Esperanza

by Trish J. MacGregor

  The Town

  Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.

  —Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

  One

  The back of her neck felt as if insects were burrowing under the skin. She thought she could hear them, too, nibbling through her tissue, a dry, whispery sound, like callused fingertips sliding over paper.

  Tess kept running her hand up under her hair, certain she would discover tiny furrows in her scalp, proof that her body was under attack. But the skin felt fine. She realized someone was staring at her, the sensation so strong that she turned slightly in her seat and searched the rows of faces.

  The rickety bus that sputtered and backfired its way up a steep and winding road in the Ecuadorian Andes was crowded, three and four people to a row meant for two. She couldn’t tell who was staring. As a tall blonde in a country where ninety-nine percent of the population was short and dark haired with dark eyes and olive complexions, she stuck out. People stared all the time. It didn’t mean anything.

  But if true, why had all the passengers avoided her, so that she had an entire seat to herself?

  The left side of the bus consisted mostly of Quechua Indians—women holding children in their laps, men clutching canvas bags, all with colorful wool blankets wrapped around their shoulders. Large families traveled with crates of noisy chickens, bleating goats, skinny dogs, even a friendly pig sprawled on the floor in the back.

  On the right side, her side, sat the tourists with their electronic toys—iPods, laptops, BlackBerrys, PDAs, DVD players. European, Asian, South American. She saw only four who looked like Americans, a mother and father with two young children.

  Tess turned around again and rubbed the heel of her hand against the foggy window, creating an aperture through which she could peer out. Not much to see. Bits of fog threaded through the branches of trees that grew at lopsided angles along the road. No people or animals in the fog—no donkeys, no dogs, just the white stuff, eddying and moving like a living thing.

  Heat burst intermittently from the vents, erratic hiccups that didn’t do much to mitigate the chill. The cold, thin air seeped in through the edges of the windows. When she exhaled, she could see her breath. Tess zipped up her leather jacket, blew into her hands to warm them. The altitude had turned her sinuses so dry that the air she inhaled felt almost abrasive.

  The bus’s engine growled, straining as it climbed yet another ridge. How many more ridges lay beyond this one? A dozen? Fifty? Each one would be higher and already she found it difficult to catch her breath. On a family vacation when she was a kid, she remembered throwing up from altitude sickness while crossing the continental divide. She didn’t feel nauseated now, but bands of pressure kept tightening across her chest. Her pulse raced. She tried to relax by sitting back, breathing deeply, shutting her eyes. But as she did so, that eerie sensation crept up her neck; the watcher was staring again.

  Tess glanced back and this time she saw him, caught him just before he averted his gaze. A short Quechua man. Intense eyes. Thick red and blue blanket around his shoulders. His black braid crossed his left shoulder and fell halfway down his chest. His face vanished beneath the brim of the white Panama hat that he’d tugged over his forehead.

  The Quechua. The face of Ecuador. They graced postcards, Web sites, travel posters, men and women in boldly colored, layered clothing, children with huge, liquid eyes, faces that hinted of an ancient lineage, a people descended from the Incas. They numbered in the millions and were one of the largest indigenous populations in South America. Known as a spiritual people, loyal to their families and communities, they were said to be neither political nor materialistic. Herders of llama and sheep, weavers, farmers, they were abysmally poor. Their language had been spoken long before the Incas and was still one of the official languages of both Bolivia and Peru. She loved its musical intonations, but didn’t understand a word of it.

  Maybe the guy just didn’t like blondes, she thought, and faced the front again.

  Her cell jingled, a bar from Bruce Springsteen’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” Tess dug it out of her jacket pocket and smiled when she saw the text message was from Maddie, her eighteen-year-old niece.

  Hey, Tesso, u out of Quito yet? Lauren’s in fretting mode, says she’s been sending u txt messages u don’t answer Luv u, M

  Tess’s mother had gotten an iPhone for her birthday last year and hadn’t yet mastered the text-messaging feature. Lauren balked at asking her eighteen-year-old granddaughter for help, but Maddie, like many kids her age, was a whiz with this stuff. Since she had moved in with Lauren last fall, the household had become a techie hub. Maddie and her computer-savvy friends had set up their own server to host their Web sites, where they posted freeware they wrote for fun and sold the software they wrote for profit. With the money, Maddie was paying her way through junior college and had enough saved to start at the University of Florida in the fall.

  Before Tess had left on this trip, she, her mother, and Maddie had agreed they would text frequently. If you disappeared down there, we wouldn’t know where to begin our search, her mother had said the day she’d left. So Tess pressed reply and typed.

  Doing fine. Headed to Tulcán, northern Ecuador. Will send L an e. Can u give her 10 lessons on iphone? Got a cute pig on this bus! Miss u guys.

  Maddie’s response came back quickly.

  Doc’s hounding L 2 give him another chance. Ha. He has to get past me 1st. luv, M

  A couple of years ago, her mother had gotten involved with an ER doc in Key Largo where she was director of nursing. He was Lauren’s age, sixty-three, and like her, an ex-hippie. But Doc, as Tess and Maddie referred to him, had lost his rebellious soul somewhere along his trek from the sixties, and was pro everything her mother was against. He also had baggage, two dysfunctional adult children and an ex-wife with a bad attitude. Doc and Lauren had split a few months ago, for the umpteenth time. If the past was any indication, he probably was calling her at odd hours, e-mailing long missives about why they should get back together.

  What’s w/ doc bugging her again? Remind him stalking is a crime.

  Tess sent the text message, then navigated to her e-mail.

  Hey mom, was in Quito 4 several days and it reminded me of the time I spent there after dad died. A couple of times I felt him around. My floor lamp blinked off and on one night, the TV came on by itself, stuff like that. M tells me doc has been making noises for reconciliation. Tell him 2 go pound sand, mom. Ask M 4 help on txt messaging. More later.

  Luv bigger than google

  She pressed send and hoped the e-mail would go through. Up here in the Andes, she wasn’t ever sure what languished in cyberspace and what actually made it to its destination. Tess turned off the cell to preserve the battery and glanced out the window again.

  The fog looked thicker, like cotton candy. Her reflection in the window was ghostlike, blue eyes as pale as distant smoke, blond hair tangled and falling to her shoulders in unruly waves, mouth quiet and still, as if waiting for something. She hoped her pallor was just the dirty glass and not a sign that she was getting sick.

  Tess blew into her hands again and wished she had something hot to drink. Tea, coffee, chocolate, it wouldn’t matter. She rubbed at the fogged glass once more. Here and there, the snow-capped peaks—volcanoes—loomed above the thick fog and burned with the afternoon light.

  At the back of the bus, the pig snorted, some of the chickens started clucking, one of the dogs barked sharply. The vehicle smelled like a barn and her hunger made the odors almost painful. Her snacks were gone, her water bottle empty. She wished she had taken a plane to Tulcán.

  Deal with it.

  Oddly, she couldn’t recall where she’d caught this bus. Was it in Guayaquil or Quito? Guayaquil was on the coast. Could she have gone there from Quito? But she hadn’t been anywhere near the ocean in days, maybe weeks. She had a memory of a crowded bus station, though that might be from an earlier trip, when
she had taken a bus from Quito to Otavalo and then on to Baños.

  The nagging confusion troubled her. Yet it also seemed par for traveling in Ecuador. Here, her American life seemed less real and she felt closer to this country, as if Ecuador were a truthful reflection of where she was in her life right this second. If you needed an ancient mysticism to soothe your soul, then your Ecuador experience would attract Quechua, tribal healers, vestiges of the Incas. If you needed something from Ecuador’s visible, conscious world, as she did, then you apparently froze your ass off on a bus that churned up the spine of the Andes.

  Ten years ago, after her first year in law school, Quito had given her solace from her father’s death. As she had walked, she had moved back in time through the labyrinth of Quito’s old city, where Indians lived on the streets, cooked on the streets, made love and raised their children on the streets, all in the gloomy shadows of ancient stone buildings. But now, as she traveled ever higher into the Andes, her cold misery reflected the purpose of this trip—track the Colombian bastard who had turned a stellar FBI counterfeiting bust into a fiasco that enabled him to abscond with more than five million. Or, as she had learned from a lead in Quito, track the woman to whom he had entrusted the five mil.

  True, the FBI had no jurisdiction here, but it was believed the guy had fled to Ecuador. If she found him or the woman to whom he allegedly had given the money, she was supposed to contact her Miami office and they would alert the Ecuadorian authorities. Her partner, Dan Hernandez, had congratulated her on an all-expenses-paid trip to Ecuador. But Dan was just trying to make her feel better because she was being blamed for the sting going south. Her boss had implied as much. Around here, memory is short, Tess. A couple of months out of sight, and when you return, everything will be just as it was.

  Right now, Tess was no longer sure that she wanted to return to the Bureau. Eight years, since graduating from law school, and she was feeling the symptoms of a massive burnout. Since landing in Quito, she had been flirting with different options—private practice with a law firm in Miami that had offered her a job several years ago, working for the Florida state attorney’s office, even opening her own firm, maybe in the Keys. Nice idea, but it would require more capital than she had.

  Another possibility was moving to Key Largo, where her mom and niece lived. She could work at one of the dolphin centers or perhaps sign up with one of the marine rescue groups and save sea turtles. Her B.S. in marine biology might get her in. At thirty-three, she just didn’t see herself grinding away for the Feds for the next twenty years.

  And she sure as hell didn’t see herself tracking a mark—or his lady friend—around Ecuador. If the informant’s lead about the creep’s whereabouts didn’t pan out, she might as well spend the rest of her time here enjoying herself. A flight to the Galápagos. Follow Darwin’s path through those islands. Tortoises the size of condominiums. Penguins that weighed just five pounds. Marine iguanas. Rare birds. An animal lover’s carnival. And then she would head out to Easter Island to wander until she had a plan—or ran out of money.

  A dilapidated building took shape in the fog, one story made of wood and tin that looked like something the big bad wolf might blow down with a single puff. BODEGA DEL CIELO read the sign on top. Store of the Sky. Over it stood a large neon Coca-Cola sign, burning blue in the fog. Scrawny dogs and cats skulked around, no doubt hoping for handouts. Half a dozen men and women, some sipping from tin cups, waited out front with their packs and bags.

  The driver pulled on the emergency brake, stood up, pointed at Tess and the four Americans. In Spanish, he told them another bus would be along shortly that would take them on to Esperanza. She liked that word. It meant “hope,” but she felt sure she hadn’t bought a ticket to a place she’d never heard of.

  “Excuse me,” she said in Spanish. “I didn’t buy a ticket to Esperanza.”

  The driver snapped his fingers impatiently and in fairly good English said, “Let me see your ticket, please.”

  “We didn’t buy tickets to Esperanza, either.” The American guy with the two kids had an irritating twang in his voice.

  The driver patted the air with one hand, and held up Tess’s ticket with his other hand. “Here.” He indicated the red number stamped at its bottom. “Eight means Esperanza. If this is not right, talk to the agent inside.”

  “Eight?” the man called out. “What kinda weird system is that? Why do other passengers have tickets with the name of their destination?”

  The driver looked flustered, then agitated, and Tess wondered if the altitude was getting to him. She wished that rude American would shut up.

  “Señor, in Ecuador, there are many systems,” the driver replied. “One man cannot know them all. Please, you and your family must get off.”

  “Christ Almighty.” He rolled his eyes and urged his family forward. Tess fell into step behind them, heavy pack over her shoulder.

  The two kids whined, rubbed their eyes, complained about the cold. The girl, the youngest, clutched her teddy bear in the crook of her arm and held on tightly to her mother’s hand. She kept glancing back at Tess, her dark eyes pools of misery. The collar of her heavy parka, zipped to the throat, swallowed most of her chin. Just as she and her mother reached the door, the girl started coughing and suddenly doubled over and vomited.

  “For Chrissake, Gretchen,” her father snapped, and hauled her off the bus.

  Tess stepped around the puke and into the cold, foggy air. The child was sobbing, wiping her hand across her mouth. Tess dug around in her pack until she found a packet and went over to them. “These papaya enzymes should calm her stomach,” she said to the mother, and offered the packet. “Have her chew a couple. If you can find an actual papaya, she should eat some of the seeds.”

  The woman took the packet and raised her rheumy eyes to Tess’s face. “Thank you. It’s probably just the altitude. But thank you.”

  “You bet.”

  The people waiting now boarded. The driver counted heads, passengers handed over tickets. No crated chickens or pigs on leashes in this haul. Moments later, the bus pulled away into the fog.

  She felt uneasy stranded here in the middle of nowhere. She brought out her cell to update her mom and Maddie, but didn’t have a signal now. She would have to wait. But she also needed to update Dan.

  As she turned to go into the building, she found herself face-to-face with the watcher from the bus. He looked half a foot shorter than she, five feet four if that, slender, with bladelike cheekbones, a badly pocked face, and scary eyes. “Permiso,” she said, and moved to the right.

  He also stepped to the right, blocking her, and his mouth swung into a mocking smile. He flicked his thick braid off his shoulder. She moved quickly to the left and pushed past him, but he grabbed the back of her jacket and jerked her around.

  Tess nearly fell into him and he grasped her forearm, as if to steady her. His fingers sank into the underside of her wrist, gripping tightly. Their faces were so close she could smell his breath: garlic, onions, and something else, something gross, decay, as though his teeth had rotted in his gums.

  “Go home, gringa.” The words ground out of his mouth, and the pressure of his fingers against her skin burned. “You are an intruder here.”

  Tess wrenched back, but his grip was too strong. He laughed softly. “You cannot escape me. You cannot escape us.”

  She jerked her arm upward, twisted, broke free, and darted toward the bodega. She glanced back once and saw him standing there, staring after her with his mocking smile, his eyes seeming to burn through the fog.

  The building was larger than it looked and was jammed—locals and tourists at the ticket counter, the food counter, milling around in the waiting area. She clearly wasn’t the only confused traveler.

  She got in line for the restroom, dismayed at the crowd in front of her. She kept looking around, worried. Would he follow her inside? Three dark blue bruises were forming on the underside of her wrist, the imprints of his fin
gers. Though armed, Tess didn’t want to display a weapon, not here. But if he came at her again, she would.

  The line barely moved. She began feeling nauseated by the odors—roasting chicken and pork, the stink of smoke and unwashed bodies. So when someone announced there were outhouses, Tess made her way through the crowd and stepped outside into the chilly, pine-scented air.

  Two wooden outhouses with tin roofs perched at the lip of a precipice, beneath a row of crooked trees. The lines were shorter and as soon as she entered an outhouse, she saw why. The toilet looked as if it had stood here fifty years and never been cleaned. The sink was practically falling out of the wall. Sit on it? No telling what germs were crawling around.

  As she squatted over the seat, she noticed a scar on her right thigh, but couldn’t remember what had caused it. And why did it now throb and ache?

  Tess stood, turned on the sink faucet. The water was icy cold, but it felt good against her face. She longed for a steaming hot shower, fluffy towels, a soft bed. Soon.

  When she emerged, she was alone. The fog had rolled up over the edge of the cliff and swirled so thickly across the ground she couldn’t even see her feet. She stumbled over something, looked down, gasped and wrenched back. The watcher lay there, sprawled on his back, staring vapidly upward, his eyes pink with blood that oozed from their corners. Blood glistened on his lips, under his nostrils, even on his earlobes. His fingernails were red, blood speckled his arms, stained his blanket, his white shirt and pants.

  He’d bled out.

  A scream clawed up her throat, she spun away and burst through the door of the building, shouting in Spanish. “Someone get the police, there’s a dead man outside.” Total silence. Everyone stared at her, no one moved. “A dead man, outside.”

  Tess stabbed her hand toward the open door, but no one reacted until streamers of fog swirled across the threshold and a woman in line at the ticket counter pointed frantically at the fog, screaming “Neblina!”