I was relieved when Paolo, our guide, assured me it was not only available but in his first-aid pack as we spoke.
It was a stunning morning, clear and cloudless, and we set off early in a group of ten plus two guides. Jane and Kendra were there, and several others I didn’t know. But by the time our short convoy of Jeeps had arrived at the parking lot where we would leave the vehicles and start hiking, we had all seen enough fabulous panoramic views and breathtaking waterfalls to give us more than enough to talk about together. Jack and Paolo were making hiking plans in brisk Portuguese throughout our early lunch, which consisted of snacks from one of the little cafés near the national park’s center.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the long table where the girls were eating, Jane was worrying about her shoes and Kendra was trying to change the subject rather than confirm her friend’s suspicions that she would be miserable by the end of the day. Leather huaraches were great for the beach, but I had to concur with Jane, whiny though she was starting to seem—she would, indeed, regret her choice of footwear before very much longer. Poor thing. She was wearing the same little ankle bracelet she’d had on the previous night too, with a tiny dangling charm shaped like a heart with a keyhole. It was another poor choice for hiking, as it could so easily get snagged on something, but I wasn’t going to comment on it.
Kendra, I noted, was wearing very high-quality light hikers, and they looked well worn. We started talking about our shoes, and then the hikes we’d worn them on. Jane, an MBA with only a passing interest in the field side of things, shook her carefully bleached head in disbelief at some of our stories.
“You mean you stayed out in the jungle for a week just to make hash marks on a page every time some monkey ate a bug off some other monkey?” With her Southern belle accent, the line was just priceless.
“
Gorilla
,” Kendra corrected, rolling her eyes. It sounded as though this wasn’t the first time they’d discussed the topic. “And make that three weeks, in my case. I had bug bites in places I don’t even want to remember. Oh, those were good times.”
“At least on today’s hike we can enjoy the wonders of insecticide without worrying about it throwing off our results if the animals catch wind of us,” I pointed out.
“Y’all are nuts,” Jane insisted, getting up to take her tray back to the café.
It was then that I finally relaxed around Kendra—because from the corner of my eye, I caught her not only ogling Jane’s admittedly toned butt as she walked away, but saw a telltale smile of tenderness that indicated she didn’t actually mind Jane’s appalling ignorance regarding the differences between monkeys and gorillas.
Kendra, it seemed, had her own workplace relationship to be concerned with. I couldn’t really credit her taste, but I could certainly feel some empathy for the circumstances.
“Is it just, you know…blaming it on Rio?” I asked tentatively, nodding in Jane’s direction, hoping that Kendra wouldn’t immediately slap me down for suggesting such a thing. Instead, she gave a weary little chuckle.
“God, no. Blame it on…I don’t know. We’ve been together for two years. I don’t think we can really blame Houston, can we? Dykes happen despite Houston, not because of it.”
“No, you can’t blame Houston. I mean, I wish. Sort of. But no.” There I went, being all articulate again. Good thing all that graduate school hadn’t gone to waste.
“What about you?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said quickly, and a bit archly.
“Oh, don’t worry, you’re both being very discreet. Do you leave the collar at home?” I blushed, surely, as red as the bromeliads lining the pavement near us, and Kendra immediately backed off. “I’m so sorry, I just thought… Oh really, I’m so, so sorry! I didn’t mean to imply—”
“That’s okay, really, that’s okay,” I reassured her. “You’re not completely wrong. Um, right lifestyle, wrong relationship. We’re not…I don’t even know for sure if
he
is. And it’s not a full-time lifestyle anyway. Collars would just be for fun. For me. I have no idea about Jack and…and any of that.”
“Oh. Oh! Well, still,
that’s
a relief. I thought my radar was busted or something. Jack doesn’t really scream Dom, he just gives off that quiet something. But you have sub written all over— There I go again,” she sighed. “See, once I start, I just can’t stop.” She was openly teasing me now, it had just taken me a second to catch on. “Sorry. I’m sure it’s only obvious to people who know what they’re looking at.”
I looked down at the table, realizing only then that Jane had cleared not just her own place but Kendra’s too, without a word passing between them. And Jane’s pretty-yet-impractical anklet with the heart-shaped lock… Kendra followed my gaze with a look of smug self-assurance that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t recognized earlier.
“Oh,” I said, probably stupidly.
“
We
leave the collar at home,” she said with a casual shrug, having obviously followed not only my line of sight but my train of thought.
“Given the statistics we’re always hearing,” I said, deliberately changing the subject, “does it ever surprise you just how often you end up in conversations like this with relative strangers?”
“Constantly,” she agreed. “Just more proof that statistics lie like dogs. There is no such thing as deviance.”
My reply, which would have been something witty about Alfred Kinsey, was interrupted by Paolo cautioning us all to make our last preparations for the hike. Jack was already purchasing water bottles and there was a general shuffle toward the restrooms. Within a few minutes we were all trailing like ducklings along the shaded path, with Paolo in the lead and another guide trailing the end of the line.
Jack explained, from his position behind me, that this double posting of guides was as much a precaution against bandits as against losing members of the party. Evidently muggings were quite common in the park, as in the rest of Rio. This news sort of depressed me, but I soon cheered up again in the face of the scenery. Even if I wasn’t a huge fan of the tropics, I couldn’t deny the Atlantic rainforest was breathtaking.
As the climb grew steeper and we navigated some rough patches, Jack automatically reached up to brace my leg at one particularly tricky point. I didn’t really even realize he’d done it until some time later when, having scrambled up another incline and grabbed a dangling root to brace myself, I reached down just as automatically to offer him a hand up. We’d never hiked together, it was just natural teamwork. And it felt good, really good, like we’d been doing it for years.
I had just paused to consider this development when he drew up next to me at a widening of the trail and nudged me with some urgency, pointing silently. There, peeking out at us through the sparse underbrush, was a coati, his long and fuzzy snout poking inquisitively toward the human intruders. We watched him awhile, he watched us, and then he waddled quietly off into the bushes. The whole thing lasted perhaps ten seconds and after the little creature had disappeared, Jack and I looked at one another and shared a huge grin.
“I don’t care how many times I’ve seen it, that is always so cool,” he whispered adorably.
And as he continued up the rough path, I realized I was perilously close to falling head-over-heels in love with my boss.
* * * * *
The summit,
Pico de
Tijuca
, was everything I could have expected—the panoramic vista of the city and bay beneath, the surrounding world-famous peaks, the sky that was still improbably blue since we weren’t quite into the rainy season yet. I took photo after photo, and for a few moments I even managed to forget what a bad idea it would be to fall madly in love with Jack, because he came and stood behind me with his hands resting lightly on my shoulders. He looked at the view over my head, pointing out landmarks that of course were already familiar to him. It was informative but hard for me to attend to, melting under his hands as I was.
Paolo asked him a few questions in Portuguese before shifting gears and translating for my benefit.
“I was asking, have you and Jack stayed before with
Senhor
Coelho…Mario? He has a view that nearly compares with this one.”
“Oh,” I said, a bit flustered. “No, I haven’t, but Jack has.”
“Kate hasn’t met Mario yet,” Jack explained, squeezing my shoulders a little more firmly, causing a riot in the portion of my brain that tried to keep my work and personal life separate. “In fact, this is her first visit to Brazil.”
“Ah! I never would have guessed. You seem to know the rainforest very well. You are also an ecologist?” I could see his enthusiasm about “his” park, the eagerness to relate its secrets to others who cared about such things. He was a stoutly built, bespectacled, middle-aged man, but he was beaming like a boy here, surveying the view with evident pride.
“Yes, although I don’t get to do much fieldwork these days,” I replied. More sadly than I realized, perhaps, because Jack gave me a curious look.
“You really do miss it, don’t you?”
I shouldn’t have looked up into his eyes just then. Any look from him was too intimate right now. I felt like he could see right through me. Just meeting one another’s gaze, I felt as though we were doing something inappropriate—which perhaps wasn’t entirely untrue, because Paolo coughed politely after a moment and looked away.
“Yes, I do,” I said at last, looking away and taking another picture to occupy myself. “Who wouldn’t?”
It was a rhetorical question, and I wasn’t quite sure why I felt a little annoyed that he didn’t respond. To fill the silence, I complimented Paolo on the park and the view, and with a proprietary air, he began describing the various features of
Tijuca
National Forest in loving detail. I listened with only half my attention. The other half was focused on pretending to take photos while really watching Jack. He had wandered away after a few minutes of listening, and was walking around the top of the rocky peak, looking at the views from every direction, occasionally bending to examine different types of rocks or vegetation.
His goal for the day, he had mentioned, was to spot at least three different kinds of snakes. He had already spied a huge boa lounging in a tree just off the trail in as stereotypical a pose as one might hope for, great mottled loops of muscle that nearly blended into the surrounding branches and vines. I had taken a picture for my scrapbook. We had seen a second smaller boa a few minutes later, but he insisted it didn’t count, as it was substantially the same as the first snake. Then there had been a tiny flash of red and tan in the shadowy undergrowth near one of the waterfalls that Jack had assured me was a swiftly departing coral snake or, perhaps, a
nonvenomous
false coral.
As I watched now, Jack tensed and stared into a small clump of grass growing up from some rocks a few feet away from him. For some reason I couldn’t name, I could feel the hair on my neck and arms prickling despite the heat as he backed away with excruciating care, his eyes locked on the rocks until he was quite some distance away, until he finally turned and walked back to join us, looking a little pale.
“It’s just a baby,” he murmured. “It must really like the sun on that rock, or it would have either struck or run away when I got that close. I didn’t even see it until I was almost on top of it.”
I realized he was breathing fast, sweating, and knew why when he pointed and said quietly to Paolo, “
Jararaca
.”
A pit viper. He had evidently spotted his third snake, but likely not one he had envisioned getting so close to unexpectedly. And he said he’d been almost on top of it.
“I see,” Paolo said calmly, although he too turned a little pale under his deep tan. He began circulating through the group, quietly suggesting it was time to start the hike back down to the vehicles and wordlessly shepherding everyone away from the area where the potentially deadly snake was lurking.
“Are you all right?” I asked, not sure whether he would prefer to be left alone or whether I was even willing to leave him alone just then.
“Yeah,” Jack said, but then wiped his hands over his face with a self-deprecating chuckle. “I did want to see some different snakes today. But that sure as hell wasn’t one of them. Not like that, anyway. Caught me off guard. Which isn’t a good way to get caught by a
jararaca
.” He tried to shake it off, grimacing, and then smiled again bravely. “Let’s go,” he said after a minute, sliding one hand just beneath my shoulder as we rejoined the group on the odd stairs carved into the rock face at the top of the trail.
I headed down the steep stairway, arms out for balance, trying not to reach for the old iron guide chain that had long since rusted past the point of usefulness. Jack let his hand trail down my arm and catch my own, steadying me, seemingly unaware that my wobbly moment had almost nothing to do with the terrain and everything to do with his hand against my skin. It was almost as though he was pretending for that brief time, letting himself play at the idea of a different relationship between us. It was too easy to imagine—because my imagination had been going there for days now anyway—that we were actually here “together”. Lovers. In Rio for a week.
It was contagious. I had to try it. On the way down the mountain, I let myself reach for his hand to help slow my descent down a shifting patch of rock. He let it stay there until he needed it again to balance himself on the next steep track. At one point he looked back and caught my eye, held it a minute and gave me a slow, lazy smile that turned me into a puddle of mush poorly suited for hiking. He also showed no surprise when I tugged shyly at his arm a few hundred yards later to point out a vivid purple
cattleya
orchid perching high in a tree overhead.
Laughing, he pointed farther along the way, where a woolly monkey was leaping one-handed through the trees near the trail, the other hand full of a piece of some yellow fruit. We watched it disappear from view and then Jack pulled me along for a few steps behind him, giving my hand a distinct squeeze before letting it go.