Such a Pretty Fiction: Chapter 8
This is the eighth chapter of my novel, Such a Pretty Fiction. Chapter 7 is here.
We woke up in the dark. Movement, friction, our mouths together, and then things had started again. When the moment arrived, I confessed I didn’t have any condoms.
“Really? Not even in your bag?”
I shook my head.
“Dammit, Logan.”
We stopped moving, frozen awkwardly. She hovered above me, resisting gravity and momentum.
“Well…” she said. “Is there anything I should know about?”
“What do you mean?”
“Have you been tested?”
For four years, the only person I’d slept with was Candace. I trusted Candace. Trust hadn’t been the problem.
“I’m fine,” I said. “You? What about pregnancy?”
“I have an IUD.”
And then we were quiet, coming to terms with the decision we were about to make. Her hair hung in my face, our lips close.
“Well?” she asked. “What do you think?”
“We could. What do you think? Should we?”
“We’ve got to do something.” She began to move again, slowly, rubbing against me. My body responded. That seemed to be the answer.
This time there was none of the voyeuristic feeling there had been before, where I had watched her enjoy me, everything numbed and at a distance. This time it was pure glory. Feeling her, seeing her face, being as in it as she was. As she became more serious, getting closer, I knew that it was happening for me too.
“You have an IUD, right?” I asked, though nothing would have changed if she admitted she’d been lying.
“Yes,” she gasped. “Oh, Logan. Let’s go together.”
It was perfect. She writhed, clamping onto me, finishing as I did. I collapsed on top of her. Our bodies were slick against one another.
“Out out out,” she said.
I laughed at how quickly the situation had changed. That made her start laughing. I rolled onto my back and she threw her leg over me, nestling into my neck.
“Do you always laugh afterwards?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. Not that I remember.”
“Me neither.” She kissed my neck.
We showered in my room. As I stood under the mineral-smelling water, Soledad spoke to me from the toilet. Yesterday it would have been unthinkable to watch her pee, but after sleeping together it was nothing. We traded places and I brushed my teeth.
“That reminds me,” she said over the sound of the water. “Can you see if anyone’s using Nosotras?”
I got on my computer. Candace had emailed me, but I didn’t open it. Seeing her name made me feel strange.
“Twelve people!” I called to the bathroom. “Twelve people in the first day! That seems pretty good right?”
“I told you I’m popular! Can you tell who they’re talking to?”
Women using the app could talk to doctors and to each other. Most of the calls had been to Teresa and Veronica.
“That’s perfect,” she said. “If they want to talk to each other they can just walk over and say hello. As we get more women we’ll build up the network.” She came out of the bathroom, toweling herself off. “Download the videos from the camera too, will you? It’s good to send the funders a little something. Lets them feel involved.”
“Do you want a link to send them?”
“Oh my god no. You can’t just hand chunks of video to these people. You’ve got to frame it. Build a narrative. You need to give them something obvious. Saving babies. People taking pills. They need to see poverty washed away by their generosity.”
“Oh my god… That’s pretty jaded.”
“You think so?” She dried her hair. “I don’t mean to be jaded. It’s just good marketing. I’ve got to give them what they want.”
“You don’t think that’s jaded?”
“No. I don’t. It’s how you get what you want. If they knew what the work was really like, they’d find a new cause to throw their money at. Everything easy has been done. Do you know tuberculosis kills more people than HIV? Consumption, Logan. People are still dying of consumption. We’ve had pills for decades, but people don’t like taking them. Makes them feel sick. Makes them deaf.” She shook out her hair and threw the towel around herself.
“OK… But that just means that we’ll have to be smarter about what we spend money on. We have more data, more power in the cloud. People can communicate directly. Like Nosotras.”
The towel was wrapped tightly around her. I could see the curves of her hips and her breasts. Her smooth legs disappeared under the fringe of the towel. She looked beautiful and her eyes were on fire.
“Logan!” she sang in a mocking tone. “You’re a techno utopian. Poverty? There’s an app for that!”
My mouth fell open.
“Did I hurt your feelings?” The edge in her voice had dulled.
“Um… Maybe a little.”
“I’m sorry.” She slid in front of me and put her hands on my sides, guiding me to my feet. “Without the app we wouldn’t be here.” She hugged me. Her skin was hot from the shower. “It’s helping.”
A van from the health ministry met us outside the hotel. There were three people plus the driver. They wore blue vests with a faded government logo stuck on below the collar.
We drove south. For the first ten minutes I strained to follow the conversation. It was no use. I gave up and watched the hills out the window.
Our first stop was an hour away, in a village with a one-room health center. A man came out to greet us in the same vest. I stood smiling stupidly, unable to follow the Spanish, waiting for Soledad to introduce me. His name was Wilver.
They crowded around her as she explained Nosotras, tapping the screen. One of the Peruvians made a comment and they all laughed. Soledad glanced at me to see if I understood. I didn’t, and she didn’t explain. I wondered what she was telling them.
We left the van and walked up a road to a row of houses. I had the camera. Soledad looked like a dignitary visiting a war zone, flanked by peacekeepers in matching blue vests. As we approached the first house, the Peruvians motioned that I should stow the camera. I didn’t understand their explanation. I looked at Soledad and she nodded.
Wilver knocked on the door. There was no answer. He looked over his shoulder at us and grimaced. He knocked again. A noise came from the house. The Peruvians took it as some kind of signal. They reached into their vests and pulled out surgical masks. Wilver handed one to Soledad and one to me.
I put it on, trying to catch Soledad’s eye for an explanation.
“TB,” she whispered.
The door opened and we filed in. It was a small, dim room, a table and a couch off a kitchen. The blinds were drawn. The woman who let us in was at least seventy. She shuffled back to the sofa, breathing heavily.
Wilver began asking questions. He offered her a pill and she waved it away. He was muffled behind the mask. The woman’s voice was on the verge of breaking. He tried again to hand her the pill, and she shook her head.
There was a knock at the door. Wilver looked at us. Another knock. The woman pointed that we should open it. A young woman stood in the doorway. A little girl hid behind her.
The newcomer spoke, challenging the man who had opened the door. The old woman on the couch raised her voice to calm her, ending in a cough. The young woman turned to the girl and held up a hand, telling her to wait outside.
The woman came in and barked something at me. I looked to Soledad, who answered. Hearing Soledad speak Spanish, the woman’s shoulders relaxed. Her name was Inés. She asked Wilver a question, her voice quieter now. Wilver replied and she walked into the kitchen. Inés took a glass from a cupboard, filled it in the sink, and sat next to the woman on the couch. The woman growled something, shaking her head again. Inés made an understanding noise and took the pill from Wilver. The old woman accepted it between two fingers and took the glass of water. She sighed, her breath rattling, and swallowed the pill. Inés rubbed her back. The little girl watched from the doorway.
Inés washed the glass in the sink and left with us. Her daughter clung to her leg the moment she was out the door. We took off our masks. Soledad pointed at the camera in my hand. Inés eyed me before nodding.
We thanked Wilver. He split off to continue his rounds. Inés led us down the street to her house. It was made of cinder blocks, painted light blue, and was laid out like the old woman’s house. One room and a kitchen. The curtains were open, the white walls bare except for an icon in a frame.
The girl fled into the kitchen and watched as Soledad showed her mother Nosotras. Inés introduced us to her neighbor, a woman watching over a house full of children who bounded out when she opened the door. I filmed Soledad making friends with the kids.
We thanked Inés and walked back to the van. Another village, another health center, more knocking on doors. Only women answered. The men were at work. Soledad took the lead if they were pregnant or had newborns. Otherwise she left it to the Peruvians.
The rest of the day was the same. In the late afternoon, men started to appear, clothes coated in a fine layer of dust. The Peruvians drove us back to Huaraz and dropped us in front of the hotel, getting out to hug Soledad goodbye.
We walked back to the brewery, holding hands. The air was cold and thin, but I didn’t mind. It was still light. The city hadn’t yet slowed down. Cars were in the streets. No fires burned in drums on the street corners.
Through the doors and up the stairs, another group of twentysomethings made the same raucous noise in the same brightly colored coats. We wound through the tables. Her arm stretched back to mine, not letting go. I felt bad for the others. The women looked out under their lashes as the men tried to outdo each other. Down from the mountains after a day of hiking. Living their small lives with their small concerns, their small dreams and their stylish puffy jackets.
We sat next to each other. We ordered a priestess and a doctor. I kissed her cheek and she squeezed my hand. The same scent of bacon wafted through the room.
I thought again of the living room and the light on the ocean. “You grew up with mechanics, right?”
She told me about her own childhood in Colorado. Her father wasn’t around. Her uncle was the mechanic. She and her mom lived with him above the garage. Her mom worked two jobs. The uncle had raised her.
“When I got home from school I went out and helped him with the cars. He never treated me like a fragile little girl.” Her mom didn’t cook. “Bacon doesn’t smell like home. We lived on TV dinners. Grease and motor oil smell like home to me. Lying on the concrete, looking up at an engine. Not a normal childhood, but a good childhood.”
I put my arm around her and hugged her close. “Sounds like it.” We were quiet, looking over the tops of our beers at the bar. “You turned out pretty good to me.”
A waiter walked by with a huge chocolate chip cookie in a small cast iron skillet. Soledad wanted one. We ate it with two tiny spoons.
Now we were full and it was late and we were buzzed. I followed her down the stairs again, back into the night. We retraced our steps, hand in hand. The fires burned on the street corners. Tonight they looked warm and bright, lighting our way rather than holding back the dark.
We went to her room and held each other before beginning, celebrating even the smallest touches. It was like it had been that morning, nothing between us. It was electric. Again we finished together, her hands gripping my arms so tightly that it almost hurt. But it didn’t hurt. It was wonderful.