by Whitley Cox
Well, no time like the present to learn. Perhaps I could fuck the secrets out of him. I grinned at him and then grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him on top of me. “Good. But I’m not telling you to stop now. I’m not even asking you to do anything.”
“No.” He growled low in his throat and nestled himself between my legs. “You’re right, you’re not. I’ll be the one giving the orders.”
6
We were sitting at breakfast the following morning; thankfully it was fairly quiet in the hostel dining room. Most of the guests had been at the party and were still sleeping off their hangovers. The DJ also appeared to have hung up his hat for the night/morning, and for once, there was no music thumping around the enormous compound. My teeth were enjoying the rest as well, as it felt as though they’d been rattling in my head for the last two days.
“Can we talk about the whole, ‘I’d rather be with someone who’s been to prison, then someone who has ever paid for sex’?’” Derrick asked, taking a sip of his coffee. “Where did that come from? One minute we were talking about whether we’d rather get spunk blown into our eye or our mouth by a dirty hobo, and then the next you go all serious.”
I speared a piece of papaya with my fork and put it to my lips. “I was with a guy, once, who cheated on me with call-girls.” I lifted one shoulder cavalierly, even though inside I was anything but calm. Was he going to bust out with some revelation that he too had actually paid for sex, but he’d just been too drunk and too horny to tell the truth last night?
He nodded slowly while cutting a big chunk out of his eggs benny and shoveling it into his mouth. “Ah, makes sense. Well, as I said last night, I’ve only ever gotten laid for free, so…”
My lips twisted wryly as I chewed my fruit salad. “Well, that’s good to know.”
His eyebrows bobbed. “It certainly is. So…” He continued to chew, and then shoved his bite into his cheek like a chipmunk so he could talk. “What should we do today?” And just like that the conversation and awkwardness was over. Thank goodness.
“We could disguise ourselves and go out,” I offered. “I honestly think it’s horses and not unicorns. I think we’re probably fine.”
I could tell that he was mulling it over, quietly chewing while nodding. It was a cute look.
He swallowed. “Yeah, we could do that. You’re probably right. If we hide your hair and dress down, don’t draw any attention to ourselves and stay away from that part of town, I’m sure we’ll be fine. Besides…” He swallowed and then started cutting another piece. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going a little stir crazy, being cooped up in party central all day long. It’s fine for a day or two, but I’m really feeling my thirty-plus years being around all these nineteen- and twenty-year-old backpackers.”
I snorted and nodded before getting up to grab more coffee for both of us from the urn. “I hear ya! And does the music have to be so loud?”
“And what about what kids today are wearing? Did you see those ridiculous pants that that young Finnish girl was wearing? Do you remember South Park?”
Nodding, I joined him back at the table. “But, of course. Spent most of my undergrad sitting in a dorm room playing weird South Park drinking games.”
He grinned. “Me too!”
“What about it?”
“Okay, well, do you remember the episode where Stan’s dad, Randy, microwaves his testicles and then they’re like enormous? To the point where he can no longer walk and just bounces around town on his big hairy balls?”
“I’m still eating,” I said dryly, lifting up one eyebrow in curiosity. But he just smiled and nodded, waiting for me to answer. I rolled my eyes. “Yes, yes, I remember. What about it?”
“Well, that Finnish girl’s heinous pants reminded me of that episode. Because the crotch of her pants hits the ground, but yet she still has leg holes. So, it’s like she’s wearing pants, but a skirt, but not either really. Her outfit can’t make up its mind, so instead, it just looks ugly as fuck.”
I smiled, loving the weird way his mind worked and the random tangent he was on. “Okaaaay? So, you think that the only reason anyone should wear disgusting pants like that is when their testicles are so enormous they hit the ground?”
“Yes! See, this is why we work so well together, you get me. Randy Marsh Ball Pants I’m calling them, or in case we need to be discreet, RMBP’s.”
I shook my head, unable to hide my amusement. “Okaaaay, so how do these RMBP’s fit into our earlier discussion about the fact that we feel way older than the rest of the guests here?”
“Oh, right! Because I wouldn’t be caught dead in those things. I don’t think you would, either.” He waited for me to nod and agree. “I don’t know a sane person our age who would be either. It’s clearly a generational thing. I know I’m a millennial, but I really don’t feel like one. These super millennials are annoying.”
Just then three super millennials walked into the dining hall, two of them wearing RMBP pants, while each of them had their hair tossed up into the messiest messy buns I’d ever seen, and mascara caked the skin beneath their eyes. Derrick and I took one look at each other and then burst out laughing. It’d been a while since anyone had made me laugh like that. It’d been a while since I’d laughed, period.
We decided that if I wore the big Panama hat I’d, coincidentally, bought while in Panama, hid my hair up inside it, and put big black sunglasses on my eyes, while making sure I wore boring old jean cut-offs and a white t-shirt, then I’d be hard to identify and would easily blend in. Derrick put Chase’s hat on and his own face-covering shades and figured that since he’d been sporting chin scruff the last time we’d been out around town, people wouldn’t recognize him clean-shaven.
We also didn’t leave right from the hostel. We called a cab and had it take us to another part of town, well away from The Inca Treasure and the cops that could recognize me. And so off we wandered, hand-in-hand, around the town. We ducked into little shops and weird-looking grocery stores, indulging in so much fresh ceviche at a little stand down on the dock that I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if I suddenly sprouted gills and could breathe underwater. All in all, it was a wonderful afternoon.
“What do you think of this?” I asked, grabbing a small alpaca figurine off a shelf. “They really like their alpacas here, eh?”
“Like us and beavers,” he chuckled, admiring a brightly-colored toque, which I think the guidebook had called a Chullo hat.
I snorted. “I suppose.” I put down the plastic alpaca and joined him next to a big rack of hats. I grabbed one and pulled off my big Panama hat, instead donning the rainbow- colored toque, my hair falling down around my shoulders.
“Hey!” we heard from outside the store. Both Derrick and I spun around at the loud noise, and suddenly a man wearing jeans and a black T-shirt sprinted into the store and tried to snatch my bag. His friend, another jeans/black T-shirt guy (what was that the Peruvian thug uniform?), pointed at me while looking up and down the street.
“What the hell?” I screamed, trying to keep my bag while pushing the man off me. Derrick was busy hitting the man as well and trying to pry his fingers from my bag.
“Bolso! Bolso! Bolso!” The man kept saying, not giving up and continuing to pull harder. When he realized I wasn’t going to give it up without a fight, he decided to switch gears and instead grabbed my arm and started pulling me out into the street.
“No fucking way, bud!” Derrick’s fist made contact with the guy’s face. And then all of a sudden, we were inundated with people, locals and shopkeepers and tourists alike, all intervening and, to our surprise, helping the guy to his feet. What the hell? But then I started to get dragged out. Someone else had a hold of my arm and my bag, and I was being roughly escorted out into the street. When I spun around to look, it was the other guy in jeans and black; he was using the kerfuffle Derrick was having with his accomplice as a distraction.
“Get off me!” I tried to wrench mys
elf away from him and out of his grasp, but for his slight build, the man was surprisingly strong. I flung my free hand up and started swatting at his head and face. “Derrick!”
Derrick’s head whipped around. Meanwhile, he was being held under his arms by two waify-looking Peruvian men. I’m sure he could have taken both of them with no more than a flick to the sides of their heads, but at the moment he was struggling or trying not to hurt anyone.
“Derrick!” I was still trying to bash my kidnapper over the head with my fist and scratch his arms and face with the other. But he snatched my flailing hand with his free hand and flipped it behind my back until I shrieked out in pain.
A black SUV screeched up to the curb, and another guy in jeans and this time a gray t-shirt jumped out of the back seat. “Bolso!” he hollered, pointing at my bag while waving a gun in my face. I froze. And then it was no longer a man only trying to steal my money; he was threatening to take my life if I didn’t hand my bag over. I stopped fighting his partner and unclipped my backpack from my chest and gave it to him, throwing my hand up in the air in surrender. Nothing was worth losing my life over, not even the two hundred sols I had in the bag, because money and lip gloss were all I had in there.
Derrick finally came up behind me, and he started speaking broken Spanish to the two guys. I didn’t have to understand the language to understand the tone; he was pleading with them to let me go.
The guy from the van took the bag with a smile, and then he stowed the gun in the holster on his hip. His two co-conspirators, one with a bloody nose from Derrick’s fist, and one with a bloody arm and face from my scratches, shot us both dirty looks and then climbed into the back of the vehicle. Seconds later, they peeled away, leaving the two of us standing there terrified.
Derrick grabbed my arm. “We have to go. NOW!”
I didn’t question him. The way the shopkeeper and the locals had come to the aid of the man who was trying to rob us, instead of the two innocent backpackers, was disturbing. And who was to say they weren’t going to try and pull something, take the shirts off our backs or hold us for ransom until our family or country put up the funds to get us back? No, we had to get the hell out of that neighborhood. Hell, we had to get the hell out of Lima!
We started running. I wasn’t even sure which direction we were going. But I was glad we were getting out of Dodge and running somewhere. I’d always been terrible at directions and getting my bearings; to me everything was North. And now that we were in the Southern hemisphere and the sun was to the North and not the South, things were really confusing. It didn’t help that there wasn’t really a sun in the sky to speak of anyway; even if I had known how to navigate, the smog that covered the city sky was enough to hide the sun, stars and anything else a ship captain or pioneer may have used to find their way. The smog trapped the heat, too, making it muggy and warm and difficult to breathe.
We weren’t running for long, through back alleys and down side streets, before I felt it in my chest, a painful burning and the need to stop, while sweat ran in rivulets down my face and throat.
“W-where…where are we?” I threw on the brakes when we ducked into our umpteenth alley. This one seemed to be behind a restaurant that served fresh empanadas. I felt my stomach gurgle.
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“W-why...did they want my bag so badly? There was nothing in it.”
He shook his head again. “I don’t know. But something tells me it’s unicorns and not horses. And that because there was nothing but lip gloss and cash in your bag, they’ll be back. They’re not going to be satisfied. I don’t think cash is all they want.”
“I…I don’t understand.”
His eyes darted up and down the alley. “Me either, but we need to keep going.” His gaze flew to my head. “Where’s your big hat?”
Oh crap, I must have dropped it in the big fight with the mugger-guy. My hair was free-flying behind me now, like a blonde beacon of innocence and ignorance. Letting every Peruvian know, the good and the bad, that I was not from these parts. It’d be only a matter of time until the guys in the SUV and or the cops found me again. Not too many big-boobed, blonde gringos running around with a look of pure terror on their face.
He grabbed my hand and started pulling me farther down the alley, and then all of a sudden, we heard a car pull down the narrow street behind us. It was the same SUV, the guy with the black eye and bloody face from Derrick’s offense, riding shotgun.
“Oh, fuck!” Derrick muttered, pulling my arm nearly out of its socket. “How the hell did they find us?”
“What do they want?” I followed him down the alley, fear and adrenaline taking over my body and making me feel as though I were invincible. Suddenly nothing hurt. I could run forever. It was fight or flight now, and right now I was not willing to stand and fight. They had guns. I had nothing. No, it was flight time.
We took a hard right out of the alley and started running. Suddenly we saw a movie theater up ahead, and Derrick pulled me inside. Thankfully there was no line, so he reached into his pocket, tossed more than enough money at the girl behind the register, and then pulled me down the long, ugly carpeted hallway. It’s amazing how some places, no matter where you are in the world, look the same. It would appear movie theaters were one of those places. I could have been in Victoria for all I knew — the same posters (only in Spanish), the same doors, the same everything. It was a weird kind of comfort, but a comfort I couldn’t really appreciate at the moment.
Derrick put his hand on a door to enter a theater when we heard heavy footsteps. “Senor!”
I glanced back; it was a man in cinema uniform, not one of the bad guys (I hoped).
I was glad that we were able to stop, I needed to catch my breath. The theater guy caught up and started speaking very quickly, slightly angry Spanish at Derrick.
“Ah, perdon.” Derrick smiled, throwing charisma at the guy. “Canadian.” He shrugged.
The man’s mood faltered, and then he plastered on a big smile and nodded. “Canadian? I…I love Canada. You…you know Nickelback?”
Despite the mood of the moment I couldn’t help but snort. That’s the band he associates with Canada? Come on dude, what about Brian Adams? Rush? Shania Twain? Michael Bublé? We take responsibility for a lot of gems, but Nickelback, really?
Derrick just laughed and nodded. “Never met any of them personally, I’m afraid. But we know the band, yeah, though I prefer their older stuff.”
The theater attendant was all smiles now and then started speaking slower Spanish, mixed with a few English words to Derrick. It turns out the place wasn’t entirely identical to Canadian movie theaters, at least not the ones I’d grown up with, and we had to not only pay at the front register but also pick our seats. It wasn’t first-come-first-serve; it was like an airplane. We were assigned a seat.
With eyes flying around for anything suspicious, we hastily followed Roberto, as his name tag suggested, back up to the front, where we picked our seats, all the while being quizzed about how many Nickelback concerts we’d both been to and whether we were upset when Chad and Avril got divorced. Can’t say I really lost sleep over it, but it was sad nonetheless.
“All right,” Derrick said after we’d taken our leave of Roberto and were sitting way down low near the front, blindness by the end of the show pretty much inevitable. Roberto had gone so far as to usher us to our seats, using a flashlight and everything, as the movie had already started and the theater was dark and massive. “Let’s just sit tight for a bit, okay? Come up with a game plan and figure out how we’re going to tackle this. I doubt they’ll come looking for us here. And I told Roberto that we’re on our honeymoon and don’t want to be disturbed by anyone. And then I slipped him some more cash and emphasized the anyone.”
I gawked at him. Now we were bribing people? A sudden pang of regret and sadness hit me. I was on my honeymoon…kind of, our belated honeymoon. The honeymoon we were never able to have.
&n
bsp; “Hey.” Derrick’s finger came up under my chin. “You okay? Where’d you go?”
I swallowed the sudden lump that had formed in my throat and shook my head, slapping on a giant fake smile while blinking away the tears that stung the back of my eyes. “Nothing, it’s uh…it’s just been a crazy hour. I’m still riding on adrenaline and trying to sort my thoughts.”
He nodded, accepting my answer. “It’ll be okay, Piper, I promise.” He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me close. I rested my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes, not sure that he could make such a promise, but taking comfort in his declaration anyway.
I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew Derrick was rousing me with a soft brush of his fingers against my cheek, and the whole theater was flooded with bright light. People all around us gathered bags and coats and leftover snacks, while the credits rolled and a familiar rock song, but one I couldn’t quite place, played on the screen at the front.
“Wake up, babe,” he said quietly. “We should probably make our way back to the hostel. Call Chase and figure out what the hell to do.”
I yawned and stretched. Chase was going to be pissed that we’d defied “orders” and gone out into the city. Oh, well, we’d deal with him later. And then, as if on cue, the chaos started again.
People were being pushed out of the way, and men were hollering as the same man from earlier, the one who’d had the gun, fought his way down the aisle toward us, waving his firearm and cursing at Derrick and me.
My eyes flew around the theater. We were trapped. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. People were everywhere, and now with the presence of a gun, they were screaming and scrambling, ducking behind seats and shielding children.
And then something weird happened, something wonderfully weird. Roberto emerged from the front of the theater, down below where you’d have to crane your neck up so far to see anything you’d be left with a permanent crick. And he had a gun. He also appeared to have a bulletproof vest on. Was that a normal thing for theater managers to wear? But he held his weapon on the other man and started yelling at him in Spanish.