The Tourists

by Jeff Hobbs

  It was almost 11 P.M. when I woke from an alcohol-induced nap, already severely hungover, and through the haze I was trying to figure out where to go from here, what I could do that would erase the summer from my memory.

  I saw Aidan Hoevel passed out in the same chair in front of the window, snoring next to the empty bottle of Grey Goose, his breath thick with vodka even across the room.

  Otherwise, it was silent and dim—the kind of silence that shouldn’t exist in New York City.

  A strange feeling came over me, as if I hadn’t woken up on my own.

  There was another presence in the loft on Warren Street, and I looked up.

  Samona Taylor was standing in front of the elevator.

  I tried to present myself in a way that didn’t appear slovenly and disgusting.

  Samona stood there in the dark. She had changed, even in the few days since we’d gone to The Riverview. There was a weariness draped all over her: circles under her eyes; her dress sagging; her hair in a frizz; her shoulders slumped.

  She was still beautiful—of course she was—but not as beautiful as she’d been before falling in love with Ethan Hoevel.

  What I had to accept—the real reason I was trying so hard to put myself together and failing so miserably—was that Ethan Hoevel affected her in a way that I never could.

  And it became clear to me now, as I squirmed and averted my gaze, that this was exactly why Ethan had lured me into staying at his loft while he was away (and also why it had been so easy for him): he was showing me in no uncertain terms that the world we all lived in now had been designed by him.

  I hadn’t moved since noticing Samona in the room.

  Strangely, neither had she. Finally, she whispered, “He’s out there.”

  “Um…what? Who?” I was slurring.

  “Stanton Vaughn. He’s standing downstairs in the alley. He’s smoking and looking up here.”

  I went to the window, careful to stay out of eyeline with the street, and saw Stanton in his black jacket, just out of the lamplight in the loading alley beside an empty office building.

  I would later blame it on the beer and wine I’d been drinking all afternoon, as well as on my sadness, but faced with the specter of Stanton—alone, in the dark, watching this room—a pure unease gripped me.

  “What do we do?” Samona whispered urgently.

  “I guess we should…stay up here?” I suggested.

  “No, I’m calling 911.” She hurried to the cordless phone holder, but it was empty. “Where’s the phone?”

  I stopped her, taking her wrists in mine, gripping them close to my chest. “Samona.” I tried to comfort her. “It’s just Stanton. I don’t think—I mean, what’s Stanton going to do?”

  “Spend the night in jail, hopefully,” she replied, locking onto the phone that was jammed between Aidan’s thigh and the chair he was sleeping in. She wrenched her hands away from me. “He’s a freak.”

  She moved warily toward Aidan, gripping the phone gently and attempting to slide it out from under him.

  “I wouldn’t wake him right now—”

  He snorted twice, then sat up.

  “What is it, babe?” Aidan hacked up some phlegm, eyes still closed, and reached out to kiss her but stopped when he opened his eyes and almost fell off the chair. “Oh shit,” he blurted out. “I’m sorry—I’m so drunk—”

  “Go back to sleep,” she whispered. “I just need the phone.”

  “You look all freaked,” he observed, then turned to me accusingly. “What’s going on? What did you do, dude?”

  “Nothing, Aidan. You probably should go back to sleep.”

  “Hell no. I’m awake now.”

  “Oh God.” Samona sighed.

  Aidan hopped to his feet but fell down as the blood rushed to his head. He grabbed the chair for support but it was top-heavy and didn’t hold his weight, sending him down to the floor again. He used the windowsill to pull himself up, which was when he looked down and saw Stanton, the tip of his cigarette glowing, then fading, then glowing again, almost rhythmically.

  “Aw, it’s that little fag—” Aidan cut off in order to lean out the window and scream, “What, bitch? You want a piece? Because I’ll come down there and beat your ass!”

  Stanton didn’t move. He just stood there.

  “Aidan, he carries a switchblade!” was all I could think to say.

  “And he also used to fuck my brother. I don’t give a shit.” Then to himself, Aidan muttered, “Wait, I’ve got a sweet idea.”

  His words hung in the air, and I turned toward Samona.

  “Samona—” I cut myself off because I didn’t know what would come out.

  She walked quickly into Ethan’s bedroom and locked the door.

  I stumbled across the room as it closed, pressing myself up against the opaque fiberglass.

  “Samona,” I cried.

  “You know what?” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  I couldn’t say anything. I could hear her packing her things.

  “Why are you out there?” she asked. “What are you doing out there?”

  I didn’t know. I couldn’t protect her anymore.

  I took a deep breath and managed to say, “Ask me what you want to know, and I’ll tell you.”

  “Goddammit, leave me alone,” I heard. That her voice was breaking didn’t lessen the pain it inflicted. “You think it’s not too late for that? You think I didn’t already know anyway? You think I’m that stupid? God, we’re not having this conversation. So just go away.” She pounded her fist abruptly against the inside of the door. “Why are you here? Why are you always around?”

  This was the moment when I heard footsteps and muffled screaming coming from the roof.

  And since I couldn’t be this close to her anymore—or ever again—I rushed through the kitchen and tripped up the stairs toward the roof, where Aidan Hoevel held the empty Grey Goose bottle, scanning the darkness of Warren Street until he locked onto the tip of a cigarette lighting up again, deeper in the alley.

  “Say hello to my…little…friend!” Aidan screamed.

  And then Aidan Hoevel heaved the bottle.

  I was coming out of the stairwell when the momentum of the throw sent Aidan’s body over the railing.

  I was halfway across the roof as his hand flailed for something to grab—but nothing was there.

  The bottle hurled end over end across Warren Street.

  His feet left the slate rooftop completely and, in what seemed like slow motion, began floating through the space where his head had been and then he was falling to the sidewalk.

  The bottle shattered against a wall just a few feet over Stanton’s head.

  The sound of glass raining down on his face and the concrete around him was clear, even across the street and nine stories above, where I’d reached the rail in time to see Aidan hit the ground feetfirst, just left of the front door.

  But it wasn’t as clear as the shattering of ankles, the rending of kneecaps, the dislocation of hips, the compression of vertebrae, and the fierce, high-pitched roar that was quickly snuffed out as Aidan Hoevel came to rest on his back and experienced the presumably welcome release of oblivion.

  And then the only sound left was that of Stanton’s footsteps running down the alley.

  26

  THE THIRD WEEK in September began with a voice-mail message from David Taylor early on a Saturday afternoon: “Call me—I’m at the office.”

  This was two days after Aidan had fallen, and even after all the police reports I’d filled out (the shattered glass, traces of blood, cigarette butts across the street, witnesses who’d heard the screaming, Aidan Hoevel’s history of violence paired with his. 18 blood alcohol level—all the evidence had corroborated my story), he still hadn’t woken up.

  During that time, I’d largely assumed Ethan’s role as Aidan’s brother, which had entailed gathering a suitcase for him (I even did his laundry), figuring out his Social Security number (I foun
d his wallet in a Ziploc bag with two nip bottles of Jack Daniel’s, a half-full Vicodin prescription, and a plastic bag of marijuana), and notifying Angela Hoevel in Long Beach of his “condition.” After reminding her who I was—which wasn’t easy—my biggest challenge was reducing the facts into a story that wouldn’t make her heart stop beating and also wouldn’t cause her to think either of her boys was anyone other than who she thought he was.

  The journalist in me was still adept at such modifications.

  “He’d been calling someone from the roof, Mrs. Hoevel.”

  “He’d had a few drinks, Mrs. Hoevel, since it was Wednesday night.”

  “He slipped, Mrs. Hoevel—there was a bad spot near the railing. The railing was too low.”

  (She’d started whining softly to herself by this time.)

  “It was a horrible, horrible accident, Mrs. Hoevel. It was just a horrible accident.”

  “And you were there?” This was her—curious, not accusatory.

  “Uh-huh. We were just hanging out, Aidan and I.”

  “But where was Ethan?” The question seemed to baffle her, like she couldn’t imagine why he wouldn’t have been with Aidan—she couldn’t fathom why he would have wanted to be anywhere else.

  “He’s…traveling…it’s kind of…complicated…but I’m trying to reach him. I’ll reach him as soon as it’s possible.”

  “But where was Ethan? Why wasn’t he there to stop it? Nothing like that happens when Ethan’s there!”

  Of course, I’d been wondering the same thing myself.

  And since David’s message meant that Ethan was also home from Peru, I called him first. He came directly to the hospital, where his uninsured brother lay in a coma, and where he received a $10,000-plus hospital bill. I was careful to keep a few steps between us while he cursed under his breath for a while before asking the requisite questions with varying degrees of frustration: “He’s okay?”; “Have you heard from Stanton?”; “How did he fall exactly?”; “He was imitating Al Pacino?”; and then with genuine concern, “Does my mom know?”

  “She’s at home in Long Beach. She’s waiting for more news.”

  “What about Samona? Was she there?”

  “She was in the loft,” I answered after a brief pause. “She didn’t see anything—and I don’t know what happened to her after. She just left.”

  He looked at me with pity, as if I’d failed once again.

  An hour later, after all the paperwork and credit-card info were finished, it was just the two of us (and an old black woman with frizzy gray hair whose husband had suffered a mild stroke, and the parents of a boy who’d broken his arm, who were sitting one seat apart from each other) in the bright, claustrophobic waiting room at Beth Israel. This was when Ethan told me what had happened in Peru. I hadn’t asked him to tell me—in fact, I’d actively avoided the subject—and he was careful to leave space between the details, as if he knew I was filling them in on my own.

  On September 7, the LAN Chile flight to Lima is delayed. The terminal at JFK has been locked down because a janitor found a crude homemade blade in a stall in the men’s room near Gate 4 (which means that somehow the blade went undetected through security). And even after the terminal is reopened, Ethan knows that the blade makes David Taylor nervous—that it becomes a symbol in his head. Maybe the trip is a mistake. Maybe the silence in the terminal is an omen. Maybe he’s being impulsive. David waits nervously in the first-class lounge—shifting in his seat incessantly, tapping his foot against the chair leg—while Ethan talks evasively about the strange vibe of airports these days and about the blade and to whom it might have belonged before landing in the stall.

  Ethan gives David two Ambiens as the 777 accelerates up the runway and lifts, swaying, into the sky.

  They drift in and out of half sleep as dusk becomes night and then dawn again, and when David is conscious he gazes out the window at the dark sky while focusing on the flashing light on the wing’s tip, occasionally glancing at Ethan, who is either resting with his eyes half-open or reading, and then they’re walking through the Jorge Chávez Aeropuerto, and David fixates on the oppressively lowraftered ceiling. He’s looking mildly concerned before Ethan taps his shoulder, breaking the spell, and takes his hand to lead him through a throbbing crowd of people holding signs with Peruvian names like Zavaleta, Ponce, Callirgos. It’s loud and confusing until they get to the Sheraton high-rise in Miraflores—a suburb that Ethan chose because he knew its resemblance to a typical American suburb would comfort David.

  Mildly relaxed, he stands at the window, gazing in wonder at the sprawl of city concentrated a few miles away, while Ethan sits up in the bed reading. (Ethan finished two books on the plane; contemporary fiction—stuff David’s never heard of.) From time to time Ethan looks up but never says anything, opting to let David take in the newness of their surroundings on his own, and then he orders room service: steaks, French fries, comfort food—another small effort to ease David into their foreign surroundings. When they finish, David settles on the opposite side of the bed.

  On the shuttle flight from Lima to Cuzco the next morning, David watches the unreal mountains pass below and seems to tense up again, and then he looks up at the overhead TVs showing a British comedy show called Just for Laughs: actors pretending they’re blind and walking into people whose reactions are recorded via hidden cameras. When the plane banks sharply between two mountain peaks toward the short runway, he clutches the armrests—white-knuckled—and doesn’t let go until after the Fasten Seat Belt sign blinks off. He remains tense as Ethan rents them a car at Hertz, and he grips the dashboard while they drive through the shantytowns and then down into the basin of the city, through old cathedral plazas and impossibly narrow streets. On the radio Eminem is singing “Stan” while the sidewalk vendors press themselves against the walls to let them pass, and David won’t let go of the dashboard. There’s snow on the highest peaks. David shivers against the cold.

  “Are you okay?” Ethan asks casually.

  “Yeah, yeah. I just have a headache. Also, you could have told me it was winter here.”

  Ethan smiles and keeps driving. “Stan” is still playing when they pull into Cuzco’s only four-star hotel—the José Antonio—which has hot water and cable TV and two restaurants. David fails to find the luxury of it calming.

  Ethan says, “The air’s really thin up here—we should maybe rest. You need to get acclimated.”

  In response, David points to a huge white Christ statue on the southernmost hilltop overlooking the city, which doesn’t seem far away. “Is there a path that goes up?”

  Ethan is fully aware that David suggests this because as long as they keep moving and don’t stop to think, they’re only tourists here.

  Five minutes into the walk David begins hacking from the exertion.

  “Do you want to rest for a minute?” Ethan asks gently. “It’s okay if you do.”

  David just walks faster and says over his shoulder, “I used to run a four-oh-nine mile without even thinking about it. I can get to the top of this hill.”

  Three minutes later, as Ethan comes up behind him, David coughs again and can’t stop. He gives up and sits on the side of the path muttering, “I can’t fucking believe this,” while Ethan buys him a large bottle of Fiji water, then takes him back to the hotel. David heads upstairs to lie down while Ethan leaves to visit some of the old schools where he worked—but not a single kid he knew is there anymore, a reminder that it has been six years now. The sadness he feels moves him to walk around the Plaza del Armas until nightfall and sit on the cathedral steps in the pale street light and think about the past, which is coming back to him in the blurred images of the kids he taught and the stray dogs that wandered the streets and the roughly cut Peruvian cocaine and the narrowness of the sidewalks and all the battatis he drank at a restaurant called the Witch’s Brew. Ethan goes to this restaurant on a whim and finds that the manager is still there—a Brazilian named Alejandro whom Ethan knew
back when he lived in Cuzco (they hooked up occasionally during that time). Alejandro and Ethan sit talking mostly about the restaurants Alejandro has since opened in Rio while Ethan gets buzzed off three battatis and the thin air.

  When he gets back to the room—after declining Alejandro’s invitation home and wandering around for another hour in amazement—David is deeply asleep, already in the throes of full-fledged altitude sickness. Ethan settles into the bed, careful not to wake him, trying to shut out the constant moaning in order to sleep (he can’t), and in the morning David is so messed up he can’t open his eyes or move his head without dry-heaving.

  Ethan orders cocaine tea. He puts the mug to David’s lips, but David quickly takes it away from him and drinks, murmuring, “Is there cocaine in this? Because my firm gives random drug tests.” The tea stimulates him enough to sit up.

  “Let’s take a drive,” Ethan says gently.

  David puts his face in his hands and gives an exaggerated groan. “Eh. I don’t know if I’m up for anything right now.”

  “Come on. It’ll be good for you and you don’t have to walk—or exert yourself at all.” His voice is slightly accusing.

  “I’m fine, I’m okay,” David replies defensively. “Just…a little weak.”

  Ethan sits on the bed beside him. He reaches for David’s arm, then pulls back. “Don’t you want to see some of the country?”

  David shifts a few inches away and forces a painful grin. “It’s mostly dirt, right?” He laughs at his joke before understanding how humorless it was.

  Ethan glances at his own reflection in the mirror across from the bed, and he sees that he’s grimacing—and that the pain in his face is sincere. He wishes it weren’t this way before turning back to David, who is looking at him, picking up on his hurt. David Taylor softens, and then nods his head.

  In the car, David’s hands rap out some nameless radio music. He watches the hills pass and says, “This was a good idea. I feel a lot better.”