to start drifting.
He has to
confer
with someone, she said, and rolled her eyes.
Can we stay in a motel? Can we?
The dope is
worried
the pigs will grab him for having U.S. dollars.
Finally, she saw him understand. It made his body rigid. You’re trying to
buy
it!
Baby, you said you wanted to stop going places.
He jerked away from her. She hardly saw him go, but heard him on the ladder, half falling, landing heavily. As she rose from her blankets the flies rose too and she felt one crawl along her bare arm. She slapped herself.
Che? I’m trying to look after you. She pulled on some underpants so she could decently descend the ladder. The rungs were thin. They hurt her feet.
All I have is U.S. dollars. I don’t have a lot of choices.
He did not answer.
She said, It’s useless to them, you heard that. We’re rich, but the money’s worth nothing.
She took his hand. He snatched it back. Come on, she said. She was pleading with him, really, to understand what had happened to her life.
Come on, she said, show me all the stuff you found yesterday.
He kept his hand to himself but he led her out into the long wet grass and took an obvious sulky pleasure showing her to the so-called bathroom, a rusty four-gallon can inside a square wooden box.
Come on, she said. The place itself is sort of pretty. Let’s look in the other hut.
And it would have been pretty, in photographs, the varied greens, the log-clad huts with their low sagging verandas. Inside the second hut they found shirts and trousers hanging from four-inch nails. A netted bed faced two windows. Between the windows was a door which opened onto a low dark veranda where bats hung like broken rags.
It’s a real jungle, she said. It looked poisonous to her.
There’s another hut down there, she said. Do you want to check it ount?
You said
ount,
he said.
No I didn’t. She laughed but she hated people doing that to her, pointing out the moments when Boston surfaced. He had done this to her at Australian customs, the little WASP, announcing she was saying
mayan
instead of mine. Well, he would have more foreign stuff than that to deal with.
This was going to be his home, not just the acres, or the two huts, but this small third hut down in the darkness of the rain forest, creepier than the others, with nothing in it but an empty pickle jar.
Outside, on the stoop, someone had carved a face into a block of stone. It was not exactly sinister, but it suggested superstition, witchcraft and some very lonely lost life reduced to a hidden corner of the earth.
What does
conferring
mean? The boy pushed the stone over so its face was hidden.
He’s chickenshit.
You should not use curse words, you know.
He was hugely upset. She was hugely upset herself but she was the adult and could not show it.
What’s the matter, baby?
You shouldn’t curse.
Shut up, she thought. She brought him out of the forest, emerging just below the deck of one big leaky shaky hut, beside a bush with shiny leaves and bright red berries which she said was coffee. She wasn’t even sure that this was true.
Go on, she said, peel one. You’ll see.
Inside the red skin was a white, moist seed, slippery and somehow wrong. The boy was peeling a second bean when she heard an engine and saw the dirty blue-oil smoke, then the car itself. When the motor was turned off it continued knocking and coughing. She was expecting Adam, not Trevor. Now both of them walked through the grass toward them, Trevor staring at the boy a little too intently for her taste.
Hello boy, he said, shirtless, oily, hipless in the sun.
Hello Trevor.
She saw how the boy lifted his chin, allowing himself to be silently interrogated.
She said, Fancy seeing you here.
Trevor chewed his smile in the corner of his mouth. Well,
someone
has to change your money.
Of course, she thought.
The boy also understood. His howl came out of nowhere, like something teased and taunted in a cage. He charged at Trevor like a mad thing.
He has to
confer
with someone, she said, and rolled her eyes.
Can we stay in a motel? Can we?
The dope is
worried
the pigs will grab him for having U.S. dollars.
Finally, she saw him understand. It made his body rigid. You’re trying to
buy
it!
Baby, you said you wanted to stop going places.
He jerked away from her. She hardly saw him go, but heard him on the ladder, half falling, landing heavily. As she rose from her blankets the flies rose too and she felt one crawl along her bare arm. She slapped herself.
Che? I’m trying to look after you. She pulled on some underpants so she could decently descend the ladder. The rungs were thin. They hurt her feet.
All I have is U.S. dollars. I don’t have a lot of choices.
He did not answer.
She said, It’s useless to them, you heard that. We’re rich, but the money’s worth nothing.
She took his hand. He snatched it back. Come on, she said. She was pleading with him, really, to understand what had happened to her life.
Come on, she said, show me all the stuff you found yesterday.
He kept his hand to himself but he led her out into the long wet grass and took an obvious sulky pleasure showing her to the so-called bathroom, a rusty four-gallon can inside a square wooden box.
Come on, she said. The place itself is sort of pretty. Let’s look in the other hut.
And it would have been pretty, in photographs, the varied greens, the log-clad huts with their low sagging verandas. Inside the second hut they found shirts and trousers hanging from four-inch nails. A netted bed faced two windows. Between the windows was a door which opened onto a low dark veranda where bats hung like broken rags.
It’s a real jungle, she said. It looked poisonous to her.
There’s another hut down there, she said. Do you want to check it ount?
You said
ount,
he said.
No I didn’t. She laughed but she hated people doing that to her, pointing out the moments when Boston surfaced. He had done this to her at Australian customs, the little WASP, announcing she was saying
mayan
instead of mine. Well, he would have more foreign stuff than that to deal with.
This was going to be his home, not just the acres, or the two huts, but this small third hut down in the darkness of the rain forest, creepier than the others, with nothing in it but an empty pickle jar.
Outside, on the stoop, someone had carved a face into a block of stone. It was not exactly sinister, but it suggested superstition, witchcraft and some very lonely lost life reduced to a hidden corner of the earth.
What does
conferring
mean? The boy pushed the stone over so its face was hidden.
He’s chickenshit.
You should not use curse words, you know.
He was hugely upset. She was hugely upset herself but she was the adult and could not show it.
What’s the matter, baby?
You shouldn’t curse.
Shut up, she thought. She brought him out of the forest, emerging just below the deck of one big leaky shaky hut, beside a bush with shiny leaves and bright red berries which she said was coffee. She wasn’t even sure that this was true.
Go on, she said, peel one. You’ll see.
Inside the red skin was a white, moist seed, slippery and somehow wrong. The boy was peeling a second bean when she heard an engine and saw the dirty blue-oil smoke, then the car itself. When the motor was turned off it continued knocking and coughing. She was expecting Adam, not Trevor. Now both of them walked through the grass toward them, Trevor staring at the boy a little too intently for her taste.
Hello boy, he said, shirtless, oily, hipless in the sun.
Hello Trevor.
She saw how the boy lifted his chin, allowing himself to be silently interrogated.
She said, Fancy seeing you here.
Trevor chewed his smile in the corner of his mouth. Well,
someone
has to change your money.
Of course, she thought.
The boy also understood. His howl came out of nowhere, like something teased and taunted in a cage. He charged at Trevor like a mad thing.
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