A Blind Spot for Boys (19 page)

W
ell, my dears, I am being ousted,” Grace announced dramatically the next morning as she returned to the casita, all banging doors and clomping feet. I yawned, tired from waking myself up at four on the off chance that Quattro might sneak out. I wasn’t sure what I would have done. But as it turned out, Christopher had suspected Quattro’s plans and hidden his hiking boots. I hadn’t seen Quattro since he grabbed his boots from his dad and stormed out about an hour earlier, with Christopher following close behind.

“What’s going on?” Dad asked, setting down a travel memoir that he had found in the lounge this morning. He was making notes on hotel stationery.

Without breaking her stride, Grace walked directly toward her bedroom and began tossing her few remaining possessions onto the bed. “Orders of the military. Can you believe it? I knew
I should have hidden, but one of the armed rascals actually cornered me when I was loading the final sandbag. This… this is ageism! You know, if we were in the States, I might hire a lawyer.”

“But we aren’t,” Mom said in a placating tone. “So what exactly happened?”

“Another helicopter is flying in this afternoon, and apparently the Peruvian government doesn’t want an international crisis on their hands with any old people keeling over. So they’re insisting that every single elderly person be evacuated. Elderly!” She threw up her gnarled hands, looking like Yoda, a character not exactly known for his youthfulness. “I’m not like one of those senior citizens who take the train to Machu Picchu. I’m sorry, but did I or did I not complete the Inca Trail on my own?”

My mom exchanged a look with me, both of us smiling slightly. Right then and there, I promised myself that I’d be this spry and spunky at Grace’s age.

“Since there are so many gray-haired wonders walking around town, your age-group’s been delayed. Lucky you,” said Grace to Mom, with a wistful sigh. “Well, put on your best clothes. I’m taking everyone out to lunch.”

“I wouldn’t trust anything being served at a restaurant,” Dad said, grimacing.

On the third day post-flood, the restaurant scene in Machu Picchu Pueblo had become one giant gastrointestinal health hazard. Intermittent electricity shut the town down for hours at a time. No one with a working brain cell was about to touch a morsel of food that wasn’t prepackaged in plastic, not to mention the fact that the few sketchy restaurants that remained open for business had
quadrupled their prices. Besides all that, there was no such thing as “best” clothes—only dingy clothes that were gray and grayer from being washed with hand soap, then dried stiff overnight.

Who was I to complain? I’d grown oddly attached to my rain gear. It did the job, keeping me warm and dry. Who’d have known that I’d choose survival over style? But now I wondered why great rain gear couldn’t be chic and shapely. Maybe I should try my hand at designing a line. Why not? There was nothing and no one to say that I couldn’t.

“Don’t worry about food. I got it covered,” said Grace as she sashayed to the bathroom with an impish expression. Over her shoulder, she added, “Bring your camera, Shana. Hotel restaurant. Eleven thirty.” She flashed a pirate’s grin: huge, smug, and slightly dangerous. I vowed to practice in the mirror until I perfected the same.

Only Grace could have sweet-talked the surly and overworked hotel manager into allowing her to use the kitchen. What she intended to prepare was beyond my imagination, since we had scavenged only precooked food-like substances.

The dining room may have been filled with chatter from the other tourist groups, but our long, communal table felt lifeless without Stesha and our porters. Despite showers and sleep, the Gamers looked travel worn. There was no bounce left in Helen’s hair, and I noticed that she hadn’t bothered to clean her engagement ring. No one had seen Quattro or his dad since
they’d left this morning. Maybe they had gone back to Machu Picchu together. I couldn’t wait to find out.

The door opened, and I swiveled to see if it was Quattro. No, just Ruben. We greeted him with a standing ovation, not minding that we were being stereotypically loud American tourists. Who cared if a few other tables stared disapprovingly at us for causing a scene? Ruben hadn’t just gotten us up and down the Inca Trail safely. He was a hero for helping the town itself.

From the kitchen, Grace strolled out holding a tray with tiny bowls of steaming noodles. “Top Ramen à la Grace.” Then she asked Ruben, “Now, admit it. Aren’t you glad I had these in my backpack all this time?”

The mere notion of hot noodle soup was almost enough to make me lose all semblance of manners, swipe a bowl from the tray, and chug it down, noodles, salty broth, rehydrated vegetables, and all. Mom poured Grace a glass of beer and raised her own in a toast: “To our chef!”

But Grace had her own agenda. First, she corrected Mom, “To our guide!”

After we applauded again, Grace waved her hands to shush us as she stood behind her chair. I assumed she was going to make a speech about Ruben or our group, the Wednesday Walkers or Stesha. But Grace surprised us by clambering onto the chair, then stepping carefully into the middle of the table between the dishes.

“Grace? What are you doing?” Mom said, jumping to her feet with her arms outstretched, ready to catch Grace in case she took a swan dive. I scrambled to the opposite side of the table.

“I think you should get down,” Hank said as he stood, too.

“Well, I think it’s long past risk-taking time, bucko,” Grace retorted as she untucked her floral-embroidered T-shirt. She glanced around for a safe place to set her glass but ended up handing it to me.

“Grace, what’re you doing?” I asked, genuinely confused, staring up at her as she unbuttoned her hiking pants. “Um… Grace?”

Dad cleared his throat uncomfortably but didn’t say a word.

She unzipped her pants.

“Grace?” Helen asked. “Do you think this is a good idea?”

I hissed up at her. “I mean, we aren’t exactly the Wednesday Walkers.”

“Now that’s the truth” was Grace’s tart reply.

“And you’ve got an audience,” I continued, my eyes darting around the dining room.

“The more, the merrier.”

“No offense, but I’m not sure this is the last image I want to have,” Dad said, looking down at his lap.

For the record, Grace was in remarkable shape for a septuagenarian. How she’d managed the mountains without succumbing to the altitude or the trail’s steep angle, I have no idea. However.

She let go of her waistband.

“Grace,” groaned Mom, as she shook out one of the linen napkins and held it behind Grace. That did little to conceal or camouflage her tight compression shorts. Seventy-year-old buttocks are seventy-year-old buttocks, whether in grandma underwear, in the buff, or tucked into tight spandex. The expressions on the other diners’ faces morphed into dismay. I didn’t blame them.

Dad covered his eyes.

“You’re going blind. What are
you
hiding for?” Grace demanded as she wriggled her hips.

With a final swivel, her pants pooled at her ankles.

Her
ankle
.

There, standing before us as proud as any perfectly proportioned Aphrodite fresh on the clamshell, was Grace, glorious in her hiking boots that sheathed one foot… and one prosthetic leg attached at her knee.

Glancing around the table at one shocked person after another, Grace’s eyes finally rested on my father. She said, “I promised the Wednesday Walkers that I would complete the Inca Trail sooner or later. And a promise is a promise.” She considered Dad hard before her gaze bore into Helen. “My husband was there for me during my first bout with cancer. We never imagined that the second would lop off my leg.”

Dad was still dumbstruck in his front-row seat before this miracle. Grace smiled kindly at him and said, “You look like you need another round.”

“You walked the entire Inca Trail,” Dad said, slow to comprehend.

“Every step of the way.” She beamed at me. “I had good company.”

“You’re sexy to the end!” I called, raising my bottle of water. That seemed like the only appropriate toast.

We all cheered. At that moment, Quattro strode into the restaurant with his dad, both of them looking bleak and angry until they did a double take at Grace, half-naked on the table. The sight of their shock made us all laugh again.

“Now you may take a photo,” Grace told me after hiking up her pants and buttoning them. She posed on the table, hands in the air, an impish grin lighting her face.

After Grace’s big reveal, everyone demanded to know how she’d managed the trek. Casting a glance around to make sure no one was eavesdropping, I asked Quattro my own burning question: “Did you go…?” But he shook his head, lips thinning as he glowered at his dad, then ate his ramen noodles in stoic silence. The conversation turned to the clear skies and whether they would hold long enough for the helicopters to land. That brought us right up to the four thousand tourists packed into this tiny town, each of them vying for a spot on the helicopters. The dank smell of tension permeated the streets.

Mom joked, “That’s the scent of the unwashed.”

We all knew better. My own sense of uneasiness only increased at the end of lunch, when Helen piped up to say that her dad had worked in a bunch of different emergencies, and that there was a tipping point when fear and desperation led to riots and worse. As we all accompanied Grace to the helipad, I could feel the entire town teetering on that sharp tipping point.

A crowd of gray-haired senior citizens was already waiting, most clinging to their luggage even though the orders had been to leave behind all nonessential items to maximize the number of people who could be squeezed onto the helicopter. One push on the flimsy gate that separated the impatient crowd from the
path to the helipad, and the barrier would topple. And then all these elderly people who the Peruvian government wanted to protect would be trampled.

“You should grab the first helicopter that you can tomorrow morning,” Grace urged us. I shot a quick glance at Quattro. The days were dwindling, if he wanted to honor his mother.

Now an armed Peruvian soldier, menacing in his military fatigues, pointed at Grace. As though we were planning on sneaking aboard the helicopter, he snapped, “Only her.”

I lifted the camera to capture this farewell and framed Dad enfolding Grace in his arms, telling her in a tear-clogged voice, “I’m so sorry.”

No one, least of all Grace, had to ask him what he was apologizing for.

“It feels like this place is going to implode.” Grace’s frown deepened. “You should go back to the casita now.”

Mom smiled patiently at her. “We’re your groupies, haven’t you figured that out yet?”

“Yeah, and we’re demanding an encore performance,” I said, giving Grace a last hug.

“Don’t tempt her!” Dad said; his old teasing tone was back. A glimmer of a smile danced on his lips before he handed Grace over to the soldier. On the basis of that expression alone, I felt like my family had already been airlifted to safety. But when I saw the forlorn look on Quattro’s face, I made up my mind: I was going with him to Machu Picchu.

O
ther girls sneak out late at night to party or fool around with their boyfriends. But I was preparing to sneak out before dawn to hike to ancient ruins with a friend who was on a mission.

From the thick rug where I lay swaddled in comforters, I could trace the barest hint of pink lightening the sky through the window slats. Only a few clouds blocked the stars. If Quattro didn’t attempt to break into Machu Picchu this morning, he might never get another chance.

Just as I was debating about whether to wake him, the door to the walk-in closet where he had been sleeping opened slowly. Quattro padded out to the living room in socks, holding his hiking boots. He must have slept with them so his dad couldn’t hide them again. Last night, I had noticed that he’d stashed his backpack and rain gear behind the couch. He collected
them now, as I rose from my nest of comforters and tiptoed after him.

“You can’t come,” he said in a low voice after I shut the front door softly behind us.

“Excuse me, free country,” I reminded him as I laced up my hiking boots.

“No, this could be dangerous.”

“Rule number one in hiking: Always go with a buddy.”

He continued to shake his head.

Unstoppable now that I had committed to this, I continued, “Or no, because you want privacy? If it’s that, I’ll walk with you up to the point where you want to”—I paused, uncertain how to phrase it—“be with your mom.” Then more firmly, I said, “I’m going with you.”

He finally relented with a grudging “Fine.”

We set off across the bridge that connected the hotel with the rest of the pueblo, skirting the barrier that blocked the road to the heritage site I thought I’d never see again. It was a good twenty-minute walk along a dirt road next to the river before we got to the trailhead. Time had done nothing to tame the seething river, and I was glad we’d be leaving it behind before long for the steep uphill climb. I stopped in front of the footbridge we had crossed three days earlier, still under assault. My pulse raced. If either of us slipped and fell into that deadly whirlpool, there was even less of a chance of survival. We only had each other.

Not far from the bridge, Mother Nature had provided her own barricade in the form of a fallen tree. This was as close
to real photojournalism as I had ever come—encountering obstacles, flinging myself into the unknown. I was going to say as much to Quattro, but he was lost in his own thoughts. We barely exchanged any words on our rapid walk other than instructions: Watch out for that rock, careful over that slime. He needed solitude; I understood that. It wasn’t every day that you laid your mother’s ashes to rest.

For the next few minutes, I had to concentrate on my footing. We’d decided earlier that the trail through the jungle was the fastest way up to Machu Picchu, but littered as it was with wind-torn branches, our progress was slow. Quattro sighed, frustrated.

“We’ll get there,” I assured him.

His only answer was to push a low-hanging branch out of my way. I wished I had my old camera to zoom in on Quattro, staring at the trail ahead of us, ready to tackle any challenge handed to him: tough and resourceful, protective and well meaning. And irritating. Very irritating. He glanced at me after I clicked the shutter of his point-and-shoot. Even before I lowered the camera, I knew that I had captured something special.

“You want to turn back?” Quattro asked me, his first real words in half an hour, as he leaned his hand against a mossy tree trunk.

“Do you?” I asked.

He vaulted over another log that lay across the trail.

“Show-off,” I said as I hoisted myself up on the fallen tree and swung both legs over. Not graceful, but it would do the trick.

“What does that make you?” he asked.

A hundred responses formulated in my head, few of them
G-rated. While I might not have said a word, I couldn’t quite conceal the curve of my smile: challenging with just a hint of suggestiveness. I couldn’t help it, really. As Quattro held my gaze, he shook his head at me with an expression I was still deciphering when he said in a low voice, “I give up.”

He gave up? On me? On this mission? I frowned, confused.

“You’re impossible to forget,” he said. His tone was almost accusatory, but he stepped closer to me.

Ohhhhh. I breathed out. My lips softened into a smile. “That makes two of us.”

Before my toes could even graze the trail, he caught me in his arms, held me so tight our bodies were imprinted on each other, and kissed me as if every bit of pent-up passion was unleashed in that moment. He pressed me back against the tree, his hands protecting me from the rough bark, and deepened the kiss. And then just as suddenly, he lifted his lips, both of us breathing hard, as we stared at each other.

“What happened to starting college without any ties?” I asked. I had to know.

“Ancient history.”

“Prehistoric?”

“Mesozoic.”

I smiled, pleased. He grinned, even more pleased.

The rushing in my head when he kissed me a second time, then a third, had little to do with altitude. Not that I would ever tell him. Boys, bravado, egos, and all that.

Our ascent to Machu Picchu was going to end up being much slower than the descent a few days before, and not just because we were plowing straight uphill. We kept stopping every couple of feet to kiss each other: the hollow at my throat, the side of his neck, our lips. Our lips. Our lips.

When we reached the first intersection between the trail and the road, we found the asphalt was even more treacherous, covered with mossy slime.

“You okay?” Quattro asked, reaching over for my hand to lead us across the road.

“Never better,” I said softly. Even so, I gripped his hand tighter for the sheer pleasure of it.

“You know, most people wouldn’t do this.”

“I’m not most people.”

“Definitely not.” The sexy look he shot me could fill an entire bookshelf of romance novels.

A few minutes later, the evidence of another small mudslide lay before us once we’d crossed to the other side. More ragged branches torn from trees jutted out of a thick layer of mud. More ankle-twisting rocks. How many more slides were up ahead? How many more were waiting to unleash from these precarious slopes? What if we got trapped?

I shivered at the memory of our flattened tent. We would have been buried alive. I wondered what my parents were thinking this very moment, wondered about myself always plunging into things without full consideration.…

Far below us, the sound of the river had eased from enraged roar to warning growl. I ventured forward, fighting my fear,
hiding my trembling by hugging my arms around myself. I refused to let Quattro know just how scared I was.

We started to hike, the mocking river filling the grooves of our silence. My foot slipped. The echo of my surprised cry reverberated around us.

I fell.