We Eat Our Own (9 page)

Jhonito could move in, the landlady said, tickling the skin inside Andres' elbow. I'd love to see more of him.

Jhon faked a smile. I doubt Uncle Vicente would want that.

Vicente smiled, too, leaned against the bedframe; he was not two meters from the trapdoor now. Come on, nephew, he said. How do you know what Uncle Vicente would want?

Jhon ladled cold soup into white bowls while Vicente chatted with the landlady about last autumn's rains. He arranged bocadillos in a little arc on the top of the platter, placed blue flowers between each of the crusts. The pantry was off the kitchen, and he knew Marina was watching him from there, from behind the secret panel and the shelves of cans, a knot in the wood gouged out strategically with the whittling knife. Jhon could feel this: her brown eye behind the hole, staring. He couldn't hear her, but he could imagine the small movement of her chest behind the wall. When he thought of it, his cock stirred, and he was guilty.

• • •

Guilty, too, because he knew that Matón would be dead by then, or dying, thrashes muffled by the soundproofing. Matón, who had no real name and no life outside the house, just fleshy hands like an enormous child and a voice too loud for his assignment and a poorly whittled sculpture of what might have been a jaguar. Andres had studied it earlier that day, before
he went to see the Patient: little spots for eyes carved out like pockmarks, the teeth a row of uneven triangles. He'd stared at the sculpture and faltered. A voice inside his head whispered, I won't do this. No. I can't.

But an hour later, he went in to serve his guard shift anyway, the garrote in his rucksack. He unfurled it before the Patient and showed him how to use it: the piano wire around the throat, the stick through the two loops at the back to give him leverage.

The Patient stared. I can't do that.

I know, Andres, said, but you will. He'll come in to guard you in a hour.

I'll mess it up. He'll get free. He'll kill me.

You want to get out of here? Andres said. Then hide the weapon and wait.

• • •

Andres made himself look away from the hole where Marina was, made himself remember. Your name is Jhon, Jhonito, Jhon. You are not yourself.

Jhon picked up the platter, yelled Buen provecho as he swung through the kitchen door. He poured out the Bellinis. A glitter of light came through the window, the sun dodging the fronds of a wax palm in the alley and glancing off his bike mirror and then into the house. The peaches positively sparkled. The landlady murmured, Qué linda.

Upstairs, the trapdoor thumped and thumped and the Patient said I'm sorry.

Downstairs, Vicente Mosa heard nothing. He raised his glass. To the most beautiful woman in Bogotá.

In the pantry, Marina heard the scramble of feet over her
head, and then a whispered Sorry,
and then silence. Then the sound of an opening door. Then the grunt of a man hoisting himself up and over a ledge.

In the parlor, Jhon toasted to the lovely afternoon, but Andres said nothing. He was waiting for the Patient to speak for him. He was waiting for footsteps on the stairs, and then the starved shape in the parlor room door, for the smell of him to fill the room, for the landlady to stand and scream. That was the plan. That was why he'd left the trapdoor unlocked.

In the pantry, Marina held her rifle in two hands and tapped the barrel to the ceiling above her, gently. She waited for Matón in the chamber to tap the signal back.

Downstairs, the landlady put down her cup and smiled. And will you be renewing your lease, too, señores?

Upstairs, the Patient sprinted to the bedroom door and found it locked.

This wasn't the plan. The Patient stood in the dark. Cold water filled his chest, his head.

He turned back to the room slowly and studied all the furniture. The bed was still in place. The trapdoor he'd locked, in case. The man he'd killed was still under there, curled up like a comma inside the room between the floors, but that was a thought the Patient had no time to think, not when he had to decide, right now, what to do.

That was when he saw the record player on the nightstand.

• • •

E-flat major, another, a rest. Allegro con brio into adagio assai, scherzo, finale. The highest the volume could go.

By the end of the first movement, Vicente will have charged up the stairs, thrown the bedroom door open, and shoved the
screaming Patient back into the room under the bed. The Patient will thrash and beat his fists as loud as he can, so Juan Carlos will leave the record going. He will explain to the landlady that he is sorry—it will not turn off—and before the landlady can put together that this makes no sense, he will hustle her into a cab and tell the driver her home address. Then he will go back upstairs, to shut the player down, to try to make the Patient shut up.

Recapitulation. The horns find the melody in the tonic. The violins stroke out the dominant chord again and again, the sound sawing at the eardrums.

When the second movement begins and she is sure that it is safe, Marina will push out the false wall in the pantry, gasping. Cereal boxes and tin cans and sacks of root vegtables will explode away and across the floor. She will step over it, out of it, into the yellow light of the kitchen. The gun she took in with her will be gripped in both her hands.

The second movement is a funeral march, C minor. Andres will have sprinted to the alley and then stopped, his hands on his bicycle's handlebars. He will not be able to decide: whether to run away now or stay and play dumb.

But when the trio comes in, modulation to C major, he will go back inside the house.

Marina will hear the front door ease open, and she will not hide like she's supposed to. She will look at a sweet potato on the linoleum, smashed with her boot heel. She will think of Matón, feet scuttling in the ceiling over her head, and she will wait.

The landlady gone, Juan Carlos will open the trapdoor again and stare into Matón's eyes, until he's sure his friend is dead. The Patient will have scuttled to the back of the cell, as far as he can get from the body, clutching the piano wire with both hands like he's presenting a bouquet of flowers.

Modulation back to C minor, and Andres will step into the kitchen.

A yank to the record player's cord. The music staggers and stops.

They will not reach the scherzo. Marina will not notice. By then she will be going through what she's seen, putting it all together. She will step over a spill of dried black beans, her eyes full of something hard and changed. She will shoot Andres in the gut, once, again. She will step over his body and go slowly up the silent stairs.

• • •

That will be later.

But for now, there was just E-flat major, blasting, twice: sudden violins in the walls, as loud as thirty-nine kilos of sharpened steel falling.

Every one of them heard it: Andres and Jhon and Vicente and Juan Carlos and the landlady and the Patient and Marina and Marina and Marina.

Andres had no idea that Juan Carlos would lock the bedroom door, as a precaution, his key slipped into his palm as the landlady turned the corner into the upstairs kitchen. Andres had no idea how any of this would go, not really, not if he was honest. It wasn't a good plan.

But there is a moment between those two chords, a full-count rest. There is an instant of total knowing: that the chord will come again, that there are things we can be sure of. Andres stayed there as long as he could. He didn't want the second chord to vibrate in his chest, but it would. It would shake as deep in him as if he'd made the sound with his own mouth. He would feel it surge through him like catharsis, so loud his
own throat would go raw with it, and after that, every single thing he'd planned would go all wrong, but not yet. Not yet.

For now, there was a rest. For now, he held his teacup high, finishing the toast. He was so happy and so sure: the music did it. It did this to all of them. It was not him, no: Andres was not the one who did this terrible thing.

RICHARD

Ovidio

Y
ou take a connecting flight to Ecuador and sleep two nights in the airport floor with your suitcase as pillow and a bored gate agent with an eyelid sty who speaks English but won't tell you anything, but finally, after you've reread five times the one book you brought, goddammit: they let you on the plane.

It's a puddle jumper that leaves at two in the morning, but you don't let yourself sleep. You probably couldn't if you wanted to, anyway. Your nerves feel stripped. The jet you're on seems minuscule in comparison to the colossal sound of its engine. You stare out the window and try to equate that grinding rush with how the blades look to you, a tinny blur, fast as hummingbird wings in the dark. You finish a plastic cup of water and feel your mouth go slowly dry. You have never been on a plane as small as this before.

But you know what—this is a good thing. Your acting teacher in New York always said that one of the first steps to understanding a character is to isolate and confront his greatest fear. As the plane descends, you feel the last week in Bogotá draining from your memory, shaken out of you by the motion of the engine.

Through your window, you watch the rain forest creep up on the fields, until there is nothing but rain forest under you, a landscape with no edges. It is exactly what you expected: a carpet of endless black-green, the shine of brown rivers curling through. Your heart trills as you descend, the fuselage skimming upper leaves. You close your eyes and study this new terror, the exact shape it makes as it spreads in your chest.

• • •

From here, it happens like a film slowed down to half speed: you can see all the black splits between the frames, and none of it feels real.

The plane descends, and you look out your window.

There is no airport below you.

An elbow of blond dust arcs around a surge of trees, hacked abruptly back. There are only two floodlights on the runway and they throw parallel lines across that space, stretching from nowhere to nowhere. You squint. You can't see a hangar, no terminal, no silvery windows stuffed with staring children. As you get closer, you can see a shack hoisted up near the edge of the clearing, tethered to the end of one of the floodlight beams, but otherwise, there's nothing. The whole land is black and empty. The trees are a single surface, a freeze frame of a boiling sea.

The shapes of four shirtless men with flashlights amble out of the shack, laughing about something as the plane lowers its wheels. You are close enough to the ground, now, that you can see them clearly through the shuddering window, striding into the floodlights. You could yell to them, Duck
or No
or You're going to die,
and you want to.
Their sandals drag in the dirt, and you are almost close enough to see the trails they leave in
their flashlight beams. One of the men bends over at the waist, laughing, and his teeth are so white that it stuns you.

The plane finds the earth, bangs down into it.

The windows cloud in an upsurge of dust, darkening every­thing inside the cabin. The speed of the jet pulls straight through you.

• • •

You stand on the runway, new sweat crowding on your hairline and upper lip, and watch the unharmed men wheel the luggage out of the hull.

The other passengers mutter in tired Spanish to the workers, pass them palmfuls of folded pesos. The money is russet-brown with a silver insignia on each bill that glints under light, bigger denominations than the casting director sent you with. When the man passes you your suitcase, you take it and smile like an idiot. You don't have anything left to give him, and you don't know the Spanish for
sorry.

You don't know where the road comes from either, how it grows so suddenly out of the distant edge of the clearing as the fleet of cars suddenly pulls up. You can't see where the jungle ends and the lot begins, and how these dozen Fiats and Renaults come growling out of the black horizon itself. It happens so fast: the passengers hoist their luggage into trunks and leave. New passengers spill out of the cars and fill the hull up again.

You stand there alone, your little brown suitcase a thousand pounds in your hand.

The cars clunk away, one by one. The plane roars and narrows to a speck of light between two dim blue stars, and is gone.

Count your breaths: one, two, three, four. A meditation.

You lose count at five. For the first time you hear the insects, a rising drone coming from the jungle.

• • •

An hour later, the Volkswagen appears.

You can hear the two men inside before they even stall the car, guffawing in a strange language at some story one of them is telling. When they get out, they don't introduce themselves. They finish their cigarettes. They finish the joke. You shuffle your feet and wait for them to acknowledge you, the only other person in that black, open field.

Finally, the shorter one careens toward you, says something in Italian that might be an apology. He shakes your hand with both of his—Fabiano, però chiamami Fabi,
Fa
bi—grinning drunkenly around a gold-capped eyetooth. He motions to the taller one. This man murmurs an introduction just once, in ­English—Baldo, is nice to meet you—and squints over his shoulder, avoiding your eyes. Baldo wears a powder-blue shirt with a wide collar, a skinny gold necklace that he twirls around the tip of his pinky finger as he frowns into the distance, locating the road. Finally, he decides—Andiamo—and folds himself into the driver's seat, his legs six inches too long for their brown corduroys and his knees crowding the wheel.

The car rolls out of the lot, down the lightless road. Tree branches come out of nowhere and slap the windshield hard enough to make you jump. You try to ask questions, to distract yourself. Fabi doesn't seem to speak any English, and Baldo does so only begrudgingly. He keeps the windows shut to keep out the mosquitoes, ashes his cigarette into an empty Styrofoam cup between your seats as he talks. He peppers his answers with constant quips of Italian, the words aimed over his
shoulder at Fabi, slouching in the backseat. Whatever Baldo is saying is hilarious, and probably at your expense. Fabi collapses lower and lower into his seat every time he laughs, absolutely contorting himself with laughter, whacking his knees furiously with his fists. You glance up for an instant, and the seat belt is all the way up by his neck.

Hesitant, you ask another question.

We are producers, Baldo answers. Both of us. E tu sei un idiota che avrebbe dovuto leggere il suo contratto.

Fabi thumps his thighbone and roars. Bravo, bastardo! The car doesn't have a headrest, and his spittle lands on the back of your neck as he laughs.

No, I don't have the script for you. Cosa ti aspetti, che ho la sceneggiatura uscendo dal mio culo, eh?

You can tell he's not just translating. Fabi hocks a blue knuckle of chewing gum out the window, then resumes a guffaw as if uninterrupted.

Yes, we are behind schedule. The rest of the crew is already out on set. Davvero, i putti americani partono un giorno si e uno no . . .

You give up on questions. The men keep talking, smoking. The road grows smoother under the car, the dirt firmed by the weight of steadier traffic. The trees must be thinning out around you, but you still can't see them: the headlight beams don't illuminate much. They shine over things on the roadside here and there, but only at wide intervals: a tin-roofed bar called Game Over; two miles down, a brown girl in jean shorts staring stunned at a wrecked bicycle lying in the waist-high grass. No fruit stands closed for the night, no fishermen dragging the daybreak haul in. Nothing you expected. The trees arch over the road. One drops something over the windshield: a cluch of seven leaves the size and shape of machete blades.

Baldo curses and thwacks at the wiper control. In the backseat, Fabi gives another yawp of laughter, throwing his head back toward the rear window until it arches nearly perpendicular with his neck. In the mirror, you can see the line of his teeth in his open mouth, the gold eyetooth a glinting sliver over his wet, undulating tongue.

Shadows move over the car. The car moves faster than it should on this road.

What? you ask. What's so funny?

Instead of answering you, Fabi points out the window.

It takes you a moment to realize that you're in a town. You're in it for only a moment: a handful of one-room buildings on one unpaved street, unlit signs propped up next to doorways:
MÉDICO, ABARROTES, BAR
. Everything is painted weird shades of salmon and tan, a sharp accent against the rotten avocado color of the trees that loom a foot behind everything. Heaps of trash fester in the alleys between buildings: broken chairs and tin cans and fruit peels that you can smell through the windows.

A loud dog sprints out of nowhere and chases you out of town. That's it. Half a minute's drive, and you've seen everything.

The trees thicken again. The road roughens under your tires. The dog disappears.

Two more minutes' drive, and Baldo kills the engine.

Ovidio, he says. This is where you stay.

This is not a part of the village you just saw. A square building, a pocked tin roof and wood walls painted a discount blue-gray. A wood-chip clearing to park cars, a thatched hut with a long table under it, covered in blue plates set out for an invisible dinner party. The air smells like citronella and bleach and mildew and the wet, dense scent of the jungle that you're just now learning.

You remember yourself. So my room—

Get out of the car, please now, Baldo mutters, slamming his own door and opening yours. Sono le quattro del mattino, cazzo.

As you tug at the stuck trunk lid, you try to remember the map the casting agent flashed at you, that sad clutch of colored paper. Where did the casting director point to, on the map? God, why didn't you ask? You remember the name
Ovidio,
you think you do,
but you hadn't registered its coordinates. There was a mottled inch of green, the words
Amazon Rain Forest
etched in thin script, and a crooked Y where the country lines met. Brazil, Colombia, Peru. Which one was this town in?

You have an early shoot tomorrow, Baldo warns.

I'm sorry, I just can't get this trunk—

He thumps it once with his fist, hoists your suitcase out and shoves it into your hand. These are your keys, he says, pressing them into your other palm. We're going to bed, he says, walking away.

Fabi trips along after him, swigging from an amber-colored bottle he's produced from somewhere. You stand a minute in the lot, squinting to read the worn number etched onto the leather tag. You think you hear someone walking nearby, wandering somewhere near the perimeter of the lot, but you think you're hearing so many things: prowling cats and winding anacondas and ghosts striding slowly over brush.

You don't look over your shoulder as you walk off to find the door to your room. You don't notice the director, pacing the lot because he can't sleep, but he notices you. He pauses near the picnic table. He watches you open your door. He watches you study the room in the dark: the tatty carpet and the twin bed, the tent of mosquito netting floating beneath the ceiling, the
framed cross-stitch of a macaw. Then you find the light switch, and he turns back toward the trees.

• • •

In the morning, you wake up to someone turning a key in your door.

You startle, sit up fast in bed. Whoever's coming in hears you and gives a warning knock, three times, with what sounds like the side of their fist. You can't see the digital alarm clock through the mosquito netting so you shove the net back. The numbers are blinking 12:00, 12:00.

Good morning, pal! someone shouts from inside the glare in the doorway.

You don't register, at first, that it's an American accent. You can't see the man, either, but as he shoulders his way into the room, your eyes focus. He's wearing Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt with a spiral-tailed monkey surfing on the back of an alligator. The man's face and his arms are tanned so dark you can't tell what race he is immediately, and his voice is so loud that any accent is moot. He has no wrinkles until he smiles, and then they are everywhere. He speaks too fast for your brain to register relief, to recognize the miracle of it: the first American voice you've heard since you left New York.

Hank Vance, he says, thrusting his hand out to you with a grin. Proprietor.

What time is it? you manage, reaching for the handshake.

But then Baldo is in the room, too, pulling you up and out of bed by the collar of your undershirt. Fabi jogs in and opens your suitcase, starts rifling around. Hank laughs.

Eleven thirty. Barely dawn. Boys, boys, what's the fucking emergency?

Why didn't my alarm go off?

Generator trip in the middle of the night, Hank says. Happens all the time, no need to lose your damn mind about it.

Fabi throws you a pair of jeans and you stand up to put them on. Are we supposed to be—

Everyone's already on set, Baldo barks.

How?

They forgot you! Hank laughs. They'd been shooting for three hours before anyone thought, where's our leading man?

The shirt Fabi throws you is a white button-down, something you brought in case you had to go to a nice dinner. You button it slowly.

Hurry, Baldo says.

Hank sneers. Come on, Balso! You're not going to let me greet my guest? The thump he lands on your back makes your chest feel like an empty tin box. His smile releases a rush of new creases at the corners of his eyes; when he relaxes, you can see tan lines between them.

Baldo curses in Italian and yells something to Fabi. Fabi grabs your wallet off the nightstand and tosses it underhand to him.

I heard you're the new American! Hank cheers.

You stare at Baldo, paging through your wallet, looking for something.

I'm from Georgia, Hank says. Outside Savannah. Absolute shithole. I'm gonna bet for you . . . Nebraska! He squints and jabs his index finger into the center of an invisible map.