Esperanza (15 page)

He resumed his stitching. “In a way, I
am
handicapped. Many here are.”

“I don’t understand.”

“How old do you think I am, Mr. Ritter?”

“Late thirties, early forties.”

He finished stitching and pressed a bandage over the sutured gash. “I arrived in Esperanza on my thirty-ninth birthday. And that was forty-two years ago.”

What the fuck.
“You’re
eighty-one
? But . . . that’s impossible.”

“People who live north of Río Palo don’t age. Or they age very slowly. If I left this area, it would be only a matter of hours before I would look every second of my real age. There are others who are much older and would turn to dust. That’s why so many of us haven’t left. We can’t. When I came here, Mr. Ritter, it was as a gift to myself. I had been diagnosed with leukemia and given three months to live and I wanted to enjoy whatever time I had left. Within a week of my arrival, all my symptoms were gone. I was cured.”

From ghosts to miracle cures and long life. “What about infants? Do they stay that way forever?”

“No, they grow normally until adolescence, when hormones kick in. Most of them leave Esperanza after high school—to attend universities, for jobs, to start families, whatever—and age normally. Many of them then return in their thirties or forties and live out long and healthy lives. They often bring outsiders back with them, which we encourage. That keeps the area diverse. Tourists who stay here for any time marvel at how much better they feel, how invigorated. On the far side of the Lago del Sueño there’s a spa and health resort that’s enormously popular with upscale tourists. People who arrive with chronic health problems often leave completely cured. I know this because I’m one of their on-call physicians.”

“How is that even possible? Is it the water? The soil? What?”

“No one knows for sure. Physiologically, it seems to be connected with the master gland—the pituitary. But in a deeper sense, I believe it’s related to Esperanza’s extraordinary history, it’s—”

The doctor suddenly started twitching, shoulders jerking one way, then the other, eyes darting right, left. His arms flew up, hands fisted, his head
dropped back and his mouth fell open as if to scream, but only gurgling sounds spilled into the air. His face contorted in excruciating agony, his head snapped upright again, eyes wide, shiny, almost all pupil, and pinned Ian like a butterfly under glass.

Like the men in the field.

“Know this,” he said in a quiet, slippery voice that made Ian feel as if he were inhaling wet moss. “We want you because you’re in transition. There hasn’t been a transitional soul in Esperanza since it became a physical place five centuries ago. And now, suddenly, there are two of you. A kind of Adam and Eve, if you’re the religious sort.”

Ian couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, but as Paco moved toward him, he grabbed his pack and swung. It struck Paco in the side of the head and he stumbled back, eyes wide with astonishment, breath exploding from his mouth. He crashed into the end table and a lamp toppled, books slid to the floor, a pair of coffee mugs shattered.

Paco lay there, groaning, then the
brujo
inside him forced him to rise up on his elbows and explode with laughter. In that same wet, slithering voice, he said, “You had a heart attack, Ian Ritter. You’re on life support. In the between. Not here, not there. Tess Livingston was shot, she’s in a coma. Not here, not there. And since we covet physical life and appreciate it more than your kind, let me sink into your skin. Let me live out your mortal time. We’ll be partners you and me, we’ll be—”

“Shut up, you brujo fuck.”
Ian spun around, swept Tess’s pack off the couch, and tore out of the cottage, that hideous laughter and voice pursuing him.

“You cannot escape us, Ian Ritter. We can find you anywhere there is fog.”

A blind, white panic propelled him up the path, past other cottages, past the main building. He raced out onto Calle Principal and plunged into the stream of pedestrians, slowing down slightly so that he didn’t attract attention.
You had a heart attack, Ian Ritter. You’re on life support.
Lies, just lies to deepen his terror. He obviously wasn’t on life support. The dead didn’t make love or bleed. His heart beat, he slept and dreamed, he was moving, scared, hungry, and he desperately wanted to find Tess and get out of here.

But he didn’t know where to look for her, so he kept moving with the crowd, deeper into El Corazón, the old city. He didn’t see a single bus station or car rental agency. But on every corner, huge fans whirred incessantly and more air blew up through grates in roads and sidewalks. It wasn’t like the city wilted in heat. The air was chilly. The only possible purpose the fans
could serve was to keep away fog and, therefore,
brujos.
Insanity. But no less nuts than the idea that a
brujo
possessed the doc.

C’mon, c’mon, you need a goddamn plan.
Great urgency seized him and with it came clarity. He figured that Tess had learned the same thing he had about the buses and had headed directly to Manuel’s. Ian dug out the man’s business card, memorized the address. He had no idea where the town of Gigante was or how he might get there, but intended to find out.

Ian loped across the road to a huge park lined with vendor stalls and wooden bins overflowing with fruits and vegetables, freshly baked breads and pastries, kiosks selling coffee. He ordered a café con leche from a diminutive man with several missing teeth. The man returned with a tiny plastic cup half filled with a tarlike coffee and a second, larger cup that held steamed milk. He poured the viscous stuff into the cup of milk, gave it a quick, vigorous stir, and set it in front of Ian. The man picked up the dollar Ian had left on the counter, counted out change, but Ian shook his head.
“No cambio. Gracias.”
He showed the man Manuel’s business card.
“Autobús? Gigante?”

The little man gestured off to his left and rattled away in Spanish. The only part Ian understood was “four blocks” and “Gigante 11.”
“Es lejos?”
Ian asked.

“
Veinticuatro kilómetros.”

He understood
kilómetros
as “kilometers,” but didn’t know what the rest of it meant. He held up five fingers. “This many?”

“No, no, señor.” He flashed ten fingers twice, then held up four fingers.

Twenty-four kilometers. That was about fifteen miles, he thought, and moved on to a wagon filled with fresh fruits and vegetables. He bought two ripe mangos for fifty cents. He needed to eat something before boarding a bus, so he headed into the park and found a vacant bench.

The current gringo wisdom about South America, at least in Minneapolis, was that if you bought from a street vendor, you would end up with Montezuma’s revenge. But once you’d been stalked and chased by
brujos
and one of them claimed you were on life support, what was a little Montezuma’s revenge?

Anxiety ate away at him and he continually looked for Granger or Juanito, certain one of them would barrel into the park, perhaps with cops, and accuse him of taking off without paying his bill. But he felt protected here, surrounded by so many people, and if he did see either man, he could easily lose himself in the crowd.

Eerie fucks,
Paco had said moments before he started to twitch and jerk. Was that the instant when a
brujo
had seized him?

You had a heart attack, Ian Ritter. You’re on life support. In the between. Not here, not there. Tess Livingston was shot, she’s in a coma. Not here, not there.
Ian took another sip of the strong, sweet coffee, savoring it, then peeled the top off one of the mangos and bit into it. The taste was exquisite, sweet and warm, the texture soft. The juice dripped between his fingers.

I taste, smell, see, touch, hear. I’m alive.

Monkey-puzzle trees rose everywhere, birds flitted through their branches, singing and occasionally hopping around on the ground, seeking food. Hummingbirds congregated around a nearby feeder and just above him, a pair of condors circled against the brilliant blue sky. They were larger than the ones he’d seen outside the inn, wingspans at least ten feet across. They drifted on the air currents, conserving energy, and gracefully spiraled lower until they were just above the treetops.

Across the Andes, these magnificent birds lived at anywhere between ten thousand and sixteen thousand feet of altitude and these two were the most magnificent he’d seen. Everyone in the park watched them until they lifted upward again, shrinking to dark dots against the blue. People on life support couldn’t see condors, couldn’t drink in or appreciate such breathtaking beauty: stunning snow-covered volcanic peaks, cobblestone roads twisting up and down hills that rivaled San Francisco, the explosive carnival of color in the flowers, the sky. Homes and apartment buildings basked in sunlight on the nearby hillsides. Except for the
brujos,
Esperanza secretly enchanted him.

People who live north of the Río Palo don’t age.
Was it true? He looked around at other people in the park, studying their faces. How old were the two teenagers tossing crumbs to a flock of pigeons over by the fountain? And what about that elderly man snoozing on another bench? He looked seventy, but might be twice that.

“Hey, hello,” someone called.

A short, thin woman hurried toward him, waving. He recognized her bouncing curls and the dimples as deep as craters at the sides of her mouth. Stephanie Logan, the American woman from the bodega. He barely resisted the urge to pretend he hadn’t seen her.

“I remember you,” she said breathlessly, stopping in front of him. “The bodega. Yesterday. Or was that the day before yesterday? Or five days ago?” She rubbed her hand nervously against her cheek. “I’m so mixed up here. We spoke briefly at the bodega. You’re Mr. Roiter, right?”

“Ritter.” He continued to consume the mango.

“Right. Ian Ritter.” As her head bobbed, her eyes darted about uneasily. She sat beside him on the bench, emitted a long, dramatic sigh. “I’m so relieved to see a familiar face. That awful bus we took from the bodega left us off in some godforsaken town and we had to wait around for another bus to bring us here. The driver gestured uptown. That’s where the hotels supposedly are. I mean, can you believe this place? Where are we?”

In the between, he thought, if he could believe what the
brujo
had said.
Maybe you’re a transitional, too, Stephanie. Or maybe you’re dead.
“Where’s your family, Stephanie?”

She waved across the park. “Somewhere around here. My husband was trying to find a restroom for the kids and a place to charge up our cells.” She touched his arm and spoke in a soft, conspiratorial tone. “I think there’s something really strange about all this.”

Tell me about strange.
He wondered what she meant by “cells.” “Strange how?”
Enlighten me. Tell me you know you’re dead.

“Nothing feels right to me. I mean, I’m known to be a bit fey, and from time to time I sense things. And I have to tell you, Mr. Ritter, that my senses have been going haywire since we got kicked off the bus at Bodega del Cielo. I mean, honestly, I can’t remember a damn thing before the bodega. Don’t you think that’s a tad strange?”

“Yeah. I don’t recall anything before the bodega, either.” It still disturbed him and he didn’t want to discuss it with Stephanie “a little bit fey” Logan from upstate New York. He polished off the rest of the mango, tossed the seed in the nearest trash, stood. “And that’s part of the reason I’m leaving. Did you happen to see a bus station on your way in?”

“I’m not sure. I wasn’t really paying attention. There’re so many distractions. But could you stick around for a few minutes and repeat what you just said to my husband? He thinks I’m making this stuff up even though he can’t remember anything, either.”

For all he knew, Stephanie and her husband might be
brujos
in their phony human forms. “I really need to get moving. Good luck, Stephanie.”

Ian hurried away from her.
Brujo
or something else, she was the type, he felt certain, who might follow him and prove to be the ugly American stalker, whose persistence, rudeness, or tenacity doesn’t just embarrass you, but becomes a thorn in your side.

Sure enough, she ran after him, shouting, waving her arms, begging him to stop, drawing attention from anyone who could hear her. Pedestrians
stepped out of her way, bicyclists swerved clear, and when she pursued him across a street, cars slammed on their brakes to keep from hitting her.

Ian pounded up and down hills, around corners, into and out of alleys. By the time he lost her, he was completely disoriented. Since he had left his city map in the cottage, he picked a direction and started walking. How many of the people around him were
brujos
in human form? Or were possessed by
brujos
? What was he supposed to look for?

Black, glossy eyes.

Twitches, erratic movements.

Ian now scrutinized everyone—men and women in business attire, obvious tourists, Quechuans, locals, even kids. And suddenly, it seemed they all had black, glossy eyes and moved erratically, that he traveled through a city of
brujos.
Panicked, he barreled through the crowds, his mind empty, and when the muscles in his legs screamed for a respite and he couldn’t catch his breath, he stopped, backed up to a wall and bent forward, hands clutching his thighs, gasping for breath.