Red Jungle (14 page)

From where they stopped, he could see the catwalk above, and the deejay. He left Katherine’s side, pushed his way to the bar, and ordered two tequilas. The bar was a moving throng. Girls with rave bars were wiggling in the confined spaces. Young men in well-ironed shirts stood staring at the girls: some had taken off their shirts because of the heat. Their young bodies reflected the multi-colored lights. The bartender was rushing to fill orders.

A break came in the music. The room felt as if the air had been sucked out of it. A girl bumped into him, obviously high on something. She ran her hand over her boyfriend’s naked chest. Still dancing, she held the light stick against his stomach. Suddenly the music started again.

He felt someone grab him from behind. He thought it was Katherine; he turned, and it was Beatrice. She was holding another dancer’s hand and she didn’t really look at him as she shimmied to the bar, her hands raised in a kind of dance move. She broke free from her friend and she began to dance to the music. Wherever she’d been, she knew how to move in a way that only dancers, trained dancers, have. It was a feeling that she controlled her body perfectly, yet was out of control slightly, so that the energy moved across her and then back again in a wild let-it-all-go step that was meant to go with the trance music.

There was a break with just the beat. He tried to catch her eye, but she was completely absorbed. People made room for her and her partner.

He looked around as best he could to see if her husband was in the place, but he couldn’t see him. So much older than the kids here, he knew the general would stand out easily. But Russell didn’t see him.

The music picked up speed. Beatrice was sweating. He could see the sheen on her face; her blond hair had been braided, the braids flew.

The barman tapped him on the shoulder. Russell turned, paid for the drinks, and left with them. He saw Katherine nearby. She’d seen Beatrice and clearly recognized her. He moved through the crowd and handed Katherine a drink. She turned to look at him. He tried not to register shock. Or was it something else on his face? Excitement? Lust? All of them?

“That’s
what’s-
her-name. The general’s wife. Look at her!” Katherine said. She leaned into him and yelled over the music, obviously surprised to see her here.

He turned and looked at Beatrice again. He thought she noticed them. He wasn’t sure. “Jesus, she can dance,” he heard Katherine say. He felt her put her arm around him. Another powerful break came in the music; all the turntables were playing now. A James Brown tune dominated the mix; it was propped up by sitar music.

Beatrice spun. Her midriff flattened. She started a new series of moves, more controlled, shaking her hips to the sitar music then undulating. All the young men at the bar were transfixed now by her dancing and her beauty. It seemed as if she were getting bigger, but it was just the lights that had moved. Someone on the catwalk had turned a spotlight down on them; a purple light hit Beatrice and her companion.

There was a complete stop to the music. You could feel the silent beats building as everyone expected the music to come back. It didn’t on the first beat, or the third. The lights started to come on as if the night were ending, five beats… He watched Beatrice slow, then slow again. She was looking at him on the seventh beat. On the ninth, the house lights went dark. Only one single spotlight was left on. Then suddenly, the music came back on, thundering. The famous break in “I Feel Good” came up.
So good . . . so good, that I gotta yoouuu.”
The crowd went wild. The breaks worked their magic. Everyone in the place yelled excitedly.

Beatrice had looked directly at him then, as if she’d been dancing all along for him. They played “Make it Funky.” He took a drink and for a moment he thought they would move away from the bar, because Katherine was pulling him to a place where they could dance. He turned to look at Beatrice; she was coming through the crowd toward them, as James Brown sang “Like a Boom-er-ang.”

Beatrice stopped in front of him and draped her arms over his neck, and they started to dance. It happened like that. He didn’t think he stopped dancing for the next hour. By the time he remembered Katherine, she’d left.

Later he checked his cell phone messages; she had left him several. “You’re a shit,” she’d said angrily. Of course she was right. But there were others, too. She said she was sorry. She said she didn’t mean it. She said he should call her.

He did, a week later, but she’d gone to Chicago. He left a message at her office, telling her he was very sorry. He felt guilty for using her. He was truly sorry about that. His affair with Beatrice Selva started that night at the Q Bar.

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.”