The Second Bat Guano War: a Hard-Boiled Spy Thriller (13 page)

I crept down the stairs barefoot, my flip-flops in hand. I slid my feet into the sandals, stepped out onto the cool sand. She stood on top of a dune, between two tall palms, her feet apart, knees bent, arms out, holding an imaginary ball.

She had shown me some T’ai Chi one drunken afternoon in a filthy motel in Callao. “Let’s play with the imaginary ball,” she’d crooned from the bed, and leaped naked onto the floor, crunching a cockroach underfoot. It was her way of relaxing when nothing else worked, she had explained, after her screaming subsided and she’d washed off her foot. When drugs and alcohol didn’t work, she had purred into my ear, and there’s no eligible male nearby, T’ai Chi is all you’ve got left.

That. Or a bullet in the brain.

I climbed the dune. Put my hands in my pockets, affected nonchalance. I stopped next to her and looked out at the sea. “It’s over,” I said. “You know that.”

Her eyes remained closed. She breathed slowly, lips unmoving. “Security’s watching us.”

I looked back at the house. A dark shape clung to the roof. Cigarette smoke curled from the window of an SUV parked by the side of the house.

“Good night, then.” I put a foot into empty space, launched myself down the dune.

“He’s going to take you.” The sea murmured on the sand. The tide was coming in. I could taste the salt spray on my lips. “Like he took me.”

I looked up the dune at her. I had the sudden urge to crouch low, stand up inside her imaginary ball. Instead, I scooped up a handful of sand, letting it stream through my fingers.

“Take me,” I said. “What does that mean?”

“What he wants, he takes. He wants you.”

“Who does? Pitt?”

“Ambo. Look what happened to my husband.”

She stood motionless. I squinted at her face. White powder circled her nostrils.

I sighed. “Easy on the dope, alright, Lynn? Ambo is your husband. I’m going back to bed.”

Her voice cracked. “I mean Pitt’s father.”

That stopped me. “What about him?”

“Industrial accident.” She pronounced each consonant, her lips hissing, groaning the syllables. “Oil rig.”

“What happened?”

Her fingers shook. The imaginary ball was in danger of bouncing free. “Ambo wanted me. So he took me.”

“You mean—”

“Yes.”

“He murdered your husband.”

“Yes.”

“And then you
married
him?”

Her breathing came in gasps, no longer the steady meditative breaths of T’ai Chi. “He can be very persuasive,” she said. “He decides he wants you, he will take you too.”

“What could he possibly want from me?” I laughed. “What am I, Lynn? You tell me, huh?” She didn’t move. “Or you want me to tell you?” I climbed back up the dune, stood in front of her, an unspoken challenge to open her eyes and meet my gaze. “I am a worthless piece of shit. I am scum. I am a drug addict who teaches English to criminals so they can rob tourists. I will most likely die of a drug overdose or a knife between the ribs. And you know what?” I smacked at her fingers with my open hand, but she refused to look at me. “You know what?” I said, growled the words at her. “I don’t really give a shit.”

Her face quivered. She punched her lips together. Tears dropped from the corners of her eyes.

“Ah shit, Lynn.”

I scratched at the back of my head with my nails, wishing I could rip the flesh from my body, my face from my skull, peel back the layers of skin and be faceless, nameless, without body: some spirit. I turned to the sea, as though begging for guidance, but heard only the soft roar of the infinite deep.

“What do you care anyway?” I said. “This is just—”

“Just what?”

I held my hands to the stars, pleading with the Milky Way for answers, but the mute universe cursed me with its silence.

She said, “Who do I have left to love?” A long thread of snot trailed from one nostril. She snorted it back up and swallowed. Tears dripped from her chin.

Love.
That word. I bit my cheek, twisted my foot into the sand. “What is that, that I’m supposed to—”

“My husband doesn’t love me.”

“So what if he doesn’t? You think that makes you special?”

“He can’t love me. Won’t love me.” She fought to hold on to that goddamn imaginary ball, eyes squeezed shut, hands shaking wildly, but her head fell to her chest, her face cast in shadow. “He stole Pitt’s father from me. He took Pitt. Now he’s taking you. Who else is there? What do I have left?”

“Shit and piss,” I said. “That’s what you got. Just like me. Same as every other goddamn person in this whole fucked-up world.”

My flip-flops broke as I tramped back to the house, pounding my feet into the sand to get away from her, away from the thoughts that filled my head. I left the sandals where they fell, more garbage to coat the world, fill the belly of some unlucky whale.

I didn’t look back until I had tracked sand all the way up the stairs and into my room. From my perch in the lightless window I looked down at her. She lay on the ground in a heap. The waves crashed loud on the shore, the tide getting higher, higher.

She stood, her bathrobe trailing from her naked limbs. Her hairless body emerged as though from a cocoon. She ran along the sand into the breakers, jumping as each wave hit, the bare cleft between her legs grinding down on the foamy waters. A bigger wave heaved itself over her naked body, and she fell. She did not get up. I waited. Still she did not get up. The water was cold. The current was strong. She would be washed out to sea. She was going to die. I opened my mouth to shout for the security detail, but as my lips parted she crawled onto the sand. She lay there, soaking up the darkness. The waves washed away the sand around her, digging her a hole in which to hide.

I dragged myself into bed. Huddled deep inside my blanket, eyes wide open, wishing myself deep in the bowels of the earth. I snorted a continuous stream of cocaine to ward off sleep. Blood and snot mingled on my pillow. I shivered the night away.

The next morning I was in the bathroom when the door banged open. A purple dawn filtered in past the dark figure blocking the doorway.

Pitt’s voice said, “Hey man, ready to hit some killer waves?” Followed by a gasp.

I stood on tiptoe, reached up to undo the noose. A knife flashed in the dark, sawed through the rope that hung from the ceiling. I coughed, struggled to pull up my pants. Failed. Wiped the K-Y off on my shirt. I clawed at the rope around my neck with my clean hand.

“The
fuck,
dude,” I said. “Don’t you ever knock?”

Ten

We showered and were enjoying a cold morning beer when the maid announced lunch.

She was a plump little number, firm flesh bulging in all the right places. Don’t fuck with her, Pitt had warned me. She’s security. The tip of her fingernail dug into Ambo’s shoulder as he sat down at the table. He frowned at his empty plate. Lynn sat beside him, her menthol cigarette trailing smoke from between her fingers. Did she see the gesture? Sunglasses hid her face.

Pitt and I had waded into the surf that morning strangers, and waded out again as friends. He’d made no mention of my autoerotic habit. I’d tried to raise the subject but he spoke over me, banishing the theme to the heap of unmentionables.

Meanwhile, every time I looked at Lynn I saw her naked in the waves the night before. I closed my eyes, but there she was, twitching in the surf, groping at the sand. I shook my head, trying to free myself from this vision. I drank deep from my glass of
Cusqueña.

“Nothing like a cold beer before noon,” I said.

“Except perhaps a second.” Pitt grinned. He was topless again, in jeans and flip-flops. The sun filtered through the latticed wooden canopy onto our table on the beachside patio. He laughed and slapped his ribs.

I rubbed my damaged side through my crusty brown sweater. I was sweating in the noonday heat, but I didn’t want them to see my scars. The injured rib was down low, on the right. I hissed at the pain.

“You hurt yourself?” Lynn leaned over her martini. Her triangular bikini—pink this time—did nothing to hide her rubbery pectoral missiles.

“That’s why surfers have flat chests.” Pitt’s lips were tight, his eyes on Lynn. Perhaps he remembered the smaller glands he’d suckled as a child.

“Well,” she said, and sipped from her cocktail, “remind me not to take up surfing.”

Pitt put his glass down. “Let’s have a look at you.”

“What for?” My scars itched under my shirt. Lynn knew about them. Obviously. Pitt saw them this morning when he barged into the bathroom. All the same I didn’t want to be their freak show entertainment for the weekend.

Pitt said, “My guess is, it’s cracked. Could be broken. We should check.”

I shrugged. “If it’s broken, it’ll mend.”

Pitt grabbed the bottom of my sweater and T-shirt, yanked them up to my nipples. My scars cringed in the open air. My ribs bulged like some starved Ethiopian orphan. Maybe I could get UNESCO to send me emergency rations, couple metric tons of cocaine, I thought. I pulled my sweater down to cover myself.

Ambo tipped the omnipresent Stetson farther back on his head and whistled. “Christ, son. Don’t you never eat?”

“I’m sorry?” I had been expecting a question about the scars. Had my car crash story all ready to go. The Burn Unit. Intensive Care. Sadistic hospital nurses with fangs and forked tails. You know. The usual.

Ambo patted his belly. “You look half-starved, boy.”

Pitt felt my rib cage. His finger traced the injured rib.

“Eating’s not really my thing,” I said. Did Ambo really not notice? Or maybe he was just being nice. A thumb dug into the bump where the bone had split. I made a noise.

Pitt sat back in his chair. “I got just the thing for that.”

“Pitt.” Lynn. The voice a warning.

“Herbal remedy, Mother. Purely medicinal.”

“Not here. Not now. We have a guest?” She gestured at me with her cigarette.

Pitt shrugged, smacked my rib cage. I opened my mouth but held on to the pain, not wanting to share it.

He said, “You’ll live.”

I took a deep breath. “Not serious, then?”

“Standard case of surfer’s chest.”

The maid came out with a pitcher of ice water. Conversation stopped while she filled our glasses.

“Que tenemos hoy?”
Lynn asked.

“Ceviche, señora.”
The maid put the pitcher down, studied her fingernails. She twisted her hands behind her back and marched off unbidden.

“Funny how I’m never consulted on the menu, don’t you think?” Lynn said in the direction of the ocean.

Ambo put his elbows on the table. Asked me, “You like
ceviche?”

Pitt came to my rescue. He lifted his glass of beer. “Who doesn’t like a bit of raw fish?”

Ambo laughed, pounded the table with his fist. The crockery trembled.

The maid returned carrying a large platter. Dropped it in the center of the table.
Bang.
She slopped mounds of raw fish on our plates. Could have been a prison matron feeding convicts roach-flecked oatmeal. A bottle of white wine rested in an ice bucket. A flick of her wrist, a deft twist of a corkscrew, and she drowned our glasses in
vino,
until they overflowed onto the table and dripped between the slats onto our toes.

I took a bite of the marinated seafood, a mixture of fish, conch and crab. Ambo shoveled large spoonfuls into his mouth until his cheeks bulged. Pitt poked at his with a fork. Lynn nibbled, a Scandinavian parakeet. I put my fork down, sat back, drank beer.

Ambo swallowed a gargantuan mouthful and belched. He wiped his lips with the back of his knuckles. “Not a fan?”

“Like I said, I don’t really eat.”

“You must eat something.”

I drained my beer and waved it at the maid, who snatched the empty from my hand and sulked off back to the kitchen.

Ambo laced his fingers together, lowered his eyebrows. “You do eat, don’t you?”

“Mostly junk food,” I said. Eating healthy used to be an obsession. These days, the quantity of cocaine I consumed pretty much numbed all desire to eat. When I did, it was hamburgers, potato chips, Inca Kola. All of which made me feel like shit. Which was the point.

The maid brought me another beer. She slammed it down next to my plate so hard that foam shot from the neck of the bottle, pegged her in the eye. She went rigid, wiped the suds from her eyelid. No one dared laugh.

“Let’s get this boy some real food,” Ambo said, staring at the maid’s firm thighs. He aimed an open palm at her muscular bicep. “Bring out the dips.”

Pitt swallowed a mouthful of fish, put a hand in his pocket and drew out a plastic bag and some rolling papers.

Lynn looked at Ambo, at Pitt. “You aren’t going to let him toke. Right here. In front of me.” She waved her wrist in my direction. “In front of us.”

Ambo shrugged, lit a cigarette. “You toke too. Don’t be such a hypocrite.”

She stood, glared at us. “So now I’m a hypocrite, is that it?”

She finished her martini, and replaced the glass on the table. It shattered with a sharp crack. She studied the broken stem, as though unsure of her own strength, then lay the empty glass down sideways.

Pitt said, “But, Mom, you’ll miss the dips.”

“I’ve lost my appetite.”

He held up a half-rolled joint. “Got the cure for that right here.”

Lynn nearly ran into the maid, who held a large glass punch bowl in each hand, bags of corn chips under each arm. The two women swayed back and forth, a wordless contest to see who would triumph, until Lynn seized the maid by the waist, shoved her to one side and left the patio.

Pitt called after her, “Come on, Mom. Relax. Take a toke already!”

In reply, the sound of slamming doors echoed from the house. Pitt chuckled, shook his head, licked the seam of the joint. There was a momentary quiet.

An earthquake shook the table. The maid had deposited the two punch bowls in front of us. “Guacamole.” She stabbed a manicured fingernail at each in turn. “Salsa.” She hurled the corn chips between the bowls, as though determined to reduce them to dust.

I liked guacamole. I had told Pitt that once. It was one of the few things I enjoyed eating. That was why I usually avoided eating it.