The Travel Writer

by Jeff Soloway

  “To Kenny?” I said.

  At the sound of his name, Kenny stiffened.

  “No,” I said. “It has nothing to do with Kenny. He’s just my friend. He helped me find this place. He’ll go back to his room now. Back to sleep.”

  “He cannot leave,” said Dionisius.

  He stared at Kenny, whose truly sleepy eyes were now bulging at me, bursting with confusion and the secret. I knew that all Kenny wanted was to read my mind, to pick from it a few words of advice and comfort. I couldn’t help resenting his helplessness. Who did I have to look to? Still I nodded slightly, to acknowledge his terror and remind him he wasn’t cast adrift.

  “What’s he saying?” asked Kenny.

  I wished I could approach Kenny, so I wouldn’t have to toss my English across the room, past the dangerous gaze of Dionisius and Arturo, but my feet had seeped into the carpet and were stuck.

  “You don’t understand me. I have evidence back in my room. Let’s go there.” I hoped we would be safer in the main, occupied part of the hotel.

  “Liar!” said Dionisius. “Your friend knows what happened.”

  Dionisius examined Kenny through the dimness as a commando sizes up the nearby hill he’s been ordered to secure. Arturo’s gaze followed.

  “You son of a bitch,” I said to Dionisius. “You killer. Will you kill him too?”

  “Not if he tells the truth,” said Dionisius.

  Kenny scratched his nose with a long, broomstick finger. “What did he say?” he asked.

  “Enough,” said Dionisius.

  “Wait,” said Arturo, but Dionisius had already started toward Kenny.

  “Arturo, they’re hidden in the other room,” I blurted out. “Hilary Pearson and Ray Quinones. Go now and look. Tell him to leave Kenny alone.”

  Dionisius halted just in front of Kenny. Arturo shot Dionisius one last lingering glare, then sidled to the door, flung it open, and plunged inside.

  Kenny tried to leap after him, but Dionisius caught him by the shirt and spiked him like a football to the floor. He lay there stunned, his limbs jumbled. Then he opened his eyes, which immediately, infuriatingly, sought mine.

  “I see nothing,” Arturo called.

  “Kenny, don’t!” I said.

  Kenny scrambled to his feet and stumbled backward into the ironing board, near me. It quivered but stood. The iron’s dangling cord, a thin black snake in the darkness, swung with the motion, counting the seconds.

  Dionisius stepped toward Kenny, intently, almost delicately. He was just beside me. I could see the short bristles of hair on his neck, shining in the candlelight. Perhaps he had just had a haircut. I tried to tell myself to concentrate, but I wasn’t sure what I should be concentrating on. The pendulum was slowing. Soon it would be barely stirring. A thud came from the bedroom.

  “Come out!” came Arturo’s muffled bark, from within the bedroom.

  “Kenny, no!” I cried.

  With a swift intake of breath, Kenny slung his skinny fist at Dionisius’s head. It wouldn’t have mattered even if it had landed. Dionisius blocked the blow with his left forearm, and then with his right hand grabbed Kenny, whirled him around, and shoved him to the floor across the room.

  Kenny lifted his head, again looking for me. He was cornered now, on the opposite side of the room from me. I did this, I thought. I did this too.

  Dionisius observed him for just an instant, then pulled something out of his pocket. It glinted in his hand.

  I picked up the iron from the ironing board. The room seemed as wide as the ocean as I started across it. At the last instant, Dionisius must have heard me coming, because he turned his head to look, and the flat of the iron landed directly on his face. He roared and toppled over, cramming his hands to his face, a gun still entwined in his fingers. Blood flowed through his fingers over his hands and his shirt. I must have broken his nose.

  “Run,” I said. Kenny dashed through the doorway and halted, befuddled, in the corridor, flipping his gaze from side to side; then he turned and ran. Dionisius removed his hands from his face, revealing a gargoyle, black-smeared with blood. He was between me and the door. I didn’t even have the iron, which had slipped from my hand. I backed into the wall. He lifted the gun.

  Arturo was in the bedroom doorway.

  “Stop!” he cried.

  Dionisius roared again and aimed, and a crack, like the sound of the air itself tearing, almost knocked me over. But it was Dionisius who pitched sideways and crashed to the floor. I couldn’t hear if he cried out. Human material was oozing from his chest. He wasn’t moving. I looked at Arturo. He was lowering a gun. He had shot his comrade.

  “Son of a bitch!” he said, and crossed the room to crouch before Dionisius.

  My fingers were curled into fists. I relaxed them and let my fingertips feel the surface of the wall behind me; it was rougher than I expected, unglossy paint, hard to wash. They’d have to clean the whole room, maybe repaint it, or just give up on it completely as cursed, make it a linen closet or maids’ dormitory. The iron I’d dropped was lying on its side like a kicked-off shoe. Arturo was still crouching.

  “Is he dead?” I asked.

  “How could he be alive?” Arturo sprang up. “This is your fault.”

  “How my fault?” My heart rate was returning to normal. I couldn’t believe I was alive.

  “You forced me to do this. Son of a bitch North American!”

  “You saved the hotel,” I said. “If another American had been killed here, the place would have been finished. And this is justice. He killed Pilar. You know that.”

  “Of course I know that. Now shut up or I’ll shoot you too. Bring those two idiots over here.”

  “Come out, Hilary!” I called into the bedroom. “It’s all right. I’m going to take you home. Are you in the bathroom? Come out, both of you. You can’t stay there forever.”

  I heard a low but frantic mumbling within.

  “If he wanted to shoot you he could shoot you through the door. Or get a friend to kick it in first. Come out.”

  Hilary emerged with her hands up, as she had seen in movies. Ray was trembling all over.

  “Sit down,” ordered Arturo.

  “I’m going for Kenny,” I said to Arturo. “I’ll be back.”

  I knew he couldn’t have gone far without the passkey. He was crouching by the door to the wing, trying to hide in the shadows. All the doors had been locked to him.

  “It’s me, Kenny. It’s all right.”

  “What happened?”

  “Arturo helped us out. We got him, Kenny. Dionisius. He’s dead. You helped.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I tried to hit him.”

  “I saw you.”

  “He’s a big guy, but I tried. Why did I try? I don’t even care anymore. I’m not gonna waste my time. She’s got a boyfriend. She’s not worth it. Right? Let’s just go home.”

  He made no move to stand up.

  “We’ll go home. I promise.”

  “Ray’s not dead. And she’s not dead, right? That’s not what I want. I want to get her out. That’s what I came to do. After that I don’t care anymore. Let’s go home.”

  I helped him up.

  Back in the room, Arturo had Ray on his knees, mopping up what he could with toilet paper and tissues from the bathroom, while Arturo himself lit more candles and placed them on the floor around the corpse, so Ray could see what he was doing. It wouldn’t be easy to lug the body out of the building; perhaps they’d bundle it in more blankets and strap it to a handcart.

  “Why did you kill him?” Hilary asked Arturo in Spanish.

  “He was about to kill Kenny and me,” I told her.

  “I didn’t kill him,” said Arturo. “He did.” Arturo waved at me with the gun. I tried not to flinch.

  “This is the plan,” Arturo went on. “I want you all to listen! I am going to tell Barrientos what happened. That you grabbed his gun in the struggle, after you pegged
him with the iron. With the iron! Very macho. Don’t touch it. It still has blood on it. My evidence. I only arrived much later, after you had run off. Yes, and I’ll throw my gun and his in the river.”

  He nodded to himself. “It’s a good plan,” he said. “You, the American, will be the killer, Dionisius died bravely as he was investigating the false kidnapping, and the supposed kidnapped victim escapes alive. You three Americans can leave, but quickly. If Barrientos finds you, you die too, for killing Dionisius. Barrientos is not as reasonable as I am. Don’t leave through the lobby. His men are there.”

  “We’ll find another way,” I said.

  “And Ray?” asked Hilary.

  “He stays to clean this mess with me,” said Arturo. “And you go home.”

  He waved his gun again to emphasize his insistence, not threateningly but not idly either.

  “Yes. You go home and tell everybody that you were hiding, and then became tired of hiding and decided to return home. That is your story. The hotel was not at fault; you were not kidnapped; you were only hiding. That is what you tell everybody. Your lover stays with me. If you tell a different story, then he dies, I swear it.”

  Chapter 26

  As we left, Ray was too stunned even to look up from his mopping to say goodbye to his lover. All Hilary brought with her was her passport and her wallet.

  It was 4:30 A.M. We returned to our room to grab our passports from the room safe. All the lights were on; our clothes were strewn about, as if they’d been spat from the flung-open closet doors; the furniture had been yanked out of position. Dionisius had come here first tonight.

  “How did they find us?” asked Hilary as we crammed stuff in our packs. “Did they follow you?”

  “They’ve been combing the hotel. They saw me near the Alpaca Wing last night. I thought they’d find you soon. I took the risk to find out what Pilar was hiding.”

  “That dead man killed Pilar?”

  “Yes.”

  She sat down and bent her head so that her hair fell around her face like a dark veil. In the heavy light of the room, she looked thin and pale, wasted by boredom and worry.

  We left the room. On our way through the hall we passed a maid, the first woman up in the morning. She smiled and wrapped her skirt tight to shrink herself as we passed.

  “Permiso,” she said to me. “Señor Esmalls?” She held up a finger, as if she had a message for me. Had the staff been told to look for us?

  I shook my head. She took out a Nextel from her apron. I kept walking. From farther behind I heard another voice, a male voice, not Kenny’s, shouting “Stop!”

  I turned a corner and ran, hearing only Kenny’s following thunder behind me. And Hilary’s.

  I used Pilar’s passkey to slip through the door she had shown me, just last night. We struggled past the boiler and into the passage behind it. There was no light, but I knew it was a straight shot ahead. I grabbed Hilary’s hand like a lover and pulled her along, my other hand sliding forward on the wall to guide us. Behind us, Kenny yelped. He must have bashed his head. Finally my knuckles knocked on something hard. Far behind us I heard a door open and could suddenly make out my fingers in the gloom. I shoved the door ahead, and we were through into the cool air. It was almost sunrise. I shut the door.

  “Where now?” asked Hilary.

  “Down,” I said.

  On a terrace high above us someone pointed and shouted.

  We ran past the altars and down the hillside gardens, shouldering through shrubbery and trampling priceless tropical flowers, their bold colors a pewtery gray in the gathering predawn light. With his gasping breaths and heavy footfalls, Kenny sounded like a charging bison, but I couldn’t spare the breath to shush him. Hilary kept close behind me. Or maybe she just wanted me to take the first bullet. I didn’t know where we were going, but I knew that the road and the river were below, so I followed gravity and kept blundering down. Then the gardens were behind us and we had to slalom through an orchard of trees. Coffee? Banana? How big was this orchard?

  We moved as fast as we could, waving our arms before us to intercept the branches whipping at our eyes. There was no wind, no sighing of the branches, and as yet no clamor of pursuit behind us. But they’d be coming. Back in the garden, we must have left a Sherman’s swath of destruction to follow. Or maybe they were ahead. Maybe they had a helicopter. There was a helipad at the hotel. I glanced up. You’d hear a helicopter, wouldn’t you?

  It seemed that we spent years pushing through the trees, until the adrenaline wore off and my arms felt as heavy as clubs. At last there were no more branches. We were at the road. The clouds and the pink dawn made the sky as blotchy as the face of a feverish child. Kenny leaned back against a tree and puffed for his life. I sat down at the roadside and saw black fireworks. Now that my legs had stopped I could feel their electrified trembling. What a stupid place for a rest, I thought. We couldn’t stay by the road. But how else could we get to Coroico? I didn’t know any other path through the wilderness. As soon as I got my breath back I’d make a decision.

  “Where are we going?” asked Kenny, between puffs.

  “The nearest village.”

  “Then what?” asked Hilary.

  “Back to La Paz.”

  Kenny slid his butt down the tree trunk until he was sitting and folded his arm around his eyes. He probably hadn’t exerted himself this much since high school gym class.

  I had just gathered enough of my reluctant strength to stand when I heard what at first sounded like the wind rising and then the rumble of an engine. Hilary darted away, and I pulled Kenny behind a tree. It wasn’t big enough to hide both of us. I started to drag him farther back into the orchard when I realized the vehicle was coming from the other direction, not from the hotel, and it wasn’t an SUV or a minivan.

  It was an open-backed fruit pickers’ truck, loaded with laborers, tottering over the rise. The first truck of the morning back to La Paz. Kenny gasped as I jogged out to the middle of the road and flagged it down.

  It groaned to a halt, and the driver leaned out the window, his eyebrows squished together less in annoyance than in incredulity. In the growing daylight I could see the muck on my arms and pant legs. I flicked a wet leaf from my shirt and waved Kenny and Hilary over.

  “Good morning.” I forced myself to speak slowly. “Can you take me and my friends to La Paz?”

  The driver said nothing. Kenny’s backside was glistening with wet mud and grass; he must have slipped on the way down. Hilary stood beside him.

  “Please,” she said.

  “I’ll pay you twenty dollars,” I added.

  I pulled a crumpled bill out of my pocket, smoothed it ingratiatingly on the truck’s filthy hood, and handed it up like a prayer. Twenty dollars was more money than any of those laborers made in a week. It bought us each a square foot in the back of the truck.

  * * *

  The bumps, backfires, and engine roar rendered conversation impossible. I would have been grateful had I not been devoting all my concentration to not throwing up. The overpowering smell of exhaust and people wasn’t helping my efforts. Kenny, to my surprise, seemed to bear the ride easily, perhaps because he had ridden rush-hour subway cars all his life. He even tried speaking to me over the chaos, but I couldn’t listen. His fair face rose over everyone else’s like a white flag. What if someone saw him and stopped us? But no one did. The truck never stopped at all, not even at Chuspipata; perhaps it was too early for the soldiers to be up. Hilary huddled in the corner; the other riders gallantly allowed her a few extra inches of space. We all got splashed when the truck thundered under a waterfall, but we dried quickly in the sun. In El Alto, the driver let most of the men off and I managed to suppress my queasiness enough to leap off and negotiate a ride to the airport for another twenty dollars. The driver might have done it for free, but I wasn’t taking any chances. The snobby airport guards refused to permit a clattering truck driven by an Indian to pass the security gate, so the three o
f us climbed down and trotted the rest of way, gasping in the thin air, looking in all directions for we didn’t know what. I had felt so much safer in the truck, despite the nausea.

  “I have to call Ray,” said Hilary, inside the sanctuary of the terminal. “I can’t just abandon him.”

  “Leave Ray alone if you want him to live,” I said. “All you can do is go home.”

  “We should have taken him with us.”

  “Arturo wouldn’t have let us. He’s holding Ray hostage to make sure you don’t say anything stupid to the media. Just go home and tell everyone you dropped out of sight for a few months until you got sick of it. You were staying with a man you don’t want to talk about. You’re sorry, and now you’re home.”

  “My parents, my friends, my boss—they’re supposed to buy that?”

  “Why not? It’s just about the truth. Anyway, you better hope they believe it, if you want Ray to live.”

  “When can I see him again?”

  The answer was too obvious to state. “Do you have any money?”

  Through all her hardships, she had managed to hang on to her parents’ credit card. “They must have canceled it by now,” she said.

  “Maybe not. They were hoping someone would use it, someone they could track down. Preferably you.”

  We spent some time cleaning ourselves up in the bathroom before attempting to haggle with the ticket agents. We bought Hilary a pair of sunglasses and a cap to tuck her hair under so she wouldn’t resemble the Missing picture. I decided we should split up, for Kenny’s sake—he winced whenever he glanced at her, which was every five seconds. I gave her enough cash for eggs at the café and a copy of USA Today and told her we’d see her later on the plane. She said she wasn’t hungry, so we left her browsing listlessly through sweaters at a gift shop and went to arrange our return home.

  The LAB agents in Bolivia were, as always, solicitous of American passengers; our agent professed (in English no less) to be delighted to change my ticket, though she let slip that today’s flight to Miami featured a stopover in Manaus, Brazil, thus adding several hours to the flight time. No wonder she had space. She let Kenny change his bucket-shop ticket too, but charged him $150. I expected a tantrum, but he just pulled out a credit card. I was half surprised he had a credit card. I wondered if Hilary would find changing her ticket as easy. Probably—as far as a gate agent was concerned, she was just another name on a computer, that of a rich, idle American who had missed her flight weeks ago.