Thom nodded sheepishly.
“I’m on the line, see. I hope you fail, but I’d like to come with you, see you succeed. I bet it’s a marvelous place. I don’t know how you’ll find it. I don’t know if it can be found, or if it even exists. Not in the normal sense anyway. Maybe just the past. Ruins.” Per threw his hands up, and the bite of pancake launched from the end of his fork and skittered across the hardwood floor, leaving a trail of stickiness. A cat lunged from under a chair and got its jaws around it.
“Do you know who took it from us?” Erik said. “Was it you?”
Per smiled. “No, of course not. I thought about it though. God, I thought about it. I heard about it after you’d launched it off to sea. Rumors were everywhere. The local shaman came and told me. Wanted me to . . . didn’t want me to interfere. No one knows what it is. I’m an old collector, and I know that it’s incredibly valuable and it’s what you’d call magic in the way that anything inexplicable to the superstitious is magic or otherworldly or alien. You’ve got a lot of serious collectors after you, but also the council.” Per screwed his eyes at Erik, paused. “Very valuable,” he repeated.
Erik swallowed and made a sound in his throat.
“But it’s more than that. There are corporations that want it, governments, all those entities that have realized the importance of believing in certain myths. You’d be surprised. Though very few people understand, really. Some seek it for its supposed value, not its effect, and vice versa. It’s been lost for a long, long time. It’s a population-control tool. It affects the way people think, the way people react or do not react. Perhaps its return will change the way the world is ordered.” He sighed. “Perhaps not. It doesn’t matter to me much. I’m old, and I believe differently than I live. But to a lot of people, it will be a very big deal. If you fail, and I’m trying to be optimistic by not telling you the likelihood of failure, but if you fail”—Per shrugged—“the world will continue as it is. If you believe that’s a good thing, then you might as well quit now.”
“Can you help us get it back at least?” Thom leaned forward.
Per smiled out of the corner of his mouth. “I’ll pay your bus fare to Cuenca.”
“So you know it’s in Cuenca.”
“Sure, I saw them. They got it before I could. They got you. But I know who they are, generally. Collectors don’t really get along with one another.”
“After the speech we got last night, I expected a bit more. Where are the politics now?”
“This is no longer my fight, Thom. I’m a registered misanthrope. I don’t believe the species has a chance. This is yours. I lost the fight with myself a long time ago. Everybody decides where they are going to put their energy. You can either seek out or choose to ignore a collective human vision. I chose the latter. I chose to be comfortable.”
“But it’s not too late!”
“Yes, it is! Dammit. Yes, it is.”
Thom studied Per’s face and saw that the discussion was over. He finished his orange juice and tried to avoid his gaze.
Thom considered his face in the mirror, the bruises that marked it, the cuts, the swelling. The crusted blood of the split lip, the skin brown and yellow and black around his eye. He tenderly felt the back of his head where a lump was subsiding. But his face was different in other ways. He admired it, surprised by how different he looked, realized the image of himself that he had in his mind looked nothing like the one in the mirror. His nose was swollen and red and peeling from sunburn, but his face was browned. His skin everywhere seemed tighter. What had been pastry-white cheeks were now stubbled and chapped. There was a series of scratches over his right eyebrow and his eyes were green. “Green eyes,” he said out loud to see if it sounded familiar and wondered if he’d always had them or if they’d just gotten a lot greener recently. His chin came out of his face instead of being buried by it, and he had only one. The soft second chin had disappeared. He smiled and liked what he saw, gauged the lights for trickery. Not handsome, no, but not unhandsome either. “Okay,” he said, “okay.” He took a deep breath, thought of the day ahead and then couldn’t keep track of his breathing, his heart pattering along like an Irish drummer.
He balled his fists, echoed the moves Erik had taught him, thinking zapato, seeing himself anew as a hero whose trial had just begun, practicing a smile, mis labios estan cerrados. Then being driven to the bus in Per’s fancy air-conditioned American behemoth of a vehicle, seeing himself again in the rearview mirror. Fear a pressure on his bladder, trying not to pant. Was he having a heart attack? He was the wrong person for this, a coward at heart, a bumbling mound of flesh. How did he get mixed up with this . . . this artifact? Tree stared quietly out the opposite window.
The bus station was loosely centered in a dusty market. Per handed Erik money and pointed. No one was clear whose side he was on. All of them still wore his suits, dressed for an awards banquet, a theater performance, white-collar crime. Their bus was decorated like a jukebox or a race car or a rodeo clown, an abundance of racing stripes, tassels, Christ images, lewd stickers, slogans, Dios es mi señor or Cambiaré una vieja de treinte años por dos chicas de quince.
They followed the mountain pass up and up accompanied by jaunty music: horns and shouting, hooting, a festive, jangling affair. Their driver kept time to the music with swerves, the engine grinding like a ten-ton dentist’s drill. And Thom’s fear was like water spilling over the banks of the Mississippi, the Nile flooding, an Amazon of fear, the Colombia’s rushing waters, the slow Danube. A pressure in Thom’s bowels, against his temples, ears plugged with it, his eyes letting go with a drop of fear now and then. They were going to confront the enemy. He had enemies, real bad people. He was a good guy. Was that what he was? Wasn’t everyone always the good guy to themselves? How would the movie be cast? From which perspective? Who would play his part? Where was the screenwriter? Who wrote this joke, dream, illusion, trick? Do I want the world to change, comfortable America, full of stoplights, millions of internet connections, singing fish, dancing teddy bears, corn bread, animal cookies? Tree was asleep next to him. Erik by chance seated next to an Ecuadorian princess, a love goddess, was talking and flirting, and Thom in a hot clench of fear was sweating through his clothes. As they wove up and up and up through the mountains, the temperature dropped. They were on a mud road through an Andean pass, between impossibly steep mountains, garbed in fog. Does Atlas miss his Earth? Is it such a good thing to remove a burden from the world? Wasn’t the couch’s evil an important and necessary evil? How can you strive if there is no strife?
And then they were over the pass, a long roll down, switchback and switchback to Cuenca, Ecuador. Erik getting off the bus all smiles, a phone number crumpled in his hand, a date for the evening.
In Cuenca they walked through an entirely different Ecuador. Cobblestone streets and cool air and refinement. They walked past two- and three-story buildings. Colonial tile roofs, a clear sky to the south. To the west, the sky rumbled black to the height of the Andes. Cuenca felt like the right place to wear a suit. They barely got a second look. The giantness of Thom only occasionally causing a startled stare. Except for a mad, diesel-spewing bus charging down a street or a suicidal taxi driver, the place seemed orderly. They asked directions and headed to Jean’s hotel, hostel, hosepedaje. They passed two internet cafes in a row, and Thom gripped Erik’s shoulder. “Look.”
“Yep, bud. You can whack off all you want. I bet you missed your internet porn.”
They were a motley crew, filing in line down the street, Erik absurdly straight, pertly issuing buenas tardes, his suit smart if out of fashion, a mustached gentleman from a gentleman’s movie. His gaze steadfast on the back of Erik’s knees, Tree followed—a silence like coffins, like earthworms, a presence that wasn’t there, the ghost of Tree—and lastly the giant, his suit wrinkled and tight and still damp across his back, under his arms, a mountain chill in the air but sweat in his eyebrows, his muscles tensed for flight, walking past two-hund
red-year-old cathedrals the size of coliseums, a church on every other block, red tile sidewalks and stone streets, Ecuadorian children on balconies following the progress, See that one? Thom imagined them saying. Walking to the south end of town, a hostel called La Casa.
In front and down every street, Thom’s dread led to shadowy hallucinations of a friendly faced man with a straw hat and a nightstick, threatening.
Jean came around a corner, nearly knocking Erik over, and there were spontaneous cheers. Hugs. She pressed herself into Thom, and he felt knocked off-kilter by how beautiful she was, desire and fear mixing in the pot, a feeling of losing control. And he couldn’t suppress suspicion: how had she found them? How many emotions can you amp at once? He tried for a smile, a look of polite confidence. Was he fooling anyone? Listening with excessive interest to everything she said.
Jean touched Erik’s swollen eye, Thom’s lip, made the sounds of compassion that make pain so worthwhile. She put her arm around Tree and said, “I can’t wait to hear the story.”
She led them toward the hostel, and Tree chatted like he hadn’t lost his voice for days. Erik got them a room. A dingy three-storied place, with dark, rickety stairs to their room on the roof, a fourth floor, sort of. Plywood walls painted orange with green trim, a bare lightbulb dangling, a queen bed and wooden table at the other end. Thom wondered where they were all going to sleep. Jean with her own room and the three of them in this. Three here and one in the other room didn’t follow the natural law of osmosis, brain pointed out. Counting desires: first, to die, second, if the first should fail, a hope for an invitation.
They ate at a cafe, told stories, drank. Since Thom’s email, Jean had cased the house where she’d seen the couch, and she related the details. All of them pretended to be detectives. Pretended to be action heroes. They worked on a plan. Something that would preferably not get them killed, Erik requested. Thom tried to keep his knees from shaking the table.
After they’d eaten, Erik peeled off to some salsa dance bar for a rendezvous with his Ecuadorian interest.
The streets of Cuenca were dark and quiet. They ambled back to their rooms. Thom imagined trying to share a queen bed with a mosquito-bitten Tree. A sauced, sweaty, smokey Erik piling onto the floor later in the night.
He hesitated in the entranceway. He saw Tree go into his now-familiar getting-ready-for-bed routine: too much toothpaste on his toothbrush, always foam left in the sink afterward, a heavy-lidded walking coma at nine p.m. sharp. He realized how much he didn’t want to be in this room.
He wondered what Portland was up to. Tried to imagine returning to any kind of routine there. Can a person go from this back to a life? An apartment and a job?
He looked back at Jean just before going in, just before committing for the night. And she raised her eyebrows. Her head leaning slightly toward her room. Thom raised his eyebrows back. He decided for once not to be timid, stepped out into the hallway, to verify, to try.
“Do you . . . did they give you . . . would . . . would you like to have breakfast in the morning?”
“What?”
“Breakfast. In the morning?”
“We’re all going to breakfast. We just talked about that.”
“Of course, of course. I meant to say, what’s your room like?”
“It’s about—”
“I didn’t mean that. What I meant was, can I go to bed with you?” Not quite sure he’d said it. He imagined the words in his mouth again to see if they fit. He studied her expression to see if she’d heard what he thought he’d said.
She smiled. “Thom. I . . . it seems so much more real when you say it out loud. Wouldn’t you rather have a slow, painful courtship? That’s what I usually do.”
“Mmm,” he said, took a step back. “So. So then I did say that, something about a bed?”
Her face was a mask of seriousness. “I think you did. Or did I?”
“Ah, you may have. I think you said it.”
“Ah. Well then. That changes things.”
“Does it?” Unsure of what to do next. If death was going to come, now would be a good time.
“Then?” she said.
“After you?”
He kept his eyes on her curly hair, followed her through the labyrinth of the hostel. Toothbrush, he thought, floss, soap, condom. Hadn’t he only met her a week or two or ten ago? When he was somebody else. A failed computer nerd in the States. Now what was he? Already stripped of his superhero status of Azulman. She went down a stairway, along a passageway, and then up another stairway, her ass at eye level as they climbed, Thom wishing the stairway were just that much longer, the anxiety of arrival, plus the enjoyment of the current perspective. A bite away, the brain volunteered, an image of teeth against flesh, then skin against skin.
He was aware while it was happening, while he was following her, that it was he who followed her, he who walked up the stairs, saw every nervous motion of his like an ambivalent second party, a player just above his head, his body being controlled by joystick—ha ha, he thought, wouldn’t be the first time—or the up arrow of a keyboard, steering the video game of him lustily up, up, up into the celestial-bound bedroom of Jean, where social disaster could at any time strike, or the bliss of having her, her curvy body that he wanted to squeeze into him like a bear, the brute craving of affection—but she too, looking back once slyly, seductively, seemed to indicate a mutuality of intention.
Then his brain telescoping the image of the videogame player repeatedly above his head, like a house of mirrors, each incarnation of him being joystick controlled by the incarnation above it until in the dimensional distance he could not tell if the joystick controller was he or not. Ssshhhh, he said to his brain, just let me enjoy this, just let me be human.
In her room, she flicked on the lights for a fraction of a second, then off, freezing the room and its obstacles in memory. In the dark their eyes adjusted. A barest hint of moonlight behind a cloud outlined her form across the room. Observing him. Now what. Then he realized she had managed to free herself of her clothes. Naked, the brain volunteered. Thank you, I know the word for it. Thom pulled off his shirt, touché. There was too much quiet in the room to speak. A voice would sound awkward, excusing, mis labios estan cerrados. She edged one way along the wall. A big room with a bed dead center. He edged the other, fumbling a shoe off, recovering. There’s no need to bumble, not now. Does she like me because I did that computer thing. Does she like me? Does she just want sex, want to know what sex is like with an oversized human? Is she using me? Shut up, brain. His shoes, pants, underwear came off deftly, and he moved like he hoped he’d move, agile, playing this creeping along the wall, this wild animal thing. Or was he supposed to stop now. Was she playing or was he running away? Shut. Up. He stopped, his back to the wall, watched her edge along until their arms touched, the dimness emphasizing curves, everything a shadow within a shadow, both facing outward. She edged farther, over him, her lower back against his hip, her head grazing his arm, touching his collarbone.
She pulled him toward the bed. Thom conscious of the size of him, his size everywhere. She grabbed him there, by that size. Directed him onto his back with it.
Afterward they whispered for hours in the dark. The difficulty of sleeping when you had someone new. There beside you.
They’d pushed the sheet off in the hot night, and Thom lay on his side and watched Jean sleep in the dawn. Strands of her hair twisted in stripes across her lips, lips that were so rounded and lush and perfect that it made his heart ache, lips that shone and sung all the more by being placed between an ordinary chin and a nose with a bump.
His eyes followed the base of her neck into the indentation between the joining of the collarbone, deep enough while she was at rest to hold a capful of mercury, a perfect pool where tea leaves might be cast.
As he watched the slow rise and fall of her chest and listened to the soothing whistle of the gentlest of snores, the breast closest to him goosebumped briefly, the nipple
hardening, and he held his hand just above the surface, felt her warmth.
Maybe this is what I’ve come all the way here for. Maybe this is the most elaborate way to woo a woman ever conceived. He imperceptibly traced the soft skin around her belly button, let his forefinger rest briefly on the concavity there. Her breathing changed, quickened, and she turned toward him in her sleep, scooted in closer, her hand finding the back of his neck and her thigh coming to rest on his hip. She licked her lips, and Thom held his breath until her breathing returned to normal, marveling that sleep allowed this level of familiarity, this level of trust. She trusted him, and he wondered why. His life must seem like a string of chaotic impulses to any recent observer. He lightly grabbed her hip that rose from the bed so alluringly from where her middle thinned, wanted to pull her firmly, violently toward him to squeeze her to him until she cried out. I trust her, he tried out, and found Erik’s doubts flooding into the words, drowning them.
How did she know the couch was here? She found them and followed them for thousands of miles. He tried to swallow his fear down. She’d found them, and he’d slept with her so gullibly.
He stared at her closed eyelids. She slept comfortably while his heart rate increased, his paranoia grew.
He was sure of it suddenly. It didn’t make any sense otherwise. He, Erik, and Tree were carrying some ancient relic. They were important. They were sought after by everyone, and so of course the collectors had tapped his loneliness, his heartbroken personality, as a potential weakness. To do what?
She was wrapped around him like a spider, clutching her prey. He wouldn’t be able to get up without waking her. But he could easily overpower her. Unless there was someone else in the room. He listened for another presence, tried to listen as the sound of blood echoed in his ears like the sea, his breathing like a train. And then he saw that Jean was awake and watching him, her eyes wide but barely visible, large dark shooter marbles, ominous in their unblinking stillness. Then he remembered Tree, who’d gone to bed alone. They wanted Tree. They wanted their dreamer.
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