26

In the morning, a hysterical Kristy shakes me awake. I’m still in the hammock. No sign of Ben or the Jeep. “Chinita? Where is everybody?”

By which she means, Where is Pelo?

“I’m not sure,” I say. “Probably the police station.”

“The police?”

“They chased us last night. It’s all a big misunderstanding.” In fact, it was more a case of too much understanding too fast.

“What will you do about it?” she asks.

I don’t quite know how to answer that question. But now, in the daylight, it seems plausible that I could head down to the station and talk this all out. “I guess I’ll go over there, see if somebody will listen to me.”

Outside, a man pedals a creaking three-wheeled cart full of produce. He has a loudspeaker and microphone attached. In a robotic monotone, he mutters the prices of plantains, potatoes, onions, and mangoes. Kristy turns to him, then stares back at me and sighs. Frustrated, she walks off to buy vegetables.

I shower, then do my best to dress up like somebody who could cause consequences for a local cop. From out of the mattress bundle, I take a hundred-dollar bill and tuck it into my bra.

On the way out, I tell Kristy to be sure to watch our bedroom. She seems hurt by this remark, but I don’t much care.

*   *   *

The police station isn’t far. I’ve walked past it hundreds of times but never had any business there—not even when we’d captured burglars in our hotel room. The interior reminds me of the public schools I’ve seen in this country: the furniture too small for those who sit at it, the blue-and-white two-tone walls painted the colors of the Salvadoran flag, the stiff uniforms likely sewn by the mothers of those who wear them.

An officer with a crew cut waits behind the counter. He holds a phone to his ear and listens to somebody on the other end, uttering the occasional “Yes” or “I understand.” He doesn’t seem to notice that I’ve entered.

I put both hands on the counter. He looks up at me, then goes back to muttering and agreeing. Finally, he says good-bye and hangs up.

“Can I help you?”

“Did you bring a gringo in here last night? With red hair? A beard?” I use my hands to draw an air beard over my own face. “I need to see him.”

The officer wrinkles his eyes as if deep in thought. In the ensuing minute, I nearly come undone. Only now do I allow myself to consider the much more terrible possibilities of where Ben might’ve wound up last night—that he might’ve been dealt with by the criminals, and not just the crooked cops.

“It was two gringos, was it not?”

I exhale so hard, it ripples the fabric of my shirt. “Yes.” I nod. “But I don’t give a shit about the other one.” If there were some way I could lay the whole blame on Pelo, a button I could press to force him to take the fall, believe me, I’d do it in an instant.

The officer shakes his head. “Sorry, I can’t help you.”

“That’s too bad.” From out of my bra, I draw the hundred-dollar bill and lay it flat on the counter with both my hands. “You must get thirsty doing this job. I’d like to offer you a little something, for a soda.”

He looks down at the bill, then back up at me. “Let’s go.” One meaty hand gestures for me to follow, the other grabs the hundred from off the counter. On his wrist is the expensive watch that Pelo wore yesterday.

*   *   *

He leads me out a back door. We cross a courtyard and enter another bare and boxy concrete room. This one holds a card table and two small plastic chairs.

“Wait here,” he says.

I nod.

He starts to leave, then turns back to me. “The beard, right?”

“Yes,” I say.

He shuts the door and I wait. For a few minutes, I wonder if he’s taken off with my money. What could I do about it if he had?

The iron latch jangles and the door swings open. I see Ben’s face, backlit by the morning sun. One of his ears is swollen and crusted in dried blood. His wrists are bound with tarnished cuffs. The same officer’s hand rests on his shoulder.

I run over to hug him, but Ben says, “Don’t!”

We stare at each other, our faces only inches apart. I take a confused step back.

“It might be better if he doesn’t see too much … affection.” Ben gestures with his head toward the policeman.

I nod. The two of us sit in the plastic chairs. The officer leans against the back wall.

“Did they do that to you?” I can’t look away from his ear.

“It happened last night,” Ben says. “It’s not so bad.”

It looks bad to me. “What do we do now?”

“Not sure.” Ben shrugs. “Doesn’t seem to be much actual law enforcement going on here. We haven’t been charged or anything legal like that.”

“What happened to the last bale?” I look over at the officer leaning on the wall. He shows no signs of understanding English.

Ben laughs. “The cops got all confused. They finally put it in the squad car and dropped it off at the real crack house.”

I don’t find this funny.

“We were there for a while, waiting in the car.”

“So it’s true,” I say. “The cops are in the pocket of those guys?”

Ben nods. “They’re definitely pulling the strings with us.”

“Is that a bad thing or a good thing?”

Ben squints and jukes his head back and forth. “Best case, they’ll decide we’ve learned our lesson and let us go. Worst case, they’ll think we’ve seen too much. I’m not sure there’s anything we can do about it either way.”

“I have to do something.” The words hiss their way out of my mouth.

“Malia.” Ben cringes as though about to remove a splinter. “It might be better if you get out of this town. If these guys decide to do anything drastic, they won’t want any loose ends.”

“What?” I’m taken aback. “There’s no way!” I want to tell him I’d never leave him here. Instead, I say, “I don’t even have a passport.”

“Get to San Salvador, then. Someplace safer. Even Cara Sucia.” Ben turns toward the guard for a second, then back to me. “I’m worried about you.”

“I’m worried about you!”

He nods and stares down at the table. “All I wanted was a fucking surf trip.”

The guard looks at his new wristwatch and says, “Ya.”

“What should I do?” My eyes water.

“Be careful,” Ben says. “Whatever else happens, this situation is not going to leave La Libertad. I’m sure of that.”

The guard puts a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Vamos.”

“I love you,” I say.

“I love you, too, Malia.”

I follow as far as the door while Ben is taken away.

*   *   *

For the next hour or so, I pace the courtyard of La Posada. By the looks she gives me from the kitchen, it’s obvious that Kristy expects me to find a solution to this mess. I have a seat in the dining room and ask her for a beer.

She slams the bottle down on the table and gives me an angry glare.

“Kristy?” I stop her before she walks back into the kitchen. “Did you lose anybody, in the earthquake?”

“No one close to me, thanks to God,” she says. “My mother was on a bus from San Vicente. They were among the last ones to pass by before the tragedy there.”

One of the more gruesome episodes brought on by the quake was a landslide on the Pan-American Highway. Several buses full of people were buried alive in dirt and mud. It’s a busy route, one that most Salvadorans must travel at one time or another. While not the deadliest aspect of the quake, it is perhaps the one that has most captured the imaginations of us, the survivors.

“We were both lucky,” I say.

“Yes. You heard about Don Adán’s family?”

“No.” I realize that I’ve not seen the owner of La Posada in several weeks. “What about them?”

“His in-laws lost their home, outside Santa Tecla. That’s been the biggest change for me. I’ve hardly seen the owners since.”

“I didn’t realize,” I mumble.

“They may try to sell this place. The señora never liked the business. I hope my job is stable for a while longer.” She walks back into the kitchen.

I carry my beer up to the roof and stare out at the rectangle of visible ocean. Not long ago, Ben and I were twenty-four hours away from leaving this place, from the trip of a lifetime. That kind of freedom—the very idea of it—feels unthinkable to me now.

The sun creeps into the last quarter of the sky. I have to figure something out.

*   *   *

In the bedroom, I find my baggy jeans and hiking boots—the clothes I once wore to work on the aqueduct. I tie my hair back in a tight ponytail. Thankfully, that wad of bills still waits under the mattress. I pass them through my fingers a few times. It’s plenty. The ceiling fan sticks at the far end of its turn, lets out several clicks, and then goes the other way. I put a hundred dollars under the pillow. I break the rest of it up into four rubber-banded packets and put those into the four pockets of my jeans. I tuck one tightly folded Salvadoran bill into the palm of my hand.

Outside, the sun has begun to set. I leave La Posada and head for the crack house. My only plan is to get Ben out of that jail, or die trying.

*   *   *

I don’t allow myself to hesitate crossing the street or at the stoop. My fist knocks against the red wood of the door. I let a long breath out through my nose.

The door opens a few inches and a bearded face sticks out. “What do you want?” He blinks hard. “¿Mota?”

“No,” I say. “I want to enter.”

“Sorry.” He pushes the door toward me.

“Here.” I hold up a fifty-colón bill. The rumor is that one must pay to go in, but I’ve never heard why or how much.

He tenses his nostrils and takes the money from my hand. Then he pulls the door open and gestures for me to come inside.

With one long stride, I cross the threshold into this, the last forbidden place in La Libertad. My eyes dilate in the dark. The doorman goes back to his post as soon as I’m inside—with no mention of any change from my bill.

The only light comes from several small red bulbs burning at low angles along the walls. It reminds me of old pizza parlors. I see a few bony bodies seated on the floor, the spark of a lighter from the corner of my eye. This first room is connected to a narrow hallway. A gas stove sits upon a table in the corner by the door, a round tank of fuel at its side, blackened pots stacked atop its grill. The place smells of body odor and pool chemicals. Along the walls are posters and centerfolds of naked women. Gang signs and initials are scribbled onto the white rounds of their breasts and buttocks.

As my vision improves, I make out the face of Peseta. He sits on an overturned milk crate against the wall, next to others. Our eyes meet. He wags his index finger back and forth, warning me not to speak to him.

“What do you want, mi niña?” A tall man materializes from the hallway. He is shirtless, in American-style oversize jeans, his chest covered in gang tattoos: MS, 13, long-nailed demon hands making a series of signs. He wears a leather belt that has EL SALVADOR written in blocky stencils, alongside pictures of cowboy boots and cacti. He smiles and shows a golden front tooth. Along his forehead runs the phrase Pardon Me Mother, in a bluish cursive script. He looks me up and down, grins.

“I need to speak to whoever’s in charge around here,” I say.

He laughs hard, throws back his head. “What do you think this is? The customer service department?”

“I have information,” I say, “about what happened last night.”

That gets his attention. He nods for a long moment, then motions for me to follow him. Peseta and I exchange one last glance before I head down the hall. He shakes his head back and forth like a disappointed parent.

Pardon Me Mother pounds on the last door at the end of the hallway. “Macizo,” he says to the wood. “Got something out here that might be of interest to you.”

Pardon Me cracks open the door. He puts a hand on my shoulder and roughly ushers me in.

Inside, it’s like a room from a totally different building. A ceiling fan rotates slowly above; its lamps keep the room well lit. A man in a white guayabera sits at a large desk. His pockmarked face has no tattoos. His hair is oily and black, well along into male-pattern baldness. He wears wire-frame glasses that look a few years out of style. A ledger notebook sits before him. The place reminds me of the doctor’s office where we took Pelo. In a chair beside the desk sits the same police officer who took me to see Ben this morning. He cocks his head at the sight of me. In one corner, there’s a large iron door that looks like it leads outside to the alley.

“What in the devil is this little Chinese girl doing in my office?” asks the man at the desk.

Pardon Me Mother clears his throat. “She says that she was there last night, Macizo, that she has information.”

The cop leans over and speaks into the boss’s ear.

The boss removes his glasses and rubs at the space between his eyes. “All right,” he says. “Let’s hear what you have to say.”

“Yes, sir.” I swallow. “This is all a big misunderstanding. You see, we believed we were doing this errand for you, for your … organization. That big-haired gringo, the one with the eye patch, he’s an idiot. He made arrangements with those other…” I struggle to come up with a word that they won’t find offensive. “Other salesmen. Ben—the bearded one—and I, we didn’t know. We thought it was a service to you. Instantly, we saw the error.”

The boss stares on at me, impatient and unmoved. “You were there last night?”

“Yes.”

“To whom did you deliver those goods?” he asks.

I pause. “It was a blue house, a few blocks from here. There were two men. I didn’t recognize them.”

“And the original delivery?”

“By sea.” I suddenly feel useful, like I have something to offer. “There were two of them as well, their faces covered with handkerchiefs. At the cove we call Kilometer Ninety-nine.”

The boss turns to the policeman, who offers him a nod. They seem to know all this already.

The boss turns back to me. “Is that all?”

I decide to lay all of my cards on the table. “I have the money. I assume you have the product or know how you can get it. I need the bearded one back. That’s all I ask.”

The boss crosses his arms in front of his chest. “Where are you from?” he asks me in perfect English.

“The States.” I switch to English as well. “Hawai‘i, actually.”

“Do you know much about the Conflict?”

“The Conflict?”

“Yes. The civil war that took place in this country not so long ago.”

It’s the last question I expect him to ask. “A little,” I say. “I’ve lived in El Salvador for nearly two years, most of the time in a small village north of here. Some of the families there fought with the Frente, most with the army.” I shrug. “It’s hard not to hear things, under those circumstances.

“Have you heard of El Mozote?” His English is excellent.

I nod. “I visited. Almost two years ago.”

“You’ve been there?” He raises his eyebrows. “Seen the little memorial with the silhouettes?”

“Yes,” I say. “It’s very moving.”

The policeman’s chair creaks as he leans back and crosses his legs. As I thought this morning, he doesn’t appear to understand English.

“I was there, you know,” the boss man continues, “on that day twenty years ago. I come from a village nearby. I lost my family then. You understand what happened, yes?”

“Rape,” I say. “Murder. Women and children all killed for no good reason. Some pretense about finding the guerilla.”

“Little girls.” He holds up the palm of his hand to indicate a short stature. “Ten or twelve years old. Can you imagine? They cut off heads until their arms were tired and their machetes were dull. Then they used the machine guns.”

Tears well up behind my eyes. The room goes silent but for the slow rotation of the fan above, like the blades on an old helicopter.

“The journalists always mention that those soldiers were the ones trained by the gringos.”

I manage to whisper, “I’m not really a gringo.”

“But I tend to think it’s impossible to train anyone to commit that kind of brutality.”

I nod.

“These young men today”—he points with his lips at Pardon Me Mother—“they will never suffer the way that my generation suffered.” He shakes his head. “And still they walk around as if they have some chip on their shoulder.”

I turn toward Pardon Me Mother. He doesn’t understand a word. I wonder if the two of them are related.

“Let me ask you something,” the boss says. “What do you believe you were doing there last night?”

“Last night?” With the El Mozote story, I’ve nearly forgotten my reason for coming here. “I thought we would make some fast money. Cash was stolen from us recently. This … this errand—it seemed a good way to settle things. That’s all.”

The boss man nods. “Some fast money. A way to even accounts.” He turns to the cop momentarily, then back to me. “It’s interesting. I hid in a tree and watched twenty years ago as those so-called soldiers committed all those horrible acts—killing children as if they were breaking open anthills. I asked myself, How can one do such things? Now I understand that they couldn’t see it for what it was. If I had asked one of those young men, all he would have said was, ‘I was pulling a trigger, following orders.’ And the superiors—who are even more irredeemable—they’d have simply said they were winning a war, saving their country from godless communism. Do you understand what I mean?”

“I think so,” I say. “It all depends on the frame of reference. If your focus is too narrow or too wide, you can obscure the act itself. Not see it for what it is.”

From the main room down the hall, a ranchero song suddenly blares. Pardon Me Mother turns his head toward the sound, unsure if he should go and silence it.

“So when you say that you were only interested in some fast money, a small measure of economic justice, I have to ask myself, Does she not understand the kinds of consequences associated with this thing that she did last night? Or is she just stupid?”

“Consequences?” After following his meandering line of thought for so many minutes, I’m now confused. “You mean for the users?” Is this man about to lecture me on the dangers of drug abuse?

“What I mean,” he pounds one meaty fist upon the table, “are the consequences of starting a rivalry in my business. Have you any idea the sort of bloodshed that occurs whenever there’s a power vacuum in this industry? Young Salvadoran men—my friends and family, in some cases—will have to die by the dozens if anyone presents a real challenge to me in this city.” He shouts now, both hands clasped upon the desk’s edge, flecks of his spittle dotting the top. “So tell me: Why should those two moronic gringos be spared?”

I fear that my legs might collapse beneath me. The scariest thing of all, I find, is that he’s absolutely right. “I swear to you, I didn’t know there was any rivalry. All I did was drive. It was that other gringo who made the arrangements with the men from the blue house.”

“Of course.” He shakes his head and snickers. “Only driving—turning the wheel and pushing the pedals. Only earning a little fast money.”

Pardon Me Mother and the policeman tentatively laugh along with him; neither knows why.

“I thought we were working for you,” I say.

“Oh yes! I forgot,” he says sarcastically. “You were performing a service for me. You were on my side, right? Tell me: Do you know what they called that operation in El Mozote?”

“Operation Rescue.” Why do I remember that?

“That’s correct,” he says. “Operation Rescue.” He smiles, nearly laughing at the absurdity of it.

We pass a tense few seconds in which the only sound is the music from down the hall.

“I have your money.” I take the four wads of dollars out of my pockets and drop them all upon his desk. “I need Ben released; then we’ll be no more trouble to you.”

The boss man quickly puts all the cash into one of his desk drawers, as if the sight of it is somehow unseemly.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “Please.”

He lets out a big sigh, looking bored by the whole exchange. He turns to the policeman and says in Spanish, “Let those two idiots go already.” He shakes his head, still staring at the cop. “If there’s any thing that’s more trouble than one dead American, it’s two dead Americans.”

“Or three.” The cop points an index finger in my direction, like a pistol.

Everyone but me laughs.

The cop rises from his chair and lets himself out through the iron door at the side.

“Thank you,” I say to the boss man. I fight a sudden urge to prostrate myself at his feet, to kiss his ring or touch the edge of his garment—some timeless and Catholic show of respect.

He stands up from his chair and shrugs. “It’s only logical, really.” He pulls the drawer open, removes all the money I gave him, and stuffs it into a paper bag. He rolls the top down and makes a handle, like it’s a big sandwich.

“Well done,” he says to Pardon Me Mother. “She’s all yours. Nothing too rough, eh?”

“Simón.” Pardon Me smiles and nods.

“How’s that?” I stop myself before asking what he means by “She’s all yours.”

The boss goes to the iron door. Pardon Me Mother reaches out and runs the back side of his first two fingers down my cheek.

“¡Tranquila!” he hisses, as if I were a horse about to be broken. The gold tooth flashes from between his lips.

“What the hell?” I say to the boss in English.

He opens the door, turns back to me, and shrugs. “It’s how things are done. Your friends have suffered for their offense. Isn’t it fitting that you suffer a little as well?”

“You can’t just offer me to him!” I swat away Pardon Me’s hand.

“You’ll survive,” the boss man says. “In this country, we’ve been doing it for decades. Who knows? Perhaps you’ll even grow stronger.”

The iron door shuts with a clang.

Pardon Me Mother steps toward me. “Vaya.” He undoes the buckle of his belt and slips it out through the loops of his pants. “You can relax, or we can do this the hard way. Your decision.”

The sight of him physically sickens me. The door is only a few meters away, on the room’s far side. With both hands, I push him in the sternum and let out a groan. He’s more solid than I expected. My shove doesn’t move him an inch. I step high and try to run around him instead.

Then the blow. The belt is wrapped around his hand. I hear the sound before I feel anything. It’s a crack like an old tree falling—the sound of something strong giving way. The taste of sweaty leather fills the inside of my mouth, followed by the mineral warmth of blood.

Finally, there’s the pain. It’s like a foreign thing along my lips and teeth, under my gums, my skin. My vision goes grainy, then fades to black. In my former life, this would be the part where they’d blow the whistle, when everybody would take a step back and the grown-ups would come onto the court. But that life is thousands of miles from here. My limp body bends and twists through the blackness as through a big wave after a wipeout.

With my tongue, I try to count my own teeth but can’t keep the numbers straight. When I open my eyes again, my face is down against the plastic top of the desk. My arms are bound behind me somehow—both bent so far, they feel broken. I move my hands a little and brush the low-grade leather of that same EL SALVADOR belt.

There’s an audible grunt, then a sudden gust of air against my hips. With one violent motion, my jeans are pulled down to my ankles. Pardon Me Mother steps back into my field of vision. The tattoo on his forehead still asks forgiveness, but his eyes offer no penance.

“You see.” He reaches one hand up to the tight bundle of my arms. “This would all be so much easier if you would just relax!”

He torques an end of the belt. One arm feels as if it’s about to come away at the shoulder; the other is numb from fingers to elbow. I try to resist, but that grinds my aching mouth farther into the desk. Pardon Me Mother slaps my ass with his open hand, and that feels like the only part of me that’s not about to shatter.

He lets go of my arms. I shut my eyes and open them. Now Pardon Me has his own dick in his hand. It’s crooked and uncircumcised, like a length of knotty wood or one of those blind subterranean moles. He spits into his palm twice and then rubs the saliva into the skin of his cock. I squirm with every remaining muscle but get nowhere. Even my feet are bound by the wad of denim around my ankles.

Now I can’t see him, but I feel him pull at my arms from behind.

“Get away!” I scream through a broken mouth. “Help!” I can’t tell if it’s English or Spanish or just some soup of syllables.

Pardon Me’s whole body presses me against the desk. His kneecap pushes my legs apart. I feel that crooked dick against the inside of my thigh. He puts one of his hands over my mouth. He hardly has to cover it, only to pinch and prod at the wound enough to shut me up.

Then that same hand—now wet with my own blood and spittle—is below my navel and moving lower. The tears come hard, wetting my cheek and pooling up on the plastic top of the desk. They make a puddle right in the spot where I laid that money down—which I believed would be the last sacrifice I’d have to make in this room.

“Stop! Stop!” I squirm and kick, but he has my lower body pinned against his. His palm presses into my pubic hair. Two moist fingers pry me open and make way for the ragged fingernail of a third.

“Relax,” he hisses into my ear again.

Finally, I wonder if he’s right. I cannot stop him, no matter how hard I try. Is this my punishment after all? I’ve been trying to undo fate for weeks now. I couldn’t simply accept the earthquake or the loss of my project. Even the stolen passport wouldn’t convince me to give up on the trip. Will it take being raped by a gangster to teach me that this nation and this world are indifferent to my plans? The fight drains from my limbs. I blow a hot breath out through my bloody lips. Relax. Stop fighting. Surrender.

In that very instant, the pressure on both sides of my pelvis abates.

“That’s enough, Cheecho. ¡Basta!” A different voice is in the room with us, speaking a gravelly Spanish. “Take a step back.”

Those two heavy hands come away from me. No sweaty, stinking male flesh touches mine. The sensation is so liberating, it’s as if I’ve learned to fly.

“Remove the belt,” says the same small voice.

I close my eyes as my arms roughly come unbound. To my surprise, they’re both still attached to my shoulders. Pins and needles fill the numb one.

“Pull your pants up, Chinita. I’m very bashful.”

I’m finally able to turn and see who’s come to help me. Though he hardly reaches Pardon Me’s chest, he has a death grip on his ponytail, and a small silver blade—it looks like a butter knife that’s been sharpened on both sides—held tip-first against my attacker’s windpipe. It’s Peseta.

I pull up my pants and fasten them. Pardon Me twitches and snorts, but Peseta keeps a steely grip on the hair and the knife.

“Thank you,” I manage to say.

“There’s the door, Chinita,” Peseta says. “I’d go if I were you.”

“You’re a fucking dead man, Peseta!” Pardon Me shouts. “You hear me? That’s a promise.”

I can’t help but stare at Peseta. “What will you do?” My eyes scan the room for something heavy, an object big and blunt enough to bash Pardon Me’s face in.

“Don’t worry, Chinita.” Peseta grins from behind the bigger man. “I’m just going to have a little talk with my old friend here. We have history, him and me. You run along.”

“But what … what will they do to you?”

“We’ll fucking kill him, that’s what!” Pardon Me shouts.

Peseta tightens his grip. A red dot of blood appears on Pardon Me’s neck. “These assholes have been trying to kill me with their crack rocks for ten years. Maybe they’ll have more luck with their guns and knives.”

Someone bangs on the wooden interior door to the room. Peseta has locked it from this side. “Don’t speak!” he hisses at Pardon Me.

My feet feel planted to the ground.

“Go on, Chinita!” Peseta scolds now. “There’s the door. Do this one favor for me.” He pulls hard on the other man’s ponytail. “Go!”

I nod. He’s put himself in grave danger to save me. The least I can do is allow myself to be saved.

“Thank you,” I say again, then open the iron door.

For the second night in a row, I make a desperate late-night run through the streets of La Libertad. This time, it’s much shorter, and I know exactly where I’m going.

*   *   *

The gate is open at La Posada. I’m shocked to see the Jeep parked inside again, in front of Pelo’s stupid stack of cement. In all the commotion of the last twenty-four hours, I’d forgotten that we owned the thing.

“Ben!” I scream. He comes running from over by the room. We meet halfway through the courtyard and he wraps me up inside his arms. I sob against his chest, staining his T-shirt with tears and the blood from my mouth.

“What happened to you?” he asks.

“I was at the crack house,” I say. “I got them to let you out.”

“Are you all right?”

“Barely. It got ugly.”

Ben’s face goes pale, like he’s unsure whether or not he wants to know more. His ear is swollen and still crusty with dried blood. “Let me see your mouth,” Ben says. He tugs open my mouth and grimaces. “Your lip’s split. And your gums are swollen up, but the teeth look okay.”

I’m shocked that none are missing.

Pelo walks over to join us, eating pork rinds from a bag. For a moment, the three of us stand there in relative silence, broken only by Pelo’s crunching. Our three wounds have us looking like the “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” monkeys. Or some stupider version of them that never quite learned their lessons.

“Hey, Chinita!” His mouth full, Pelo overenunciates the words, as if speaking to the locals in his poor Spanish. “What about the money?” He rubs a thumb and forefinger together. “You still have it?”

“The money?” I take a step toward him, fresh anger coursing through my veins. “The money?” I take another step, but this time I slap him across the face.

“Oww! What the fuck?” He touches his own cheek. Reddish pork-rind dust dots his chin. “It was only a question.”

“All you care about is your fucking money.” I pound my balled-up fists against his chest, my vision all blurred by rage and tears. “Do you have any clue what happened to me tonight? I nearly died because of you.” And Peseta may still die, I think, but I can’t quite bring myself to say it. “All because of you and your dumb-ass plan.”

I land one square blow to his rib cage before Ben grabs me from behind and pins my arms to my sides. Pelo shakes his head and slinks off toward Kristy’s room.

“I fucking hate you!” I follow the words with a hasty wad of spit, but it falls short of him and lands on the dirt of the courtyard.

Ben pulls me several paces away. “Easy, Malia. Easy,” he whispers into my ear. “You’re okay now. We’re all right.”

“I want to leave. I need to get out of here. Now. I don’t give a shit about our trip anymore. I just want to go.”

Ben’s restraining hold morphs into something more like a hug.

“And I want to talk to my dad. I need to see him. I want to go home.”

“Okay,” Ben says. “We can do all that. Fuck South America. We’ll go to Hawai‘i. Together. I don’t care where it is, as long as we go together.”

The moment he says that, I hug him back—as hard as I ever have. Kristy closes and locks the gate to the courtyard. Back inside the hotel, back inside Ben’s arms, I finally feel like we might indeed be all right.

“But Malia, we have to wait until morning. It’s not safe right now. You get that, don’t you?”

The idea of not running from this place, of settling in—even for just one night—is like a strong medicine that takes a second to swallow. “Yes,” I admit. “You’re right.”

“Let’s go to bed,” Ben says. “We can bail first thing.”

I nod. We start toward the bedroom.

“How’d you get the car back?” I point to the Jeep.

Ben shrugs. “The cop handed me the keys when they let us out. It was behind the station the whole time.”

Ben stops right in front of our room, takes me by each hand. “Malia, what happened to you tonight?”

I shake my head. “Could we talk about it later?”

He nods, then gives me another hug.

Before we climb into bed, I double-check the door lock and find the jar of Valium that Peseta brought to me yesterday. I place two of them on my tongue, like I’m receiving Communion and the little yellow pills might become the flesh of my ragged Savior.