Chapter 5
This is the fifth chapter of my novel, Such a Pretty Fiction. Chapter 4 is here.
When Muriel got up, she said good morning and acted as if the night before had never happened. We packed our bags. Muriel and Rafa walked us to the restaurant, hand in hand. The hostess called a cab and we made our goodbyes. We ignored the arguing and the crying, the sound of Muriel sobbing into Rafa’s chest behind the closed door. We thanked them for the champagne and the day on the water. The girls hugged. I shook Rafa’s hand. We waved goodbye and walked along the thick beams of the pier to the parking lot.
Soledad and Sophie sat next to each other on the bus. I sat behind them. Most of the seats were empty. Sophie made apologies for Muriel. My contempt for the apologies grew. Soledad agreed. She pointed out how strange it was that Muriel could be so assertive and then so quick to break down in Rafa’s arms. Sophie defended her, arguing there’s more than one way to be strong. Maybe she was right. I looked out the window and wondered what else was in Muriel’s memoir.
Soledad came back to Sophie’s apartment. We strategized in the living room. Our flight left the next morning for Iquitos. We’d arrive in the afternoon and spend the first night in a hotel, then take a boat downriver.
“How are you with a camera?” she asked.
“Like pictures? Or like a video camera?”
“Video camera. For filming.”
“I don’t know. I take videos on my phone sometimes. I can help you with Nosotras, but with videos I can’t make any promises.”
She laughed. “Well this will be interesting. Shouldn’t be too hard. I’ll tell you what to do. You can hold the camera and make sure it’s recording. A sort of human tripod.” Her eyes gleamed.
Sophie brought in a giant bowl of salad. “I think we could use something healthy after the weekend, no?” It felt good to eat something light after the steak and beer.
Soledad packed her things. “Tomorrow at five thirty,” she said. “I’ll pick you up.” She gave Sophie a hug, thanked her for lunch, and was gone.
At precisely 5:30 my phone buzzed.
“In the cab. Outside.”
There was a pad of paper by the door. I scribbled a thank-you note to Sophie and went down.
The city was still asleep. The cab idling at the curb was the only sign of life, headlights shining down the street, exhaust wisping out of the tailpipe.
“Good morning,” Soledad said as I slid into the cab.
“Buenos días,” I said.
“Ah, muy bueno! Cómo va tu español?”
“That’s about all of it.”
“Even after living in Buenos Aires? Logan.” She clucked her tongue. “We’ll work on it.”
The plane change in Lima was easy, and nine hours later we dropped through the clouds toward a carpet of jungle that stretched to the horizon. Soledad had given me the window, and she leaned over to look out. As her hair brushed across my face I breathed her in.
“I never get tired of flying into Iquitos.” She gazed through the window. “No roads in and out. Only the river and the air. See those lakes?”
I’d seen them. They weren’t like regular lakes. The smallest were rectangular, and the largest snaked through the trees. They were strewn across the jungle as if someone had dropped a box of earrings.
“Oxbow lakes. That used to be a river. Then the river shifted and that part was cut off.”
“The river?” I asked her. “All of those used to be the Amazon?”
“Oh no.” She shook her head. Her hair brushed my face again, stirring up more of her smell. “A river. Not the river. Thousands of little rivers feed the Amazon.” She tilted her head up to look at me. “You’ll know the Amazon when you see it.”
I peered past her. The lakes were spread out unevenly, but they were everywhere that I could see. The biggest didn’t look more than a hundred feet across. We were five hundred miles from the west coast of South America. The Amazon had over a thousand miles before it reached the Atlantic.
“Is it bigger than those?” I asked.
She straightened up in her seat and turned to look at me. The light streaming through the window lit her eyes on fire. “Oh yeah,” she said. “The Amazon carries more water than any other river in the world. The ocean is freshwater for miles off the coast of Brazil. Just wait until you see it.”
The ground crew wheeled a staircase up to the plane. The humidity stuck to me. A dozen slender palm trees teetered over the lone building of the terminal. The jungle grew up to the edge of the runway, and the sky stretched out above us.
As we walked out of the terminal, men’s voices assaulted us, offering rides. Soledad explained that most of them were moto drivers. She pointed out a line of motorcycles against the curb, each affixed with a tiny trailer and a bench. They looked like chariots. She ignored the motos and made for a row of taxis. It was nice to travel under someone else’s wing. First Sophie, now Soledad.
The road to the city swarmed with motos. The intersections near the airport didn’t have stoplights. The driver slowed as he approached them. Motos rolled by us in neutral, crept into the intersection, then revved their engines and tore away in a high-pitched roar.
Soledad had chosen her usual hotel, the Dawn of the Amazon. It was in a converted mansion built during the boom days of Iquitos, when the city was one of the main rubber producers in the world. The house was set back from the road, surrounded by its own grounds and encircled by a stucco wall.
She had the driver drop us at the gate so I could appreciate the splendor of the place. Some European had lived there growing fat, as Indians were driven like slaves up and down the river. She pointed off the drive to a tall, smooth-barked tree nestled in a grove of palms.
“Rubber. A bad word in Iquitos.”
The house was a creamy yellow color, three stories. Steps swept down from both sides of a veranda to an old fountain. A boy in a page uniform hurried to take our bags. The veranda was wide and deep, shaded under the floor of the balcony above. Rattan chairs were placed tastefully around the porch. Three women lounged with long drinks, clear with bright yellow wheels of lemon. Fans twirled lazily overhead.
I followed Soledad through a pair of French doors. Everything in the house was dark wood. Sitting rooms had been converted to lounges on our left and right. The page led us to our rooms.
We were on the same floor. Soledad at the back of the house, me in the front overlooking the yard. The room was clean. It had been the lap of luxury once, but the humidity of Iquitos was cruel. The plaster molding in the corners was crumbling and darkened by mildew, but in spite of this the room smelled fresh.
I threw my things down on the bed. Soledad knocked and we walked to get dinner. She headed straight for the river, leading me carefully through the motos. After a few blocks we hit a row of trees and she took us right, along a low stone wall. The trees dropped away and there was the river.
I stared. “Whoa…”
“No mistaking it, right?”
Over a low wall was a plain made of water. At the base of the wall, a grassy hill rolled down into the river. A rusted paddle boat was wrecked in the shallows, the upper decks covered in graffiti. The river stretched on for ages. A line of trees grew along what I thought for a moment was the other side, but I could see more water through their trunks. And it still had one thousand miles to build strength before the ocean.
“Where’s the other side?” I asked.
“It’s over there somewhere. The bank is solid here, but the other side is mostly flowing through marshes and smaller channels.”
Up from the derelict paddle boat, a cluster of wooden huts on stilts hovered above the water. The walls were unfinished timber, brown and weathered. The roofs were thatched with dry grass.
“Are those natives?” I asked.
Soledad laughed out loud. “Natives? Is this 1907? Those are shops for tourists. You’d better stay away. Who knows what they’ll talk you into buying. Come on, let’s get dinner.” She started along the wall. “Don’t get too close to those huts, though. I hear they’re restless.” She laughed and I walked beside her, feeling foolish.
Her favorite restaurant was in a two-story building facing the river. The tables were set on two levels. She chose one on the ground floor and sat looking at the wall, which was mirrored all the way to the ceiling. I sat in the booth, against the mirror.
“I hope you’re not disappointed,” she beamed at me, “but there are no natives in the kitchen here. No fish in banana leaves. No bushmeat. Just Peruvians.”
I looked at the menu, trying to stay in good spirits. “Peruvian and pasta, it looks like.” The house specialty was marked as spaghetti and meatballs.
“The spaghetti’s quite good, believe it or not.”
“Have you had everything here?”
“Oh my god no. I usually get the same things. Lomo saltado. Spaghetti. Tallarin. Ceviche occasionally. River fish.” She looked at me over the top of her menu and arched her eyebrows. “Maybe caught by natives.”
“Maybe I’ll get the ceviche. Or should I say…the-VEE-chay.” I scrunched my face and lisped the word, mimicking Rafa’s accent.
She threw back her head and laughed. “Maybe ceviche, and afterwards a cerveza.” As she spoke, she dropped her voice a register and lisped out each syllable. “Do I sound pompous enough? ‘Ceviche and a cerveza.’” As she formed the words she lowered her chin, her brow furrowed and her face serious. Then she broke back into a smile that lit up the table.
“You’re doing OK on pompous, but you’re not sufficiently dead inside. Cerveza,” I droned as flatly as I could manage.
“Oh that’s perfect! Your eyes even went dim and beady.”
The waiter stepped up to our table. “Ceviche y cervezas, sí?”
We erupted into laughter. Soledad collapsed with her head on the table. When she recovered, she explained that we were doing impressions, that in fact we would like spaghetti and lomo saltado, although, yes, we’d like the beers.
“So what do you make of their relationship?” she asked.
“Rafa and Muriel?”
She nodded.
“I don’t understand it. When we got there, they were arguing about something. Then they were close again, and then he freaked out at her over the filter. But then in the evening he was so gentle when she was upset.”
“Well he’s obviously a dick.” Her voice had an edge. “Treating her like that. Unacceptable. So he was nice to her after she broke down sobbing. So what? Anyone could do that.” She wasn’t smiling now. She took a drink of her beer. “Tears will soften anybody up. Don’t give him credit for that.”
“It seemed genuine, though, don’t you think?”
“Self-preservation. They’re stuck on a boat together.”
“Don’t say that! We’re getting on a boat tomorrow, aren’t we? Let’s not jinx it.”
“If you treat me like that I’ll go straight to shore and leave you in the jungle.” She still wasn’t smiling. “They can’t get more than thirty feet away from each other, bow to stern. That’s probably why she hasn’t dumped him, too. Bad idea to date the crew. If she kicked Rafa off now, she’d be stuck in South America. Have to scuttle the boat.” She took another drink. “Might be worth it to get away from him, though.”
The food arrived—spaghetti and lomo saltado, chunks of beef on a bed of fries.
“Which one did you get?” she asked.
“No idea. You ordered for me.” I smiled to make clear I didn’t mind.
“I did?” She sat back in her chair.
“If I’d cared I would’ve said something. I’m happy with either.”
“Let’s split them, then. I’ll get a couple more plates.” She looked for the waiter.
“I don’t mind sharing. I’m clean.”
“You sure you don’t mind? I feel bad taking your order and now taking half your plate.”
“Positive. I should probably get used to you getting your way.”
She snorted. I was glad to land a jab after her teasing about the natives. We ate, the plates alongside each other in the center of the table.
“What does Muriel’s dad do?” she asked.
“Professor I think. At Harvard. In case you missed that somehow.”
Soledad rolled her eyes. “Doesn’t seem like the kind of money that could afford to live on a boat.” She held a fry in two delicate fingers and took a bite.
“I’m pretty sure Rafa’s picking up the bill. Or Rafa’s dad, anyways. I don’t think Rafa has a job.”
“Home-schooled on a boat by a Harvard professor.” She chewed the fry. “How does that turn into a memoir?”
“Well the story about the ricin was pretty wild.”
“Do you believe that?” she asked.
“I think I do. Sophie believed it. I don’t think she’d lie to Sophie. Do you?”
“I don’t know. Not just anyone can make ricin.”
“Well he didn’t. He botched it.”
“True. True. But still. He got close enough to go to prison. That’s assuming any of it’s true, of course. Sophie wouldn’t lie to me. But she might be taken in by a liar. She puts so much faith in her friends.” She took a drink of beer. “Besides the ricin, then. Do you think her dad abused her? Maybe he was too harsh on the home schooling. Graded on a curve and she’s the only student. Cs down the board.” Her head darted up to the mirror. “Ah, there he is!” The waiter had just emerged from the kitchen. “Dos cervezas, por favor!” she called to him. “I’m getting you another beer. Executive decision.”
He popped them open for us. She took a drink. “I don’t know her life. I don’t know what happened. Maybe it’s been hard.” Another drink. “But I get so sick of these people whining about how terrible their lives have been. All the things that have gone wrong for them. All the things that aren’t fair. Wait till you see these women, Logan. Pregnant at sixteen. Real problems. And they’re happy. They’re not whining. Not bursting into tears like a hot mess.”
She pushed a piece of beef around the plate with the back of her fork. “He kept winking at me too. Did you notice that?”
“Who did?”
“Rafa. Piece of shit.”
“Winking at you? Like flirting?”
“Yeah.”
“For real? When?”
“From the moment he stuck his face out of the boat. What a pig. She’ll be able to write a second memoir about whatever he’s doing to her.”
I laughed.
She glanced up. The serious look broke into a smile. “Really! And not just that. When we went to the restaurant to get the wine, he told me to tell him something I’ve never told anybody.”
“What?” It made me jealous to think of Rafa being so forward with her, even while Muriel was back on the boat. “Was he serious?”
She nodded.
“So what’d you tell him?”
Her eyes gleamed. “‘You’re not that handsome.’”
I threw back my head and laughed.
She took the last of the spaghetti, and I finished the lomo saltado. We walked into the street. It was dark now, the lights from the buildings shining onto the splotchy stone wall. When we reached the paddle boat, she put her hand on my shoulder and turned me toward the river.
“Look.” Across the water, where we’d been trying to make out the far shore, was a tangle of yellow lights. “A village. It’s free to live over there, so people build huts.”
She left her hand on my shoulder. We were close enough that I could almost feel her. Not her body, but a presence to my right, something disturbing the air and feeling thick. Something I wanted to be closer to.
“They run it on generators. Carry the gasoline across the river in dugout canoes. Amazing people. They’d have no time for Muriel’s whining.”
The weight of her hand filled my mind. Should I move closer to her? Kiss her? Then the moment passed. She lifted her hand. I felt like I had lost something. She stepped past me and began down the sidewalk. I followed, two steps behind.
The motos never sleep in Iquitos. Dust swirled in their headlights as we picked our way across the streets. We said goodnight in the hall. Her eyes lingered on me for a moment. I watched her walk down the hallway, past the antique sofa and the portraits, and I went into my room thinking about what my life would be like if I was someone else.