Ava said, “You seriously want to go to this thing?”
“No choice.”
The hotel was in the Mariscal Sucre district, within walking distance of the Colon, down the wide avenue called Amazonas, the narrow side streets leading off it full of strollers and youthful tourists on this chilly November night. No masks, no finery, no processions: the fiesta had ended. What costumed people they saw were Indians from the mountain villages, wearing shawls and beads and woolen leggings, selling woven mats and brightly colored rugs. Most of the shops on the avenue were shut, but Ava remarked that they catered to visitors who wanted jungle tours and Panama hats and leather jackets and raffia bags. The Ecuador experience.
“People like us,” Steadman said.
Seeing them approach, Nestor waved from the foyer of the restaurant. Steadman could tell from the hostility that hung over them like the stink from cold ashes that it would not be a friendly party but an absolute farewell, something verging on the funereal, but a ritual of empty gestures, as though they were burying a stranger. From the outset no one made eye contact. Manfred had already gone inside the restaurant and taken his place at the table and started drinking.
“This kind of goodbye party, we call it a despedida,” Nestor explained.
Janey's greeting to Steadman was “We didn’t reckon you’d pitch up.”
“The man of mystery,” Hack said.
Steadman had watched Hack drinking from an elegant silver pocket flask, and Steadman’s smile was his usual misleadingly mild one, his silence defiant and provocative.
“We have this feeling you think you’re too good for us,” Wood said.
“Is that the mystery?” Ava asked.
“The mystery is that he doesn’t say anything,” Hack said, and it really was like a chorus, this quartet of travelers. “The mystery is that we give a shit.”
Ava said to Nestor, “We were looking forward to your despedida.”
Steadman was still smiling. He knew that his smile was an irritant and that his silence and his gaze had worn them down.
“What is it about this guy?” Hack said, but it was less a question than an unfinished statement.
The hotel restaurant, Papagayo, had an Amazonian Indian theme — jungle foliage and macaws in cages and straw mats and even an assortment of oversized baskets that resembled the one that Manfred had sold Steadman. The floor show promised “folklore.” Nestor obviously chose the place because it was attached to the hotel where the Hacklers and Wilmutts were staying, as some sort of barter arrangement.
The couples had changed their style of clothes, the women now in white shirts and loose slacks and sandals: they were the catalogue models again, and Steadman saw with dismay that they were loyal to the Trespassing logo. The men wore new Panama hats and safari jackets and freshly pressed cargo pants. They had conquered the jungle. They seemed fashionable, calmer, relieved; they had put their humiliation and disappointment behind them. Their adventure was over. It would never be repeated. They had their stories, their photographs, and on entering the restaurant each of them wore a weary look of triumph.
When Steadman sat down at the long table, they lost their confidence and became furtive again, uneasy and resentful, for this man was still a stranger to them. He had mentioned nothing of his experience, not a single word to them in all the days they had spent together. They had never learned his name. He was like a man who had vanished in a forest and reappeared after a long time without telling anyone what he had seen.
“Thanks for sharing,” Wood had said in the van on the way back, in an attempt to provoke him.
Sarcasm was their way of showing frustration. Steadman’s silences maddened them, especially as their own talking revealed them as querulous and ashamed, like naked people in the presence of a man in a tuxedo. In their attempt to tease him they were mocking themselves and feeling foolish.
“Aguardiente,” Manfred said, sipping his glass of clear liquid.
“How about you?” Hack said to Ava. “Have a drink.”
Ava felt that she too was being tested, for every apparent expression of politeness from them was like a challenge.
At the head of the table, Nestor ordered the dishes, saying, “This a specialty of Esmeraldas,” and “The people in Riobamba make this chicken seco — like a stew but dry, seco de gallina,” and “My mother, from Guayaquil, prepares the fish like this.”
Even so, no one ate much. The altitude killed their appetite, they said. Only Manfred ate and drank with any gusto, and he had seconds. Steadman thought, He is silent only because his mouth is full of food.
While they picked at dessert (“I’d call this iced fancy a kind of macaroon,” Janey said), Nestor made a short speech, thanking them for visiting his homeland of Ecuador and for being such great travelers.
“And maybe better not say much about where we went and what things we did.” He leaned forward to confide in them. “Is secreto. Is escondido.”
And he put his finger to his lips. Conferring with the waiter, he quietly settled the bill, then scattered his business cards on the table. He backed away smiling, looking courtly, giving a little salute, leaving them to themselves and causing, by his departure, a conspicuous void that was like a reproach to the ones who remained there.
“He hates us,” Wood said. “Maybe because we didn’t tip him.”
“Because the expedition sucked,” Hack said. “Like, who would we tell?”
“Those natives in that scruffy village were cheeky monkeys,” Janey said.
Hack went on, “Nestor was all attitude. That didn’t sit well with me at all. Let’s get out of here.”
But he remained seated, drinking from a large glass, a green concoction, one of the local drinks the restaurant offered, canelazo.
“Rocket fuel,” Hack said. He was drunk, though he had always seemed that way to Steadman because of his anger and loudness, his air of reckless violence; even his posture was like a drunken threat.
Wood said to Ava and Steadman, “Want to come upstairs for a drink?”
He didn’t mean it — she knew that. His inverted politeness was not an invitation but a challenge. Out of a hostile reflex of false pleasantry, they were being asked to have a drink precisely because Wood and the others, who didn’t really want to have a drink with them, disliked them.
“Just one,” Ava said, accepting because she disliked them in turn. It was as though each were trying to expose the other. Had Ava and Steadman refused, their dislike would have been obvious.
Wood said to Manfred — more hostile ritual—“What about you?”
“Fámonos,” Manfred said, wiping his mouth.
In the elevator, Hack turned to a stranger, a man in a track suit, obviously an American hotel guest returning from jogging, and said, “You American? Us too. Bay Area. Marshall Hackler,” and stuck out his hand. “We just came from the Oriente. Lago Agrio? Aguarico River? We were staying in an Indian village. We took this psychedelic drug, no shit.”
“Ayahuasca,” Wood said. “I got ripped.”
“It was all ghastly,” Janey said.
“I’m not even supposed to be telling you this, but my friends will back me up. Anyway, the whole thing sucked.”
“No way.”
The man feigned interest, but seemed embarrassed to be at such close quarters with this loud man and this group of seemingly drunken people who filled the elevator. He pressed his lips together and said nothing more. He watched the lighted floor numbers change, and when the warning bell rang and the elevator stopped at his floor, he quickly squeezed past Hack, who was still talking.