A Blind Spot for Boys (12 page)

T
wo hours later, all the trekking groups at the campsite had accounted for their parties. Luckily, not one person had been buried under the mud or been badly injured. We were just bruised and scared. At the sight of Quattro’s group, now inching down the mountain with all their gear, the tenor of our morning grew even more somber as we tallied our loss: every tent, every sleeping bag, most of the backpacks except for three: Ruben’s, Hank’s, and Grace’s. That meant almost all our supplies were gone.

“Where are we going to sleep?” I overheard Mom ask Dad. My instincts pricked, and I maneuvered for a better angle. If ever I hoped for a decisive moment to shoot, this was it. I could feel it. I waited.

“We’ll figure it out,” Dad assured her. For the first time in days, he pulled Mom close and tucked her head under his chin.
Through the lens, I could see the tension releasing from Mom’s body as she sank into Dad in homecoming. Their eyes closed. And there it was, the moment I so wanted, even more than as a photographer: the first glimmer of hope that my parents would actually survive Dad’s blindness.

Another bunch of tired trekkers spilled into our ruined campsite, telling everyone that they had come from a kilometer away. Worse, their guide and porters had abandoned them. I snapped a quick photo of Quattro, who was standing with his dad and trekking group, listening attentively to their guide.

Whatever Stesha and Ruben were talking about, it couldn’t have been good, judging from their grim expressions. Nervous, I focused my camera on Grace and Dad providing medical attention to every trekker who needed bandaging with the supplies from Christopher’s small but well-stocked first aid kit. As I continued to shoot the scenes unfolding around us, Mom stuck close to me, worried that I’d be swept away by a second wave of mud. I was glad for her company; I kept glancing uphill, suspicious of the mountain. That unease disrupted the usual Zen I found while photographing. Correction: that, plus the fact that Quattro met my eyes but turned away to help his dad dig out a backpack covered in muck. He hadn’t even acknowledged me, as if he didn’t want to talk to me.

My cheeks flamed. More than hurt, I was confused. Part of me wanted to crawl behind a boulder to hide, rescue myself, no different from Hank. What was wrong with Quattro anyway? I could not possibly have misjudged another guy again, could I? But there was no way I could have misread that earlier tenderness. I knew I hadn’t imagined our almost-kiss.

Whatever was going on with him, I forced myself to focus on my work. I crouched down to frame the mud-buried tents. As I did, Hank’s voice carried over to me as he spoke with Helen: “If you see an extra pair of socks, let me know. I’m starting to get a blister.”

“Wait, where are yours?” she asked, frowning as if only now taking into account Hank’s pristine fedora, his clean backpack, which he had somehow miraculously rescued, his undershirt, his bare feet in tied-up hiking boots.

“I… I—” he stammered.

“Hank, why aren’t you wearing socks?” Then her own flood of disbelief unleashed on him. “Where were you this morning? Didn’t you hear me calling from the tent? I thought I was going to
die
. And I looked for
you
.” Finally, the damning question: “Did you
leave
me?”

The flush on Hank’s face was the one emotion I never thought I’d see him wear: shame.

“I’m sorry! I wasn’t thinking, but it doesn’t mean anything.” He reached for her, but Helen shook her head, first slowly, then furiously. “I came back to look for you.”

“Don’t touch me!” she cried, backing away so suddenly she stumbled but regained her balance. Her face crumpled, and she wound her arms around herself. Grace hastened to Helen, and I followed to flank Helen on her other side, the way my friends would have if I had only told them about Dom. Change the environment, replace the guy, and that could have been me, alone at a restaurant table, set for two.

After I’d apologized at least five times by text for my critique of Dom’s website, then didn’t hear from him for days, he had finally responded. Relieved that he suggested getting together for dinner, I nervously chatted through the appetizer and main course, barely eating more than a bite. As soon as I told him I’d spent the morning taking the senior portraits for two of the guys on the varsity soccer team, he was on my case. I tried hard to understand why he was angry about it when I’d told him way back on our first date that portraiture was how I was helping to pay for college. I was so focused on deciphering his terse words, I hadn’t even noticed the young couple sitting next to us until they were leaving.

The woman with a lion’s mane of blonde hair and a birthmark on her face stood up, glanced swiftly at Dom, and told her boyfriend, “I’m glad you don’t have a problem with what I do.”

The man’s coffee-brown eyes dropped on me before he smiled crookedly at her. A faint scar scored his upper lip. Placing his hand on the small of her back, he said, “I’d be a complete idiot if I did.”

Fuming, Dom pushed back from the table and strode outside, leaving me with our unpaid-for, half-finished dinner. I was positive he was coming back once he’d cooled down in the fresh air. For ten minutes, the waiters walked by our table, alternately curious and pitying as they checked in on me: Was I finished? Did I want dessert? Coffee? The check? But I had no credit card, only a ten-dollar bill, which didn’t cover the cost of our appetizer. After twenty minutes, Dom finally returned, but not before one of the waitresses had asked if she could call me a taxi.

“You can come back tomorrow with the money,” she had offered.

“He’ll be back,” I had assured her.

The waitress had studied me briefly before she attended to the new set of diners at the table next to mine. “Honey, you’d be lucky if he didn’t.”

The waitress was beyond right. So was Grace. I was better off without a guy who’d punish me for not fawning over his website and had an issue with my job. I glanced over my shoulder at Helen, sitting like a pariah on her rock. I knew how she felt. But Hank was staring down at his hiking boots, looking so lost that I felt sorry for him, too. Every minute or so, he’d glance over at Helen, confirm that she was still ignoring him, then stare again at the strips of bare skin between his boots and his rain pants.

A few yards away, Stesha motioned for everyone to gather around her while she relayed our new game plan.

“I’ll be fine,” Helen whispered to me. “Go.”

So Grace and I left her side in time to hear Stesha: “Ruben and I have decided that we’re going to push on to Machu Picchu. From there, buses run regularly down to the town, and then we’ll be able to take the train back to Cusco.”

For a long moment, we stood in awkward silence. No one wanted to stay in this death trap of mud, but no one wanted to leave either. What if worse lay ahead of us? Yet there was
zero assurance that backtracking would be any safer. This was supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime expedition, not the only expedition in our lifetimes. All I wanted was to be safe at home in our little cottage.

“We’ll ask that group without a guide if they want to join us,” Stesha said, nodding toward the leaderless trekkers who were milling around aimlessly.

“We’re slow enough as it is on our own,” Hank countered as he cast about for support. He looked pleadingly over at Helen as though trying to redeem himself. “A couple of us could make it to town tonight if we pushed hard. Get some provisions, be back with help.”

“We need to stick together,” Stesha said.

“But we could do it.” Hank’s eyes glowed passionately as he turned the full firepower of his charm on Dad, the same charisma that I had admired earlier. But charisma meant nothing in the middle of a crisis. Hank told Dad, “The two of us could get to town fast, make sure we’ve got tickets for the train. Buy food for everyone. Divide and conquer.”

Dad replied firmly, “I’m not leaving anybody behind.”

At that, Mom eyed Dad with the same fierce pride she always wore when she talked about him, reminding me of her recurring dream: Dad flying overhead as if he were some kind of superhero. I caught the envious look Helen shot at my parents—the same one I’m sure I wore when I first met her and Hank at the airport in Cusco. My parents—not Hank and Helen, not me and Dom, and clearly not me and Quattro—were the It Couple.

“No one is being left behind,” Stesha said. She pulled herself up to her full five feet. “Right now, everyone’s safety is my concern. There’s a hostel a couple of hours before the Sun Gate. We can take shelter there tonight.”

“But what if it’s already full? We don’t have tents,” Hank persisted. “What about the porters and Ruben? What’s our contract with them?”

“I’m staying with Stesha,” said Ruben, and he added a question in Quechua to the porters, who all nodded. Addressing our entire group, he said, “None of us are leaving you.”

So the decision was made: push on toward the hostel together. At that, Stesha and Ruben went to invite the other groups to join forces with us. Not getting the answer he wanted from our group, Hank stalked over to Christopher. I trudged behind, camera in hand. I could tell myself I was fulfilling my duty as the trip photojournalist, but I knew the truth: I wanted a chance to talk to Quattro.

The sonic boom of Hank’s voice could have unleashed another mudslide as he confronted Christopher: “Your group’s going all the way to Machu Picchu today, right?”

“Not all of the group,” Christopher corrected, pointing his thumb at their porters, who were unloading their backpacks, reallocating the supplies. “David and Jorje have little kids at home, and Salvador’s mom is sick. So our porters are going straight back to Cusco.”

I gripped the camera in my hand, feeling guilty. I hadn’t exchanged many words with our porters except for a dozen
gracias
es,
por favor
s, and smiles, lots of wordless smiles.

“But you need them,” Hank said.

“We’ll be fine without them,” Christopher said confidently, chin raised as he stared Hank down. Without hesitating, I took my shot, knowing that I was seeing the real Christopher, the man he had been before Quattro’s mom died. There was no muting him now.

“Hey.”

Quattro. At his voice, I felt an impossible spurt of happiness. Our campsite and plans were in disarray, but here it was. Joy. He had come looking for me after all, just as he’d promised. But then I read his shuttered face.

“How’re you holding up?” he asked, sounding more clinical than concerned.

I sighed, shrugged, shook my head. How could I explain how I was feeling? Still reeling that we’d survived a mudslide. Whiplashed by his behavior. The whisperings of boyfriends past filled my head. How many guys had called me out on my flirt-and-run habit? Now that I was experiencing it firsthand, I had to say: I felt more unwanted than a speck of dust.

“Are you avoiding me?” I asked him point-blank.

He flushed. “I’ve been helping out.…” When his shoulders slumped tiredly, I softened. There was no question about it: He’d been pushing himself hard.

“We were lucky that you and your dad came when you did.”

“Hardly.”

“A minute more, and Helen might not be here.” My eyes welled up with tears at the close call. The mudslide had scraped me raw; my emotions were bouncing all over the place. “If we
had stayed in our tent for another couple of minutes… If Dad didn’t pull us out…”

He closed his eyes tight, balled his fists. “I just can’t.”

“Quattro.”

At once, he averted his face, but not before I saw his expression ruined with more than grief, but anguish.

“I have to go,” he said, as if he had made a fatal mistake by caring for me.

“Quattro! Wait!”

He was gone.