A Small Fortune (9 page)

Benicio distracts me from the pain by pointing out vanilla vines and coffee trees as if the two of us are on a day hike, strolling along, taking in the sights. He points out parakeets flying to and from a termite nest they are raiding to feed their young. He tells me about all the animals we’re likely to run into. Badgers, armadillos, and squirrel monkeys. Lizards, iguanas, countless varieties of birds with shocking green and yellow feathers.

“Just tell me what’s going to eat me,” I say.

“Jaguars, though no one ever really sees them. But there is the poisonous beaded lizard. I’ve seen plenty of those. Tarantulas, of course.”

“Are you serious?”

“Lots of snakes.”

“If we don’t make it to the kiosk, where are we going to spend the night?”

“Here somewhere. We don’t have a choice.”

I glance around at the thick brush and what I now know is an enormous parota tree, which the indigenous people use to make canoes. I imagine lying on the ground with snakes and tarantulas crawling across my prone body. Some kind of insect nesting in my wound. We may as well have tried to make it to the consulate. We seem doomed either way.

It isn’t long before we need to rest again. I make an effort to hide the pain, but Benicio is clearly on to me, asking to stop for just a moment while he doles out another round of Tylenol with codeine. He swallows another round himself.

Rapids rush by on the river, making it difficult to hear our own voices. But the unmistakable sound of laughter suddenly carries on the waves. We stop.

Benicio tucks me behind him and pulls out his gun. I grab my own from my waistband but am suddenly unsure what to do with it. I can imagine using it to threaten people the way characters in movies do, bossing them around, getting them to do what I want. But shoot it? Even now, after everything that’s happened, after being shot myself, it seems out of the question.

We duck behind a clump of bamboo. Benicio takes my gun and shows me where the safety is. “The only thing left to do is cock the hammer, line up the rear and front sights in your aim, and pull the trigger.”

He talks of shooting a gun like it’s nothing more than mixing a drink. Add that, then that, then this.

A new round of fear passes through me.

The laughter on the wind is now followed by screams.

We ready ourselves behind a parota tree. My hand sweats around the warm metal of the gun.

Yellow-helmeted tourists come rushing down the rapids on a yellow inflatable raft. They jab yellow oars into the choppy water, laughing as they work to keep the raft facing forward. Once they pass, two more rafts charge by the same way. After that there’s nothing but water hurling against the rocks.

Benicio clicks the safety and shoves the gun into his jeans. He releases the breath from his chest.

I realize I’m no longer holding my gun. I’ve dropped it to the ground with the safety off.

“We may be closer to the kiosk than I thought,” Benicio says. “Let’s rest a while longer. Take the pressure off your leg.”

I shake my head no.

“If we keep pushing it, you’ll end up not being able to walk at all.”

I know he’s right, but I don’t like handing over the decision-making. Handing over too many decisions is what got me into this mess in the first place.

Benicio clears the ground at the base of a tree. He sits down with his back against the trunk. “Here,” he says, patting his lap. “Lay your head down and rest.”

I’ve been up all night counting, and before that I was tied to a chair.

I lower my head onto his thigh, feeling a warm surge of feelings in my stomach. He brushes a tangle from my face and strokes my hair with a single finger until I drift into a dissatisfying sleep, dreaming the universal dream of running in place.

I wake to him watching me.

“Your fingers were twitching,” he says. “You moaned a couple of times, too.”

“How long was I out?”

“An hour and a half at the most.”

“What!” I sit up with a wince. “Why did you let me sleep so long?”

“That leg needs to heal.”

I swallow dryly and turn away.

He stands and brushes the dust from his shorts. “We may be closer than I thought, but that doesn’t leave room for something that might go wrong along the way.”

I offer my hand and Benicio helps me stand. My leg has swelled even more. “Oh God,” I say, before I can catch myself. How much codeine do I need to make it go away?

Benicio wraps my arm around his shoulder. “Let’s get over to the water,” he says. “The cold will feel good on your leg.”

“But we’ll be out in the open.”

“We’ll be quick.”

My leg is now hard and hot as an iron grill.

I lower myself onto the rocks, determined not to cry. The pain is worse, if that’s even possible. I feel light-headed, a little high, afraid of passing out.

Benicio removes my sneaker and I dip my leg, slowly, into the water. The corkscrew current is so painful I pull my leg back out.

“Here.” He wedges a log between two rocks and makes a small eddy. The water still spirals but without the speed and strength of the rapid.

I grit my teeth and lower my leg, determined to leave it submerged. After a few minutes the cold slips inside and chills the red-hot nerves. I finally feel some relief.

Dragonflies zip across the river. The humidity is thick without the ocean breeze. My skin is covered in layers of sweat and dust and bug bites. The dime-store repellant is no match for insects of the jungle.

Benicio rummages through the bag of food. He cuts salami into small pieces and stuffs them between chunks of torn bread. He hands the makeshift sandwich to me.

He tears small pieces of bread and chews them with an open mouth so he can breathe. A crooked bump at the center of his nose appears bigger in the sunlight. Some version of it will probably be there forever. Every time he looks in the mirror, every time someone asks where it came from, he’ll think of me. And every time I swipe a razor down my calf, I’ll think of him. We’ve made a mark on one another, scars like tattoos, bearing one another’s names.

“Wouldn’t it have been a lot easier for you to just join the family business?” I ask. “I mean, here you are running for your life in the jungle with a broken nose instead of kicking back in your estate on the beach.”

He lets go a small laugh and nods but says nothing.

My leg is slightly numb. The codeine and cold are finally kicking in.

We eat in silence, keeping one eye upstream, the other on the trees behind us. We’re open targets for someone coming from either direction. The rushing water makes it nearly impossible to hear approaching feet.

“We better hurry,” I say, even as my words begin to gel in my mouth.
Relax
, my body begs.
Hush
.

Benicio takes off his shirt. The carve of his muscles beneath his smooth dark skin is so beautiful against the rocks and sun, the white foam whirling behind him, that I forget to chew the food in my mouth. My heart thumps, and then a piercing dart when I think of lying with him on the bed.

He stands and drops his shorts.

My face flushes.

“I promise I’ll be fast,” he says.

It’s only now that I remember to chew. He maneuvers across the large rocks like a crab, the muscles in his arms and legs twist and flex under his weight. He drops feet first into the river behind a clump of rocks that keep him from being swept away. He tilts his head back to wet his hair and swipes the dried blood from his face and neck.

Codeine is a beautiful thing. It’s easy to imagine the two of us here under different circumstances. Lovers taking a dip in paradise. My lids open and close like a camera’s aperture, capturing the moment forever.

Benicio rises from the water and scoops his clothes from the rock. I hold up a hand to stop him from getting dressed. I’ve drifted away from the pain in my leg, away from my rage, my inhibitions and fears. I’m a kite cut loose from the life I’ve been tied to.

“Come here,” I say, scooting behind the partial wall of brush. I lift my blouse over my head and undo my bra.

Benicio unravels his clothes across the ground for me to lie on. He moves beside me, quickly aroused.

“This is crazy,” he says.

“I know.”

“The codeine?”

“Maybe.”

I can feel Benicio’s body fill with urgency.

I push my shorts down and take him into my hands in the same moment his fingers slip between my legs. The ground beneath us doesn’t seem strong enough, and I half-expect to crash through the earth and disappear.

This is a different kind of quick than the one I experienced with Jonathon. I’m so ready for him, and he’s about to explode in my hands. It isn’t out of habit, routine, and efficiency. I’m swept inside a current. There’s nothing to ground me, nothing to grab onto, nothing to keep from being pulled farther and farther away.

I moan. Claw fingernails into dirt. Sweat stings my eyes, drips to the ground, pools with Benicio’s. The pain pulses deep inside my leg, and yet I’ve never felt so euphoric, my core so unmoored in all my life. Gone are the agony and loneliness and lies. Gone the rage. I’ve punched my way through to happiness.

I want to make it last. I ease off on the pressure, turn my lips away, but our bodies are so far gone, so irretrievably lost inside a force so powerful, that in my hesitation only seconds are spared.

Afterward Benicio lies back and laughs at the sky. He seems to be reading my mind. Yes, it’s ridiculous. All of it. Our pasts, the way we found each other, the fact that the two of us should meet now when we might not live to see another day. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to us on the worst day of our lives.

Benicio closes his eyes and I sit up, my body swaying with tipsy contentment. I’m punch-drunk, naked, covered in sand, a pink chicken rolled in Shake ’n Bake.

I jostle Benicio’s shoulder.

He opens his eyes with a start.

“Do you know what Shake ’n Bake is?”

He sits up and looks around.

“It’s Shake ’n Bake, and we helped!”

Benicio pulls on his shirt, clearly not knowing what he’s laughing at, other than me.

“Didn’t you have those commercials when you were a kid?” I ask.

“No.”

“There were these two kids.” I stop. “Are there wild dogs out here?” I hear a bark. Not the kind that comes from a squirrel or a monkey. The kind that comes from a barrel-chested dog.

I turn my ear to the jungle. There it is again.

Benicio yanks on his shorts and shoes.

I dress quickly.

“Get behind the big tree,” he says.

I’m already moving, looking to see what I should grab. The tree’s at least twenty yards away.

“I’ll get the stuff, just go,” he says.

I slide the gun into my shorts and hobble behind the tree, grunting and cursing beneath my breath as the pain, the memory of the bullet, comes grinding back.

Benicio’s no more than fifteen feet behind me, out in the wide open with the bag of food when the dog barks again. It’s close. Very close. Benicio runs, ducks, and scrambles across the ground.

Then the loud crack of gunshot. Another. I look in the direction it seems to be coming from. The dog barks nonstop, a desperate refrain.

Branches above me quake and flop; small, long-legged monkeys leap from tree to tree, croaking and twittering in panic.

When I turn back I expect to see Benicio behind me, his amber eyes and cracked nose, my shoulder bracing for the touch of his hand, the breeze lifting a trace of river water from his skin. But there’s no one. Benicio hasn’t come any closer. He lies facedown in the grass. His arms and legs splayed open as if he’s embracing the earth. No matter how long I stare he just lies there, still as a corpse.

First my father. Then my mother.

“She’s gone,” the nurse said to me.

But I already knew. My mother’s withered hand beneath mine was cool and light as a dead baby bird. We were alone in the hospital room when I whispered, “It’s all right, Mom. You can go now.” I didn’t mean this. There was nothing all right about my mother leaving me, and I wanted to take it back. But the wispy sound of her final breath was unmistakable. The absence of her spirit had deadened the air in its wake.

Something black and wretched took hold of me. I drifted wordless past the nurse. Outside the sun hovered in a flawless sky. Men and women ducked in and out of shops and cafés. Children cried, then laughed. The trolley wheels slogged metal on metal. Somehow life managed to go on. But nothing looked the same through the waxy lens of grief.

For weeks I walked by the hospital half-expecting the sliding doors to jerk open and my mother to step out laughing, telling me how it was all just a silly mistake. A blunder, a goof, a screwy mishap.
Oh, Cee-Cee, you won’t believe it!
Weeks turned to months. I got married as if through a screen, a gauzy veil allowing only the tiniest things to sift through. I kept waiting for the grief to go away. For something to take its place.

I fumble the safety off the gun. There’s movement in the brush. A German shepherd lunging on its leash, a man in a gray T-shirt and khaki shorts—leash in one hand, gun in the other.

My sights race between the man and Benicio on the ground. Somewhere in the back of my mind I believe Benicio won’t allow himself to die. I believe he can control such a thing. It’s idiotic. It’s foolish and childish and insane, and yet the idea that Benicio won’t leave me no matter what slows my wild pulse and makes sense of the chaos in my head.

From where I stand I don’t think the man can see Benicio in the grass. I don’t think he knows I’m behind the tree. But the dog knows. He smells the way, lunging straight for Benicio. Within seconds he’ll be on us both.

I steady my hand around the gun. There shouldn’t be any question. No moral dilemma. His life or mine. Even so, the fact that I’m about to kill another human being tugs the gag reflex in my throat. I lower the gun. A collage of images flash before me. Oliver’s tiny body running into the street. Benicio facedown in the grass. Jonathon’s smile, that
smile
, and then his voice like a steady whistle in my ear, in my head, a piercing that will not go away.
Please pinpoint what it is and I will try and make it better.

I raise the gun and cock the hammer near my cheek.

The dog lunges. The man pulls back on the leash and crouches into the edge of the clearing. He calls Benicio’s name. He yells in Spanish while I hold my breath, lining up the rear and front sights, taking aim.

I glance once more at Benicio. His gun is just out of reach of his hand. I will him to feel me there, to make a sign to let me know he hasn’t left me. Not yet. Not here. Not today.

The man takes another step. “Benicio!” he shouts.

And then I see Benicio’s fingers curl into a fist. He unfurls his forefinger and thumb until his hand takes the shape of a gun. He pulls an imaginary trigger.

I aim at the man’s chest. The heart? The head? My God, I think, my God, and pull the trigger.

What happens next happens inside a bubble of eerie, high-pitched silence. Senses shut down. No sight, no sound, nothing to feel or smell. The pain in my leg is gone. Fear is gone. Time and place cease to exist. I disappear.

Then the blast of my own gun suddenly rushes my ears long after I’ve pulled the trigger. The man has disappeared into the grass, and the dog is charging Benicio.

Time resumes, along with fear and pain and the horror of what’s happening.

Benicio jumps for his pistol, turns, and fires two rounds. The dog yelps and twists sideways, flipping in the air. He yelps once more, then stops.

I drop the gun as if it’s seared my hand. I hobble out to Benicio. He meets me halfway and wraps his arms around me. I can barely breathe. The man I shot is sprawled on the ground not far from where we stand. I turn away, but not before seeing his blood-soaked body from his neck to his belt, a black hole gaping at the base of his throat, his eyes open and dead to the sun.

I lean to the side and throw up.

“Roberto,” Benicio says. “Fucking Roberto.” He paces the grass near the man’s body. He looks to be crying. He mumbles in Spanish.

I throw up again, sure I’m going to pass out. I stumble back to the tree. I can’t erase the bullet hole from my eyes.

When nothing is left in my stomach, I spit my mouth clean and press my hand against the tree. “We need to get out of here,” I say. “They could have heard those shots.” But in my mind all I can think is Roberto was someone’s son, brother, husband, father. He drove the
agua
truck for his father on the days when his mother needed cancer treatments.

Benicio nods at the ground.

I accidentally lean on my bad leg, and an explosion of pain erupts all the way into my jaw. We’re stuck here for the night. I cannot, will not move another inch.

I pick up the gun and click the safety. “It was either him or us,” I say, with a coldness that surprises me. After that it’s as if a heavy drape is pulled over my eyes. Light evaporates. The entire day fades away.