Kilometer 99 (16 page)

“Will you tell him?”

“Tell Ben? About last night? I don't think he'd take it too well.” I neglect to mention our jealous exchange a couple hours earlier. I look down at my arms. Twin black dots—the size of nickels—form at the base of each bicep in the spots where Ben pressed his thumbs.

“That's probably for the best,” Alex says. “It's not about him, after all.”

“It's not about anything. I feel shitty not telling him, but it isn't worth ruining our trip.” I leave off the fact that my carelessness—combined with some crackhead's cunning—might already have ruined the trip.

“I'm with you,” he says.

“Look, Alex. I have to go.”

“You don't have to go, Malia.”

“I do, actually. Ben will be back any minute, and we've got some stuff to deal with here.”

“I don't mean right now,” he goes on. “I mean period. You don't have to leave El Salvador. I understand your reasons. You can, obviously. But don't act as if you have no choice. That may be the only thing I learned from going to D.C., then coming back here. I didn't think I could face it: Salvador, El Vado, the Peace Corps, anything. But the truth is, nobody cares. People have their own problems.”

I hear the distinct rattle of our Jeep's engine coming down the street. “Alex, I have to hang up now.”

“Come see me if you can, please.”

“Good-bye.”

I hang up the phone and take a few steps out into the courtyard. Ben pulls in and parks. Once he climbs out of the Jeep, he sticks his index finger in his mouth and then holds it straight up above his head. “The wind still hasn't picked up,” he says. “Might as well go surfing.”

*   *   *

Ben and I set out into a hapless sea. We don't bother with the point, opting instead for the shorter beach break on the inside, the surf spot the locals call La Paz.

A couple small sets roll in after we paddle out. I get a workable section right off the bat and land a little floater before it closes. For a moment, I have that rare and wonderful sense that surfing can redeem the rest of this mess. My feet hit the deck, and for one fleeting instant my bank account and my passport don't exist. Two turns into a moderately punchy face, and I can see myself from a distance, from years in the future; today's problems look small and silly—a funny story told over cocktails. That feeling lasts less than a second, then fizzles out with the white water.

After twenty minutes or so, the wind picks up and the surf turns to crap. We stubbornly sit on our boards, hoping that a fluke wave might line up, waiting for that same elusive sense of redemption.

Bobbing up and down in the blown-out sea, with the midday sun now reflecting so hard off the water that I have to squint, things finally catch up with me. I internalize the accusations that Courtney hurled my way. I think of my mother again. Once she'd cheated on my father and left us, at least she left for good. She didn't lie about it—as far as I know. And she didn't come back and try to be a wife or parent every so often. Maybe she deserves some credit for that.

The shame washes over me along with the residual indecision and a slight sense that I ought to tell Ben what happened. For a second, I fear I might drown in all of it.

“This sucks,” I shout to Ben, and paddle for shore.

*   *   *

I rinse off. Ben gathers the medical supplies and enters Pelochucho's room. In my sarong, I go to the doorway and watch as Pelo lowers his board shorts and exposes the uppermost inches of his white ass.

“Easy,” Ben says, then sticks the needle in.

I wonder if Ben has ever done this before. He looks like a pro. Beyond tired, I walk back to our own room. The sun is still high in the early-afternoon sky. I shut the door, turn on the fan, take off my sarong, and lie down across the bed. For a few minutes, I enjoy the cold, quick air against my naked skin.

*   *   *

I wake up feeling drugged, barely able to open my eyes. It takes a second to remember where I am. I paw at the bed beside me, surprised not to find a male body there.

In the hastily wrapped sarong, I have a peek out the door. It's dusk. The sun will be setting soon. Ben sits at a table in the kitchen, a Regia and a glass set before him. He waves when he sees me. I put on some proper clothes and go to join him. The metal wire of my flip-flop scrapes against the tiles of the dining room.

“How'd it get so late?” My voice is deep and froggy.

“You were out like a light.” He stands up and grabs me a glass from behind the counter. I pour myself a beer from the big amber bottle.

Ben reaches into the cargo pocket of his board shorts. “Got you a new wallet,” he says.

Before me, he places a leather square with the image of Che Guevara burned into it, along with the words
¡
HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE!

“Where'd you get this?” I pick up the gift. It's still stiff and smells of the tanning process.

“The jewelry lady stopped by. It was either Che or the Virgin Mary.”

“Tough choice.” I grin. “Thank you.” I love it. It's sweet of him. And while we're prone to joke about Che's misunderstood iconography, I find the image and the mythology comforting at that moment: a handful of men with ideals and bird rifles taking on the strongest military in the world, their faith and their struggle.
Until victory always!

“I am sorry,” Ben says. “About before. I shouldn't have … grabbed you like that.”

“No, you shouldn't have,” I say. “But it's been a messed-up day. I forgive you.”

“It's my Irish side,” he says. “My grandmother used to say that Irishmen treat women and horses the exact same way.” He takes a sip of beer.

“How's that?”

“They worship both, but they expect both to suffer constantly and gracefully.”

“I was expecting something more R-rated,” I say. “How's Pelochucho?”

“He's fine. Sleeping. I was bored out here with nobody to talk to.”

“Has he mentioned anything about the hospital bills?”

“Yeah, he paid me back.” Ben nods and points at the Che wallet. “That's all we have in the world.”

I look inside. There's a little over four hundred American dollars.

“You hungry?” Ben asks.

“Starving.” All I've eaten today is the sweet bread at the hospital.

A couple doors down, a woman cooks
pupusas
on a portable gas grill. She wraps them in brown paper, along with plastic bags of spicy pickled cabbage and red tomato sauce. We take them back to the hotel and open more beer.

Once the food is finished, we carry our bottles up to the roof. Ben takes out his pouch of Dutch tobacco and a newspaper bundle of the local brown weed. He rolls a spliff. Opting out on the pot, I make myself a thin cigarette. The ocean is still and sounds like a dog's whimper. It laps gently upon the shore, as if afraid it might do harm to the land.

“No waves,” Ben says with a dry mouth.

“Not one.”

We're silent for a minute, sharing only the mild sucking and puffing sounds of smoking.

“Can I ask you something?” The quiet night turns me contemplative. “Why do you love surfing so much?”

“It's fun,” Ben says, trying to brush the question off. “What's not to love?”

“I know it's fun.” I won't let him off that easy. “Lots of things are fun. But why surfing? Why you?”

He holds the spliff upward and inspects the cherry. “I come from a family of—for lack of a better term—tough guys. My dad, my uncles, my older brother: They've all been marines, high school football stars, that sort of thing.”

I pay attention, never having heard him say much on this subject. “Obviously, I'm the hippie in the bunch, right? And I'd never make it in the military—could never stand some asshole shouting at me, or, God forbid, to shoot anyone. Even the team sports thing was too much.”

I take a long gulp of beer.

“But when you're a boy and you're raised by guys like that, they presume you're a pussy—too scared for all that physical stuff. For me, surfing—especially in North Carolina, where I learned, with the only real waves coming in as storms and all—was a way for me to have adventures, to test myself.”

“Did it work?” I can't say the next sentence with a straight face. “Did it prove to your dad that you're not a pussy?” The suppressed laughter bursts at the sides of my mouth.

Ben smiles at the silliness of the question. “It's not like that. My dad, my brothers, they'll never get it. But yeah, it gives me peace of mind. I know I'm not afraid. That's enough. In a sense, I like that they don't understand it. After all, I don't get any of the stuff they're into.” Ben tops his beer glass off, relieved to be finished with his explanation. “What about you?” he asks. “What do you love about surfing?”

I shrug, wishing I'd prepared a response before starting this. “Most of all, I like that it's an end in itself, you know? That it's not a means to an end.”

“How so?”

The cigarette feels hot in my fingers. “Speaking of families, my father's family is … we'd say
pake
in Hawai‘i. That word technically means Chinese, but it's used for anyone who's frugal and thrifty. You met my dad; he's very disciplined. Everything is about getting ahead, or helping the next generation get ahead. It's sort of admirable. My grandparents were plantation workers, and my grandfather managed to save up and start his own business. Now my dad runs it, and it's successful. He raised me by himself, of course. Sent me to private school. But there's no stopping to enjoy it, no indulgence. It's all profit and loss.”

Ben furrows his brow.

“With surfing, I like that there's no earning or spending involved. Waves aren't an investment in something else to come. There's no past or future—only the moment at hand.”

He licks a finger and wets one side of the spliff.

“I get hard work and sacrifice and everything; it's not like I'm lazy.” I'm having a hard time expressing myself. “But people like my father, or Alex, for that matter … it's as if they see life as one big suffering contest, you know? That's like the only measure of character for them.”

I stop talking. The two of us stare out at the dark ocean.

“I've got a bad feeling about this passport thing,” I confess.

“Want me to go with you tomorrow?”

“No.” I didn't even think of that, but it's kind of him to ask. “It'll be a shitty day. No reason for both of us to go through it.” I almost add that it's my fault, but figure that much is obvious. “It's probably better if you look after Pelochucho.”

Ben puts the still-burning spliff down in an upturned jar lid on the cinder block we use as a table. “I got to piss; be right back.”

His steps are slow and heavy down the stairs. As it had a few hours ago in the water, the swelling shame surges again and comes after me. I want a crude time machine that can go back one day and fix all the mistakes I made. I can live with the guilt over what happened with Alex. But this burglary stuff was stupid, and it's ruined Ben's surf trip, this dream he's been looking forward to for years.

I have to fix it. Maybe it's all the beer, or maybe it's simply the lack of a better idea, but something emboldens me. It's absurd: We know the exact location of whichever crackhead stole our stuff, or where he'll be coming back and forth from at least.

I slip down the staircase. From the bathroom comes the sound of piss splashing water. The gate is still open. Kristy's light is on.

I leave La Posada and head out into the streets. Walking around this town alone after dark is something I know better than to do.

The crack house is only a couple blocks away, a nondescript two-story building. It fared well through the earthquake. Its white exterior looks newly painted; the trim and front door shine bright red.

I stop on the far side of the street and stare at the crimson door. Somebody inside will know who took my wallet. It must've caused a spike in sales, the greatest binge in some lucky addict's career. I will demand only the passport back; the money will be long gone. That's reasonable, isn't it? Perhaps the thieves will even thank me, the way that gunmen often do on the buses here if handed a particularly large sum. I'm not some tourist; I'm La Chinita, after all. That has to count for something.

As logical as I tell myself that this plan is, I can't quite cross that street. I hear low chatter and the inkling of what sounds like choral music coming from inside. A taste like bile and pennies rises in the back of my throat.

“Chinita!
¿Qué haces?
” I hear my nickname in a barbed voice. It's Peseta. “What are you doing? Have you gone crazy?”

“I want my passport back. I don't care about the money. Somebody here must have it or know who has it. Come with me.”

“You don't understand.” Peseta carries a white paper bag spotted with grease. It smells of fried food. I've never seen him eat before. He puts his body between mine and the crack house.

“I need that passport,” I say.

“Chinita, trust me on this. You can't go in there. Please.”

I look over his shoulder at the red door—the final thin membrane that separates the surfers and the crackheads in this town. It's a Pandora's box of trouble and change that I'm both attracted to and repulsed by all at once. My eyes turn back to Peseta. He seems sincere. This is the only interaction I've had with him that carries no trace of a hustle. Perhaps he doesn't want me killed just because then he'd lose my spare coins.

After a few more seconds, I exhale and realize that I don't have the guts. I'm
only
La Chinita—that's all I'll ever be here.

“Malia? What the fuck?” The second I've made the decision, I hear Ben's voice.