Esperanza

by Trish J. MacGregor

  A short man with salt-and-pepper hair leaped out of another line and threw himself against the door. It crashed shut so hard the windows trembled. He slammed a bolt into place, turned, made a hasty sign of the cross on his forehead. “El jefe, dónde está el jefe?” he called.

  Weird. No one had reacted to her shouts about the dead man outside, but two people had freaked about fog streaming in. What was that about? Then she heard voices, a scuffle, and saw an Ecuadorian man in a tattered uniform stumble out of the food area. The local cop. He tugged at his jacket, straightened his sleeves, hoisted his cop belt. “Aquí, estoy aquí.” He weaved through the crowd, obviously drunk, and stopped in front of the man who had slammed the door.

  Tess hurried over to them. “Excuse me, there’s a dead man outside by the outhouses.”

  Her Spanish was good, not great. But she might have been speaking Swahili. The cop could barely stand upright without tilting in one direction or another. She started to bring out her FBI badge, but the cop belched, “Gringa,” then sank to the floor.

  “Are there any other police?” she asked the man who had shut the door.

  Although she had spoken in Spanish, he replied in English. “We call by radio. You not worry, señorita. We take care of body. Your ticket, which bus you on?”

  As he spoke, he urged her along through the crowd until they had reached the calmer side of the building. The people in the food line eyed them, but didn’t stare. In fact, most of them deliberately looked away.

  He called out something in Quechua and a group of men and women hastened to the windows along the back wall and peered through the windows. But no one stepped outside. The man folded her ticket and pressed it into her hand. “You get in line for food, drinks. You must be on that bus, Señorita Tess.”

  He moved away, vanishing into the crowd. What the hell. Tess was certain she had not told the man her name.

  Two

  Ian heard a woman screaming something in Spanish. He didn’t speak the language, but recognized the alarm in her voice and glanced around, through the sea of faces. So many people were jammed into the building that it was difficult to see anything. Customers were lined up at the counters, in front of the restrooms, and more people poured through the doors and occupied the old plastic chairs along the walls. Someone bumped into him from behind. A baby’s cries echoed in the stuffy air.

  Christ, he just wanted to get his ticket straightened out and grab a bite to eat. He’d been booted off his bus and told to arrange his transportation to Guayaquil and the Galápagos at the ticket counter. But that line moved slowly and his stomach rumbled with hunger, so he slipped into the food line. He couldn’t read the menu. What were plátanos? Legumbres? Luke would know. His son spoke Spanish.

  But Luke was in Minneapolis, Ian didn’t have a Spanish-English dictionary with him, and didn’t know how he’d ended up in this crammed building in the middle of nowhere. His memory seemed to be riddled with holes. He couldn’t remember much of anything about this trip prior to arriving here at the bodega. He desperately wanted to believe the altitude and fatigue accounted for it.

  Someone tapped him on the shoulder, a slight woman with Shirley Temple curls and a dimpled smile. “Excuse me, but do you know what’s happening over there?” She gestured toward the other side of the building where the scream had come from. “My Spanish isn’t that good, but I thought I heard a woman shout about a dead man outside.” She nervously smoothed her hands over her wrinkled slacks and jacket. “I mean, my daughter has altitude sickness, my husband is ready to strangle someone, we got kicked off our bus, we—”

  “I don’t have any idea what’s going on,” he said.

  “I’m Stephanie Logan, from upstate New York.” She thrust out her skinny hand.

  “Ian Ritter, Minneapolis.”

  “Do you think it’s safe here?” She looked around uneasily. “My husband just took the kids out back to the outhouses because the line at the restroom is so long.”

  “I’m sure it’s—”

  “Jesus God,” huffed the plump guy who hurried over to them, herding two kids into the line behind Ian. “There’s a dead man outside. On the ground. By the outhouses. Covered in blood.” His young daughter rubbed her little fists against her eyes and started to cry. Her brother took one look at her, threw his head back, and began to wail. Stephanie’s husband snapped his hand against the side of the boy’s head. “Stop it. Now.” He jerked on the girl’s arm. “Look what you made your brother do. Shut up, just shut up.”

  Stephanie looked embarrassed, then angry as she drew the children up against her. “You’re scaring them, Jim.”

  Ian slipped away from them and made his way through the crowd, toward the windows where people huddled together, peering out. He squeezed into a spot at the window and pressed his face to the glass, but all he saw out there was fog, rolling in through the trees, thickening like soup.

  He moved toward the door, turned the dead bolt, pushed it open. Streamers of fog swirled in, wrapping around his feet and ankles, chilling him. He stepped outside, trying to see through the fog. He detected the shapes of outhouses and of trees that leaned in toward the bodega. Then, as the fog parted slightly, he saw someone on the ground, a man, motionless and bloodied. Dead. As he was about to move forward, someone yanked him back, slammed the door.

  Ian spun around, facing a benign-looking man who spoke in tortured English. “No outside. No safe. Bad.” He shook his finger in Ian’s face as though he were a naughty child and spat, “You get ticket, Señor Ritter.”

  What the fuck? How did this guy know his name? Before Ian could ask, the crowd closed in around him, cutting him off from the man, the cop, the door, the windows. Ian hastened back to the food line, unnerved by what had just happened, but grateful to find that Stephanie and her family had moved on.

  Never mind that he couldn’t read the menu. He would point at anything, eat anything, drink anything. And then he would dare the ticket line and get his itinerary squared away. Galápagos. Darwin. Please.

  Tess was shocked that people continued to peer through the windows of the building, yet no one had ventured outside. Maybe just as well. Her federal badge wouldn’t mean much here and she didn’t want to get stuck answering questions. She had been inside the outhouse. She didn’t know what had happened. But she probably was the last person who had seen the man alive, so it all could end up like something out of a Graham Greene novel. American Fed held for questioning. American Fed jailed. American Fed never heard from again.

  Finally, at the front of the line, she bought a thick, hot coffee, three steaming vegetable empanadas, a couple of mangos, a papaya, a knife and spoon, and two more bottles of water. These rich odors exacerbated her hunger and she quickly unwrapped one of the empanadas, bit into it. The crust and vegetables tasted so fresh they melted in her mouth. She stood there feeling like a fool, devouring the whole empanada, licking her fingers, unable to recall when she had eaten last. She was tempted to wolf down the other two empanadas as well, but remembered how hungry she had been on the first bus trip and decided to save these.

  “Excuse me.”

  Tess looked up at the man who towered over her and felt as if she nearly swallowed her tongue. George Clooney. Here. In Ecuador. Speaking to her. He seemed taller in person than on the screen, at least six three. Gray threaded through his beard, his eyes were dark pools into which she might fall. He appeared to have the body of a runner, hard, compact, lean. She didn’t remember seeing him on her bus.

  “Uh, yes?”

  “An American. Fantastic. Can you read Spanish?”

  She couldn’t take her eyes off him—and not just because of his resemblance to Clooney. There was something undeniably sensual about this man—the shape of his mouth? Those eyes? His lean body? All of it. Then she realized he had asked her a question and she still hadn’t answered.

  “On a good day I speak Spanish passably,” she said, and he laughed and showed her his ticket.

  “My
bus just dropped me here, supposedly because that’s what’s on my ticket. What’s this say?”

  Tess took a look. “You’re headed to Esperanza—that’s apparently what the eight means—on bus thirteen, which leaves here at four-ten.”

  “What the hell? I’m supposed to be on a bus to Guayaquil so I can fly from there to the Galápagos.”

  Her dream trip. “You may not get it straightened out quickly.” She nodded toward the growing line at the ticket counter. “I thought my bus was headed to Tulcán until I got kicked off and was told to speak to the ticket agent.” She was about to tell him about the dead man, to blab about what had happened, but changed her mind. “I figure I’ll be lucky to get out of here before midnight.”

  “Maybe the line moves faster than we think. Listen, could you translate what’s good on that menu up there? By the way, I’m Ian Ritter, from Minneapolis.”

  What? George Clooney traveling incognito? “Tess Livingston, Miami.”

  When they shook hands, his touch electrified her, unnerved her, and it definitely wasn’t his resemblance to Clooney. It was as if they had been lovers in the distant past and she couldn’t remember. Clearly absurd. He was not the sort of man she would forget.

  She had been involved with her Bureau partner, Dan, for the last two years and they had discussed moving in together. Tess had resisted it. She loved her privacy, her space. At the moment, she could barely remember Dan Hernandez’s face. She knew she had to figure out these glitches in her memory, but wasn’t sure how.

  “That’s some nasty bruise on your arm,” Ian remarked.

  The marks were now a deep purple. “Some guy outside grabbed my wrist and told me I was an intruder.”

  “A local?”

  “I don’t know. But he was Quechua.” And then he turned up dead outside.

  “I saw a dead man outside by the outhouses,” he confided, glancing around uneasily.

  Ripples of shock tore through her. It happened, here’s your confirmation. She kept her eyes fixed on the floor and whispered, “I don’t think we should talk about this right now.” Then she raised her head and pointed at the menu. In a normal tone of voice, she discussed the menu posted on the wall. Plátanos were plantains, a kind of banana, served baked or fried. Pollo was chicken, legumbres were vegetables. “It’s smart to stay away from pork and beef. Chicken’s probably okay, but vegetables are safer, the hotter the better. And bottled water is safer than soft drinks with ice. Or any drink with ice.”

  “Got it. Thanks.”

  She desperately wanted to linger, to continue talking to Ian. But her attraction to him was so strong that it troubled her. It might be too easy to allow camaraderie on the road to turn into a sexual adventure that she’d regret. She hadn’t come to Ecuador to get her heart broken. “I need to get my ticket stuff straightened out. Excuse me.”

  But even when she got into the line at the ticket counter, she glanced back at him, drinking in the sight of him, unable to satisfy a need to look at him, to make sure he was real.

  She noticed that people still peered out the window, the drunken cop still argued with someone, the door remained shut. Not my business. Tess checked her cell. No signal. But it looked as if her message to Maddie earlier had gone through. She typed a message to Dan in the hopes that once she was out of this valley, she might have a signal again. She updated him on the lead she’d gotten in Quito and her detour to Esperanza. She wanted to add something personal, that she missed him. But she didn’t. In fact, she felt conflicted about writing him at all, and what was the point if she didn’t have a signal?

  She turned off the phone, slipped it back into her pocket. The American family waited just in front of her. The little girl was no longer crying, the boy had fallen asleep in his father’s arms, and the wife seemed distraught. But Tess saw a plump, ripe papaya sticking up from her shoulder bag.

  The girl looked back at Tess and said, “I feel better now. Thanks.” She held out her teddy. “This is Roo. He feels better, too.”

  “Roo looks cold. Maybe you should tuck him inside your jacket.”

  The mother smiled nervously at Tess, tugged on her daughter’s hand, leaned down and whispered something to her. Probably, Don’t talk to strangers, she found a dead man outside . . .

  Except she wasn’t a stranger. She had given the woman all of her papaya enzymes.

  When she reached the ticket agent, he listened with patient boredom. He said she had two choices—to return to Quito, a trip that would take about fifteen hours, or take the bus to Esperanza and make her travel arrangements from there to Tulcán.

  “When does the bus leave for Quito?” she asked.

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “Where’s the nearest hotel?”

  “No hotels. You sleep here.” His sweeping gesture encompassed the waiting area—plastic chairs lined up along the windows and walls, most of them occupied, the dirty concrete floor, dozens of stranded passengers.

  No, thanks. Esperanza it would be. “Is my ticket set to go?”

  He stamped it, gave her a thumbs-up. “Set to go.”

  Tess navigated through the crowd again and made it outside. The fog seemed thicker, and the cold, damp air penetrated her jeans, socks, jacket, chilling her to the bone. She wished she had one of those colorful wool blankets the Quechuans wore.

  Two buses pulled up, Otavalo 12 and Baños 18, expelled passengers, and the drivers called out destinations. She felt uncomfortable in the crowd and moved to a bench against the wall, under the eaves. There. Better. A wall at her back, her own little space on the bench, food in her pack. She was good to go.

  Ian Ritter came through the door, spotted her, and joined her, ticket in hand. “Esperanza on bus thirteen,” he said. “It’s better than staying in that lobby, with the dead guy outside. The body’s still out there.”

  “I’d feel better about it if it weren’t bus thirteen.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.” He gave a soft, nervous laugh. “Listen to us. Superstitious grown-ups.”

  “Hey, I’ve yet to find an elevator with a floor thirteen listed.”

  “So you think the superstition is universal?”

  “You look like George Clooney,” she blurted.

  “You remind me of Lauren Bacall in Dark Passage.”

  Wow. Bacall? The only other person who had ever told her that was her dad. “One of my all-time favorite movies.”

  “You like old movies?”

  “Some of them. You make it sound like that’s rare.”

  “Rare for me. So why is Dark Passage one of your favorites?”

  “Bogie and Bacall. How can you not like everything they were in together? Okay, so the premise is simple. Man is convicted of murdering his wife and goes to prison. He escapes to prove that he’s innocent, Bacall helps him remain free, and he has plastic surgery to change his appearance. But it’s the way it was done—how we don’t see Bogie’s face until the bandages come off. Up until that point, the entire perspective is through his eyes. It tells you a lot about what lies beneath appearances.” Why the hell did I say that? It sounds like I’m coming on to him.

  Well, wasn’t she?

  “I think The Big Sleep is a better movie,” Ian said. “But in Dark Passage, you could really feel their chemistry.” He flashed a quick smile. “You know what Bacall’s nickname was?”

  “Slim.” Her dad used to call her that. Hey, Slim, let’s get a move on.

  Ian looked delighted. “You win the 1957 T-Bird.”

  She laughed and decided it didn’t matter if her heart got broken here.

  “Now, who the hell is George Clooney?” he asked.

  Yeah, okay. Ian from Minneapolis had been living under a rock for the last twenty years. “An actor.”

  “Never heard of him. What movies has he been in?”

  She’d seen all of Clooney’s movies, but only recalled one. “Ocean’s Eleven.”

  “I thought Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin were in that.”

>   “Well, yeah, in the original. But they did a remake.”

  He seemed confused now and she wondered if the altitude was affecting his memory, too. She returned to the number thirteen. “Okay, number thirteen. Among the Greeks, the bad luck day is Tuesday the thirteenth. On most planes, you don’t find a thirteenth seat or a thirteenth row, at least not in planes where the first twelve rows are first class. In some cultures, there’s a superstition that if thirteen people sit at a table for a meal, one of them will die in the next year. And it goes on like that, in country after country, culture after culture.”

  “If I remember my trivia correctly, I think the fear of the number thirteen is called ‘triskaidekaphobia.’ ”

  “That’s a mouthful,” she said, laughing.

  One of the scrawny dogs, a black Lab, crept over to them, tail between his legs, as though he expected to be hit. But his tea-colored eyes, so wolflike, so primal, denied that impression. He looked up at her and Tess brought out an empanada, broke off a piece, set it on the ground in front of him. The dog hesitated, eyes flicking from the food to her face, as though he thought it might be a trick to grab him, haul him off. He finally drew closer and gobbled up the food. She put a second piece in the center of her palm, held out her hand. The dog wagged his tail, sniffed her hand, and delicately took the piece of empanada. Then he sat right up against her legs, shivering from the cold. She stroked his head, ran her nails down his sleek coat, finally put her arm around him.

  The dog licked her hand. “So what should we call you?” she asked.

  The Lab whined and pawed at the ground. Ian scratched the dog behind his ears and gave him the last bite of his empanada. She liked that, a man who fed strays. “When my son was really young,” Ian said, “we had a yellow Lab we named Old Yeller, after the dog in the movie. We were convinced she had a human soul.”

  “How old is your son?”

  “Twenty-one. He’s a senior at the University of Minnesota.”