‘Do you want to come with me?’
Startled, he tried to catch her eye, but she had turned away.
‘It’ll be easier with someone else along,’ She gave a twitch of her head as if she wanted to look at him but was fighting the urge. ‘It’s up to you.’
Her shirt was molded to the wet curve of her ribcage, and he could see tension there, tension in her cabled neck, the stillness of her head.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘I don’t have the strength for it anymore.’
‘That’s not true,’ she said. ‘You’re just tired… like how you get after you’ve been hiking, and when you lie down, your muscles ache and you don’t think you can go on. But once you do, you’re all right again.’
‘You have Nate,’ he said. ‘He’ll share the load.’
‘I know, but…’
‘But it’s not the same, right? Why don’t you be honest, why don’t you tell me the real reason you want me along?’
He traced the line of her jaw, and she shivered—an all-over shiver, the way a colt reacts to something unfamiliar in the wind—but she didn’t pull away. ‘Because I want you, because I want to make love with you… is that what you want me to say?’
‘If it’s true.’ He moved his hand to her shoulder, lower, felt her heartbeat. The band of pink in the west had deepened to crimson, widened, its shape like a flame blown back in a strong wind, and the curve of her cheek held a red sheen.
‘Of course it’s true. I can’t hide it, I’ve never been able to hide it. Maybe that is part of the reason, but it’s the smallest part.’
‘Because it’s suspect, because everything is suspect.’ He heard the seductive challenge in his voice.
‘Yes.’
‘The only way it won’t be suspect is if you learn to trust it.’
‘I… I don’t know.’
‘Then why do you want me along? You think we’re going to be buddies or something? That it?’
‘No… I…’
‘You have to trust it, you have to trust something.’
‘I want to,’ she said. ’I do, but I can’t.’
He turned her, his hands went to her waist. ‘Why not?’
Her words came in a fragmented rush. ‘It’s just never been good, not with… and… I want to… I want for it…’
He slipped one hand up under her shirt, and she caught her breath, holding very still.
‘No,’ she said weakly.
‘I love you,’ he said, inching his hand higher. ‘And you love me.’
‘I’m trying not to,’ she said.
‘What for?’
His thumb nudged the swell of her breast, rubbed slowly back and forth, a sleepy rhythm. Her head drooped to the side as if her attention had been attracted by a faint sound on the far bank, and he kissed the angle where her neck and shoulder joined. The cool green taste of the river and the warmth of her skin mixed on his tongue. Like a hypnotist, he locked on to her eyes as he undid her blouse. She made a sound that started to be a rejection but died in the back of her throat. He spread the halves of the blouse, bent to her breasts, nuzzled them, kissed their tips, teasing the nipples hard. When he took one in his mouth, worked it gently with his teeth, she shuddered and put her hands on the back of his head, guiding him.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Wait.’
But he was through waiting and drew her down on the bank, his hand moving to her belly, lower, feeling the softness beneath her jeans, knowing she was open, ready.
‘Wait!’
This time she shrilled it, and dismayed, startled, wondering if he’d hurt her, he let her go. She rolled away from him, stood, holding her blouse closed. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I don’t even know you.’
That could be argued, he thought, but why bother? He sat up, his balls aching. He was puzzled, though not by her reaction. Women were always making this mistake, discovering in the middle of things that they weren’t prepared for you to touch them here or there or somewhere, leaving you doubled over in pain. No, he was just generally puzzled. Looking at the bubbled surface of the spring, it seemed he was staring down through the strata of his various conditions. Blue-balled, on a riverbank at sunset, in the midst of a rain forest, the midst of war, surrounded by lunatics and Indians, in Guatemala. And binding it all together the strange web of his relationship with this woman. He wondered why he wasn’t more puzzled.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Let’s just skip it.’ He turned to the far bank, and when he looked back a minute later, he found that she had gone.
Darkness sifted in, the moon was still down, and not wanting to negotiate the trail without a flashlight, he crawled into the tent. It had her smell, and that made him feel isolated among the night cries and the slop of the river. Too bad the tent wasn’t equipped with a phone. He’d make some calls. His parents, of course. Just for the sake of getting oriented to the American wavelength, a dose of salt and Nutra-Sweet. Hi, Mom, hi, Dad, here I am with gun and camera in Mangoland, the war’s no worse than a Disney Tru-Life Adventure narrated by a noble voice, and I’ll be home soon with souvenirs, bye, Mom, bye, Dad. And then, then maybe he’d give Sparky’s a buzz, his hometown hangout. He could picture it. Sparky the old fart scuttling crabwise for the phone, saying, ‘Yeah, whatcha want?’ and he’d say, ‘Hey, Spark. It’s David Mingolla calling from Guatemala.’ And Sparky would repeat the name a couple of times and say, ‘Sure… Davy! Cheeseburger plate and a lemon Coke, right? How the hell are ya?’ he’d say with false heartiness, recalling what a big shot Mingolla’s father was, and Mingolla would say, ‘I’m kicking ass down here, Spark. Refrying them beaners, y’know.’ Because Sparky was a hardcore patriot and why get into it? Then he’d ask who was around, and Sparky would say, ‘Well, nobody you’d know, what with your crowd split up and all.’ And maybe he’d bag calling Sparky’s, he didn’t need a reminder that those days were gone. Who else could he call? Light bulb switching on overhead. Yeah! He’d call up Long Island Woman. Give her a chill and a thrill. What was today? He counted on his fingers. Friday. Damn! They’d be out for a pizza and a movie, their idea of a hot date, and home around midnight for a bout of uninspired sex. Four times a week, regular as sin. Less would be unsalubrious. He remembered the first time they’d made love, how just as they were about to do the deed, she’d drawn back and said in a cool clinical voice, ‘At home we always do it on our sides. That way neither of us has to bear the other’s weight.’ He’d been amazed by her sexual naivete, yet knowing this about her had given him a sense of mastery, and maybe that had been responsible for his loving her. You didn’t need much of a reason for love; that had been proved again with Debora, And it might be that lack of knowledge was a stimulant to emotion, that things were most alluring when they were not quite real… Naw… he’d bag that call, too. He needed to talk to Debora. In a way, she hung on to revolution with the same avidity that Long Island Woman had hung on to marriage. But there was some hope for her. He’d buzz her on the jungle hotline. ‘Listen,’ he’d say, and hold out the phone to catch the electric message of the night, the crickets and frogs with glowing eyes, the red-skulled monkeys with vibratory tongues, the black magic birds with tympany beaks, and she would tune in to what they were saying separately and unanimously, saying in music, saying in code, in clicks and squeals and arcs of iridescent noise. There is no reason There is no reason There is no reason, and she would be mesmerized, and she would understand, and she would give up her fear.
Mingolla awakened from a dream of suffocation, unable to breathe the stale heated air inside the tent. He crawled out, stood and stretched. It had rained during the night, rinsing the sky of clouds, and the sun was fierce on the river, adding a shimmering glaze to its jade finish. Blue-and-silver fish were nudging pebbles along the bottom of the hot springs. It looked inviting. He could, he thought, get into nudging pebbles, hunting for tiny bugs in the silt. He stripped and waded in, quickstepping away from the scalding current that bubbled from the bank. The limestone bank extended about ten feet out, and at its edge the water was only inches deep over a smooth bottom. He kneeled, splashed himself, and tilted his face to the sun, his thoughts going with the race of the current. Something splashed near shore, and he turned toward the sound. Saw Debora standing in the water, undoing her blouse, her
