“Okay,” I say.
He pushes his chair back from the table.
“One hour,” he repeats, holding up his pointer finger in a stern fashion as if he knows I have an issue with lateness. Because I do, in fact, have an issue with lateness, this otherwise rude assumption has a positive impact. I feel like Edgardo and I have known each other forever.
“Got it,” I say.
“Oh.” Edgardo stops himself and removes a pair of mountain-climbing boots from his backpack. “We need to understand your feet.”
He drops to the ground as if about to propose and grabs my ankle. A couple at the next table looks the other way. Despite their clunky shape, the boots are too small. We’ll have to add “boots” to the list of things to rent before we go—a list that evidently includes crampons, a Gore-Tex jumpsuit, and a headlamp. I am starting to detect the faintest odor of intensity to all this.
“Is what I’m wearing okay?”
I push back from my chair and wipe crumbs off my lap. I am wearing cotton tights and a pilled tank top. It’s less of an outfit than a few swaths of cloth to carry me from my room to a public dining room in a socially acceptable fashion.
“Yes, yes,” he says. “One hour.”
I go back to my room and locate the warmest clothing I can find, which amounts to the fleece vest. I lock my passport in a counterintuitively communal safe, operated by a janitor. Then, just as I’m getting ready to leave, I feel an ache in my abdomen. I go to the bathroom to find that there’s both a Cotomaxi joke and a crampon joke to be made—but no one around to get it.
* * *
Edgardo arrives outside the hotel three hours later. When he pulls up, I see that his Jeep features an orange-and-red flame extending from door to bumper and blacked-out windows. He fusses with a tarp on top of the Jeep, pulling hard at ropes. When I ask him if I can help, he says nothing. When I ask him if he’s sure I can’t help, he tells me I should get in the car—but not before looking me up and down and asking: This is what you wear?
I open the passenger door, expecting the car to be empty. But a second man reclines in the back of the Jeep. It would seem the “we” that needed to understand my feet was not royal but literal. This second man I will come to know as Pedro. Pedro’s primary contributions to our journey include pointing out gas stations, eating massive quantities of fruit, sleeping with his arms crossed, and pulling off Oakleys. He nods as I climb into the passenger seat. A small hill of orange peels at my feet, along with a warmth emanating from my seat fabric, tells me that Pedro’s perch in the backseat is a recently acquired one.
“That’s my assistant,” Edgardo explains over my shoulder.
Both of them laugh. I know in my heart the joke is about their friendship and not my soon-to-be-unsolved murder case, but my unease regarding a second person operates on two levels. The first is the one in which I’m in no mood to be kidnapped in a foreign country. The second is the one in which I refuse to pay double. It’s hard to say which is more pressing. I sit in the car as Edgardo straps supplies to the roof. A first-aid kit comes loose and pops open. The windshield is showered with plastic matches and energy bars. Band-Aids flutter and stick to the glass. Edgardo and I lock eyes. He smiles, picks up a six-inch hunting knife, and shoves it back into the bag.
Trips up Cotopaxi work like this: First, you drive out of Quito, a city whose traffic patterns mirror those of a cubist painting. Once on the outskirts of town, it’s another few hours to the base of Cotopaxi. During this time, there are many road types at your disposal. Wide ones, short ones, narrow ones, steep ones, long, straight, curly, fuzzy, snaggy, shaggy, ratty, matty, oily, greasy, fleecy, HAIR! Anyway. You will find one road so bumpy, you’ll want to keep your jaw ajar so your teeth don’t chatter. Boxy pastel houses are sprinkled on the hills in the distance. Soon the towns decrease in size. The crumbling apartment buildings fade from view. The clotheslines become less and less covered in clothes. Keep on vibrating up a “road” whose air quotes grow increasingly pronounced. Try not to listen as your bladder curses the day you dragged it into this world. Hold on to the handle above your window and—hey, watch out for that donkey!—swerve your vehicle straight into a river. Stop the car. Realize it’s not really a river you’re in, but a swamp saved from stagnation by an open sewage pipe. Lift any electronics off the car floor because you’re about to open your door into bacteria-infested rain-forest water. Quickly come to understand that you weigh exactly enough to be of use by exiting the car but too little to be of use pushing it back onto the road.
So just stand there for a while. Distract yourself from whatever it is that just bit your neck by humming the theme song to Family Ties. Realize that you know only two lines of this song and one of them is “sha-la-la-la.” Once back in the car, go through the gate to Cotopaxi National Park. From here, it’s a short drive to the last patch of land not at a 90-degree angle from the earth. Park the car and hike up to a cabin located 15,700 feet above sea level. Upon arrival, eat as much as you possibly can before the altitude destroys your appetite. Then make sure you’re asleep by 7 p.m. so that you can wake up five hours later and hike to the summit before the sun rises, melting the path out from under you.
Now, I have to assume that much of
