Esperanza (5 page)

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.”

She noticed he didn’t wear a wedding ring. Divorced? Widowed? “You don’t look old enough to have a twenty-one-year-old son.”

He seemed flattered. “Forty-four last month. You have kids? Pets?”

“No kids yet, no pets now.” But before law school and the FBI, she’d always had pets. Dogs, cats, birds, guinea pigs, gerbils, a regular circus. “What’re you doing in Ecuador?”

“Vacation. You?”

“Same.”

A bus emerged from the fog, smaller, more compact, painted in festive colors, bright red, bold yellow, celery green. Large black letters across the side read:
ESPERANZA
13. It didn’t shudder and backfire like the first bus. Piled high on its roof rack were bags, crates, packages. It stopped, the door sighed open, no one got off. But a young man with high cheekbones and a smile filled with teeth as white as a picket fence appeared in the doorway.

“Esperanza.” His voice echoed through the fog like a cry to arms.
“Número trece a Esperanza.”

As Tess and Ian got up, the dog started barking, tail whipping back and forth, and tore toward the bus. The driver stepped out and threw open his arms, laughing.
“Nomada. Caramba, perro.”
The Lab leaped up, knocking
the driver back onto the steps, and covered the man’s face with wet, sloppy kisses.

“He’s got friends and a name. Let’s get outta here,” she said.

“Can’t be too soon for me, Slim.”

Slim
. Yes, this guy intrigued her.

They walked over to the bus, where Nomad now sat at the top of the steps, panting, and the driver was brushing off his jacket. “Esperanza, right?” Ian asked.

“Sí, señor. Bienvenidos.”
The driver took their tickets and they got on.

“Is Nomad your dog?” Tess asked.

“No, no.” He shook his head vigorously, still smiling, and replied in heavily accented English. “Nomad belongs to everyone. He often rides the bus to Esperanza.”

The bus was completely empty and nicer than she had expected, tourist transportation, clean and spacious, with a restroom, and a TV screen mounted up front. She chose an aisle seat halfway down and slipped her pack under the seat in front of her. Ian claimed a seat across the aisle and Nomad then settled in the aisle between them.

Through the window, Tess saw the American family huddled together, the mother stabbing her hand toward this bus, the husband pointing at the bus that had pulled up behind them. Beyond the Americans, slouched in the doorway of the bodega, was the drunken cop. Tess wondered if he was looking for her, for an official statement, to detain her. She turned away.

“Are we it?” Ian asked. “The only people headed for Esperanza?”

“There’s a second bus behind us. I talked to that family earlier.”

Ian slid open his window, took a look, pulled his head back in. “Yeah, I did, too. They’re from upstate New York and headed to Esperanza.”

The driver shouted out their destination again and when no one else came forward, he shut the door and turned to Tess, Ian, and the dog. “Amigos, welcome aboard.”

“That bus behind us,” Tess said. “Is it going to Esperanza, too?”

“Yes. But we are the express. My name is Manuel Ortega and I am honored to be your driver between here and Esperanza.” He spoke carefully, as if testing each word in his head first. “And you are . . . ?”

Tess and Ian introduced themselves.

“We have much room, and on the screen behind me, we will be showing one of my favorite movies.
The Graduate.
In the back of the bus you will
find a cooler with cold drinks and snacks. No popcorn, I am sorry to say, but I believe I have included some delicious treats for our dog, Nomad.”

Nomad’s ears twitched at the sound of his name. Manuel laughed and sat down. “And so, amigos—”

Banging on the door truncated his announcement. Manuel pressed the lever, the door whispered open, and a man lurched up the steps, clutching an old duffel bag. An icy horror swept through Tess: he looked like the dead man’s twin, except he was taller and his braid was mostly gray.

Nomad lifted his head, a low, feral growl issuing from him, and Manuel shot to his feet and shouted,
“Vete, hombre. No hay bienvenido aquí para tí.”

A heated exchange ensued in Quechua. Nomad was now on his feet, snarling, lips drawn back, exposing his teeth, body hunched and ready to spring. The man gestured wildly at Tess and Ian. “You heard Manuel,” Ian said, moving up the aisle. “Get the hell off the bus.”

The man’s expression didn’t bode well. Tess had seen it on the faces of other foreigners when dealing with Americans, a kind of,
Who the fuck do you think you are?

The man threw his head back, laughing. “What? A gringo tells
me
what to do?” He grabbed the front of Ian’s jacket, and even though the Quechuan was much shorter and Ian outweighed him by probably sixty pounds, he jerked Ian forward and spat at him. The glob of spittle rolled down his cheek.

Ian wrenched free and pushed the guy away. The Quechuan stumbled back, Nomad charged, Tess leaped out of her seat, but already the man was falling out through the doorway, arms pinwheeling for balance, eyes wide with shock. He slammed into the ground and Manuel hurled his bag through the opening and shut the door. A heartbeat later the bus shrieked away into the fog and the gathering darkness.

Ian gripped the backs of the seats, body swaying with the motion of the bus. The dog seemed frozen, body hunched, fur standing up along his spine. Manuel drove like a man possessed. Tess, feeling shaken, made her way toward Ian and Manuel.

“What was
that
about?” she asked Manuel.

He waved her away. “Not to worry. These crazies are everywhere.”

“C’mon, that guy wasn’t a crazy. Everything he said and did seemed deliberate. And there was another man earlier, who grabbed my arm and told me I was an intruder and then ended up dead behind the store.”

Manuel looked horrified. “He
touched
you, this man?”

She turned her arm so he could see the bruise.

“Dios mio,”
he whispered, and crossed himself.
“Mala sangre.”

“Bad blood.” She could translate it, but didn’t know what it meant in this context.

Ian said, “There were other Americans getting on that bus behind us. A family with two kids. Why did he target us?”

“He is
brujo,
” Manuel spat. “He said you were not supposed to be on this bus.”

Go home, gringa. You are an intruder here.

“Brujo,”
Ian murmured. “That means ‘witch,’ doesn’t it?”

“Sí, señor, but no broomsticks, eh? They are crazy, like I say before.” Manuel now laughed like it was no big deal. Every day here in Ecuador, his laughter said, weirdness happened, it was a way of life. “You must not worry. Nomad and Manuel, we take care of things.”