That bothered him. It was all starting to bother him, and he couldn’t understand why. The thing in his hand wiggled. He balled the hand into a fist and sat down. ‘What…’ he began, and then lost track of what he had been about to ask her. He wiped sweat from his forehead. A shadow moved across the yellow glare spilling from the hut opposite them. Rippling, undulating. Mingolla shut his eyes. ‘What, uh…’ Once again he forgot his subject, and to cover up he asked the first question that occurred to him. ‘What’s happenin’ here… between you and me? I keep thinkin’…’ He broke off. Christ, what an idiot thing to say! Too bold, man! He’d probably just blown his chances with her.
But she didn’t back away from it. ‘You mean romantically?’ she asked.
Nicely put, he thought. Very delicate. Much better than saying, You mean are we gonna fuck? Which was about the best he could have managed at the moment. ‘Right,’ he said.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘Whether you go to Panama or back to your base, we don’t seem to have much of a future. But’—her voiced softened—maybe that’s not important.’
It boosted his confidence in her that she didn’t have an assured answer. He opened his eyes. Gave his head a twitch, fighting off more ripples. So what is important?’ he asked, and was pleased with himself. Very suave, Mingolla. Let her be the one to say it. Very suave, indeed! He wished he didn’t feel so shaky.
‘Well, there’s obviously a strong attraction.’
Attraction? I guess so, he thought. I wanna rip your damn dress off!
‘And,’ she went on, ‘maybe something more. I wish we had time to find out what.’
Clever! Knocked the ball right back into his court. He tried to focus on her, had to close his eyes again, and saw Panama. White sand, cerulean water deepening to cobalt toward the horizon. ‘What’s it like in Panama?’ he asked, then kicked himself for having changed the subject.
‘I’ve never been there. Probably not much different from here.’
Maybe he should stand up, walk around. Maybe that would help. Or maybe he should just sit and talk. Talking seemed to steady him. I bet it’s beautiful, y’know,’ he said. Green mountains, jungle waterfalls. I bet there’s lots of birds. Macaws, parrots. Millions of ’em.’
‘I suppose.’
‘And hummingbirds. This friend of mine was down there once on a hummingbird-collectin’ expedition. Said there was a million kinds. I thought he was sort of a creep for bein’ into collectin’ hummingbirds. I didn’t think it was very relevant to the big issues, y’know.’
‘David?’ Apprehension in her voice.
‘You get there by boat, right?’ The smell of her perfume was more cloying than he remembered. ‘Must be a pretty big boat. I’ve never been on a real boat. Just this rowboat my uncle had. He used to take me fishin’ off Coney Island. We’d tie up to a buoy and catch all these poison fish. You shoulda seen some of ’em. Like mutants. Rainbow-colored eyes, weird growths all over. Scared the hell outta me to think about eatin’ fish.’
‘I…’
‘I used to think about the ones that musta been down there too deep for us to catch. Giant blowfish, genius sharks, whales with hands. I’d see ’em swallowin’ the boat, and…’
‘Calm down, David.’ She kneaded the back of his neck, sending a shiver down his spine.
‘I’m okay.’ He shrugged off her hand. Didn’t need shivers along with everything else. ‘Lemme hear some more about Panama.’
‘I told you… I’ve never been there.’
‘Oh, yeah. How ’bout Costa Rica? You been to Costa Rica.’ Sweat was popping out all over his body. Maybe he should go for a swim, cool off. He’d heard there were manatees in the Río Dulce. ‘Ever seen a manatee?’
‘David!’
She must have leaned close, because he could feel her heat spreading through him, and he thought maybe that would help, smothering in her heat, in heavy motion. Get rid of the shakiness. He’d take her into the hut and see just how hot she got. How hot she got, how hot she got. The words did a train rhythm inside his head. Afraid to open his eyes, he reached out blindly and pulled her to him. Bumped faces, searched for her mouth. She kissed back, and his hand slipped up to cup a breast. Jesus, she felt good! She felt like salvation, like Panama, like what you fall into when you sleep.
But then the feeling changed. Changed so slowly that he didn’t notice until it was almost complete, until her tongue was no longer quick and darting in his mouth, but squirmed as thick and stupid as a snail’s foot, and her breast was jiggling, trembling with the same wormy juice that had invaded his left hand. He pushed her off, opened his eyes. Saw crude-stitch eyelids sewn to her cheek. Lips parted, mouth full of bones. Blank face of meat. He got to his feet, pawing the air, wanting to rip away the film of ugliness that had settled over him.
‘David?’ She warped his name, gulping the syllables as if trying to swallow and talk at once.
Frog voice, devil voice.
He whirled around, caught an eyeful of black sky, spiky trees, and a pitted bone-knob moon trapped in a web of leaves and branches. Dark warty shapes of the huts, doors opening into yellow flame, with crooked shadow men inside. He blinked, shook his head. It wouldn’t vanish, it was real. What was this place? Not a village, naw, un-unh! A strangled grunt came from his throat, and he backed away, backed away from everything. She walked after him, croaking his name. Wig of black straw, shining dabs of jelly for eyes. Some of the shadow men were herky-jerked out of their doors, gathering behind her. Croaking. Long-legged, licorice-skinned demons with drumbeat hearts, faceless nothings from the dimension of sickness. They’d be on him in a flash.
‘I see you,’ he said, backing another few steps. ‘I know what you are.’
‘No one’s trying to hurt you. It’s all right, David,’ she said, and smiled.
She thought he’d buy that smile, but he wasn’t fooled. It broke over her face the way something rotten melts through the bottom of a grocery sack after it’s been in the garbage a week. Gloating smile of the Queen Devil Bitch. She had done this to him! Teamed up with the bad life in his hand and played witchy tricks on his head.
‘I see you,’ he said again, and tripped. Stumbled backward, clawing for balance, and going with his momentum, came up running toward the town.
Ferns whipped his legs, branches slashed at his face. Webs of shadow fettered the trail, and the shrilling insects had the sound of a metal edge being honed. He ran out of control, bashing into trees, nearly falling, his breath shrieking. But then he spotted a big moonstruck ceiba tree up ahead, standing on a rise overlooking the water. A grandfather tree, a white magic tree. It summoned him. He stopped beside it, sucking in air. The moonlight cooled him, drenched him in silver, and he thought he understood the purpose of the tree. Fountain of whiteness in the dark wood, shining for him alone. He made a fist of his left hand, and the thing inside it eeled frantically as if it knew what was coming. He studied the mystic grainy patterns of the bark, found their point of confluence. Steeled himself. Then he drove his fist into the trunk. Bright pain lanced up his arm, and he cried out. But he hit the trunk again, hit it a third time. He held the hand tight against his chest to muffle the pain, it was already swelling, becoming a knuckleless cartoon hand; but nothing moved inside it. The riverbank, with its shadows and rustlings, no longer menaced him, transformed into a place of ordinary lights and darks. Even the whiteness of the tree seemed diminished.
‘David!’ Debora’s voice, and not far off.