The Wilds (27 page)

“Yes, but . . . I didn’t authorize it,” says Zugnord. “The Neanderthals are kind of out of hand. Some of them were in this guerilla theater troupe and really get into what they do.”

“Bullshit,” says the mysterious woman. “You’ve planted your thugs to keep an eye on me. Instead of indulging in pseudo-pagan sex bullshit, you’d better do something about your Neanderthals. They’re the ones you should be worried about, not me.”

“I’ll take care of them. First thing tomorrow. Promise.”

The woman vanishes into the forest. Zugnord’s henchmen shovel sand onto the fire. And then they all head back toward Hominid Hotel.

We creep out into the sacred space. I stand there awkwardly, feeling a sick stab of guilt, as Jeff takes pictures of bloodstained stone, a fur bikini top, a used condom. The pagan monument glows in the moonlight, casting eerie shadows. A few live coals smolder in the fire pit. The woods are thick and deep, full of shape-shifting
beasts and fake Neanderthals. The sky, spangled with myriad blobs of burning plasma, is infinite and eternal. The next morning, at the Leaf, Nut, and Berry Buffet, Jeff snarls over the mizuna trough.

“Not exactly the kind of thing you want to eat in the morning, you know?” he says.

We heap our plates with greens and fruit. Sit down at our favorite stone booth.

“Hungover?” I ask, hoping he’s forgotten about last night’s near kiss.

“Hard to tell. Didn’t get much sleep. Spent the night Googling, chasing Paleo fanatics through chat rooms, trying to get to the bottom of last night’s mysterious Amazon queen.”

“She was on the small side.”

“Dwarf Amazon, then. How’s that?”

“Oxymoronic.”

“Anyway, this morning I interviewed a few former personnel. A disgruntled waitress. A chattering chambermaid. I tried to get ahold of Kungar, but she wouldn’t answer my texts. Get this: the mysterious Amazon is Zugnord’s ex. She’s known him since he was fat, dumpy Wilbur Sims. Goes by the name of Zongar.”

“Wow. I don’t envy her, asshole that he is.”

“It gets better. They were once this insufferable power couple. They started Pleisto-Scene Island together,
and then Zongar got sick of Zugnord’s womanizing and went apostate. Last year, she started her own thing in the woods, some kind of earth-loving, vegetarian, chimpanzee-diet thing, which is, of course, anathema to the Paleo carnivores. Every now and then, a few of Zugnord’s customers get lured into her cult. Since last fall, a podiatrist, a personal trainer, and a realtor have disappeared into the forest. Families are concerned. Lawyers involved. Neanderthals are on the case, slinking through the woods.”

“So that’s what the fake Neanderthals are up to.”

“Not all of the fake Neanderthals, apparently, just this one tribe.”

“A bit much to digest this early in the morning.”

“No shit. I’m going to do a little deep-forest exploring today, see if I can catch a whiff of the Earth goddess in question. You up for a hike?”

Clad in earth-toned Patagonia, equipped with a backpack, a canteen, a picnic lunch of jerky and fruit, I regard myself in the mirror. I look leaner, more ferocious, something carnivorous and feline in my mock snarl—from the side view at least. I’m about to head out when I hear a knock on my door. I open it, expecting Jeff.

My fiancé stands there, rumpled from travel, his eyes huge—the magical eyes of a rare nocturnal monkey, I used to think, though now they look terrified and feverish, like a refugee child’s. He’s wearing khakis, a vintage plaid shirt, these mouthwash-green dead-stock 1980s Pumas he spent two weeks stalking on Etsy. He looks smaller, as though the journey has deflated him and he needs a pump of air. He treats me to his sly smile, which used to wreak havoc on my nervous system, but now I feel nothing.

Then I smell him—his fruity shampoo, his high
SPF
sunscreen, the darker animal brine of his armpits. I detect a hint of metallic mineral in his sweat, bespeaking the trauma of his trip across the planet. These smells, which send obscure messages to my blood, give his eyes resonance again. And my stomach is a mess, a weird turmoil of lust and repulsion.

“So, I figured I should, you know, like, come out here and see what’s going on,” he says, trying to play it cool.

“Nothing’s going on,” I say, noticing that my hands have spontaneously tensed into trembling raptor claws. I hide them behind my back.

“You sound defensive.”

“I’m not. Just surprised. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

“I didn’t know if I’d be able to go through with it.”

There it is again, the elated smile. I’m supposed to hug him, to praise his bravery.

“Besides,” he says, “you wouldn’t answer my texts, my calls.”

“Isolation is part of the full Paleo experience. I told you that.”

“Whatever. Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“Of course. Come in. But I’m heading out for my morning hike. Part of the regime.”

He squeezes around me into the room, tosses his duffel onto a chair, reclines on the bed, and smirks—a sweet expression from the old days, mischievous and inviting.

“I’ll be back soon,” I say. “It won’t take long.”

I give him a quick peck on the cheek and dart down the hallway, jog through the lobby in my clunky hiking boots. When I finally reach the patio, I collapse against a wall of purple clematis. I sink into the riot of flowers, taking deep breaths of perfumed air.

And there’s Jeff, strolling through the flowering arbor, dressed in shorts and hiking boots, equipped with backpack and water bottle, twinkling, ready for adventure.

“Great day for a jungle trek,” he says.

I’m about to tell him that today’s not a good day, when, for some reason, he reaches out and touches my shoulder. He motions toward the trail that curls into the forest. I hear insects chanting their mating dirges deep
in the mysterious woodland gloom. I picture my fiancé, bored already, looking around for a television, scoping the faux-stone walls for a mounted screen.

I walk into the woods with Jeff.

As we tromp down the foraging trail, Jeff chatters wittily about Zongar, prehistoric matriarchal societies, Earth Mothers and herbalists, moon goddesses and sacred menses. I respond with the occasional polite grunt, feeling sick about abandoning my fiancé, scanning the trail to make sure he’s not tailing me, half expecting to see the wild-eyed creature making his tentative way through the woods.

We cut down a side path and enter deeper forest, the forest within the forest, where the trail dwindles to a scruffy footpath. Locating a stream that a waitress told Jeff about, we wind along its meandering bank.

Around noon, we climb up an embankment in search of sunnier space and discover the perfect picnic spot. We unwrap our lunches. From an inside pocket of his backpack, Jeff pulls a contraband Coke—still cold and dewy with miraculous condensation.

At last, I am able to laugh.

“Christ almighty. Where did you get that?”

“From an undisclosed source.”

Jeff unscrews the top, releasing a mystical hiss. He offers me the bottle. I close my eyes and savor the
burnt-vanilla sweetness. We sit in the sun, eating peanuts and jerked venison, passing the Coke between us. We relish the melody of salt and sweet, infusing our sluggish blood with the elixir of caffeine and sugar.

Jeff leans in with a dopey look on his face. He closes his eyes and draws his lips into a lush pucker.

I hesitate, picturing my fiancé lolling in my hotel room, sighing every five minutes, unsure of what to do with himself. Then I take the plunge.

Now Jeff and I are kissing, rolling in the grass, leaf shreds and bark bits stuck to our sweaty skin. Now we are grunting, groping, our mouths gaping with greed as we reach for each other’s secret parts. I am Vogmar, daughter of the Blackboar Clan. Jeff is Bogwag of the Shaggy Bear People. And we are fucking in the forest, our bodies sleek and keening. We fall into natural, beastly rhythms. Mosquitoes veer in to suck our blood. Birds flit through foliage, snatching berries and grubs. The trees ring with laughter.

I open my eyes, peer into foliage, half expecting to see my fiancé roosting on a bough, his face scrunched with fury, his eyes drenched with pain. Instead, ape-men hoot and jeer. They bounce in the branches. Slap their shaggy knees. At least six fake Neanderthals gaze down at us, ululating over the sheer hilarity of two chubby humans getting it on.

“Goddamn it,” Jeff hisses. He unplugs his wilting member and shakes his fist in wrath.

I can’t find my shorts. I cover my crotch with my backpack and stare at my empty palms in shame. Jeff snatches up rocks and sticks, hurls them into the trees.

“Get out of here!” he shouts. “You stupid Neanderthal shits.”

Deep in the forest, as we slog through brush, eyes peeled for pouncing ticks, ears pricked for snapping twigs, noses sniffing for whiffs of roasting veggies, my fiancé texts me, trying to sound casual:
What’s shakin’, Cavegirl?
But I know that he must be hysterical by now. I turn off my phone, bury it deep in my backpack, beneath my extra socks, birth-control pills, and contact-lens solution, beneath my hairbrush and Sani-Cloth wipes and pre-pasted disposable toothbrush.

When we stop to drink from our canteens, a flock of greenfinches scatters from a berry bush. The berries gleam with a purple, poisonous luster, and I wonder if the dwarf Amazon queen knows which berries are safe to eat. I wonder if she’s an expert on edible fungi and healing herbs. I wonder if she has a boyfriend out here in the wild, some feral accountant or savage data
processor. Or perhaps she has a series of consorts—lean vegan foragers with sinewy yoga bodies who feed her succulent fruits. Maybe she’s still nursing the wound of Wilbur, licking and licking it like a dog. Maybe Wilbur still lights up the darkest, most twisted chamber of her heart. Or maybe, through some old-school, matriarchal mojo, she’s gotten in touch with her inner goddess and banished the asshole from her mind.

“Crap,” says Jeff, fiddling with his iPhone. “My cell’s not catching a signal. Check yours.”

I scrounge through my backpack. My battery’s dead.

“What time is it?” I ask Jeff.

“4:43.”

There’s a chill in the air. A figment of moon has appeared in the deep, blue sky. What else can we do but keep trudging down the ghostly footpath, attempting witty conversation, trying to recover from the awkwardness of our thwarted coupling? Of course the conversation is stilted now, tainted with false chirpiness. Of course things are no longer the same, now that the sweet pressure of suspended flirtation has been punctured, the holy mystery unshrouded, the comedy of flesh unveiled. The forest is getting dark, and we have no bedding to lie down upon, no booze to swill, nothing, really, to talk about. Jeff’s ex and my fiancé hover in the forest gloom like ancestral spirits.

I’m almost relieved when the fake Neanderthals leap upon us, grimacing and grunting. They brandish spears tipped with Levalloisian points. Their faces are streaked with red mud.

Hissing gibberish into our faces, they threaten us with their weapons.

“Here we go again.” Jeff rolls his eyes.

“Maybe they think we’re part of Zongar’s cult,” I whisper, but Jeff doesn’t hear me.

Prodding us with the butts of their spears, the brutes push us off trail into deeper forest, into the heart of the heart of the wilderness, where darkness oozes like fog from the earth and flying insects brush against our skin. Strange birds moan. A luminous moth flaps up from a cluster of ferns. And monkeys bounce in the branches, howling churlishly.