Laura Restrepo - Hot Sur

Rose managed to figure out the mouse well enough to enlarge the image. The blackened and blistered skin had disfigured the features of the face, but there was no doubt that this was Bubba. The ritual had taken place in the backyard of his house. On a piece of wood nailed to the post about one quarter of the way up above the head of the figure, the initials INRI are visible.

A rush of fever bathed Rose in sweat. Sleepy Joe was alive. Not only was he alive, now he was very well informed about who was trying to kill him. Just thinking about the magnitude of the disaster that he himself had unleashed, Rose sank inside his own body. His eyes clouded over, the blood dropped from his brain, and his whole body weakened. I’m going to die, he thought, and that feeling flooded him with lethargy, a momentary sense of relief. But he did not die; he remained suspended and conscious in that intolerable moment. The extreme suffering of the dying man became an alarm that Rose felt would burst his ears. Rose sensed Bubba burning like mustard gas on every one of his nerve endings. The guilt overpowered him. Any logical thought escaped him, knowing he was responsible for the horror that occurred, and the horror to come. Blinded by stupidity, naive as a child, he had been waving a red cloth at the beast, gibing it, and now the beast responded. Rose covered his face with his hands not to see: he needed to save himself from his own anguish. But the martyrdom of Bubba had made its way inside and now took the form of others — those in line waiting their turn. That girl Violeta would be next. And María Paz. And Rose himself, although this last possibility did not bother him.

It’s the others. The girls. Because of Rose, they had been exposed, and now he needed to make a superhuman effort to think, to think well and thoroughly, and then act, trying to prevent the chain of atrocities he had set off. But how, when he couldn’t even regain control of himself? He couldn’t even get up from that chair. He could not even digest and expel that calcified being inside him that radiated with an unbearable intensity, forcing Rose to cross the limits of his own endurance. The sacrificial victim was raw, in the flesh, poisonous and contagious. And it wasn’t the wretched Bubba incarnated inside him. Now it was Cleve, crowned with thorns, stuck to the inner membrane of Rose’s eyelids, preventing him from opening them. A fog blanketed his thoughts before they could rise.

“I have to think,” he said aloud, and the phrase reached him from afar, as if an echo. “I have to think,” he said again, but he was sure he was falling asleep.

He wasn’t quite sure how he managed, but he was at the door of his chalet, holding the key in his hand. He was about to go on, but didn’t have the strength. The dogs soon sensed his presence and started going crazy, scraping the door. They wanted to go for a walk, but Rose didn’t dare. He had to warn María Paz, but wasn’t sure how. It’s my fault, he thought. That’s all he could think about, the fault he bore. What happened had happened because of him. Not just that, also what would happen. He had to prevent it, go back to Vermont right now to protect the girl. But before this, he had to face María Paz, show her the picture of the man burned, confess everything; she needed to know. But how could Rose confess something as unmentionable as his plot to murder Sleepy Joe behind her back? And to cap it off, relate to her how the murderer failed? He would have to admit his mistakes in pursuing the plot, his systematic deception, his selfish machinations, his grand stupidity, his poor old fool’s ignorance, his despicable uselessness, his pulp fiction avenger charade woefully mocked.

Sleepy Joe did not know the whereabouts of María Paz; as ardently as he searched for her to kill her, it would be a while before he found her, if he found her at all. But Violeta was a fish in a barrel within easy reach of his claws. They should be leaving for Vermont at that very moment, but Rose’s legs were leaden, his will deadened, his soul entombed. The dogs were going to destroy the door with their clawing, and Rose pushed it ajar. They stampeded out and jumped up to greet him. Then they stopped, all three at the same time, dazzled by the sheer whiteness that had blanketed the countryside. Then, slowly, they moved away, each on his own, sniffing and peeing here and there. Rose closed the door without going inside. He leaned against the wall, took in the divergent lines of the paw prints left behind in the snow as the dogs moved away from each other, then crossed.

“Sometimes you do things,” Rose tells me. “When you’re at a loss, you do funny things. I remember overhearing María Paz inside the chalet finishing in the shower. Then I heard her moving around on the creaky wooden floor. I should have gone in and faced her. And yet I walked away. I took refuge in the laundry room, practically hid between machines. I sat on the floor next to a running dryer. I still remember feeling the heat and vibration against my forearm. I thought of nothing, or only of Effexor pills. I had stopped taking them a long time ago, but at that moment I would have taken two, three, the whole bottle.”

Rose managed to emerge out of his well of anguish and return to the chalet, but there was no one there. The dog-care service left a note informing him that it had the dogs, and María Paz had left with all her ski gear. Already on the slopes? It couldn’t be; they weren’t even open yet. He went searching in the dining room and found her there, but she was having breakfast with some friends she had made, and Rose did not dare interrupt. As much of a hurry as there was, it wasn’t smart to make a fuss. Stay under the radar, and keep the police at bay. Rose decided to wait for María Paz to come out of the dining room. He would take her by the arm, and tell her what had happened, or maybe not everything, not now. Only the essentials: he would inform her that something very serious had happened and explain the details later. For the moment, they had to fly out of there. They had ten minutes to gather all their things, pay the hotel bill, and hit the road.

At the far end of the dining room, María Paz laughed with her new friends, ignorant of everything. Rose observed how she drank her orange juice, smeared butter on her bread, and brought the fork to her mouth. Suddenly she stood and walked toward the buffet. This is it, Rose thought, and prepared to move, but her friends followed her and were with her at once. María Paz served herself a bowl of granola and milk and returned to the table. This is taking way too long, thought Rose. Jesus Christ, the horrors that could unfold while this woman finished a bowl of granola. He could make better use of this time, he decided, and went looking for the concierge to ask about his dogs.

“Not to worry, sir, they’ll have them back by noon,” he was told. “Today they were taken mushing.”

“Taken what?”

“Mushing, sir.”

“Mushing?”

“It’s a sled sport, sir.”

“They make my dogs pull sleds.”

“No sir, how you can say such a thing? They go running alongside.”

While Rose was trying to find out where his dogs were, María Paz finished breakfast and left the dining room with her new friends, catching the shuttle that took them to the slopes. Rose got there just as it left and chased it in vain: the minibus moving up the road and out of sight.

Rose returned to the chalet. He was not concerned at all about his unshaven face, his putrid breath, or the fact that his pajamas were poking out from under his clothes. He just needed to switch his shoes for boots, get his wallet, car keys, identification documents, and fill their bags with their things. He bolted to the reception desk. He wanted to check out, he begged a methodical receptionist. An urgent matter had come up and it was imperative that he settled his account, he told her. “Please, miss, if you can hurry, this is urgent.” Because he didn’t cancel in advance, she charged an extra day. He paid without protest and returned the keys. He loaded the Toyota with the suitcases, stacking them in whichever way, and was about to take off when he remembered Ming’s gun. He had hidden it in the chalet, on top of one of the rafters in the ceiling. He went back to the reception desk, asked for the key, waited an eternity for it, got the gun, and then headed for the slopes lost in thought. He would pick up María Paz, do a drive-by to get the dogs, then retrace the marathon journey that got them here, but in reverse. The only difference would be that before they had the luxury of devoting five days to the trip, and now the days were numbered minutes.