Kilometer 99 (22 page)

Western Union recently dethroned a local service called Gigante Express as the preferred method for sending
remesas
from the States to El Salvador. Niña Tere uses the one in the capital often. I wonder what Pelo is getting cash for. More materials? Maybe he'll give me an advance against my first paycheck.

After a few minutes, he emerges from the office with his sunglasses down, the briefcase in his hand. He looks suspiciously up the street in either direction, then climbs inside.

“Let's roll.”

I drive out of town. Pelo pulls a one-hitter from his pocket and packs it with some of his potent weed. “I'm sorry about that Alex comment.” He lets the words out along with his first puff of pot smoke. “I don't feel great about leveraging that eavesdrop. But what can I say?” He pauses for another hit. “I'm just a born deal-maker.”

He passes the still-smoldering pipe in my direction. I wave it off.

“The swell will probably be here by tomorrow. You'll get some good waves, maybe a few barrels, and this resort will practically build itself.”

At the turnoff, I throw the Jeep into four-wheel drive and head uphill. Through the bumps and potholes, I maintain speed.

“Careful!” Pelo shouts as we near the top. By less than a meter, I manage to avoid driving straight into a gigantic hole in the center of the small hamlet, where we'd originally met with Don Miguel.

“Jesus,” I say. “Did a bomb go off here?”

“The pool, dude.” Pelo raises his sunglasses and stares into the hole. Three shirtless Salvadoran teenagers stand inside of it, swinging shovels and picks, chipping away at each of its sides.

“You can park over there, behind their truck.”

I pull up in back of an old Toyota pickup, the only other vehicle around. Pelo puts his pipe and lighter into the glove compartment, checks the vanity mirror, and straightens out his eye patch.

“Let's do some work,” he says.

The second we step out of the car, we're swarmed by the remaining members of the community. Half a dozen women take the lead, men and children behind them. Several hold up pieces of paper and all fight for Pelochucho's attention.

“
¡Tranquilo!”
Pelo waves his hands and shouts at them. He turns to me. “Chinita, I'll need you to translate.”

I nod. “Go ahead.”

“Please,” he says. “Let's do this in an orderly fashion. Can we find a spot in the shade and sort all this out one by one?”

I do my best to translate.

An older woman whom I recognize from our last visit tugs at my arm. “We can use my house.”

She leads us toward a series of adobe walls that no longer have a roof. A blue tarp is strung over the top, with help from a nearby tree, and shades the inside. Pelo and I take a seat around what appears to be the same table we sat at with Don Miguel.

“What's going on here?” I ask Pelo.

“I'm solving the problem with the hillside.” He places his briefcase on the table and pops it open. “You'll like this.”

The owner of the house introduces herself as Niña Gloria and sits at the table with her teenage daughter. The other families wait by the entrance to the room.

“She has her deed?” Pelo asks me, pointing to a plastic folder full of notarized papers held tight to her chest.

Not knowing the Spanish word for deed, I ask about her “housing documents.” She smiles and hands them over. Pelo pushes his index finger around the lines of text, clicking his tongue inside his mouth. He then fishes a fresher document from his open briefcase.

I make out the title at the very top; it's in Spanish and means “Letter of Intention.” There are several blanks throughout the main body of the text. Pelo takes a pen from his case and proceeds to copy a few names and numbers from the deed into his letter.

“Okay.” He looks up. Sweat has beaded along his brow. “Tell her to look this over and check if everything is correct.” He passes the paper to Niña Gloria. I relate his instructions. She holds it up to her eyes, but it's obvious she can't read. She hands the paper to her teenage daughter.

From his briefcase, Pelo produces an envelope full of hundred-dollar bills. He counts them out on the table. Niña Gloria stares wide-eyed at the currency.

“Jesus.” Pelo wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. “We had to do this on the hottest fucking day of the year.”

“What are we doing, exactly?” I ask.

He snaps a rubber band around what looks like a thousand dollars. “I talked to the guys at SalvaCorp about your issues with the hillside.” He counts out another stack. “They got squeamish. Then somebody suggested we just buy up the whole hamlet. Move our buildings back—and upward. We'll have the kitchen and dining room on the lower floors. But the suites up top will still get the ocean view.”

My first thoughts are all about engineering. I steal a look out the door, at the line of sight toward the ocean. It would work, more or less. The ground is level here at the top. Then I become human again. “You can't just displace this whole community.”

Pelo dribbles air out of his lips. “Is that a joke? They're dying to sell. They're living under fucking tarps. The earthquake did most of the displacing for me.”

The mother and daughter at the far end of the table sign the paper and pass it to Pelo. He smiles and hands them the stack of bills. “
Gracias.
”

I pick up the letter and have a look. “Is this even legal?” It's one single-spaced page. Niña Gloria and her daughter rise and exit.

“Legal enough.” Pelo shrugs. “A lawyer friend drew it up with speed in mind. Your tip about the squatters' rights laws, that was a big help. Truth is, if they take the money and go now, and we build on this land, it'll be ours either way.”

“That's not what I meant about those laws.”

“
¡Próximo!”
Pelo hollers at the small crowd outside.

A younger couple enters, the man with a roll of papers cupped in his hand, the woman with a baby on her hip. Pelo smiles and extends another of his letters toward them. This time, he simply points at the blanks that need filling—perhaps guessing they are more literate, perhaps already bored with that part of the task.

“What are you paying them?” My voice quivers as I ask the question. “Like one or two fucking grand?”

He loses count of the bills and sighs, checks to see if the two understand. “Look here, Chinita. Every house, every road, every building that's ever been built in the Americas—in Hawai‘i, too, for that matter—has pushed out somebody who was there first. You want all that to stop now? With me?” He scoffs and turns back to the money. “Grow up.” His rubber band snaps around another grand.

“I won't help you with this.”

“You don't have a choice.”

“I'm only supposed to advise you on environmental impacts.”

“You didn't read that contract very carefully, did you?” He turns to me. His one exposed eye is bloodshot and yellow. “This could work out, Chinita. For all of us. Don't screw it up just because you don't like my style.”

“Who are you?” It's a question I've wanted to ask for days. “Are you even a real surfer? Or just a poser businessman? Are you some kind of evil spirit sent here to fuck things up for me?”

He grins harder. I wonder if he's not a new incarnation of the Monkey-Faced Baby, another mischievous prophet who is never truly right, but never truly wrong, either. Though it makes no sense, I half-suspect him of somehow stealing my passport and my money, even of purposely putting Alex and me in close-enough proximity to commit the act he now blackmails me with.

“I'm just like you, Chinita.” Pelo lowers his sunglasses back down and relaxes his smile. “I'm just another drifter doing the best he can.”

“You're nothing like me,” I say.

“I'm not as lucky as you are, if that's what you mean.” An unfamiliar note of sincerity swells in his voice. “Not as lucky as Chuck Norris or you. I don't have somebody in my life, like you guys have each other. I don't have the chance to take this trip you'll be taking. Don't have that kind of freedom.” He turns his head away from mine. For a split second, I wonder if he might break down in tears.

I open my mouth, but no words come out.

“Okay, who's next here?” He turns to the man and woman seated before him.

My face feels like it could pop from all the blood pumping through it. I turn to the couple. The man slowly fills in the blanks.

“Don't do it,” I say in Spanish. “It's not worth it.”

The baby in his mother's arms begins to cry.

“It's a bad deal,” I say, raising my voice.

“Shut the fuck up, Chinita,” Pelo mutters at me. “You don't know what you're talking about.” He turns to the couple, spins his finger around his ear, and says, “
Loca
”—calling me crazy.

I stand up. “I won't be part of this.”

Pelo gives the couple their money and takes the letter out of their hands.

At the entrance to the house, I stare at the other families, all of them queued up with their deeds and their children in their arms. I'm reminded of what Alex said the other night, about the Red Cross lines and the atrocities they called to mind.

“Don't listen to him!” I stand outside the doorway now but point back inside the house at Pelochucho. “It's a bad deal! He's tricking you!” My head feels light. My heart flops and flutters like a headless chicken inside my chest. “Don't give up your homes!”

But my words are met mostly by confused silence. One of the men at the back of the line snuffs out a laugh and whispers, “
Chinita loca
.” The pool diggers stop working and stare up out of their hole.

Trembling, I climb inside the Jeep and dig the key from my pocket. The engine turns over. The entire line looks toward me. Pelo comes to the door of the house as I shift into reverse. He raises his sunglasses and gives me a one-eyed glare. I turn my head over my shoulder and back up.

As I have so often in the past few days, I drive fast with the windows rolled down, let the wind and the sound of the engine drown everything else out, until I can almost forget about Pelo's plan and how mixed up in it I am. Who knows what sort of sick revenge he might concoct for my abandoning him there.

*   *   *

Back at La Posada, I park in front of the too-high stack of cement bags. Ben swings in the hammock outside our room.

My eyes are moist from all the wind on the drive. I lift up the front of my T-shirt to wipe at them. “We've got a problem,” I say.

“Just one?” He sits up straight in the hammock, finds his tobacco pouch on the windowsill behind him.

“We were out there today, at K Ninety-nine. His people want to buy up all the land, turn the whole hamlet into the site for their resort.”

A thin turd of tobacco takes shape between his thumbs. Ben looks up and cocks his head. “Would that help with the erosion thing?”

I shrug. “It depends. But he was getting all the families to sign over their deeds for a thousand bucks or so. I couldn't be part of it.”

He nods and licks the glue edge of his rolling paper.

“So I ditched him there.”

Ben's eyes widen. He stops licking, but his tongue still hangs halfway out of his mouth. “You ditched him out on K Ninety-nine?”

“That's right.” I prepare myself for admonishment.

Instead, Ben laughs out loud. “Holy shit.” He shakes his head. “Wish I could've seen the look on his face.”

“I told the sellers that they were getting ripped off.” I can't help but share a little of Ben's mischievous glee. “I screamed it.”

Ben lights up his cigarette and shakes his head again.

“What do we do now?”

He shrugs. “I'm not sure. Can you stop him from buying up the rest of the parcels?”

“Doubt it. It's probably over by now.”

“What's he going to do? Fire you?”

“I'm not sure he wants my help anymore. He might try to use the contract against me somehow.”

“Right.” Ben takes a deep inhale and lets the smoke out slowly. “Listen. Don't sweat it. Getting back here is easy. He can hitchhike or wait for a bus. I'll have a talk with him, play the good cop.”

I sit down beside Ben in the hammock, take the cigarette out of his hands, and help myself to a long drag. “What about all those people losing their homes?”

Ben puts a hand on my knee. “You told them the truth; you walked away once it got uncomfortable. If everyone in the world did that all the time, it'd be a better place.”

I nod, hand back his smoke.

Ben pushes off the wall so that we swing back and forth inside the hammock. “Should I grab a beer?” he asks.

“Why not wait a bit?” I put my hand on Ben's thigh. “Maybe we could pick up where we left off this morning, before we were so rudely interrupted.”

Ben grins and steals a quick glance around the hotel. Still no Pelochucho. Kristy has disappeared inside the office. He climbs out of the hammock and offers me his hand. We enter our bedroom. I close the door behind me. Ben hits the switch and the fan starts up like an old airplane propeller. Already sweating in the hot room, I undo the buttons on my cutoffs and pull my shirt off over my head.

Ben rips open his Velcro fly, lets his board shorts fall to the ground, and then lies across the far side of the bed, naked and already hard. He pats a spot beside him on the mattress. We truly will pick up where we left off this morning—pretend that loud truck of building supplies never arrived. I wish we could do such a thing with even greater chunks of time—splice the present into the past and delete the bits in between.

I lie down on my side in front of Ben, in a near-fetal position. His hand runs up from the peak of my hip to the bottom of the valley formed at my waist. He cranes his neck around my shoulder and kisses my lips at a glancing angle. I turn my head to meet his. He moves his hand to just below my belly button. We stop kissing. I close my eyes as his forefinger inches farther downward.