Текст книги "Red Jungle"

Автор книги: Kent Harrington

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

TWELVE

De La Madrid’s press secretary, an ingratiating American called Nesbitt, called Russell’s office the next morning to set up an interview.

“Antonio is dying to speak to you about the crisis. He has a free hour in the afternoon around what they call tea time here. These people—” Nesbitt said in an exasperated tone. They were meant to share a moment together—savvy Americans handling the inept Latins. Russell said nothing, and Nesbitt went on, in a more reserved tone. “We could send a car?”

“Fine,” Russell said. “Four o’clock, then.”

“See you then,” Nesbitt said.

Russell put down the phone and tried to collect his thoughts. He’d been doing his homework on the economic crisis. His newspaper had been doing most of what serious reporting had been done on the crisis in Latin America. They ran some kind of story on it almost every day. The U.S. papers were writing about it, but only sporadically.

In the meantime, the regional economy was falling apart. Governments and businesses had borrowed too much from the developed countries and now, with commodity prices having crashed, they couldn’t pay the interest on their massive loans. Guatemala was no different. Russell suspected that the currency might collapse altogether; it was only a matter of time.

He stood up and searched the office for his briefcase, found it, and pulled out his notes on De La Madrid. But he found himself staring out the window at the traffic. Why did Beatrice’s husband allow her to go out at night alone? How could she possibly manage to stay out until four in the morning, as she had with him?

He hadn’t wanted to think of her husband at breakfast, or later on the way to his office. He had dwelt on the coming weekend instead. Beatrice had agreed to meet him. He told himself only that the general was bound to find out, sooner or later, that Russell was having an affair with his wife. He expected Selva would come to his office, or apartment, and try to kill him. He didn’t really care.

Death didn’t scare him. The only thing he thought about being killed was that the desire to lose himself—this inexplicable search—would finally end. He wouldn’t have to feel driven anymore. It would come to a conclusion in the street, or at his desk, or in a parking garage, with Selva pumping bullets into him.

He spoke with Nesbitt for a moment in an outer office. They were on the twentieth floor of one of the tallest buildings in the city. De La Madrid’s family owned the building as well as the bank that it housed.

The upper floor was grand, its wood floors polished like glass. Secretaries glided past them like specters dressed in Chanel and Ann Taylor. Nesbitt was natty, married and twice divorced. Somehow Russell learned all this in the matter of a few minutes, as they waited for Antonio to appear. Apparently, Nesbitt said, his boss had snuck his barber into the office for a quick haircut.

They made small talk. Nesbitt droned on about his Guatemalan problems: the maids, the water, his bowels. It was the predictable conversation. Outside, through the windows, Russell could tell it had gotten very windy. In the distance was the Volcan de Agua, barely visible through the mist of diesel smoke. Behind the volcano was the lake where he and Beatrice were to meet.

He longed for the weekend.

“I’ve found that Pepto-Bismol works if you. . . .” Nesbitt was telling him.

He worried about the hotel room. He wanted it to be nice. He was worried Beatrice wouldn’t like it.

“He’ll see you now,” he heard Nesbitt say. Russell stood up automatically and followed the American down the hall.

Experience had taught Russell that interviews with very important people, very wealthy or powerful people, usually started in one of two ways. The interviewee was either distant and seigniorial, wanting to commit to barely anything—even a handshake seemed to compromise their stature. Or they were blustering, finger-jabbing types, trying to get you to reveal yourself first, so they could then lay down their defense.

De La Madrid’s barber was still working on him when Russell followed Nesbitt into the grand office. De La Madrid seemed chagrined about the snafu in communication. Russell decided to ignore the moment and pretend that he interviewed men getting their hair cut all the time.

They’d put a chair out in the middle of an enormous office where the barber was working. The would-be president was covered with a short blue nylon sheet. He was getting his neck shaved. The barber was using an old-fashioned straight razor. The barber was an older man who looked at Russell and immediately seemed to disapprove of him. The barber rested his razor in the air for a moment, then went back to work, deciding to ignore the interruption.

Nesbitt and Antonio spoke a minute about a call from the American Embassy that Antonio was to return as soon as he could. While they spoke, De La Madrid kept looking at Russell in a curious way, as if they’d met before and he was trying to place him.

They were suddenly alone except for the barber: two men with a secret. Madrid’s was a small one, probably to do with the embassy, Russell guessed. His was a big one: he was sleeping with De La Madrid’s opponent’s wife. Antonio divulged his right away.

“It’s the bloody US ambassador. She’s quite childish; if you don’t call her back within an hour, she thinks you are mad at her. I think she’s charming; hell of a golfer too. Some people are like that, too sensitive.” Madrid smiled. “I don’t dare go to a barber shop anymore; my bodyguards get very nervous.”

“I understand,” Russell said. The barber was cutting De La Madrid’s sideburns with one flick of his wrist.

“Well, are you one of those red meat Americans?” Madrid asked, joking. “But then, you couldn’t be. If you work for the Financial Times. They’re all. . . . What do the Americans call them? Brainiacs. Who eat salads.”

“Bookish, the English would say. And I eat meat,” Russell said.

The barber looked up. He was doing the other sideburn now and said in Spanish that Antonio wasn’t to move. “There have been two attempts on my life, Mr. Price, did you know that?”

“Yes. I read about them both. You were quite lucky.”

“No. It’s my bodyguards. I have the best. They are fearless. I think they actually enjoy the attempts because they get so damned bored standing around the rest of the time.” The barber smiled, and Russell realized the barber spoke English.

“You’d think they’d just pay off Nico here. He comes up and uses a straight razor and there’s no bodyguard in sight. Right, Nico? You could buy a place in Miami,” Antonio said.

“I don’t like Miami,” the barber said in English. “Too many fucking Latins. Now if they said New York, maybe I’d do it.”

They made small talk until the barber finished. By the time the barber finally left, Russell had decided that he liked Antonio. He was relaxed and affable. There seemed to be no particular agenda. Russell had thought De La Madrid would somehow disappoint him, and instead he found him charming and intelligent. Their conversation ranged from Greenspan to Tiger Woods’ sex life.

“And are you enjoying yourself? I mean, it’s not all work. Is it? Any girl friends? Latin women are on you gringos like flies at a barbecue,” Antonio said.

“An American girl,” he lied.

“What’s she like?”

“Altruistic. Anti-free trade, you know the type. Tall and charming,” Russell said.

“You know what I like about American women? They feel guilty when they cheat on their husbands. Really. Latin women don’t feel guilty. Everyone here is expected to have affairs and just keep it quiet. But American women, they really suffer . . . I should know.” He chuckled. “Is she intelligent?”

They went to a wall of couches and a panoramic view of the city and sat down.

“Yes,” Russell said. “She wants to save the world. I think she just might. Someone should, I suppose. It’s long overdue.”

“Those young NGO girls that come here have the energy of twenty men,” Antonio said.

They looked at each other for a moment. Russell was about to make light of his remark, but caught Antonio studying him again in that strange way.

“Would you like to help me save the world, Mr. Price? Save Guatemala from itself?” Antonio said unexpectedly.

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m running for the presidency of the country.”

“I know that. I think most of the world does by now,” Russell said. “You’ve done a good job getting name recognition.”

“I’ve hired a PR firm in New York.”

“That’s where you got Nesbitt, I suppose?”

“Nesbitt is a fool,” Antonio said. “He’s no good for what’s coming.”

“I don’t understand?”

“War.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Elections are wars in Latin America, Mr. Price. It’s the way it’s always been. The difference is that I actually want to do something for the country. I want to drag it out of the dark ages and make it run like it should have been run from the very beginning.”

“I’m a little lost,” Russell said.

“No, you aren’t. You know exactly what I mean. I need your help. I need the support of all the important decision-making papers in Europe and America. You write for one of the most important. I need your help. I need you to support me. That dumb thug that’s running against me is a danger to the country. The military here are bought and sold like so many cows. I want you to help me win. What do you say? I read your editorial concerning the privatization option. I was very impressed with your ideas.”

“I’m a journalist,” Russell said. “Not a politician.”

“Don’t pull that objective crap with me. I’ve looked into you, Mr. Price; we are very similar. Anyway, none of you journalists are really objective. You all have your agendas. It just so happens that you and I share one. I want to bring financial stability and prosperity to millions of people who have known nothing but war and corruption for almost a hundred years. Are you going to help me do that or not?”

Russell had taken out his neatly typed list of questions. He had his pen in his hand, and he opened it. For some reason he thought of Flora, his secretary, the way she’d come to his office so lost, looking for a job. He thought about the hundreds of thousands of peasants that every day were being thrown off the land because coffee prices had crashed and plantation owners were turning their plantations over to the banks. No one knew how those people were going to eat. There were no jobs in the cities; the maquiladoras were all shutting down and moving to China and Vietnam, where they paid half of the miserable wage they paid here. He, better than most, knew the extent of the crisis and its aftermath of misery.

“I’d like to ask you these questions, if I could, about the crisis,” he said calmly.

“But you’re on my side? I can tell. If you weren’t, you’d be giving me the asinine speech about objectivity, and the Fourth Estate, or some other plate of bollocks,” Antonio said.

Russell didn’t answer, but he knew that he was going to help him. By the time they’d worked their way through his questions, he knew that De La Madrid probably could, with a little luck, and help from people like him, get the country going in the right direction, and avoid becoming an Argentina. There wasn’t much time; the forces of economic chaos, both men agreed, were moving in on the country in a hurry.

“General Selva is the man I have to beat. He wants to kill me. We went to the same high school,” Antonio said. “We were friends once. He’s already tried once to kill me, we think. The little shit. You know he bought Sylvester Stallone’s house in Miami, just the other day. His army pay is thirty-two thousand dollars a year. The house cost twenty million. What do you make of that?” Antonio asked, smiling.

“A difference of significant proportions,” Russell said.

“You know, Price, you’re funny. You don’t try to be funny, but you are.”

They shook hands as Russell was leaving. He wanted to ask De La Madrid everything he knew about Selva’s wife. He wanted to ask him if it was true that the general had met her in a strip club in London. He wanted to ask if he, Antonio De La Madrid, was truly a good man Russell could believe in—a man he could trust—or if he was just having him on about bringing real change. He wanted to ask him if he’d ever been lost. He doubted it. Antonio was one of those men who, because of their class and their advantages, are never lost, Russell supposed. He wanted to ask him if he was afraid of being assassinated.

“I told my wife I was meeting a very unusual American this morning. She remembered you. She met you at a party at the French embassy. She said that you weren’t really an American, you were too smooth to be one. She thought you might be lying,” Antonio said, and laughed. “If you write about me favorably, and say bad things about the general, you know that Selva won’t like it.”

“Yes, I understand,” Russell said.

“Often times people that the general doesn’t like have big problems,” Antonio said. “The kind of problems it’s hard to recover from.”

“Yes, I know.”

“A difference of significant proportions—those kinds of problems,” Madrid said. They both smiled.

Antonio slapped Russell on the back. It was a significant slap and hug, the kind Latin men give someone they want to be their compadre. He’d seduced Russell into a conspiracy against the general, whom they both knew was a shit and a mass murderer.

Russell didn’t really feel frightened about it. It was the first time he’d felt good about himself in years.

THIRTEEN

He’d gotten the hotel room he wanted, only after he’d complained when he’d checked in late. He’d driven up to the lake by himself. At night it was never a good idea. His shotgun rode on the seat next to him. Kidnappings were constant on the road to Lake Atitlán, especially at night. And being white, he knew he was a target. White people– foreigners in general—were all thought to have money.

He woke up Saturday morning and threw open the curtains of his hotel room. Lake Atitlán sat quiet, like some kind of blue goddess among three volcanoes, reflecting a few cotton-white clouds. Below his room, the hotel’s beautiful lakeside garden spread out along the shore. Everything had been watered by the gardeners first thing, and was sparkling in the morning sun. Huge azaleas bloomed red and white, exotic white roses spilled over a trellis by the elegant black-bottomed pool. A pool boy was busy laying out white cushions over lounge chairs.

He lay on the bed and read Delacroix’s journal while he waited for Beatrice. Delacroix had lived in a time of promise and hope, a vibrant time that felt itself going forward toward the modern, the rational, the harmonious, the beautiful. Paris had symbolized all the hope that was lying just ahead for mankind. The painter saw his art as a gift to this new rational world, a world no longer dominated by superstition and religion, when nation-states themselves were the ideal of modernity and sanity. Paris had become civilization’s high-water mark. Democracy and Art lived for each other in an atmosphere of rationality and reason. What had happened to all that hope, Russell wondered.

His cell phone rang at ten. He sprang up from the bed, dropping the book.

“How are you?” she said.

“Okay.” Speaking with her still seemed strange.

“I’m going to be late. Maybe eleven-thirty; is that okay?” she said.

“Yes. Eleven-thirty,” he said.

“You saw the boat dock? In front of the restaurant.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Have you missed me?” she asked. The question took him aback.

“Yes. Very much,” he said.

“I’ll see you at the dock then,” she said, and hung up.

He closed his phone and sat on the edge of the bed. He was completely drained, and didn’t understand why. It was as if he’d run several miles. His heart was pounding with both desire and fear.

“Shit,” he said out loud. “Shit. I don’t know if I can do this.” He went to the tray and tried to pour himself another cup of coffee, but the thermos they’d brought with breakfast was empty. He put the cup down and looked stupidly around the room, then walked to the window.

He saw fishermen’s canoes nestled together. The pangas— small wood canoes—rode nose to nose out on the small lagoon below his window. The fishermen were talking together, eating breakfast. Their boats made the shape of a brown star on the water.

“What’s wrong with me? I’m out of my mind. I can’t wait to see her. I can’t wait.” He said it out loud, as some kind of affirmation. Everything seemed wild. He was frightened of her for some reason. Her beauty? Her intelligence? Her station? Her role as mother? He didn’t know. He couldn’t answer. All he knew was that he wanted to have her again, all to himself. He wanted to make love to her. He wanted to see her climax. He wanted her to be that woman-girl she’d been in the Hotel Procedes, after they’d left the club. He hadn’t been afraid then. He’d been an equal. He’d been a sexual partner. It was better when she didn’t speak, when neither of them spoke. That was impossible. Perhaps people like them shouldn’t speak, but exist only sexually.

He went into the shower and looked in the mirror. He looked every bit of his age, he thought. She was much younger. She never looked tired.

He looked tired. He’d been up late at the office finishing the article on De La Madrid, and then emailing it to London. It might run as soon as the next weekend. He’d gotten very little sleep with Mahler in the bush. They had cut through to a place Mahler thought they might find the Jaguar. The work had been hellish. It had rained all day. They found nothing, again. Exhausted, they’d ridden back to the plantation without saying a word to one another. He’d had to come back to the capital, as his job was the only thing paying for their search.

Waiting for Beatrice to show up, Russell was slightly confused about the arrangements. He decided not to take his day pack, as he had no idea where they were going. He had a cold drink at the hotel’s bar, nursing it.

He was at the pier waiting for Beatrice at eleven-thirty. As he stood there in his jeans and T-shirt, his sunglasses very dark, he watched a helicopter land on a pad built for the wealthy when they came from the capital to eat lunch at the hotel. A young couple got out of the helicopter with one suitcase and made their way up the steps toward the hotel. The pilot cut the engine. Russell watched the propeller blades slowly twist to a stop.

He wondered about the couple. She was a beautiful blonde, her boyfriend was very dark. He decided for some reason that the boyfriend was a narco-trafficker. There was something about him, something—the fancy cowboy boots. That was it. They didn’t belong to the elites; at least, the young man didn’t, as he was dark-skinned. The young man had fought his way to this hotel through the underworld. The young man made Russell think of his own great-grandfather, who had also been self-made. You got dirty on the way up, it seemed, whether it was selling coffee or selling dope. But everyone on the bottom wanted out. That was the rule. It applied to everyone in every time. Everyone wanted a luxury berth, even if it was on the Titanic.

Beatrice was late. Russell was sitting on the dock looking at the blurring horizon when he finally saw a small boat, a Boston whaler, coming towards the hotel. She was alone behind the wheel, in a two-piece suit with an orange sarong. Her hair was wet and the color of honey.

She pulled up to the dock and cut the engine. She moved up to the bow and threw him a rope. He grabbed it and looked at her.

“You have to tie it off. I thought we’d have a drink. I’ve been for a swim,” she said. He did as she asked him, although he wasn’t too good at knots. She looked at it as he helped her up from the boat.

“You weren’t in the Navy,” she said, joking.

“No,” he said.

“We can’t show any affection here,” she said. “So pretend I just kissed you.”

“All right,” he said. She looked at him, then knelt down and re-tied the boat off. He realized he’d been monosyllabic since they’d spoken on the phone. He had been even in the hotel, when they’d been alone.

“I’m sorry. I just—well, it’s new to me, the intrigue,” he said, watching her work.

“No married women in the repertoire?” she asked. As she knelt, her back to him, he saw the beautiful curve of her ass. He wanted to touch her, to feel her wet hair, but couldn’t.

“How are we supposed to act right now?” he said

“Well, not like lovers, that’s for sure,” she said, standing up. “The place is crawling with my husband’s friends.”

“How are you going to explain me being here?” he asked.

“You are doing a story on my husband, and wanted to speak to his wife. You called me, and we decided to meet here. I’ve already told Carlos that. I’m here for the week at the house. We have a house on the lake.”

“But I’m not doing a story on your husband,” he said. “I’ve finished it.”

“I suggested the idea to him yesterday. He agreed it was a good idea, and said I should call you. He wants to be seen like Al Gore. I’m supposed to be his Tipper,” she said.

“So, I’m here to interview you?” he said.

“Yes. And to see the lake house, and the children, and have dinner tonight.”

“Is Carlos with you here?”

“He flies in this afternoon. Here, to the helipad; I’m to pick him up.”

“What about me?” he asked.

“What about you? You’re staying at the hotel. We’ll have some friends over to the house tonight. He wanted you to come. . . . It’s up to you.”

“Just like that,” he said.

“Yes. Just like that,” she said. “I’ll make it work . . .our affair.”

“Are we going to have an affair?” He looked towards the hotel. Some tourists were coming down the stairs towards the dock. They were middle-aged, their well-pressed clothes giving away their age. They seemed out of sorts, having an argument.

“If you like,” she said. “I want to, very much.”

“I think you’ve made me a little crazy,” he said. He tried to smile, but didn’t know how convincing it was. “But I suppose you’ve heard that before?”

“How about that drink?” she said, not answering his question. She turned and started up the dock.

They passed the older couple who’d been arguing. The woman, stopping them, asked in English where they could rent a boat. The couple turned out to be English; Beatrice was very kind, and spent several minutes talking with them. She seemed to be happy in the company of her countrymen. They slipped into a working class patois. Russell was left out of the conversation for the most part. At one point she touched his shoulder, as she was pointing out Panajachel to the couple. He realized that she was talking to him, saying something to him that had nothing to do with the couple or with the town. There was something about her touch, reaffirming, the way her hand caressed his arm, her finger tips electric. She was saying, “We’re together; we’re together in a way that doesn’t need all that talking, does it?” She looked at him carefully as they were walking up the stairs. The older couple, left behind, were staring out on the lake.

“Are you happy, Russell?” she asked him. “Are you happy you came?”

“Yes, very much,” he said. And meant it.

“I’m not going to be easy,” she said. “It’s very hard for me, too, all this, in case you thought it wasn’t, or that I was some kind of bitch on wheels.”

“No, of course not,” he said. “I understand.”

“I’m not that . . . a bitch who sleeps around,” she said. He didn’t answer. They crossed the patio and went into the hotel’s bar, which seemed very dark after their time in the sun.

They went over the ground rules of their affair over lemonade in the bar. Beatrice had studied all the problems, she said. She thought they would be fine if they followed them. He agreed to whatever she said.

She explained that she would never call him at the office. He could call her on her cell phone to make dates. She said that she paid her cell phone bill herself out of the household money, and no one checked it. She gave him the number as they sat there. There were other rules: no signs of affection in public, no matter where they were in the country, because people from all social classes knew her and, of course, her husband. It would never be safe.

He wasn’t to get too familiar with the children, as they would start to speak about him, she said.

Russell ordered a beer. The owner of the hotel appeared. It was their first test under fire, as it were. Russell stood up very straight as they shook hands, and tried to look relaxed but seem businesslike. Beatrice spoke to the man in Spanish. The owner glanced at him once after they’d shaken hands. It was a questioning look. Any man seen with her had to suffer that look, Russell supposed. But his story sounded good, and he saw the man’s interest stop short of suspicion. The owner had been a school chum of Carlos’s. He told Russell to call him directly if he needed anything. The owner asked him to mention the hotel in his article, if he would be so kind. Russell said he would.

“No promises,” she said after the owner had gone. “That’s another rule.”

“About what?” he said, trying to look indifferent for the sake of the other people milling around.

“No promises about what will happen. You understand. . . Nothing can happen. I have children. They need their father. We can’t fall in love,” she said.

“Have you done this before?” he asked. He was getting a little angry suddenly, listening to her give him rules like a schoolboy. Perhaps it was just the heat and the tension of all the eyes that might get him killed.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just . . . it’s my way. I tend to be analytical in the extreme. It was a problem, the affair in the abstract, like a math problem. I was trained as a mathematician at Oxford.”

“Yes, I know,” he said. He’d read her official bio more than once since they’d met. She’d gotten a first at Oxford.

“I got a scholarship. I’m not from money, if that’s what you were thinking. That Carlos knew me as a child because my father owns Costa Rica or something. We were poor. My mother was a waitress. I am just like those people on the dock. Nothing special about me. I’m working class.”

The young couple he’d seen land in the helicopter came down from their room with a beach bag and went by them en route to the pool. The man looked tough. The girl was elegant-looking and long-legged.

“That’s what all gangsters want. A model,” Beatrice said, looking at them pass.

“How do you know he’s a gangster?” he said.

“Just look at him. Isn’t it obvious? And she’s probably a whore of some kind.”

He was surprised by the accusation. The young woman didn’t seem like a whore.

“So you aren’t wealthy,” he said, trying to get back to her life. He was curious.

“God, no. My father was a coal miner. We lived in one of those dreadful row houses in the north before he left us. It was just like D.H. Lawrence wrote about, nothing there had changed for a hundred years. Except that the pit closed down when Maggie Thatcher had at us. My father left us right after that. I grew up with my mom and my adopted grandmother. I have a sister,” she said.

“Is she as pretty as you?”

“Absolutely not,” Beatrice said, smiling.

“Is she as smart?”

“Oh yes. She’s a genius, but she can barely leave the house. She has some kind of disease where she thinks she’s left something important behind. Then she gets that and goes out on the porch, and then thinks she needs something else she couldn’t possibly do without. It can go on that way for hours.”

They finally got up to leave. He didn’t feel as if he’d gotten through somehow. He felt as if there was something very big between them that went away only when they were touching.

“You’ll need a hat. On the water. I thought we’d go for a ride before I take you to the house. I want you to see it, the house, it’s very beautiful. There’s a cove nearby . . . we could swim.”

“I have one, a hat. But it’s awful. I feel stupid in it,” he said.

“It’s all right; I think you’re very handsome, so it doesn’t matter, does it?” she said.

“Okay. I’ll go get it,” he said. He realized they were talking like strangers because they were strangers, for all practical purposes.

“I’ll wait,” she said.

“Right. I’ll be right back then.”

She looked at him.

“I’m sorry if I’ve been a bitch. I didn’t want to start that way. Honestly.” Her face was so beautiful that for a moment he didn’t answer her. It was something about the way her hair had dried and the movement of her exposed, tanned belly as she spoke.

“No, you aren’t. Don’t say that,” he said.

“Go get the hat then,” she said.

His room was on the top floor, and he had to negotiate a series of terraces to get there. He made a wrong turn, got lost for a moment, and found himself on an unfamiliar corridor. A maid with her cart passed him; the corridor felt very cool. Below, to his left, was a garden with a parrot cage. The corridor was very clean, and bougainvillea grew up the columns, their orange flowers mixed with white ones.

Russell wondered what would happen to them. He felt a sense of dread as he tried to find the way back to his room. I’m lost, he thought. When he did finally find it, he saw Beatrice standing by his door.

Surprised, he walked towards her, thinking that he’d taken too long, or that there was something wrong, that she would have to leave or had come to tell him that they’d better forget it. Drop their affair now, while they still could. He got closer. She was facing the door, knocking; he surprised her. She wheeled around, threw herself into his arms, and kissed him.

He didn’t understand. After all the talk of rules and ways of hiding their affair, she was doing just the opposite. He heard her begin to weep. She was holding onto him very very tightly. He tried to get the room key out of his pants pocket, but couldn’t at first. He had to pry her hands from around his waist to get to the key. He tried to get her to step away so he could open the door. He finally got her to let him go, and he opened the door. They stepped inside, and she kissed him before he could close the door again.

“I was a bitch to you. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” she said. He closed the door, slamming it, looking down the hallway as he did, terrified that someone had seen them. He pushed her down on the still-unmade bed and lifted up her sarong. It came away in his hands. He peeled her bathing suit down her thighs and put his face in her blond crotch. She was still weeping; he heard the weeping stop, felt her open up, and he made love to her that way—still frightened. He felt that he was finally the master of this catastrophe as she came, her back arched on the rumpled linen.