"It"s only eight hours," I said. "We should be there by midnight. Maybe we can sleep."
She stuck her head out the window again, like a dog addicted to the wind. "I don"t think I"ll ever sleep again."
"Tell me about it," I said.
TWENTY-ONE.
The City of Rats.
I looked down at La Paz from the lookout point where the bus had stopped. A city of gnawing, chewing, eat-anything, eat-everything rats. Indestructible, high-alt.i.tude varmints that cannot be shot, beaten, trapped, poisoned or killed. c.o.c.kroaches with teeth and tails.
The bus ride had taken longer than eight hours. More like fourteen. Why couldn"t we go faster? Victor kept wondering. The clock was ticking. When we stopped for gas in the middle of the night, I peered back down the highway. The helmeted motorcyclist got off his bike for a p.i.s.s.
"Still with us," I said, returning to my seat.
"Else is new," Victor said, his socks draped across his face in a vain attempt to repel the odor.
At dawn the bus began to crawl its way uphill, up the switchbacks, up the outside of the crater in which La Paz sits. The city lay below us now, the worst-named city in the world. La Paz. Peace. Lights extinguished themselves as night gave way to day. Along the rim opposite us crowded the slums of El Alto. In the midst of the slums, an airplane took off from the world"s highest airport, bound for better climes, or at least lower alt.i.tudes. At the bottom of the crater squatted the city center.
A grunt of pleasure at my feet. A Bolivian woman sat on her haunches by the side of the road. She wore a black bowler hat three sizes too small. Long fake braids dangled to her waist. Her blue hoop skirt piled up around her, and a trickle of diarrhea formed a puddle between her ankles. She grinned at me. I spat in the dust.
Victor put his hands in his pockets, shivered in the cold. "Can you handle this?" he asked.
"Why shouldn"t I?"
"I know what happened." He put his hand on my shoulder. "She told me."
"You know nothing." I jerked my shoulder away. I spat again. "We need that jeep. Let"s get this over with."
I stepped up into the bus, turned back to Victor. A red pen light danced on his jacket.
"Watch out!"
He glanced down at the laser beam aimed at his heart. He chuckled. "They"re not going to kill us. Not here. They could"ve taken out the whole bus on the highway. But they didn"t, did they? They want us alive. So they can follow us." He gestured an open palm at the motorcyclist, and shrugged. He climbed aboard the bus.
"All the same, this is getting tiresome," I said.
"Agreed."
We descended into the madness, inched through traffic, edged our automotive might past the horse-drawn coca leaf vendors, the garbage scavengers, and the rest of the flotsam and jetsam of this remote Andean outpost.
"How long"s the drive to the mine?" Aurora asked.
"Half a day or so."
"We"ll need supplies." I thought of the canned spinach and containers of water we"d left in the boat by the beach, abandoned when the barn blew up.
Victor nodded. "Gasoline, too."
My nose itched. "Should get some c.o.ke as well," I said, looking out the windows at carts piled high with bright green coca leaves. Without my regular dose of cocaine it had been impossible to stay awake on the bus. My withdrawal left a dull ache in my soul. "Something for the alt.i.tude, no?"
On the bus the night before, I woke to screams. For a change they weren"t mine. Heavy peasant boots kicked the back of my seat, accompanied by a muttered oath in Spanish to shut the f.u.c.k up. Aurora quivered against me.
"What"s the matter?" I asked.
She pressed herself tighter into me, like she wanted to disappear. Squeezed me for hours. I held her. Stroked her face. Wiped away her silent tears. Told her that everything would be all right, that no one was going to hurt her. Dawn fluttered orange-and-purple streaks across her face before she spoke.
"Nightmare," she mumbled.
"You want to talk about it?"
She exhaled a shuddering breath. "Pile of bodies," she said. "But all of them look like Sven. I hold out my hands in horror. And I have a gun. Like Victor"s gun. It was me that killed him. Killed them all."
"That"s terrible," I said. The sound of the road under the wheels of the bus lowered in pitch. We lurched up a steep incline.
"It was awful." Her fingernails dug into my side. A yellow braid attacked my chin.
"It was just a dream," I said. I stroked her face once more, cupped her cheek in my hand. I said, "I have dreams too."
She lifted her head. "Do you?"
I nodded.
She buried her face in my sweater. "Thank you."
"Don"t worry about it."
The bus vibrated, shook us in our seats.
"Can I ask you something?" she said.
"What"s that?"
She loosened her fingernails, rested an open palm against my chest. "Who was your loss?"
I sat up. She pulled away. Her eyelids hung crooked, trying to stay awake. I was suddenly cold. Huddled together, we had warmed each other.
"Why do you want to know?" I asked.
She fumbled with her hands, trying to get the words right. "On the island. The stairs. You said I weren"t-wasn"t-the only one who ever lost somebody."
Sleep still fogged my brain. Holding her had soothed me. Not just brute animal friction, with a wh.o.r.e, or with Lynn. Not hurried, desperate, grief-infused s.e.x on the beach. Aurora needed my help. I could no longer say the same for Kate, I realized.
"I"m sorry," I said. "I was harsh with you, wasn"t I?"
"That"s OK," she said quickly. "It"s just I...I"d like to...to know what happened."
"Would you?" I peeked at her sideways.
She lay a cold hand against my cheek. "It would make me feel better."
I stared at the stained seat in front of me. And hesitated. Unlike the others, I wanted her to like me. Then I told her anyway. Everything. The hostel. Kate. The baby. La Paz. My swan dive into the open sewer that was Lima. When I finished, she sat silent for a long while. She would hate me now. She would judge me. Like everyone else.
"Well?" I said, as roughly as I dared.
She took my hand. Tears dripped down the outside of her nose. She said, "That"s the saddest story I ever heard," and kissed me on the forehead.
The bus weaved its way through traffic in La Paz, heading for the terminal. I leaned out the window, haggling with a coca vendor. My five dollars wasn"t going to be enough.
"Won"t revenge taste sweeter with a clear head?" Victor asked.
Aurora spoke first. "It isn"t revenge I want."
"Hang on," I said. "I thought that was the point."
"Sven is gone and isn"t coming back. Neither," and she clutched my wrist and held it, her fingers taking my pulse, "neither is your friend Pitt."
I shook my head, chased away the memory of last night. "What changed?" I asked. "What happened to "kill the f.u.c.kers"?"
She said, "Remember my nightmare?"
"What nightmare?" Victor asked.
I nodded. "The one she had last night."
"How many people do we have to kill to equal that body count?" she said. "We"re talking about ma.s.s murder. How many is enough? When do we stop?"
"As many as it takes," I said.
"But what does that make us? Make me? I don"t want to be that person. I couldn"t live with myself."
"Then why are we doing this?" I asked.
Aurora shut her eyes. "Because stopping the war is the right thing to do."
I ruminated on that. Revenge was the only thing that gave me hope. A reason to live. Pitt"s own father had killed him. Justice demanded a life for a life. I sat sideways, gazed at Aurora"s silent features. Suppose you manage to find him and kill him, I asked myself. What then?
What then?
"What is the right thing to do?" I whispered at last. But no one answered.
The cab driver swerved around a mule-drawn cart piled high with dirty cardboard, swore in Quechua at the muleteer. He splashed the tiny taxi through a puddle of llama dung, and turned the corner onto Calle Villacabamba, the city"s main avenue.
"Guys." Aurora tugged at my sleeve.
"Was it jealousy?" I asked Victor. "Or just business?"
"What"s that?" he said.
"The Americans killed Pitt. Right?"
"Correct."
"So Ambo had his own son killed."
"Guys!" Aurora tugged again at my sleeve. I waved her away.
Victor said, "Adopted son."
"Still. The man ordered the execution of both his wife-"
"-who you admit you were s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g-"
"-and his own son. The mind boggles. I just can"t get my head around it."
Victor reclined in the backseat of the taxi. He ran his fingers through his combover, trying to separate the dreadlocked chunks into more presentable waves. Shrugged. "Ruthless men for ruthless times. What do you expect?"
"Guys!" Aurora clawed my knee with her fingernails.
"What already?"
She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. Several cars behind us, the black motorcycle idled in heavy traffic. Despite ample s.p.a.ce between the lanes to pa.s.s, as other scooters were doing, he seemed content to hang back. Like he wanted us to know he was following us.
"Still there," I said.
Victor rubbed his hands together, a smile forming on his lips. "Not for long."
"What do you have in mind?"
"You"ll see." He tapped the driver on the shoulder. "Choffer."
"Si?"
"Turn here, please."
The cab ducked down a steep alleyway and emerged into a narrow lane. Metal shanties surrounded us on both sides. Dried herbs hung from their eaves. Under cover hung the main course: llama fetuses dangling from wooden beams.
Aurora clapped her hands. "Calle de los Brujos!"
"The Witches" Market," I said. "You know it?"