"Okay."
"Shit," he said.
"I know."
"This is gonna hurt if we fall," he said.
"There's nothing sharp down there. All we can do is break bones."
"Don't land on your head, that'll be key."
"I know."
"You'll drag me out of here if I break something?" Hand asked.
"C'mon."
"Really."
"Sure."
"Good. Okay. Shit."
"Okay -"
"Man, this is like the helium," Hand said.
"What?"
"The helium. Didn't I tell you about that?"
"No. Let's go. Stop stalling."
"About Raymond and the helium and stuff?"
"No." He was maddening like this.
"We were in Senegal. I started telling you about it at one point. The day after."
"Can it wait? We should do this before our hands are too cold to grip."
"That's the point of the story."
"I know."
"No. I mean – Okay, forget it."
"On ten," I said, "we jump."
"We've wanted to do this since we were eight. You remember that?"
"That was from my roof to the tree, not tree to tree," I said. "Now shut up. Ten."
– Hand you need to do this.
"Nine."
– You fucking bastard this is for me.
"Eight," I said, my head humming. Could we get far enough across? We hadn't talked seriously about falling yet, the possibility of falling.
"Seven," I said.
– Hand: last chance.
"Six," he said.
Maybe it wasn't all that far. We felt safe.
"Five," I said.
– Hand if you jump I'll know I can leave.
"Four," he said.
It was an easy jump. It wasn't an easy jump. We were eighteen feet up and were jumping fourteen feet laterally. If we didn't hit or catch a branch to break our fall, we would break a leg or worse, for sure. Can't land on your head. I know, I know.
"Three," I said.
"Two," he said.
"One," I said. "Go."
"Now?"
"Go, Hand!"
He leapt toward me and I leapt toward him. We passed in the air. The air was black and all I saw were his eyes, his hands like huge white claws and then my own branch bisecting my vision, thrumming toward me. It hit my forearms and I fell until my hands caught it – I'd caught it! – and I stopped. My legs swung in front of me, and then back behind me, the weight straining my shoulders – but holy shit, I'd done it. I whooped. Hand whooped. I turned around and saw Hand's back to me, he too hanging by his arms, looking back at me, over his shoulder.
"Holy shit," he said.
"I know."
After a few seconds, we fell at the same time, the last twelve feet, collapsed on the loud dry forest floor.
"Oh man," Hand said.
"I know."
"I feel like I could catch anything."
"Yeah."
"I mean, any building. I could jump between any buildings. I always wanted to do that, too. How did we get to twenty-seven without ever trying that? Jumping between buildings? Everyone wants to do that."
It was not as cold on the floor, so low. My feet were bent below me, together and to the side, in a broken-looking way, but they were fine, and we were good.
Back in the car we warmed and picked sticks and leaves off our sweatshirts, out of our hair, while recounting the jump fifteen, twenty times, the best moments, the true feeling of flying while headed from one branch to the other, the incredible pull on our shoulders once we'd caught the branch, like a shark yanking our legs down from below -
"How much left? To Riga," I asked.
"About an hour."
"So the helium."
"Sure I never told you this?"
"Yes. Let's drive."
Hand pulled the car into drive and we left the forest.
"The Chilean helium thing, Raymond's story?"
"You didn't tell me," I said. "What story?"
"I thought I told you this. That last night after you fell asleep I went back to his room for the Scotch. We had a drink and he went into this long thing about his ancestors. We talked forever. I never told you any of this?"
"Shit."
"What?"
"Look."
Ahead of us, coming at us from the opposite direction, a police car fulminating. Soon it was stopped and the driver, arm out his window, was flagging us down. We stopped. The man in the passenger seat was out of the car and, in a skisuit, appeared at our window. He said something in Latvian. I lifted my hands and did a confused clown face. He barked through the window again and, guessing at his question, Hand passed me the rental car papers, which I handed through the window, with my license. He opened my door and beckoned me to follow. Hand opened his door and we were all standing. The officer, red-faced and with a blond crew-cut, motioned Hand to get back inside. He did. I followed the officer to his car, where a larger officer, also in a skisuit, sat inside.
"Too fast," the first one said.
I told him I was sorry. I was, he said, going 123 in a 90 kph zone. I almost smiled.
"Oh," I said. We'd been going 135 a few minutes earlier.
"Too fast!" he yelled. He'd become suddenly angrier.
We hadn't really figured out the relationship between kilometers and miles per hour. Now I guessed I'd been speeding.
The cop was really angry.
"You pay fine," he said.
"Okay."
He didn't say how much.
"How much?" I asked.
He took out a calculator, just like the Moroccan two days before, and pressed 4-0-0.
"You take Estonian money?" I asked.
He sighed extravagantly. He didn't take Estonian money. He said something to his partner. They seemed flummoxed, then pissed off. They argued.
"That's all I have," I said. I showed him my wallet, full of Estonian money, with some marks and pounds mixed in. He returned to the calculator and tapped it. He and his cohort spoke quickly to each other. (Ask for more! How much? Did you see that wad he had? Grab it!)
He showed me the calculator. 2-0-0. I gave him 200 kroon and he waved me away.
Back in the car, Hand was playing with the stereo.
"I have a question," he said.
"Yeah."
"Is there any country where we haven't been stopped?"
"No."
"Not one."
"Wait. Estonia."
"We've been pulled over four times in five days."
This was true.
There is a corner of the sea that is deep but not so deep that it's black. It's the blue of a blueberry, violet in its heart, though this blue allows light through its million unseeable pores. The hue is evenly painted but electric, a klieg light pushing through a gel of cyan. But invading this blue are clouds of inky purple, billowing clouds curling in small waves, and they grow from below, splitting the sea between light above and dark growing from below.
Turn it upside down and this was the sky above Riga.
What did we expect of Riga? Something more drab, with less panache. But good God, this Riga, when we plowed through its suburbs and into the core of the place, was glittery and so alive. Full of stores still lit at 7 P.M., and hotels, casinos, restaurants, people going home in big coats and tall furry hats, the huge cable buses, whatever you call those things on tracks and attached from above, full of commuters rehashing in their heads easy but punishing mistakes and wondering about God and his gifts long-withheld.
We stopped at a clothing store, resembling a Gap and staffed by the same sorts of young and indifferent women. It was closed. We knocked on the window, watching the girls fold and carry hangers from the dressing rooms. We knocked again.
"Sorry," I said, as one, a short-haired girl with the face of a British boy, cracked the door. "We really need pants. Can we just run in and get something? We'll be easy."
We assumed they spoke English and were right. She smiled and let us in, locking the door behind us. I went to the shelf of pants, found my size in some green khaki kind of pants and brought them to the counter. There was another girl there, petite with black hair. Their skin, all of them, was so pale, petal-pink.
Hand asked them to dinner. They said no. They told us to come back the next day and then they would eat with us.