It is dark by the time the colectivo pulls into the Plaza de Armas in Arequipa. Kate thinks of the night she spent on the hard bench of the church. How could she have run away like that? She feels strange to herself and humbled by her good luck. No, not luck; she has been protected, watched over. She pushes back the sleeve of her habit. The scar on her arm is still red. It will fade, she knows, but it will never disappear entirely, a reminder she’ll carry forever.
The driver stops just off the plaza, saying they will take a two-hour break to eat. He’ll get some rest, and by seven o’clock they’ll be on the road to Puno. “It’s better to travel at night,” he says. “Fewer trucks to pass on the steep curves.” He is a small man, slim and weathered, with a husky voice. He’s smoked one cigarette after another, and he coughs now and spits on the sidewalk. He looks tired, and Kate hopes he really will take a nap.
“Madre, would you care to join us for dinner? There is a good restaurant in the Hotel Mercaderes. We would like you to be our guest.” Señor Molina, much to Kate’s surprise for she hasn’t heard him say a word the whole trip, is charming.
“Thank you, I would be honored.” She smiles at the three of them standing before her, and the señora beams and takes her arm. The father walks arm in arm with his daughter, and Kate can hear them talking softly.
It is early for dinner when they enter the restaurant; the waiters are just putting on their white coats and aprons. Their expressions are not friendly, but Señor Molina gestures grandly to one of them, and the young man scurries over to show them a table.
“Oye, chico, we’re in a hurry. We are leaving for Puno in an hour or so. Do you think you can feed some hungry travelers from Lima?” Señor Molina is already tucking his napkin into his shirt collar. The waiter notices María Luísa, and suddenly his indifference disappears.
“Of course, señor. What will you have?”
Now both the husband and wife lecture Kate on the delicacies of Arequipa’s cuisine. Their eyes shine as they describe the subtle flavor of ocopa or rocoto relleno. Kate asks Señor Molina to order for her, and soon they are drinking a red wine Kate recognizes from the winery in Ica. She mentions that she has visited the winery, and that starts the Molinas on a long and careful explanation of the superiority of Peruvian wines over Chilean wines. Kate watches María Luísa, for every time the waiter comes near, she raises her dark eyes to him with a peculiar gleam of conscious power. The waiter stumbles once and drops a basket of bread he was carrying. María Luísa looks at Kate and laughs, and Kate begins to think the parents are right in exiling this girl to a convent boarding school in Bolivia.
Are American girls like this? So sure of their sexual power? Kate knows she hadn’t been. Her way with boys had come from being around her brother. She would tease and taunt them, but her banter was friendly and not charged with sex. Soon she will be going out into the world again—but as a twenty-six-year-old woman, not a girl. She doesn’t know the rules of the game anymore. This fifteen-year-old is more worldly than she.
By the end of dinner they are all stunned with the food and fatigue. Señor Molina, looking at his watch, suggests a short walk around the plaza. Soon they are out on the street, joining the jostling crowds coming from work, spilling into cafes and bars. Music floats from the open doors of bars, and in the distance the peak of El Misti pierces the darkening sky.
They walk to the corner where the driver told them to meet him, but he is not there. Señor Molina puffs on his cigar and watches with a slight smile the passing stream of office workers, school children, and young lovers walking hand in hand. Kate walks beside him in silence. Ahead of them, María Luísa is walking with her mother, her head high, her eyes never swerving to catch the admiring glances she draws from both men and women. “Your eyes are like the stars,” one older man mutters, but neither the mother nor the daughter acknowledges the piropo.
The four of them wait on the corner for a few minutes before they hear the Chevy backfiring as it comes toward them.
“I’ll bet he’s drunk,” says Señor Molina, trying to get a good look at their silent driver as he waits for them to get in without taking his eyes from the street in front of him.
“Ready?” he calls back to them. Then they are off, the tires squealing as they circle the plaza and head for the road to Puno. This time María Luísa sits in the middle, and Kate can smell her perfume, something delicate, violets.
As they leave the city, no one speaks. It is dark now, but on Kate’s left the moon slips in and out of the clouds. Kate can see they are edging gradually across small hills and then they are crossing wide, flat fields. There is no sudden dramatic ascent into the mountains as she remembers on the road from Coroico to La Paz. Yet she knows they are climbing steadily, for her ears pop. Kate glimpses strange tufts of grass in the plains, like the feather dusters they had used to dust the convent parlor. Herds of llama move across the pampa, ghostly and silent in the moonlight. It is getting colder now, and Kate is grateful for the huddled warmth of the girl
