La Paz, Part Three

Velasco continued to smoke and stare into space even as Fellows reached the bottom step and joined him in the courtyard. Perhaps he was thinking of the humble fountain and this apartment, luxurious by Bolivian standards and paid for in large part by the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, in which there was no official higher than him. Of course, ultimate power in the industry belonged to the energy company executives and foreign investors, but he dined with many of them on occasion and knew exactly when to laugh at their poorly translated jokes, and how wide to smile when they clapped him on the back and told the room he was a “good man.” He had pressed flesh with his Venezuelan counterpart and several Russian Gazprom enforcers. He had networked with Evo Morales at the right times, and had been rewarded. Senora Morales was his eldest daughter’s godmother. His eldest son attended university in Buenos Aires, and his wife’s driver sat behind the wheel of a heavily modified Ford Explorer, one of four in his fleet. He’d also kept most of his hair, and with the exception of a minimal paunch at his waist, his military muscle tone.

In spite of this, he evidently could not control his American mistress. There was no end to Yankee arrogance in Bolivia, and here was her ex-classmate Fellows, witnessing his humiliation and insulting him with this sad expression.

“No aduenare tu compassion.”

“No brindia.”

Velasco crisply sat down on a bench with open mouthed cherub heads carved into the corners and took another long draw on his pipe. “You can go. I won’t stop you or send anyone after you, unless you start talking.”

Fellows believed him. He could reach down and pick up his guitar. The duffel was already on his back. In ten minutes he could be in a hostel, his supplies stowed, a cold beer in his hand, Chatting up Canadian tourists and doing his best to forget.

The opera let another crescendo fly, and Velasco turned his calm gaze to the flickering lights in the bedroom window. Fellows peered through the gate and saw at least two, maybe three men in a Ford Explorer.

“Suppose.. suppose you drive around the block. I could go upstairs and remove him for you, make sure he leaves on the next plane. Less fuss all around.”

Velasco said nothing.

“I’ll even tune him up a bit. He’s weak, it’ll be easy.” He tried to read the official’s profile for some hint of expressed emotion that he could seize upon and use as a release valve, but none was evident.

“You should disappear now, Mr. Fellows.” Velasco’s voice sounded resigned.

Fellows shook his head. “I have to be certain that you won’t try to hurt Monica.”

“Of course I won’t hurt her, even though she deserves it.” Velasco rose to his feet and hurled his pipe into the fountain with enough force to make it shatter and the American jump.

“And Van Sant?”

Velasco shot him the cold gaze again, then smiled. “As you said. I’ll put him on the next plane out.”

Fellows shuddered. “He’s too well known. If something happens to him, it’ll garner a lot of attention.”

“You don’t believe me, eh? Why are you getting involved, you SHIT?”

Were it not for the opera, the last word should have been audible inside the house. The two stared at each other for several long seconds without speaking, and Fellows desperately scrabbled for any words that could soothe a cuckholding cuckhold’s ruffled ego, and minimize or delay the violence that seemed inevitable. But just then the Van Sant let out a wild whoop that was something between a rebel yell and Tarzan’s roar. Velasco turned crimson and charged the stairs. Fellows kicked his guitar case across the ground to trip him up and succeeded beyond his wildest expectations.

 

…

Simon woke late the next morning in his hostel with pesto pasta in his breath. He could not recall a time since the college soccer days when he was so grateful to draw air into his lungs. He made the trip around the balcony to the bathroom as quickly as he could shamble; wearing last night’s clothes, stained as they were with coca leaf tea, felt like a new form of naked,

He resolved to take it easy today, search for an internet connection. Some dry food he could stretch. Maybe check some train schedules and plan a trip farther south. Tierra Del Fuego, maybe.

He dunked his head into the halfshell-shaped sink and raked his fingers through his hair, slapping water onto the usual cowlicks. When he raised his head and regarded himself in the mirror, he believed he was seeing new and unfamiliar spikes just before his eyes involuntarily closed in the deluge.

He imagined going back to the states to teach, a definite possibility. As one of the few young male teachers signing up for secondary education, he would be tapped to work with the hardest cases. He wasn’t scared of that. He pictured himself a few years from now as a popular teacher admired and envied by students and school officials alike for dating the gorgeous Spanish teacher. He saw himself living with the Spanish teacher in a fashionable part of the city, near a park where he could run their rescued greyhounds and walk to the co-op.

What scared him weren’t the job, the life, or the girlfriend, but his inability to imagine a future that wasn’t cribbed from clips out of a romantic comedy. Simon buried his face in his towel longer than was necessary and remembered the last film he’d seen, begun with his fellow teacher volunteers, but completed alone long after the rest had gone to bed. It was the one where the hero and the heroine are separated for all of the final reel until the very last scene, in which they simultaneously reach for the buzzer of their shared literary agent’s apartment building. The camera pans out from their fingers to show them turned toward each other in profile, like the optical illusion that resembles a candle or a couple, based on how the viewer sees it. At first, their faces are inscrutable, and the U.K. version ended there. Hollywood rejected the director’s choice of ambiguity and added another ten seconds of film in which the couple smile and embrace.

Simon had watched both endings and weighed them in the silence of the mission basement. Ultimately he found both wanting, since no amount of ambiguity or implied resolution could reconcile with the emptiness of the final credits. The Monotones’ ‘Book of Love’ played over a black screen and a series of Polaroids appeared, windowbox style, as if part of a ghostly album. Combine quirky best friend A with the stiff pseudo-antagonist B? Opposites can attract, but that doesn’t hold up as anything more than a one-off gag. Putting together the absurdly tall mortician with the little redhead from the baby clothes emporium? Opposites again. All in all, Simon thought it seemed like a chilly rumination on loneliness that he found unsettling, since it implied that the minor characters would settle down with each other in some kind of incestuous desperation.

He toweled off and plunged his toiletries back into his gym bag. He had been accustomed to leaving soap and shampoo in the mission bathrooms, but he knew that any bathroom supplies he left here wouldn’t be here an hour later. Downstairs in the galley, a sullen teenager cleared away the bread bags seconds after Simon put two slices in the toaster, perhaps in unspoken criticism of his late arrival. Breakfast was supposed to end at 10 a.m. and by his watch 10 a.m. was five minutes away. He smiled helplessly at the teen and plucked a sad looking apple from the bowl. The teenager removed the bowl right after, and waited impassively for him to make his next move. There wasn’t much else left, so Simon filled a cup of juice from the dispenser, picked up a butter packet from the bowl of ice cubes and scurried out of the way. He sat alone at the last of four tables, listening to the loud clatter of the busboy’s cleanup and checking Fodor’s guide for internet cafes. That was where Remedios found him.

“Simon! You look well rested. Good thing, too, cause we have a lot to do today.” The younger man looked up, startled. This was the first time he’d gotten a really good look at his benefactor. It had been the early afternoon the day before when he’d pitched into that table of relics, but his eyes and brain hadn’t focused consistently until the sun had gone down. From that point forward, the shadows on the man’s face had been distorted by the electric lights. Simon could see now that Don Remedios was probably older than he had previously believed, or perhaps had just spent a lot more time outdoors. He had a round smooth face with exaggerated wrinkles around eyes that didn’t blink very often. His dark hair was curly and thick, but pushed forward and upward almost comically over a large forehead. He was wearing another loud shirt, but this time had a dark leather jacket on top. And he was every bit as driven as the day before, pulling Simon along in his wake.

“I was hoping to stop by the market and pick up some bread, maybe some mixed nuts.-”

“-No biggie, we can get that on the way.”

“- You know, something to fill in the gaps when the galley closes.”

The sun outside was bright enough to punish his rods and cones. Simon wanted to go back in and get his sunglasses, and then remembered that he had lost them in a game of football in Peru. Would the market have an inexpensive pair?

“I also need to find an internet café.”

“If you only need fifteen minutes to check your e-mail, I know a place where you can do that for free. We can do that on the way, as well.”

Remedios reminded Simon of his older cousin, another someone who seemed to know people and places everywhere and have an incredible confidence in his ability to charm them for his benefit. He also reminded him of one of the case study character from his introduction to psychology class, but he could not recall what the classification had been or what it meant for anyone encountering that person. He was vaguely aware that dealing with the schemes of the psych class character, his cousin or Remedios could lead to trouble, but he was also alone and friendless in La Paz otherwise, and had no immediate plans beyond touring a few significant buildings and licking his wounds. It was easier to do the latter if he was distracted enough not to think on it, and his companion seemed to have mastered the art of distraction.

Simon did pause on the street, forcing Remedios to pull up short as well. He had suddenly become very aware of his breathing. “I - don’t know if I should be moving so fast today. I might relapse.”

Remedios grinned. “Way ahead of you. Today you won’t have to walk or run much at all, I hope.” He checked the time on a gold diver’s watch. “Depending on whether or not we make this bus.”

They quick-stepped around the corner and Simon looked longingly at the far side of the square and the beginning of the market. “Later.” Remedios said firmly. Just as Simon’s nose captured the smell of diesel wafting through the thin air, Remedios broke into a brief run, in an arm-pumping style that bordered on the absurd. He seized the door of a green bus that looked to be over thirty-years old and was as heavily pockmarked as if had followed Clint Eastwood to City Hall in the movie “The Gauntlet.” Which Simon supposed probably should have been called “The Gantlet.” He followed Remedios aboard. There were only two seats available, three rows apart, both on the aisle. Simon could see his new friend only if he turned around. As the bus rumbled off on an unsurprisingly bumpy ride, he began to emerge from the spell of Remedios long enough to worry that he hadn’t taken enough note of his surroundings, and that he might begin to have trouble getting back. He reached into his satchel and clenched the edges of his guidebook hard enough to leave impressions on his palm. There was a map inside, but he knew it had limited range. Would this bus leave the city? The ride seemed to continue for a long time, and he felt like they were going down. He wondered how much the ride would be, or if Remedios had paid for him already. The Bolivians around him mostly appeared to be domestic servants and laborers, and with the exception of an occasional muttered comment, they rode in a silence Simon was loathe to break. Just when his nerves were getting the best of him and he was close to turning around and asking Remedios how much farther, he felt the other man’s hand on his shoulder.

“We want to get off at the next stop.”

Simon turned in time to see Remedios crouch-walk back to his seat.

They got off the bus two minutes later in front of a lot surrounded by a barbwire fence containing half-a-dozen cars and a small cylindrical building. Nobody else got off, and the driver didn’t seem interested in collecting any money. It rumbled away.

“Did we owe..” Simon began.

“Tut-tut.” Remedios replied, “Don’t you worry about that.” He rummaged inside the jacket pocket and withdrew a ring of keys with plastic covers. He gripped the blue one between his thumb and forefinger and approached the gate, turning over the lock to find: four combination wheels.

“Ahhh, Fuck! Okay, okay… Let’s see..”

He snapped his fingers ostentatiously, and then turned the wheels. The lock popped open. He did an end zone victory dance as they walked through the gate, and put the lock back into place behind them. There was a glint from the window of the house that suggested a television, and Simon wondered whom they would be meeting next. Someone like the doctor from the other day? Even though Torvald had been incredibly helpful, Simon had never been able to shake a feeling of uneasiness around that man.

A perfect ringer for Cujo emerged from the building, and both men froze. Simon looked at Remedios to see what his own reaction should be and wasn’t reassured. The other was measuring the distance back to the gate and calculating how fast he could open the combination lock from this side.

“Tapas!” A harsh but unmistakably female voice from the direction of the house,

Tapas obediently turned back and disappeared around the corner again.

They let their breath out explosively.

“Donnie, get in here!”

When his eyes adjusted on the inside, Simon’s first impression was that they had stumbled across a neglected pro shop. The entire inside perimeter (excluding the door that led to the bathroom) was lined with golf clubs of all kinds, in no recognizable order. Wedges mixed with drivers, mixed with putters, mixed with telescoping ball retrievers. The floor was covered with cheap artificial turf, which was itself covered by golf balls that someone had kicked mostly into one corner. When Tapas shifted his bulk and rose to greet them a second time with snuffling canine friendliness, several balls jostled back over with him, making it clear where he stood in the clean up efforts.

The dog’s temporary resting place had been the foot of the recliner, now occupied by a deep breathing old man who flicked his eyes dully at the visitors once, then back to the flat screen television on the wall, where Anika Sorenson advertised a new scientific advance in golf club construction that was guaranteed to increase one’s drive by 30 yards.

Simon didn’t have much time to consider this further, because his attention was drawn to the woman who had emerged from behind the counter. She wore a headset microphone over her short black hair, a scowl and tight red-orange camisole over black tights. But that wasn’t the most distinctive thing about her.

Remedios lost some of his unflappability at that moment.

“Ah, Hello… Geneva.”

Each of Geneva’s eyes had their own distinct color; light blue for the left, and black for the right. She half closed them and murmured something in Spanish into the headset, then switched it off and gently pulled the entire unit free of her hair.

“You must want something big, little man, if you’re calling me by my name. My break doesn’t last that long, so get to it. A quick drink?”

“Got any Gin?”

Geneva looked over her left shoulder and gave him a glare with the light blue orb, but pulled open the minibar and poured him a drink anyway, one for herself, and one for Simon, whom she hadn’t addressed or been introduced to, yet. She regarded him over the glass as he struggled to begin an introduction.

“Ftt - ftt -ftt.” The sound was coming from the old man in the recliner.

“No, Abuelo.” Geneva said firmly “Tu Medicaccion.”

“Simon.” Said Simon.

Geneva turned back to the young man and cocked her head. “Your name is Simon?”

“Si.- Yes. Pleased to meet you.”

“Pleased to meet you, Simon,” Geneva said. “I’ll give you some free advice. If my eyes start to freak you out too much, just stare at my tits.”

She said it so matter-of-factly that Simon visibly swallowed. Then she and Remedios laughed.

“You’re as delightfully cruel as ever,” Remedios said, and tipped back the glass with gusto. “You, me, Simon, and your Abuelo should open a bottle of wine this afternoon and tease each other.”

She shook her head and took his glass, closing the minibar. “You’re wasting valuable break time when you could be asking for favors.”

Remedios laughed and spread his arms helplessly. “I need to borrow the sedan.”

“I thought so. But my father said no more.”

“I’m fairly certain he would have said ‘no mas’”

“Ass. You’re barely bilingual. You shouldn’t get on his case for only speaking Spanish when your Spanish is so rough.”

“Yes, but I’m lazy and picked up the tongue without trying. He struggled for years, and couldn’t speak English even with a virtuoso like you to practice it on.”

“Anyway, you can’t have it. He’ll be in tomorrow for sure.”

“I can have it back here tonight.”

“What’s in it for me, huh? I take the risk that he comes in early like last time, goes ape shit when he sees one of his precious cars isn’t here. He said if I do it again, Tappas and I can’t be here during the day, that’ll he’ll hire someone to watch the place and mi Abuelo.”

“He’s bluffing. He needs you to watch the cars and his father. No one else will do it right. Besides, I’ll pay the rental fee this time.” Remedios held up and fanned out a stack of bills.

Geneva blinked. “Well, that’s a new one.”

The sedan started on the fourth try. Geneva and Tapas waited for them by the gate, which she had opened on both sides to accommodate the vehicle. Remedios idled just by the exit, and Geneva bent down and rested both hands on the door. “When are you bringing it back, Donnie?”

“We’ll be back by dinnertime, Ginger, ‘cause we’re gonna take you out on the town, tonight.”

“More nicknames, eh? I have plans tonight.”

Remedios lunged forward and pecked her on the cheek. She squealed and withdrew, but not before he lashed her ear with his tongue once and made her giggle.

They drove even lower in altitude, although Simon wasn’t paying much attention. He was thinking about how different Geneva was from the girls he knew back home. He’d been to a ‘party school’ and heard women say shocking things before, but it has always seemed like dress up, a role taken for a theme party that was ultimately understood to be artificial.

Geneva didn’t have to say anything suggestive to quicken his pulse. It was as natural as breathing for her. He’d only encountered this phenomenon once before, at the mission, and it nearly destroyed him. Perhaps if he continued to travel with Remedios a bit longer he would meet more women like that and build up enough resistance to safely function.

“Gotta stop here for a moment, Simon. Be right back.” Remedios had parked the car in an alley, and curiously, climbed on top of it to hop over to the wall. He was 10,477 feet above sea level.

He steadied himself and then climbed down on the other side, casually circled around the back of a squat brick house and entered through the kitchen, picking up a chair as he did so. He raised it over his head as he entered the TV room and smashed it down on the midsection of one of the bowler brothers as he tried to get off the couch. The second made it to his feet but Remedios roughly threw him back down again and pointed his finger at him. An applause came from the TV set, and Remedios and Bowler brothers both turned to the set to watch a crowd cheer on Vijay Singh as he walked away from a successful birdie.

“Does everybody around me watch this stupid game?” Remedios snarled.