Red Jungle (16 page)

“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.

He knew then that he was the one that would have to make them follow the rules, that she wouldn’t be able to, that passion would get the better of her. He felt the milky feel of her, the brush of her thigh, the pulling of his hair, the moaning and rocking as she came again. He was a little shocked by her eagerness as she pulled his pants down and made love to him, looking up at him with her blue eyes full of lust while he looked at the volcanoes, the window wide open, the fishermen gone, just the flat water and the feeling of her mouth on him using quick little strokes, the sound of it. The three volcanoes, each one watching them. Before he climaxed, he realized—in the ecstasy—that it was this thing, this affair, that was the last great jungle in which he could lose himself. This was exactly what he’d been searching for, without realizing it. It was the kind of madness that made him trade stocks until he’d lost everything. He’d wanted to give up his self, the great monolith of his personality; he’d wanted to smash it, to pulverize it and walk away somehow different, or dead.

They both heard the helicopter. He’d fallen asleep. He panicked. For a moment, he couldn’t move.

FOURTEEN

He made the mistake of standing up. The helicopter flew low over the lake in front of his window. He knew it must be Carlos. He looked and saw the little Boston Whaler sitting down on the water, looking tiny by the dock. The lake was suddenly whipped up into a green-blue froth. He sat down again immediately.

He was naked. He turned and looked at Beatrice; she was only in her bathing suit top. They’d lost control completely. He didn’t understand it. They’d known he was coming.

She reached for him. He could see real terror on her face. “I told him you were staying here,” she said. She wouldn’t let go of him. He had to pull her arms from his shoulders. “He’s going to find us. He’ll shoot us. Oh my God! My kids.”

He pulled her arms down and slapped her. He didn’t know what else to do. She looked at him a moment, and nodded. Her cheek was bright red where he’d hit her.

“Get dressed,” he said. He stood up and pulled the curtain closed. The room was plunged into semi-darkness. His mind was racing for an idea, any idea. Nothing came. They both dressed frantically.

“What’s he usually do when he gets here?”

“He calls me. I come and pick him up. He’s going to—” One of the cell phones on the dresser rang. It was hers. They looked at each other. She was wrapping the sarong around her hips. He was pulling his pants on.

“He’ll have seen the boat,” she said.

“Pick it up and tell him you’ll meet him in the bar. Go ahead! Tell him you went for a walk in the garden.” She looked at him.

“He’ll know something’s wrong.
I’m frightened.”

“Don’t be,” he said. “Everything’s all right. It’s going to be fine. He isn’t going to find out. He is going to get in the boat with you. Then you are going to take him wherever it is you go.” Her phone stopped ringing. “Now call him back.”

“Shit. I’m shaking, Russell.”

He walked across the room, picked up her phone, and took it to her. She sat down. “Please call him back. If you don’t, he might think something is wrong.” He held the phone out to her. She took it, finally.

She stood up, went to the curtains and opened them slightly. He walked up behind her and looked down on the heliport. Two Bell helicopters were parked near one another. He saw Carlos Selva on the stairs, heading toward the pool. In full dress uniform, he was talking—briefcase in his hand—to one of his bodyguards. He could see the general’s cell phone cradled in his shoulder. Beatrice’s phone rang again. She opened it.

“Hello. Darling… Yes… I’m in the garden in the back by the parrots. Yes… I know it’s silly, but I like them. No, I’ll meet you in the bar. Right now. Yes—No, I wanted to be here when you came. I don’t know… I can check. Why don’t you? The American. No. Yes, he’s here. Yes, right now,” she said. He watched her husband move up the stairs, flanked by his two men. He was walking slowly. Russell knew that if he decided to look for her outside, they were going to be caught.