We Eat Our Own (19 page)

Where were you? In the chuntos? Juan Carlos asks, so she knows he's been passed out, probably for hours. Marina exhales; at least she doesn't have to explain herself.

You mean the toilet, Marina says, flattening her voice to play along. Don't use their fucking lingo.

I'm just wondering.

Don't pretend you were worried. She turns onto her side. I'm going to sleep.

She can hear him exhale, deciding whether or not to push it. She can almost feel Juan Carlos' thoughts working, plotting his approach, trying to sidestep the fight. He decides on this, and says it in a careful voice: I know you're mad that they kept me out all night. I wouldn't have left if I had a choice.

Marina holds her breath, doesn't dispute him.

A shipment came up short, Juan Carlos says. A shipment
we delivered from Brazil. Maybe three kilos. The cartel thought we were skimming.

Were we? Marina thinks, but she's too tired to say it out loud.

We weren't, of course, Juan Carlos says. We would never. We do this to fund the revolution. Drugs aren't our business. It must have been an accident.

She can tell by his voice that Juan Carlos believes this completely. Marina breathes, something hardening inside her.

But anyway, it was the American's idea, Juan Carlos says. For us to send someone new to smooth things over, for them to send
me
instead of one of the comandantes. In case the cartel feels like they can't trust the people they know anymore. It's better to send a new face. It's basic diplomacy.

If this conversation had happened yesterday, now is when Marina would have sat up straight, spitting venom, shouting out how dumb he's been, how dumb it is that he's let himself be used. Here is where she should be saying: This is not our fight anymore, and we have to get out now. But Marina feels something strange creeping through her now, a sick heat, like vomit welling up. She is thinking of a wall of fire in the jungle, and beyond it a river, wider than they can swim across. She is thinking, despite herself, of Andres: a ghost who would cling to her back even if she ran straight through the flames, if she managed to kick hard enough to make it all the way across the water.

She is realizing: even if she convinced him to escape with her, they couldn't.

Juan Carlos softens his voice down even more. I know, it wasn't fair to you. I wouldn't have left you if the American hadn't said they really needed me.

She makes her dry lips move. What American?

There's an American who runs interference between everyone here and the cartel.

I thought we hated the Americans.

Juan Carlos sits up, wincing and groping for his tobacco. Well, we'll have to work with a lot of people we don't like if we want to win this war.

Marina flips onto her stomach, listens to Juan Carlos pinch the tobacco flakes out of the pouch and thumb the paper open. She thinks of war—she used to love to think of war—but when she closes her eyes she can see nothing but the place they're in, nothing but rot and rain and dead things left to soak, razor grasses and legions of invisible insects vibrating the air.

They thought about sending you instead, but they thought you were still too weak, Juan Carlos says.

Marina thinks: their war, now, is not an invading thing but an invading place. Their enemy, now, has no brain and a billion arms and can send spores rooting in wetlands of their bodies. They are all too weak.

But she doesn't say a word.

When the pause goes on too long, Juan Carlos softens his voice.

I'm glad they didn't send you, he says, setting his cigarette down, standing. I'm glad they let me keep you safe. He sits down on her cot and reaches out for her.

Marina can hear his voice, but it's like he's at the bottom of an ocean. She can feel the weight of him lying down behind her on her cot, and then his hands on her, pulling her close. He moves slowly, like the attack has already happened and he's dragging in his kill. She keeps her face aimed away from him.

Baby, he says, underwater. Are you awake?

Yes, she answers, staring down into a flat black sea.

They got me drunk, he laughs. The cartel. They acted like it
was all a party. The American was there, and I think he invited some fucking Italian girl. She must have been some tourist he's fucking, I don't know. My point is, they weren't being secretive at all.

Marina flinches, thinking of the tall woman in the jungle and the language that she spoke. Girare, Girar. Could it—

And in some ways that was scarier, I guess, Juan Carlos wonders. That they were so confident about it all, you know? They barely even asked me about the short shipment. I'm not sure how well I did.

He holds her fist in his hand and thumbs one of her knuckles like a worry stone. She can feel the dried filth flaking off her.

I'm sure you did fine, she forces herself to say.

And here is where the hitch of doubt creeps into Juan Carlos' voice, for the first time since they came here: he says, The thing is, he says, I got the feeling that it doesn't matter what we do to pay them back. Like they're going to pretend like everything's fine, until one day, they just—I don't know.

She can tell Juan Carlos wants to tell her more, but all Marina wants is for him to be quiet, so she can focus. She shifts her body closer into his and pretends she wants it there. She sweetens her voice and makes herself talk.

Will you keep me safe? she says.

He kisses the back of her neck. Of course, he says, reaching across her hip. Anything, he says, his hand creeping toward the button of her jeans.

When Juan Carlos is inside Marina, she can think. She uses her body like a flare thrown into a field, creating a diversion. While he's tending to it, her mind can go elsewhere, out of the tent and away. That's the only way she can be alone.

When he's done, she has decided.

She won't tell him what she saw out there in the jungle.

• • •

Juan Carlos sleeps.

This is always the worst part of the day, for Marina: worse than the sex or the flies stuck to her sweat or the hours they spend fighting. When Juan Carlos sleeps, he tumbles into sleep completely, like he's been pushed underwater. He barely even breathes. The only things that move are his eyelashes.

And this is when the thought comes, each night, despite her, in the silence of the tent: the thought Marina's been avoiding every moment since they left Bogotá, the reason
she
can't sleep at all. She thinks about the day Andres let the Patient escape.

She'd studied his face just like this: his eyelashes longer than Juan Carlos', the neat grooves of his combed hair. He was in the kitchen and she was crouched behind the false wall in the pantry, staring through the knot they'd gouged out in the pine. She could see only small parts of him this way: his boyish doughy ears and sweating temples, the skin over them tensed. This is how she'd realized: he was lying.

At the same instant, she heard the Patient upstairs, just over her head, in the secret compartment where they'd kept him for thirteen weeks and six days.

In the tent, Marina's breath goes shallow and quick, anxiety rushing up from nowhere and tightening around her lungs. She tries to focus on Juan Carlos: his breath leaving just slightly through his open lips, his eyeballs spinning under the weight of his eyelids. Why can't she look away, from this man she doesn't love? Why didn't she look away from Andres, as she listened to a man's bare feet scrambling on the floor a centimeter above her head?

Why did she study the sweet curl of hair behind Andres' ear
as she heard Matón die, right above her, as she heard a voice above her whispering, I'm sorry, I'm sorry?

Marina still remembers how it felt: all her skin hot with fury, her teeth tight around her tongue. She remembers watching Andres drop ice cubes into a cup and smile. She remembers what she thought: Jesus, you are so beautiful; what the fuck did you just do?

How can these two things coexist: the specific heat of compassion, the specific heat of rage? Marina thinks she can remember when that used to be what it was all about for her, this revolution. Now, in this jungle, it makes no sense to her at all.

She crouched in the pantry, and the chord came sounding through the ceiling.

A bolt of fury struck her chest and vibrated straight through her.

And then the record player was explained away as a malfunction, and the landlady was gone, and the Patient stuffed down into the chamber again. Then Marina kicked out the panel in the pantry.

She took her rifle and stepped into the kitchen light.

She looked around once, slowly, her head swiveling like a carnivorous flower sensing the approach of meat.

And that's when she makes herself stop the memory: at that instant when Andres rounded the doorway back into the kitchen and stopped, stared back at her. She remembers the muscles in her hand and arm contracting, the weight of the gun growing lighter in her grip, and then she forces herself to think of anything else.

In the jungle, Marina watches the sleeping man who told her once that he'd save her sleep, and knows that he will never save her, that there is no escape, and she will never sleep again. Her eyes are open and her brain is in Bogotá, stunned, in a white kitchen with her rifle at her elbow and her tongue numb in her mouth.

She watches night fall through the walls of the tent: the
shadows leaning into the fabric, the color draining down to gray. Then the compañeros light the cook fires in the yard, and Marina watches the light brim up from the ground.

• • •

Hours later, when the fire is doused and the quiet hour comes, Marina makes a choice.

She tries not to rustle as she stands, stays quiet as she tucks her pants into her shoes and buckles up her belt.

Juan Carlos doesn't wake. There's a crate of supplies in the corner of the tent, a shoulder bag full of bandages and iodine that she empties out and steals. There's no food, but she will find food later. The gun is right where she left it. A machete, too, is lying by the tree line, halfway up the steep incline that separates camp from the bush. She picks it up and thumbs the point to test it. She'll probably need this more.

Marina doesn't think anyone sees her move into the woods. But if someone does, she has the gun and the machete.

She still doesn't have a compass, but she knows where the river is now.

• • •

The patrols find her less than an hour later.

She'd stepped into a nest five kilometers from camp, climbing over a fallen moriche palm with an infested hollow. She'd heard the humming, but the jungle was all humming, and so she'd walked straight into it. When they bring Marina back to Juan Carlos, he doesn't recognize her. Her clothes and boots and all her skin are covered in mud, and the mud has dried as pale as chalk, and under it her face is not her face.

Her eyes are swollen shut. She is stung and stung and stung. She is almost walking on her own—she is alive—but her skin does not look like something you can call skin.

Outside the med tent, in the pitch dark, Juan Carlos drinks and paces, waiting for the med tech to apply the poultices and get the poison out. He can hear the man mention hornets, or maybe beetles; they have an awful kind down here that spray poison straight into their bites. He can hear her suffering, little yips and whimpers, and then a low, horrible sound, once, like they're ripping her skin slowly off. He can hear a comandante standing over them both, demanding to know why she was out there alone.

When the comandante finally comes out of the tent, he runs a handkerchief over his soaked face and looks at Juan Carlos.

This girl, she's your associate?

Juan Carlos hesitates. My girlfriend.

Associate. That's what we call them here. The comandante is bald and has a heavy, fleshy forehead that makes it hard to look him in the eye. I need you to tell me what you know about her, he says. I need to know right now if you think she was running tonight. If you think she might even be the
type
who might run.

Juan Carlos swallows. No. No, she believes in this mission more than anyone I know.

The comandante bites the tip of his tongue with his back molars, nods and sucks. We're concerned this was a kidnapping attempt gone bad, he mutters. Retaliation for the short shipment.

Juan Carlos does not allow himself to think: but no one heard anyone out there with her.

But to be honest with you, it's probably better for her if she were running, the comandante says. I need you to know this. Sometimes compañeros don't take to the life down here. We
know how to deal with that. But if this wasn't a defection—here he pauses, aiming two fingers at Juan Carlos—if the cartel did this, you need to know that we won't strike back. She may be your associate, but what we have with the cartel, that is bigger than her.

Juan Carlos wants to believe it, so he says it like he does: She wasn't running. No. Marina isn't the type of person who would run.

• • •

When the med tech finally leaves, Juan Carlos goes back into the tent.

Marina is lying on her side on her cot. She is facing the wall, and all the lights are out, and he is grateful.

Are you awake? Can you talk?

She answers so fast it startles him: What do you remember about the night that Andres and El Matón died?

Her voice is not her voice; is her tongue stung, too? Juan Carlos closes his mouth and tries to make his voice kind. We shouldn't talk about this tonight, Marina. Why are you talking about this?

Do you remember what I did?

You did what you had to, he pronounces. We do what we have to. It doesn't matter, especially not now.

Not that. Not killing Andres. I mean after.

You need to rest.

She goes silent, stays still.

Marina? he hears himself say.

After Andres, I went upstairs to the Patient. You remember?