being gullible enough to trust him.

While I lay awake, my mind spins on a whole separate wheel. Is there any way out of working for Pelo on this ridiculous resort idea? If I bail, he'll tell Ben about my night with Alex, and who knows how Ben might react. But where will it end? Can I trust Pelochucho to let me go once I have some traveling money and a new passport in hand? What's to stop him from further blackmail, from forcing me to stay longer and help develop new properties out in the Wild East?

I roll over and study Ben's sleeping body in the darkness. A part of me wants to shake him awake and confess right then. Maybe he'll be too tired to freak out. So much of the time, I don't mind Ben's jealous streak. It seems a more than forgivable fault. But at the moment, it is utterly inconvenient.

 

20

It was Courtney who first gave me the news about Alex. She somehow found the number for La Posada.

That was about eight months ago. My aqueduct was in full swing, and I was enjoying a slow weekend at La Lib. Ben and I had made love in the afternoon and he'd fallen asleep. I'd tried to nap as well, but a dream kept waking me: A giant snake, big as a freight train, slithered up beside my sleeping body. I'd lie still and play dead; then the snake would move on. But each time it started on its way, I'd shudder from fear and wake up.

“Chinita.” A hesitant knock came at the door. Kristy rarely bothered us in our rooms. I'd heard the telephone ring a few seconds before. It must be important, I thought.

“
Momentito.
” I wrapped a sarong around my torso and tied it behind my back. Ben didn't stir. Outside the room, my eyes constricted against the sun.

Kristy crossed the courtyard. I followed several paces behind.

The phone cord stretched from the office out to the patio in front of Kristy's room. I took the call there.

“
Sí,
” I said, still groggy.

“Malia? Is that you? Are you sitting down?”

“Courtney? What's up?”

“Sit down, Malia.”

The only way to get a chair was to put the phone down and fetch one from the dining room—too much trouble. I waited a second, then lied and said I was sitting.

“It's about Alex,” she said.

“What about him?”

Outside the gate, Peseta walked by, scanning the street for some sort of action to get into—travelers in search of accommodation, surfers in search of drugs, any brand of honest-enough hustle that might result in a few coins.

“Alex hurt himself,” Courtney said.

“Is he all right?” Finally, I woke up; the tragedy reel played through my mind. This was long before the earthquake, so it was informed mainly by images from television and film: hospital rooms with their beeping machines, bent-up car bumpers, swirling red and blue lights.

“They say he'll be okay.” She exhaled hard, so that it came through the phone as static. “He lost a lot of blood.”

I grew more confused. What exactly had happened to him? Kristy's broom scraped across the floor behind me.

“It's weird, because nobody knows what they can or cannot tell us. But the rumor is that he's got some bad scars.”

Peseta passed again, looking impatient.

“Courtney.” My heart thumped inside my chest. “I don't understand. What happened?”

“It was some kind of razor knife, apparently.”

“Alex got stabbed?” As I pronounced the
a
in
stabbed,
my bedroom door opened across the courtyard. I saw Ben stretch his arms above his head and yawn.

“His wrists, Malia.” Courtney spoke as if this should all have been obvious to me by now. “Alex tried to kill himself.”

My vision went grainy and out of focus. I put my hand on the wall to keep my balance. “Where?” I asked.

“It happened in his site, but somebody found him.”

Ben crossed the courtyard toward me. Our eyes met and his expression turned somber.

“Like I said,” Courtney went on, “it's all rumors and speculation right now. But they say a woman there put tourniquets on his arms and called for help.”

Doña Carmen. I knew her. In a sense, she was to Alex what Niña Tere was to me. During the war, I'm sure she'd stopped the bleeding of hundreds of hurt guerillas, but this sort of wound was almost certainly new to her.

“Holy fuck,” I said.

Ben stood beside me now. He put a hand on my back.

“They're sending him to D.C. tonight. It's a medical evacuation.”

“I see.” I wanted to get off the phone. “I guess I'll send an e-mail. That's probably the best way to get in touch with him.”