"Por favor," she says, squinting into the light.
I place the flashlight on the nightstand so that the beam bounces off the ceiling. The ceiling has been finished in wallboard but never taped or painted. The indirect light is much kinder to us both. Marsita drops her hand and walks to the side of the bed, using all of her muscles, all her leg muscles, all her arm muscles, all her stomach muscles, her walk is a panther's walk. Her eyes are deep golden brown loam of the earth Treasure of the Sierra Madres eyes. Her breasts are small perfect breasts and the swell of her hips and curve of her thighs is a beautiful terrible tragedy. A tragedy that such beauty can not last. A glory that exists for a terrible moment, then is gone. Her walk, her eyes, her muscles, her inevitable end, it is enough to make me cry.
The cocaine is wearing off.
Marsita slides onto the bed in one motion, on top of the sheet that covers me, and lays on her side beside me, one hand propping up her head, the other stretched along her thigh, one finger of that stretched out hand, pointed, running up and down on her leg, a little dent of flesh filling with shadow, following the tip of her finger. Marsita's eyes are hot fires in red clay ovens beneath half-lowered lids eyes and I can feel a heat emanating from her center, from the furnace of her body. My body is responding, a snake coming out from between the rocks to feel the warmth of Marsita the sun.
"Are you really driving to the South Pole?" Marsita says.
"I don't think I'll make it quite that far, do you?" I say.
"Mmmm, I don't know. You look very...capable." Marsita says. Her eyes are down.
"It'll definitely be a long and interesting trip." I say.
"Mmm, hmm, and hard, I suppose." Marsita says.
She runs her fingertips up my leg through the sheets, avoiding direct contact with my genitals, but causing the sheet to slide in such a way that my penis jumps. She smiles and winks at me.
"Yes," she says, "very hard."
* * *
Tragedy runs down the walls and drips from the ceiling. The world is a hard and cruel place. Children die needlessly. People starve from indifference. I see the cold reality of our hopelessness trapped in harsh black and white on the wall. The shadows of the trees outside, edged in diamond clarity, rip jagged across the floor and up the wall. My life is a disaster. The lives of those I touch are shattered. Fate comes crackling down upon me, crushing my world, killing everyone around me and then hurting me. Hurting me with such finality that there can never be any coming back. I watch with a sinking, that awful knowledge foremost in my mind that from this injury I can never recover. That I will be crippled forever. That there is no turning back. I remember too late why I gave up cocaine, so many years ago.
The small, warm body next to mine quivers. Her foot, walking in some dream pasture, tapping against mine. Her hand on my chest twitching, trying to pick up some dream thing.
It is time to go.
I try to get out of bed without disturbing Marsita, but she wakes up saying No, no, no, sleepy, like a kitten.
"What is it?" she says, leaning on one elbow and rubbing her eyes with thumb and forefinger.
"Nothing, chiquita, I have to go." I say. Standing by the bed, reaching for my clothes.
"Go?" she repeats as if the word makes no sense to her. "You can't go."
"Whattaya mean I can't go?" I say.
"They'll shoot you." she laughs and lays back down. The moonlight slides across her gunmetal skin. A single nipple stands like a dark tower in a moat of muddy water.
I'd forgotten the guards. They probably wouldn't look kindly on anyone trying to sneak out in the middle of the night. I sit down on the edge of the bed, one shoe in my hand. A tragic shoe. Lost and alone.
"We will go in the morning," Marsita says, "we can..."
"We?!" I say.
"...say we are going to the village for shopping..." Marsita says.
"Whattaya mean, 'We'?" I say.
"...and we will just keep driving," Marsita says, "oh darling!"
I stand up. Backing away.
"I don't think that's a good idea..." I say.
"It will work, you wait and see." Marsita says, "Now come and sit back down over here and we will make love one more time and go to sleep. We will need our rest for the trip. Come!"
I shut the louvered doors over the windows. No more tragic shadows on the walls.
* * *
There are dogs running through my dream. Big heavy leather dogs with buckles and straps running on the boardwalk next to my beach chair. Someone pulls the towel off me and starts shaking my shoulder, and the beach is a room and the dogs are men going down the stairs and Marsita is peeking through the door cracked open, naked, holding the sheet to her chest, but her back, her small shoulders, shoulder blades smooth overhangs curve of back, bumps of backbone, dimples that hurt my eyes and my heart over swell of hips so round and then legs. Stripes from the louvers, sun coming in the louvers stripes on the wall, the door jamb, the legs the door all like a kind of topographical map showing the hills and valleys of Marsitaland.
"¿Que pasa?" I say. "¿Quien es?"
"No se," Marsita says, "Son los guardia. The guards."
The room is dim and hazy but bright morning light is squeezing through the louvers in the shutters, and around the edges of the shutters over the windows. The big floor to ceiling windows with the louvered shutters over them. Maybe they're really doors, not windows. You can open them up and walk through them.
"Put your clothes on!" Marsita says. Marsita runs to the windows, running on her toes, short steps, holding the sheet over her breasts and hunching forward, eyes sharp and watching, mouth tight. Marsita looks through a broken slat and curses. I drag my pants on.
"¿Que?" I say.
I hear a distant thumping noise. It is a helicopter.
Marsita runs to my suitcase, running on her toes, short steps. She drops the sheet on the way.
"A raid," Marsita says, "Out by the lab."
The lab is out at the back of the plantation grounds, maybe 300 yards away from the hacienda. Omar showed it to me last night while we were buzzing around.
Marsita pulls a pair of my jeans out of my suitcase. The helicopter sound gets louder. I look for my shirt.
There is a burping sound. Gunfire.
"Shit." I say. I think I say.
Marsita pulls one of my T-shirts on over her head. She throws another at me and I struggle to put it on. There doesn't seem to be enough holes.
The windows explode glass and wood flying around the other end of the room, the farthest window. Holes appear high in the wall over there and in the ceiling. Marsita and I drop to the floor. There is a louder chunk! chunk! sound that shakes the floor every time it happens. Which is two or three times a second, then a pause for about a second maybe and then another series chunk!, chunk!, chunk!.
"¡Vamanos!" Marsita says from the other side of the bed. I can see her over there by looking under the bed. She is on her hands and knees and is opening the door. I wonder if I can fit under the bed. I think getting on all fours is presenting too high a target. The bed's too low, though.
I leave the shirt half on, one arm and my head through but the rest of the shirt bunched up around my shoulders. I start to get on all fours and another window explodes bullets glass wood splinters flying all over the room and my legs push off like a frog in a frying pan and I hit ground again by the door, next to my suitcase. I scrabble out the door, legs slipping on the area rug on the slick wood, arm caught on something but not stopping to see what. I get out in the hallway and sit up next to the wall, which is what everyone else is doing.
Everyone else being SiSi, Marsita and Tanya. Everyone else but Maria, who is lying on the floor her head and shoulders like nailed to the floor not moving her eyes open and not seeing blood in them and spreading around her head on the floor and her legs kick and flex like they want to get up and hands slapping in the puddle of blood and then Maria stops her legs stop and her arm stops and Maria stops.
Marsita grabs SiSi by one of their hands. SiSi are staring at Maria. Tanya is crying and her pouty lips are pouting all out and she has blood on her face from Maria splashing. Black blood in Tanya's white blond hair.
"This way!" Marsita says. Marsita pulls one of SiSi up and the other follows and I grab for Tanya and she jumps back from me like she didn't know I was there and looks at me like she doesn't know who I am. Grab her hand and this time she goes with me and we follow Marsita and SiSi down the hall bent over running and I've got my suitcase somehow and it's dragging on the floor spilling socks and underwear.
The helicopter comes in close and the wind it makes, the sound and noise blows dust and paper and crap around in the hallway and then at the top of the stairs. DiDi is there, hanging on to the banisters and crying.
"Bring her!" Marsita says.
"Tanya!" Marsita says, sharp like a drill sergeant bark and Tanya jumps I feel her arm muscle jump in my hand and I let her go and drop my bag and take DiDi by the shoulders. Her shoulders feel like electricity. Like one time when I was a kid I stuck a knife in a power outlet and it vibrated my hole body just like DiDi's body vibrating here and I take hold of DiDi's arm with one hand and go to follow Marsita and SiSi and Tanya down the stairs but DiDi yanks back so hard my feet go out from under me. She doesn't want to leave the banister. Glass and wood and bullets flying in the hallway behind us and a bunch of new holes letting in rays of light death rays of light only by the time the ray of light hits you you're already dead and dust making those death rays look solid flowing melted glass butter. Prying DiDi's fingers off the banister she grabs onto my arm and it hurts but at least I can move her now, get up and the suitcase strap is around my ankle follows me to the stairs DiDi sliding on the floor and a kind of a high squeal going on and I think it's the helicopter but then the helicopter moves away and the squeal is still there and it's DiDi through her clenched teeth drag her down the stairs she balls up and hangs on to my arm like she's going over a cliff and the suitcase strap comes off my ankle fall down the stairs rolling me bag DiDi me bag DiDi me bag me lost DiDi somewhere and catch up with Marsita and the rest at the bottom the fountain spraying water straight up in the air the statue gone and men are dead on the floor by the front door and there are death ray beams all over the place and two more men are shooting out the windows and new death ray holes come in the hall and Marsita has led us to a trap I think but then Marsita leading us around a corner to the right to some plywood hallway I hadn't been in before and it's quieter here and we stop.
Marsita is listening at a plywood door. SiSi are holding each other. Tanya is staring at her hands. DiDi is still curled up in a ball. Saying ahhhh ahhhhh. All high up and quiet and shaky. I walk up to Marsita, heart about four times bigger than usual and knocking into lungs on either side. Lungs that are no way near big enough.
The machine gun fire and helicopter noise and chunk chunk chunk are softer here, farther away and as I come up to Marsita she says “Come on” and “Get DiDi” and Marsita guides SiSi and Tanya and I get DiDi on her feet, up on those long legs and we follow Marsita left and right and left and left and then we're alongside that bus. That yellow school bus and the only light is coming through the bus's windshield and Marsita pulls SiSi and Tanya up the steps and pushes them down the aisle and Marsita sits down in the drivers seat while I pull DiDi up the steps and get her into a seat and sit next to her.
Next to DiDi. Breathing hard. Watching Marsita. She pumps the pedal. She turns the key. The engine turns over. The engine coughs. I cough. The engine catches. The engine quits. I'm looking ahead. Look through the windshield. Not really seeing. Not seeing at first. Then I see it. I see what I'm seeing. A bunch of guys. Guys in black suits. Not business suits, black swat team suits. And helmets. Hunkered down behind the heaps in the yard. Behind them a tank.
Maybe not a tank. Just an armored vehicle with a gun turret, okay, but it looks like a fucking tank. It's black. It's hard to see it through the windshield. Get up and stand next to Marsita trying to start the bus. Lean over to try to see through the haze on the windshield. The gun in the turret in the armored vehicle is not pointed at us. It's pointed over back where the tower is. Pointed over to where the chunk! chunk! chunk! sound is coming from. The armored vehicle is rolling, slow, trying to get through the heaps to get closer to the house. Crack! is the sound it makes when the gun in the turret goes off, fire spitting out, and the armored vehicle rocks on it's wheels.
The bus starts up and shakes and shudders on it's wheels, the fan belt screeching like there's a cat caught in there. An explosion right next to the armored vehicle rocks it sideways, and it takes off pretty fast on a flanking run across the front yard, away from us. My lungs are taking in a big breath of relieved air when the helicopter shows up, cutting sideways across the sky in front of the hacienda, guns blazing away under it's belly.
The bus's engine has settled down to a sort of steady running with a cough or two now and then.
Marsita jumps up out of the driver's seat.
"You drive!" Marsita says to me.
"Me?" I say. I'm about to say something else but Marsita comes up with a pistol out of a bag behind the driver's seat. A big and shiny pistol with a hole I could fit my head into pointed at my face.
"The helicopter," I say. I turn and point and there's a flash when something hits the helicopter and it starts to smoke as the pilot takes it up fast and then away from the house, out over the jungle, trailing some kind of flaming liquid.
"Good pointing," Marsita says. "Now drive."
Okay. I get in the driver's seat, let off the emergency brake, push in the clutch. It goes down maybe eighteen inches from all the way up to all the way down on the floor. I shove the gearshift into gear. After the Mercedes, it feels like I'm reaching to Equador.
"Hold on!" I yell. I try to yell, but my teeth are stuck together and I don't know how loud it really is.
I let up the clutch, giving it some gas. Let it up about three inches. Let it up slow, don't want to stall the engine, don't want to make the bus jump forward just a little bit and then stall jump forward just enough to draw everyone's attention and then stall, sitting duck. Big yellow sitting duck bus called attention to itself and then stalled with a big huge wide picture glass window in front and me framed in the window, sitting pretty, sitting duck and all those guys out there with automatic guns able to shoot me like a big fat sitting duck framed in a barrel. I let the clutch up to six inches above the floor and give it a little more gas. Nothing.
"¿Que Problema?" Marsita says.
Marsita wraps her arm around the pole next to the driver's seat. I smell gun oil and gun powder and sex and sweat. She's got a big old automatic rifle with a long curving clip sticking out of the bottom and another clip taped upside down to the first clip with duct tape. Sitting duck tape.
"Don't want to stall it." I say.
I let the clutch out to nine inches above the floor. My left calf is starting to spasm.
"It catches high," Marsita says, loud, her pitch higher. Her grip tightens on the rifle and she braces one leg out behind her.
"Gun it!" Marsita says, "Pop the clutch! It'll work."
I do it. I floor the gas and let the clutch pedal push my foot up all the way and the bus jumps up like a goosed duck and we're bouncing across the lawn. There’s a sound like wood tearing behind us.
* * *
We're moving across the lawn fast, the bus has got pretty good pickup for a bus. But then the windshield gets a star in it, then two more stars real quick after that and for a tiny fraction of a second I wonder how I'm gonna see and then another tiny fraction later and I realize that it's bullets hitting the windshield, real live bullets trying to kill me and then my ear is blasted by the gun going off in Marsita's hands next to my head and the windshield is gone in a billion pieces out on the hood and in my lap and face and the guys who were shooting at us are ducking down behind the heaps and speaking of heaps Bam! we hit the rear fender of one that was in the way because I'm heading straight for that driveway through the woods and I don't care who or what is in my way and Marsita is shooting but not aiming just letting the bullets go out in front of the bus and Bam! we hit the rear fender of a car a big Chevy Suburban painted black that just came out of the road and saw us and tried to turn out of the way and almost made it and then we're on the road and Marsita stops shooting and runs to the back of the bus. The windows back there are starred for an instant and then Marsita is shooting out the back and I'm slowing down because there's a sharp corner coming up and if I hit it at this speed we'll roll. The rear end still breaks out a little in the dirt on the corner and the far rear corner of the bus Bam! sideswipes a tree but that bumps us back on track and we're rolling again, bouncing down the road.
I look in the rear view. No one's back there. Shit, I think, did I lose them?
"Marsita!" I yell, trying to look in the rear view and watch the road ahead. Trying to do both at the same time. Trying not to look in the rear view but eyes going there anyway. The road ahead is twisting and turning again, I have to slow down, but at least it seems like no one's shooting at us anymore.
"Marsita!" I yell. I think my voice cracks. My voice doesn't sound right to me.
I see her hand come up from behind the second to rear seats.
"DiDi." Marsita's voice says, "SiSi!"
"Okay!" DiDi's voice says.
"Aqui!" SiSi's voices say, almost together, one pitched a little higher than the other, almost in harmony.
"Tanya?" DiDi says.
"We've got her," One of SiSi says.
I have to slow down to go across a narrow bridge. The bridge doesn't look strong enough to hold the bus, but at least the bridge is so short that the front end of the bus will be almost off before the rear end gets on. Marsita is back next to me, squatting by the driver's seat, holding the rifle, strap wrapped around her forearm. The muscles in her arm stand out like a weightlifter’s.
"You okay?" Marsita says.
"Yeah, I think so," I say, "But what the fuck is going on."
"CIA," Marsita says, "Deep cover. Thought you were a contact."
Branches were rubbing along the roof of the bus. Branches trying to come in the front windshield, that hole where the windshield had been. The bus bouncing in the ruts of the road. Marsita holds herself easily with one hand on the pole, squatting on legs that bounce like the springs of the bus to keep her steady. Bouncing legs in my jeans. She's ripped a knee out and is oozing blood. Her blood turns the white fibers of the jeans fabric dark red. If jeans are blue, I think, how come the threads when they rip are always white?
"Contact?" I say. What was she saying? Another branch tries to come in the front windshield hole. How am I gonna get back to town?
"I thought there'd maybe been a change in plan and you were coming to warn me?" Marsita says.
"Warn you?" I say. I hope my Mercedes still has all the gas I put in it yesterday. I hope it's right where I parked it.
"About the change in plans." Marsita says.
"What change in plans?" I say. We have to change our plans, I think. What's wrong with my plan, I think. If I just can get back to the Mercedes, I think, everything will be all right.
"About the raid." Marsita says, "You're not listening!"
"Listening?" I say. I think I say. I think the turn to the village is up here a little. I don't know why I think that, but I really hope it is. We come around a corner to a T in the road. Right, I think, I have to turn right here.
"Listen," Marsita says. Marsita takes me by the shoulder and my muscles spasm, all my muscles together, my left foot falls off the clutch while my right foot is still on the brake and the engine stalls.
It is quiet in the jungle. The bus's engine makes ticking noises. Birds are calling. Sun is coming through the opening in the trees made by the intersection. It falls on the hood and reflects up into my eyes, butter yellow. The jungle smell comes in from the windshield hole, pushing away the gunpowder smell.
My jaw hurts. Try opening my mouth. Mouth does not feel comfortable opening.
"Listen," Marsita says. "I'm a CIA agent, working with the Colombian government to shut down these drug suppliers. The raid was planned for today, but when you showed up, I thought there might have been some change, so I had to get close to you to find out."
"CIA?" I say. Had to get close, I think.
"Yes, CIA." Marsita says. “There's a bunker, under the house. I was going to hide there. That was the original plan."
Marsita's eyes are deep rich loam of the earth eyes. Marsita's eyes look hard into mine. Marsita's hand on my arm, my arm shaking. My hands shaking. I see my hands shaking, my legs shaking and then I'm shaking all over, shivering, cold and the lights are going out, slow and brown and soft.
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