The Ruins (35 page)

 He
should've brought the knife with him. Eric was going to keep
cutting himself, unless the others stopped him, and Jeff
didn't trust Amy and Mathias to do this. He was losing them,
he knew. Only twenty-four hours and already they were acting like
victims—slope-shouldered, blank-faced. Even Mathias seemed to
have retreated somehow, over the course of the morning, grown passive,
when Jeff needed him to be active.

 He
should've known it wasn't a cell phone in the
shaft; he should've anticipated such a turn of events, or
something like it. He wasn't thinking as clearly as he ought
to, and he knew this would only lead to peril. The vine
could've easily eaten the rope, but it hadn't. It
had left it untouched on the windlass, which meant that it had wanted
them to drop back into the hole, and Jeff should've seen
this, should've understood that it could only mean one thing,
that the chirping sound was a trap. The vine could move and think and
mimic different noises—not just the cell phone but the birds,
too. Because it must've been the vine that had cried out like
that to warn the Mayans as he'd crept down the hill the
previous evening, and he should've realized this also.

 He
was getting sloppy. He was losing control, and he didn't know
how to reclaim it.

 Stacy
came into sight, sitting hunched under her sunshade, facing the
clearing, the Mayans, the jungle beyond. She didn't hear Jeff
approach, didn't turn to greet him, but it wasn't
until he was nearly upon her that he understood why. She was sitting
cross-legged, slumped forward, the umbrella propped on her shoulder,
her eyes shut, her mouth hanging ajar: she was sound asleep. Jeff stood
for nearly a minute, staring down at her, his hands on his hips. His
first flash of anger at her negligence passed in an instant; he was too
worn-out to sustain it. He knew it didn't really matter, not
in any practical sense. If the Greeks had arrived, they
would've called out as soon as they'd glimpsed her
sitting here, would've roused her while they were still far
enough away to be stopped. And, more to the point, the Greeks
hadn't arrived, probably weren't ever going to. So
there was no place for anger here; it came and went, brief as a
shudder.

 Her
umbrella was angled the wrong way, its circle of shade only covering
the upper half of her body, leaving her lap, her crossed legs, exposed
to the noontime sun. Her feet, in their mud-stained sandals, were
burned all the way up to the ankle—a deep, raw-meat red. They
were going to blister later, then peel, a painful process. If it were
Amy, this would involve a prodigious amount of
complaining—tears, even, at times—but Stacy, Jeff
knew, probably wouldn't even notice, let alone mention it.
This was part of that spacey quality of hers, a sort of disassociation
from her body. Jeff often found it hard to resist comparing her to Amy.
He'd met them together, had lived in the same dorm with them
his freshman year, one floor down, directly beneath their room.
He'd come up late one evening to complain about a pounding
noise and found them in their pajamas, crouched above a small pile of
wood with a hammer and nails and a sheet of instructions written in
Korean. It was a bookshelf Amy had purchased over the Internet, very
cheap, not realizing she'd have to put it together herself.
Jeff ended up building it for them; in the process, they'd
all become friends. For a short period, it wasn't even clear
which of them he was courting, and he supposed that this was part of
what made it so difficult for him to stop looking at them in a
comparative way, weighing their differences, one against the other.

 In
the end, Amy had won him with her personality—she was so much
more solid than Stacy, more grounded, more dependable, despite her
complaining—but, in a purely physical sense, Stacy had
actually been the one he'd found more attractive. It was
something about her dark eyes, and the way she could look at you with
them, all of a sudden, a glance that seemed almost painfully open,
hiding nothing. She was sexy, alluringly so, where Amy was merely
pretty. There'd even been a brief period, shortly after he
and Amy had started dating in earnest, when Jeff had entertained the
brief, tawdry fantasy of having an affair with Stacy. Because what had
happened on the beach with Don Quixote wasn't an isolated
occurrence. Stacy had a tendency toward that sort of thing; she was
promiscuous in a sly, helpless way, almost despite herself. She liked
to kiss strange boys, to touch and be touched, especially when
she'd been drinking. Eric knew about some of these
misadventures, but not others. They had fights over the ones he did
discover, screaming and cursing viciously at each other,
only—always—to make up in the end, with Stacy
offering tearful, apparently heartfelt promises, which she'd
inevitably break, sometimes within days. It seemed strange to remember
all this now, especially his fantasy of betrayal, and difficult to
recall exactly how he'd managed to entertain it. Or why, for
that matter. Far away: that was how it felt.

 The
odd thing about Stacy was that, despite the aura of sexuality she
exuded, there was also something strikingly childish about her. Partly
this was a matter of personality—that flightiness, that
preference for play and fantasy over anything that might possibly feel
like work—but it was just as much something physical,
something in the features of her face, the shape of her head, which was
noticeably round, and a little too large for her body, more like a
little girl's than a grown woman's. It was a
quality Jeff doubted she'd ever grow out of. Even if she
survived this place, even if she lived on into a wrinkled, stooping,
shuffling, trembling old age, she'd probably still retain it.
And, of course, it was especially heightened now, with her looking so
defenseless, sunk so deeply in sleep.

 She
shouldn't be
here,
Jeff
thought.
The words rose in his head unsought, startling him. It was true, of
course: None of them should've been there. Yet they were, and
without much prospect, it increasingly appeared, of ever managing to be
anywhere else again. It had been his idea to come to Mexico, his idea
to accompany Mathias on his search for
Henrich
.
Was this what those words were pointing toward, some hesitant
shouldering of responsibility? The vine had taken root on
Stacy's sandals, clinging to the leather like a garland, and
as Jeff began to flirt with this idea, he crouched before her, reaching
to pull the plant free.

 She
woke to his touch, jerking away, scrambling to her feet, dropping her
umbrella: frightened. "What happened?" she asked,
almost shouting the words.

 Jeff
made soothing motions in the air; he would've touched her,
too—grasped her hand, hugged her—but she took a
step backward, moving beyond his reach. "You fell
asleep," he said.

 Stacy
shielded her eyes, struggling to orient herself. The vine was growing
on her clothes, too, Jeff saw. A long tendril hung off the front of her
T-shirt; another trailed down the left leg of her khakis, twining
itself around her calf. Jeff bent, picked up her sunshade, held it out
to her. She stared at it, as if she were having trouble recognizing
it—what it was, how it related to her—then she took
it, propped it on her shoulder. She retreated another
step.
As
if she's frightened of me,
Jeff thought, and felt a
flicker of irritation.

 He
waved up the hill. "You can go back now."

 Stacy
didn't move. She lifted her sunburned foot, scratched
absentmindedly at it. "It was laughing," she said.

 Jeff
just stared at her. He knew what she meant, but he couldn't
think of a way to respond. Something about her, about this encounter
here, was making him conscious of his fatigue. He had to resist the
urge to yawn.

 Stacy
gestured around them. "The vine."

 He
nodded. "We went back down into the shaft. To look for the
cell phone."

 Stacy's
expression changed in an instant—everything did, her posture,
the sound of her voice—animated by hope. "You found
it?"

 Jeff
shook his head. "It was a trap. The vine was making the
noise." He felt as if he'd struck her; the effect
of his words upon her was that dramatic. She slumped, her face going
slack, losing color.

 "I
heard it laughing. The whole hillside."

 Jeff
nodded. "It mimics things." And then, because she
seemed in such need of reassurance: "It's just a
sound it's learned to make. It's not really
laughter."

 "I
fell asleep." Stacy seemed surprised by this, as if she were
talking of someone else. "I was so scared. I
was…" She shook her head, unable to find the right
words, then finished weakly: "I don't know how I
fell asleep."

 "You're
tired. We all are."

 "Is
he okay?" Stacy whispered.

 "Who?"

 "Pablo.
Is he"—and here again, there was that fumbling
search for the proper words—"all right?"

 It
was odd, but it took Jeff a moment to grasp what she was talking about.
He could look down and see the blood spattered on his jeans, but he had
to struggle before he could remember whom it belonged to, or how it had
gotten
there.
Tired
,
he thought, though he knew it was more than that. Inside, he was in
full flight, just like the rest of them. "He's
unconscious," he said.

 "His
legs?"

 "Gone."

 "But
he's alive?"

 Jeff
nodded.

 "And
he's going to be okay?"

 "We'll
see."

 "Amy
didn't stop you?"

 Jeff
shook his head.

 "She
was supposed to stop you."

 "We
were already done."

 Stacy
fell silent at that.

 Jeff
could feel his impatience building again, his frustration with her; he
wanted her to leave. Why wouldn't she leave? He knew what she
was going to say next, guessed at it, waited for it, but was still
taken aback when it came—affronted.

 "I
don't think you should've done it," she
said.

 He
gave a brusque wave, swatting the words aside. "A little late
for that, isn't it?"

 Stacy
hesitated, watching him. Then, seemingly despite herself: "I
just wanted to say it. So you'd know. That I wish
I'd voted the other way. That I didn't want you to
cut them off."

 Jeff
couldn't think how to respond to this. All the options that
presented themselves were unacceptable. He wanted to shout at her, to
shake her by her shoulders, slap her across the face, but he knew that
nothing good would come from any of this. Everyone seemed so intent on
failing him here, on letting him down; they were all so much weaker
than he ever would've anticipated. He was simply trying to do
the right thing, to save Pablo's life, to save them all, and
no one seemed capable of recognizing this, let alone finding the
strength within themselves to help him do any of the difficult things
that needed to be done. "You should get back," he
said finally. "Tell them to give you some water."

 Stacy
nodded, tugging at the tiny vine that clung to her T-shirt. She pulled
it free, and the fabric tore open in a long slit. She wasn't
wearing a bra; Jeff had a brief glimpse of her right breast. It looked
surprisingly like Amy's: the same size, the same shape, but
with a darker nipple, a deep brown, whereas Amy's was the
faintest of pink. Jeff glanced quickly away, the gesture assuming a
life of its own, inertia carrying him onward, turning him around, so
that, without really meaning to, he ended up with his back to her. He
stared across the clearing at the Mayans. Most of them were lying in
the shade along the edge of the jungle now, trying to hide from the
day's heat. Several were smoking, talking among themselves;
others appeared to be napping. They'd let the fire burn down,
banking the embers with ashes. No one was paying Jeff or Stacy any
attention, and he had the brief illusion that he could just stride
across the clearing, walk right through their midst, vanish into the
shadows beneath the trees, and that none of them would stir to stop
him. He knew it for what it was, though, a fantasy, could imagine
easily enough the scramble for their weapons as he started forward, the
shout of warning, the twang of bowstrings, and he felt no impulse to
attempt it.

 He
could see the little boy from the day before, the one who'd
followed them as they'd left the village, riding on the
handlebars of that squeaky bike. He was standing near the remains of
the campfire, trying to teach himself to juggle. He had three fist-size
stones, and he'd toss them one after another into the air,
striving for that smooth circular motion one saw clowns give to balls
and swords and flaming torches. He lacked their grace, though,
couldn't begin to approximate it; he kept dropping the
stones, only to pick them up and immediately try again. After half a
dozen repetitions of this, he sensed Jeff's gaze. He turned,
stared at him, holding his eyes, and this, too, seemed to become a sort
of game, a challenge, both of them refusing to look away. Jeff
certainly wasn't going to be the one to surrender; he was
pouring all his frustration into the encounter, all his fury, becoming
so focused upon it that he hardly registered the sound of Stacy turning
and starting away from him, her footsteps diminishing with each passing
second, before they faded, finally, into silence.

S
tacy found Amy and Eric in the
clearing beside the tent. Amy was sitting on the ground, with her back
to Pablo, clasping her knees to her chest. Her eyes were shut. Eric was
pacing; he didn't even glance at Stacy when she appeared.
There was no sign of Mathias.

 Stacy's
thirst was her first concern. "Jeff said I could have some
water," she announced.