Kilometer 99 (29 page)

Those two heavy hands come away from me. No sweaty, stinking male flesh touches mine. The sensation is so liberating, it's as if I've learned to fly.

“Remove the belt,” says the same small voice.

I close my eyes as my arms roughly come unbound. To my surprise, they're both still attached to my shoulders. Pins and needles fill the numb one.

“Pull your pants up, Chinita. I'm very bashful.”

I'm finally able to turn and see who's come to help me. Though he hardly reaches Pardon Me's chest, he has a death grip on his ponytail, and a small silver blade—it looks like a butter knife that's been sharpened on both sides—held tip-first against my attacker's windpipe. It's Peseta.

I pull up my pants and fasten them. Pardon Me twitches and snorts, but Peseta keeps a steely grip on the hair and the knife.

“Thank you,” I manage to say.

“There's the door, Chinita,” Peseta says. “I'd go if I were you.”

“You're a fucking dead man, Peseta!” Pardon Me shouts. “You hear me? That's a promise.”

I can't help but stare at Peseta. “What will you do?” My eyes scan the room for something heavy, an object big and blunt enough to bash Pardon Me's face in.

“Don't worry, Chinita.” Peseta grins from behind the bigger man. “I'm just going to have a little talk with my old friend here. We have history, him and me. You run along.”

“But what … what will they do to you?”

“We'll fucking kill him, that's what!” Pardon Me shouts.

Peseta tightens his grip. A red dot of blood appears on Pardon Me's neck. “These assholes have been trying to kill me with their crack rocks for ten years. Maybe they'll have more luck with their guns and knives.”

Someone bangs on the wooden interior door to the room. Peseta has locked it from this side. “Don't speak!” he hisses at Pardon Me.

My feet feel planted to the ground.

“Go on, Chinita!” Peseta scolds now. “There's the door. Do this one favor for me.” He pulls hard on the other man's ponytail. “Go!”

I nod. He's put himself in grave danger to save me. The least I can do is allow myself to be saved.

“Thank you,” I say again, then open the iron door.

For the second night in a row, I make a desperate late-night run through the streets of La Libertad. This time, it's much shorter, and I know exactly where I'm going.

*   *   *

The gate is open at La Posada. I'm shocked to see the Jeep parked inside again, in front of Pelo's stupid stack of cement. In all the commotion of the last twenty-four hours, I'd forgotten that we owned the thing.

“Ben!” I scream. He comes running from over by the room. We meet halfway through the courtyard and he wraps me up inside his arms. I sob against his chest, staining his T-shirt with tears and the blood from my mouth.

“What happened to you?” he asks.

“I was at the crack house,” I say. “I got them to let you out.”

“Are you all right?”

“Barely. It got ugly.”

Ben's face goes pale, like he's unsure whether or not he wants to know more. His ear is swollen and still crusty with dried blood. “Let me see your mouth,” Ben says. He tugs open my mouth and grimaces. “Your lip's split. And your gums are swollen up, but the teeth look okay.”

I'm shocked that none are missing.

Pelo walks over to join us, eating pork rinds from a bag. For a moment, the three of us stand there in relative silence, broken only by Pelo's crunching. Our three wounds have us looking like the “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” monkeys. Or some stupider version of them that never quite learned their lessons.

“Hey, Chinita!” His mouth full, Pelo overenunciates the words, as if speaking to the locals in his poor Spanish. “What about the money?” He rubs a thumb and forefinger together. “You still have it?”

“The money?” I take a step toward him, fresh anger coursing through my veins. “
The money?
” I take another step, but this time I slap him across the face.

“Oww! What the fuck?” He touches his own cheek. Reddish pork-rind dust dots his chin. “It was only a question.”

“All you care about is your fucking money.” I pound my balled-up fists against his chest, my vision all blurred by rage and tears. “Do you have any clue what happened to me tonight? I nearly died because of you.” And Peseta may still die, I think, but I can't quite bring myself to say it. “All because of you and your dumb-ass plan.”

I land one square blow to his rib cage before Ben grabs me from behind and pins my arms to my sides. Pelo shakes his head and slinks off toward Kristy's room.

“I fucking hate you!” I follow the words with a hasty wad of spit, but it falls short of him and lands on the dirt of the courtyard.

Ben pulls me several paces away. “Easy, Malia. Easy,” he whispers into my ear. “You're okay now. We're all right.”

“I want to leave. I need to get out of here. Now. I don't give a shit about our trip anymore. I just want to go.”

Ben's restraining hold morphs into something more like a hug.

“And I want to talk to my dad. I need to see him. I want to go home.”

“Okay,” Ben says. “We can do all that. Fuck South America. We'll go to Hawai‘i. Together. I don't care where it is, as long as we go together.”

The moment he says that, I hug him back—as hard as I ever have. Kristy closes and locks the gate to the courtyard. Back inside the hotel, back inside Ben's arms, I finally feel like we might indeed be all right.

“But Malia, we have to wait until morning. It's not safe right now. You get that, don't you?”

The idea of not running from this place, of settling in—even for just one night—is like a strong medicine that takes a second to swallow. “Yes,” I admit. “You're right.”

“Let's go to bed,” Ben says. “We can bail first thing.”

I nod. We start toward the bedroom.

“How'd you get the car back?” I point to the Jeep.

Ben shrugs. “The cop handed me the keys when they let us out. It was behind the station the whole time.”

Ben stops right in front of our room, takes me by each hand. “Malia, what happened to you tonight?”

I shake my head. “Could we talk about it later?”

He nods, then gives me another hug.

Before we climb into bed, I double-check the door lock and find the jar of Valium that Peseta brought to me yesterday. I place two of them on my tongue, like I'm receiving Communion and the little yellow pills might become the flesh of my ragged Savior.

 

27

Toward the end of our Peace Corps training, Jim, the country director, interviewed each of us one by one. Our impression was that he'd use this information to decide where to send us. There was a rumor that the Peace Corps always gave you the opposite of what you asked for—say the beach and you get the mountains. That idea seems silly to me now, as if our bosses had nothing better to do than play games with us and build character.

Alex, Courtney, and I waited our turns. We wondered aloud whether we might end up close together.

I was the first to be called in. Jim had a pad of paper and a stack of files. We introduced ourselves and exchanged a firm handshake.

“I've looked over your materials,” Jim said. “Very impressive.”

“Thanks.” I wasn't sure what about those documents might have impressed him, but I didn't bother to ask.

“So, Malia.” He closed a manila folder that lay on the table between us. “Why do you want to be a Peace Corps volunteer?”

His question caught me by surprise. I'd been anticipating something about urban versus rural, inland versus coastal. In the end, I settled on the honest answer, mostly because I couldn't come up with anything more compelling. “I want to see the world.”

Jim nodded, as if that were an explanation he'd heard before.

“I come from a small island,” I said. “A lot of the people there never leave. I got my degree and my student loans, and realized I was about to find a job and work away the rest of my life. I thought I should see some other places first. But I didn't know where to start.”

Jim scribbled on his legal pad; it couldn't have been more than a word or two. “Was this a hard decision for you?”

“It wasn't hard for me.” I stared down at the yellow paper, unable to make out his writing. “I've never looked back. But it was hard to break the news. My father would rather I'd gone straight to a career or graduate school. I'm not sure he fully understands what the Peace Corps is. He sees it as an indulgence.”

“I have to be completely honest,” Jim said. “In a case like yours—a trainee with your level of technical skills—the assignment is usually a no-brainer. It's likely to choose you, so to speak. But I suppose I should ask, to be fair: Do you have a preference as to where you live?” He smiled.

“No,” I said. “I joined up willing to go anywhere in the world. I still feel that way.”

He nodded and wrote another illegible note.

*   *   *

That night, Alex and I sneaked a liter of cheap vodka into Courtney's host family's house. The three of us sat out on the open porch attached to her bedroom. We mixed the vodka with a pink and clumpy powered drink mix inside a plastic bottle. Alex passed out cigarettes. The sun set behind one shoulder of the volcano.

“What did you guys say when Jim asked why you'd joined the Peace Corps?” I was surprised we'd not discussed it already.

“Pshh.” Courtney rolled her eyes and blew out a lungful of smoke. “I came up with some crap about wanting to save the world and tried to keep a straight face.” She took a slug of the makeshift cocktail, then passed it to me.

Alex was in one of his distant moods, staring out at the San Vicente volcano. We heard Spanish arguments and a crying baby from inside the house.

I took a sip and passed the bottle to Alex.

Somebody banged on the iron of the bedroom door. Courtney rose to deal with it.

“What about you?” I asked Alex. We'd not yet kissed at this point in training, but it was something I'd thought about.

He held the bottle up to his eyes and checked the level of the liquid. “I told him I joined because I wanted to be a better person.” Alex gulped the drink.

Suddenly more attracted to him, I stared at his face until it became awkward and I had to turn away.

“
Sí, sí,
” Courtney shouted into the house. “
Momento,
okay?” She closed the door and came back to join us.

Alex passed her the bottle and she took a long pull from it.

“So,” Courtney said, “what were we just talking about?”

“Nothing,” Alex replied. “Saving the world and other impossibilities.”

 

28

I wake from a dreamless, sweaty slumber caused by the pills. The paralyzed weight of my own body feels like an anchor pulling me downward and tethering me to the bed.

Ben shakes me before first light. “Chi-ni-ta,” he whispers.

With blurry eyes, I see two big pieces of sweet bread in his hands. I rise and sit up on the bed, take one of the sticky rolls and have a bite. My swollen mouth still aches, but I'm able to chew.

“Can we leave now?” I ask.

“Hold up. Let's talk this over for a sec.”

“Let's just go, Ben. Let's throw our shit in the Jeep and go. Get out of here.”

“Not quite yet, Malia.” Ben puts a hand on my shoulder. “In a couple of hours, maybe.”

“Why? What are we waiting for?”

“The surf,” Ben says. “It's going off.”

“Waves?” But before he can answer, I hear the roar of the ocean coming from outside.

“The point's firing,” Ben says.

I nod, finish the sweet bread, and grab the bikini hanging from the doorknob. “Let's go surf, then.”

Ben smiles, and scratches a comb across the wax on my board.

*   *   *

Kristy has not yet awakened or opened the gate, so we head up to the roof. I wait while Ben lowers himself down the tree. Once he's on the ground, I hand him the boards and climb down myself.

In bare feet, we walk out along the path toward the point. I've not traveled this route in over a week, and already it feels unfamiliar. We pick our way across the boulders in front of the cemetery—the bandits still sleeping in—and past the few big houses at the far end of the point. Once we come to the rusty pipes, Ben lays his board down and does a windmill with his arms. I start to put in, but he says, “Wait.”

I turn to face him, surfboard under my arm.

“Look.” Ben extends one finger toward the ocean.

At the point, the first wave of the first real set of this surreal swell breaks. A perfectly shaped double-overhead bomb, it pitches at the takeoff and stays top to bottom all the way through to the inside. Ben and I watch four more break after it—riding them with our minds—then we paddle out.

There is no wind. Inexplicably, no other surfers join us. Salt water stings my hurt mouth a little, but not as badly as I feared. Once in position, we don't wait long for another set. Ben takes the first wave. I watch him hit the lip once—in that compact, functional stance of his—and then disappear down the line.

Wanting to take off deeper, I paddle over the second wave and go for the third. It breaks so far outside that the Mother Rock isn't a problem. Straight away, I can tell it's as good a wave as I've ever ridden. If given the power, I'd not move one single drop of water in any direction. The face is fully workable, but I've got barrels on the brain.

I surf conservatively through the first section, pumping up a little speed, staying in the trim. In a fatter section, I do a big cutback and steal a view of the curl.

Farther inside, the wave jacks up along the point. I plant a hand in the face—up to the fingertips, up to the wrist, then up to the elbow. Like some amateur, I first try to lean backward into the tube. The nose of my board rises and the hull pushes water. I crouch lower and shuffle a step forward on the deck—my front foot dangerously close to the waxless region.