The Travel Writer

by Jeff Soloway

  “I guess I did.”

  “I got time,” he said quietly, with the patience of those for whom nothing really ever changes.

  “That’s the spirit, Kenny,” I said. The spirit that defeated despair by ceaselessly ignoring it. I hoped that spirit never abandoned him.

  Chapter 22

  We turned out the lights, but I stayed awake, gazing out the window at the stars I could never see in New York. Maybe, after what I’d learned, the Hotel Matamoros could be coaxed or blackmailed into taking on another PR agent, and I could stay here with Pilar and the stars. How could I work for a hotel operated by drug lords? Perhaps instead I could become editor in chief of the English-language Bolivian American, or start a new magazine in nearby Coroico, dedicated to uplifting the Bolivian worker by evangelizing to rich Americans on behalf of Bolivia’s tourist industry. I’d dash off smart puff pieces on helicopter tours over the jungle, horseback treks beside the Rio Vagante, and life-changing epiphanies achieved via Kallawaya; and maybe once an issue, I’d sic the full powers of my lyricism and analysis on some subject not unworthy of The New Yorker’s Far-Flung Correspondent. (A portrait of the descendants of African slaves who still farmed coca in the Yungas? A lament for the dying art of Aymara weaving?) Eventually some Stateside editor would notice my work and take me on. I’d become their Man in Bolivia. Better still, their Man in the Jungle. And even if no one ever noticed me and my writing, it wouldn’t be a bad life. The food would be terrific, assuming the local hotels would feed me. And despite my lack of reputation, I would always be (even if no one back home remembered) the mystery man who abandoned his country for the Andean tropics. I could write a memoir or a screenplay. Learn the names of tropical birds. Finally see a jaguar. Have sex with adventuring guests, if things didn’t work out with Pilar.

  As if anything mattered but Pilar. Not The New Yorker, not a lifetime of the finest freebies in the world. Suddenly, I saw Pilar and my freebie hunting and my dreams of fame all as different weapons in the same struggle against misery and monotony. And even death itself, the ultimate and eternal monotony. When I was polishing off a free steak, or mentally composing a hypothetical Pulitzer acceptance speech, or just talking without anxiety to Pilar—in other words, when I was content, however briefly—the dread was banished, or perhaps just wrapped up and packed safely away. Death itself is universal and undefeatable, but the dread of death is merely human and therefore subject to human mastery. I fought it with travel and freebies, but these remedies were losing their efficacy. I needed Pilar to talk to forever, not just to imagine talking to. I needed a remedy that would never make me feel foolish; therefore I needed her to love me too. I could only hope she needed something from me. She had, after all, called on me in her time of need.

  I heard the click of a lock and a brief whine in the adjacent room. The front door had opened. Footsteps vibrated through my bed or maybe just my imagination. Wait, I commanded myself. It could be a maid entering for a midnight wastebasket clearing. It could be Dionisius. I squirmed within my twelve-hundred-thread-count sheets as I prolonged the anticipation—I knew it wasn’t Dionisius or the maid. Kenny snuffled and turned. He had insisted on sleeping on the foldout love seat beside me in the bedroom. A tap on the bedroom door, like a kick from my heart, and then the door opened. It was her. I scrambled out of the covers, grabbing a handful of coca leaves from the nightstand as I went.

  “Why did you go to bed?” Pilar whispered to me in the outer room, as I eased the bedroom door shut. “I told you to be awake.”

  “It was the only way to get him to go to sleep,” I said. “He likes to stay up.”

  “Follow me.” She turned and stumbled over the electrical cord from the iron, which forced her to hop inelegantly out the door.

  I clapped on my sandals and trotted down the hall after her in my barely respectable cotton sleeping shorts and T-shirt. The recessed hall lights were now emitting a dull, gone-to-bed yellow. We padded single file, silently, like Indians in an old movie sneaking up on the enemy camp. When Pilar turned a corner, I stuffed the wad of coca leaves against my gum and chewed—I wanted to be as sharp as possible, in every way. She stopped before an unmarked door with a security box on it and slipped a card key into it. “Hotel passkey,” she murmured, flashing the card at me like a badge. Was this her room, and so close to mine? It boded well for the rest of the week. Inside was a closet with a boiler. Somehow Pilar wormed her way behind it. I followed, less gracefully. Behind the boiler was a shrunken passageway, as dark as a coffin and not much wider. Pilar pulled out a penlight and moved forward. I followed. My sandals clopped on the floor. The passage twisted and sloped. I had no idea how Pilar was navigating or what she was seeing in front of me. With my free hand I felt the walls and ceiling, cool concrete just inches from my body.

  Pilar stopped short, and my chin clicked against her back. I mumbled an apology. She grunted and pushed, and we stepped outside into a cool forest of stars. We were on a ledge above the gardens, which were gray in the moonlight, like carved stone. I let my vision run up the ramps of the mountains and launch itself into space, up onto the road of the Milky Way. Just one more thing you never see in New York. Pilar sat down on a rock. I turned around. The door was still open behind me, an unhealed wound in the mountain.

  Pilar lit a cigarette.

  “Are you chewing gum?” she said.

  “Coca leaves,” I said. “Helps me think.”

  She took a long drag and blew the smoke out toward the moon.

  “Nothing’s gone well,” she said.

  “It’s not my fault,” I said. “Is it?”

  “No. I’m sick of blaming you, anyway. I used to, all the time.”

  I nodded sympathetically.

  “And my parents. But now I know my life is nobody’s fault but my own.”

  Her despondency surprised me; she had seemed so optimistic earlier, in the hut behind the Kallawaya. But she had been in the same depressive mood in her apartment, the other night. Maybe she needed the sun to burn away her weariness and anxiety.

  “I can help you,” I said. “But you have to tell me the truth.” I paused, to give her a chance to come out with it on her own.

  “You want to see the note from the kidnappers?” she asked.

  “Yes, but first I have a question. Why did you get Ray Quinones a job here?”

  “Ray Quinones? The security guard?”

  “That’s right. He was Hilary’s boyfriend in New York. Didn’t you know that?”

  “No.”

  “How did you know him?” I asked.

  “I met him when I worked for Guilford. When I came up to New York once. I think Hilary put us in touch, but I didn’t know they were that close. He had to go home to Bolivia and he wanted to talk to someone about a job.”

  “I didn’t know he was Bolivian. Neither did Kenny.”

  “Why would he?”

  “Good point. But in New York this guy was a handyman, not a security guard. Why did you get him a job?”

  “He needed one when he came back to Bolivia. What other kind of job could he get? He was smart. And big. He had lived in America.”

  “He doesn’t speak English.”

  “A few words. He tries.”

  “Were you in love with him?”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  Was she lying? I almost hoped so. Then we’d be even. As long as she wasn’t in love with him now. “We need to help each other,” I said.

  “You think I don’t know that? You don’t realize how much I need you. I’m so tired of depending on other people for everything. All I want is my freedom. And here I am buried in this Third World mountain.”

  “Come back to New York with me,” I said. “You can start all over, with me to help. We’ll forget everything here. I only lied to you once. I won’t do it again. I promise. Try to believe me. Everybody lies, but only a few of us come begging for forgiveness afterwards. You can’t hate us all forever.”

  “Sometimes I’m
afraid I can.”

  “Then come to New York. You’ll fit right in.”

  I was hoping she’d smile, but she nodded into her dying cigarette. “Here’s the note from the kidnappers.”

  She handed me a piece of paper and her penlight. The note was in English:

  Dear parents of Hilary Pearson,

  Pay us one million dollars or Hilary will die. Enclosed is a picture. If anyone finds out about this demand or this organization, Hilary will suffer the consequences.

  It was signed “La Organización.”

  “The kidnappers gave this to you?” It seemed a bit matter-of-fact for a ransom note, not that I was an expert.

  “They slipped it under my door when I was out.” She glanced down at the cigarette, now completely cold, and handed me a picture of a dark-haired woman glumly holding up a copy of La Razón. I pulled one of the Hilary’s parents’ flyers out of my pocket and compared the images. It looked like Hilary.

  “Their English isn’t bad,” I said. “But I can’t read the date on the paper.”

  “The headline’s recent. You can go online and look it up on the website. I checked it myself.”

  “But why was this delivered to you?”

  She shrugged and flipped away the cigarette butt like she was tossing a coin.

  “I’m the PR person. They must think I can get the word out to the right people. And Hilary knew me. I was her friend, in a way. Maybe she recommended me. How should I know?” Her voice squeaked in exasperation.

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

  She took the note from me, turned it around, and returned it. It said, “If you tell anyone about this, you die too. We know where you live. We also know”—an address on SW Fourth Street in Miami followed. It looked familiar.

  “My aunt’s house,” Pilar explained.

  The wind rose, shaking the branches on a nearby tree, which made the moon shadows around us dance like boiling water. “What if they’re out here, listening to us?” I asked. “You said they were everywhere.”

  “Nobody knows about this place except me. I told you—I know the secret ways better than anyone. Even them, I hope. But they’re not stupid.”

  I took a deep breath. “I think maybe I know who the kidnappers are. Barrientos is a Condepa hack. I think Condepa traffics cocaine and uses this hotel to launder the money. Somehow Hilary found out what they were doing, so they kidnapped her. That’s my theory. But I don’t know how the security guard fits in. Maybe you can help me find out.”

  She lit another cigarette and stared down at its tip. Her face glowed a sunset red.

  “That’s a stupid theory,” she said.

  “It’s a work in progress,” I said defensively. “And there’s no doubt about Barrientos and Condepa. You must have known about him. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Of course I knew. It helps to have a party connection in this country. We’re not supposed to talk about it. But he has nothing to do with Hilary. Where would you get such a crazy idea?”

  “Because political thugs don’t normally become hotel general managers—or the other way around.”

  “And the hotel laundering drug money?”

  “That’s what my sources tell me.”

  “What sources?”

  I pictured the manager of the Gran Hotel París marching in with her hands on her hips to set Pilar straight. “Lots of sources.”

  “They can’t be reliable.”

  “Why not? You know something else, don’t you? Why won’t you tell me? You said Hilary was your friend. What do you mean by that? You had drinks with her on Guilford trips? We all had drinks on Guilford trips. Did you have something to do with Hilary’s disappearance?”

  I wished she understood just how much she could trust me, but I couldn’t explain without making clear that I suspected her story up to now was a lie. I could take anything from her, even the knowledge that she was in league with the kidnappers, just as she was in league with Arturo, though I knew that if she had done something criminal, I should stop asking her questions, so I couldn’t later be accused of knowingly harboring a fugitive. No, I should find out the truth, and afterward, we’d have to get married; no husband can be forced to testify against his wife.

  “What are you talking about? Of course not. I received the note just before I left for New York, and I told you about it as soon as I could. I needed someone to come and help me, someone I could trust.”

  Pride surged within me, and pity—Pilar must be very lonely if I was the best she could do.

  “And it had to be someone who could pretend to write some fluff for us,” she added. “So Soldán would believe me.”

  Right. She had needed a travel writer.

  “This is what you have to do, Jacob,” she said. “Take the message back to Hilary’s parents. They have money. They can pay the ransom, and then Hilary will be safe and so will I.”

  “Safe from what? Who are these people?”

  “I’m not sure. But I know I’m afraid of them.”

  “Then why don’t you just leave? Go back to the States.”

  “They’d meet me—at the airport, at the border, wherever. You don’t understand. I’ve never felt like this in my life.”

  “They scare you more than Dionisius?”

  “Yes. Maybe. I guess I’m afraid of everybody. I just want it to be over. I’m sorry I brought you into this.”

  “I’m not sorry. I’ll get you out somehow. And then maybe we can try again. In New York.”

  She smiled feebly, and unconsciously brought her index finger to her mouth. I realized she was biting her nails, and for some reason my hopes soared.

  “When I’m with you I feel like I can’t be depressed or bored,” I said. “Didn’t you feel that way with me? I’m so afraid of getting older and more bored and miserable, Pilar, until one day it’ll be all over, and I’ll die knowing I did everything wrong. But when I’m with you it’s like we’re fighting off boredom. Fighting off death. The two of us together.”

  I was glad I said it, though I wished I hadn’t made us sound like superheroes.

  “No, Jacob. That’s not it.” She shook her head, and for a moment it was as if we were back in a hotel room on a Guilford trip, arguing companionably late at night. “The only thing that fights off boredom is freedom. And the only way to be truly free, to be independent and not to worry, is to have money. Don’t call me a Republican. My father was a socialist, you know, like half of Spain. All work at someone else’s command is drudgery. Misery.”

  “I don’t work for anyone else,” I said. “And I’m not happy.”

  “Because you’re still poor. You think you live like a prince, and you do, but only for a few days at a time, and then you’re stuck back in Queens. We’re both servants who live in the palace. That doesn’t make us kings.”

  “Maybe you need them both,” I said. “Love and freedom.” Perhaps we could compromise.

  “Maybe. Yes. I think you’re right. Jacob, let’s try to do something complicated, you and me.”

  “What?”

  “I have an idea, a brilliant idea, Jacob. A way out of this for you and me … and Hilary.”

  Her words quivered with a strange new energy.

  “What?”

  “I have to talk to somebody first, to secure an agreement, but I promise I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

  “You’re putting me off again?”

  “I need to arrange it, Jacob,” she said. “If you can hang on until tomorrow, I’ll show you something that will take away your every doubt. The kidnappers—I think I can show you who they are. Safely.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll have to persuade them. Can you wait until the morning? I’ll contact you in your room by eleven—noon at the latest. I have more work to do tonight and I’ll need to sleep. I don’t have to be in La Paz until the evening, so I’m not planning to leave before one tomorrow.”

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to be here. Soldán told me—”<
br />
  “He can’t know I’m here. No one can.”

  “No one like Dionisius?”

  “For example.”

  “What if they find you?”

  “No one’s looking for me. And besides, I’m very careful. Don’t worry, Jacob. Just be careful yourself.”

  We stepped back into the hill, and she pulled the door shut on the stars and the moonlight. I followed her back through the tunnels to my room. At my door she whispered her regrets and left me.

  But this time I was not to be put off so easily. I waited until she turned the corner and then followed. The carpet silenced my footsteps as I stalked her from far behind. She never thought to turn around. Her featureless form ahead of me was like a memory. How much had she changed in the last year? Had I ever really known her? We never know anyone. People reveal themselves to us slowly and incompletely over months, years, even decades. We never even know ourselves. What once we approved of becomes unbearable; what we despised becomes strangely persuasive. We blame time and the world for changing on us, but really we ourselves have betrayed our beliefs.

  The corridor forked and twisted; I lagged behind on the straightaways and speed-walked ahead when she vanished behind a curve. She kept to the main passages always, moving, as near as I could tell, away from the heart of the hotel. Finally she paused before a door, and I slipped behind a corner. I heard an electronic squawk and peeked to see her open the door and disappear behind it. I darted ahead and was able to jam my sandal in the doorway just in time. Then I passed through myself.

  I was in a glassed-in corridor, an enclosed walkway stretching between the peaks of the mountain. The ceiling was also glass. Above and all around me were the stars, so numerous and so bright that they faintly lit the velvet valleys below. Cold air pricked my ears, fingers, and face. As I ventured out into the middle, I tensed my body against the stiff night breeze, but there wasn’t even a draft through the glass. The floor was carpeted. I glided forward, following Pilar’s shadow farther on.

  The glass walls and ceiling ended, and the walkway widened. I could perceive on the wall beside me the outline of a beast like a llama but more upright. An alpaca. I realized we were in the new wing of the hotel, the one they had closed to save on heat and maintenance. The overhead lights in this corridor were even dimmer than in the old wing; only one in five was lit, perhaps for the odd worker or for emergencies. Far up ahead, Pilar stopped; I crushed myself against a doorway. She rapped at a door and opened it with her passkey. A light shone from the room, she slipped inside, and then nothing more could be heard through the soundproof walls. I walked faster. Here was the answer. I would knock and announce myself, and all would be revealed. Once admitted into the circle of truth, I was sure I could never be expelled.