The Travel Writer (9 page)

“The Hotel Matamoros,” he said. “The great Hotel Matamoros.”

“Yes.”

“How I would love to work there one day,” he said, switching back to Spanish and bending his gaze thoughtfully downward. “You must have excellent contacts to find employment at such a hotel. Unfortunately, my cousin has little influence, and only among the restaurant staff. I have joined organizations in an attempt to make other connections, but without success. Did you know that I am a graduate of the La Paz School of Tourism? Perhaps, if it would not bother you too much, you could inquire about the possibility that I might obtain a position at the desk of the Hotel Matamoros?”

He lifted his eyes to see if, by any chance, his shot had struck the target.

“Well,” I said. “I do not know anyone who works at the desk. I only know the public relations woman.”

“Very good! The public relations department is very well respected.”

“Yes. Well. I will try, but I doubt that I’ll have success.” I shrugged helplessly, another poor, powerless chump like himself.

“Good evening,” said Antonio. He returned his gaze to the floor and paced out of the room. I thought I could hear his distrust and disappointment echoing down the hall.

* * *

I lay on the bed and stared at the immobile blades of the ceiling fan. I imagined I was a fish chasing the propellers of an enormous boat, perhaps hoping to coast in its mighty wake.

The phone rang. The impatient manager?

The nervous desk clerk.

“Señor Cain is here.”

“Who?”

“Señor Cain.”

I put my shoes back on. Kenny was in the lobby, sitting on his duffel bag, his brow pale and accordioned, cringing before the onslaught of altitude sickness.

“Place was a dump,” he said. “No bathroom.” He stood slowly, so as not to startle the pain in his skull.

“That’s how it is in Bolivia. The rooms are cheap and the bathroom’s down the hall.”

“Is
your
bathroom down the hall?”

His eyes embarked pointedly on a tour of the Gran Hotel París’s red carpet, ceiling
moldings, and gaudy glass chandelier.

“I couldn’t find mine,” he continued, “and nobody spoke English. You said they spoke English. And my head’s killing me.”

Antonio was staring at his computer screen, which I was sure was blank. I could feel his attention bobbing back and forth between us, as he tested his understanding of our English.

“Can I order one more mate de coca for my room, please?” I asked him in Spanish.

“Of course, sir.”

His eyes never left the computer screen.

Kenny followed me up.

“Aha!” he said. “Bathroom.”

He perched his butt on the edge of one of the beds and held his head in his hands, as if afraid the pain would leak out and stain the carpet. I fed him my
mate
; the other cup never came.

When he was finished Kenny placed the cup tenderly on the floor and said, “So. You got two beds. Want to split the room?”

He pried off his sneakers with his feet and eased back over the bed. I indulged a fantasy of tossing him and his New Balances out in the hall, but only for a moment. It wasn’t such a bad idea. If I got as lucky as I hoped with Pilar the next night, I’d be spending it in her apartment near the Plaza del Estudiante, and this room would be suspiciously empty the morning after, unless I had a roommate.

“Deal,” I said.

“Sweet,” said Kenny. A troubled look crept over his face. “How much is my share?”

“It’s on me,” I said, “but after tomorrow night I’m out of town and you’re out of luck.”

Before I turned off the lights I laid my good shirt over the writing desk and ironed it with the clunky iron the París proudly provided in the closet. I needed something for tomorrow evening with Pilar. Halfway through, I glanced over my shoulder to find Kenny watching me closely, like an ethnographer observing a strange tribal ritual.

* * *

When I lay down to sleep, I was surprised by a voice in the dark, almost beside me, like the voice of my own conscience. “I think about her at night,” Kenny said.

“What do you think about?” I asked. It was like being at camp.

“When she kissed me. I should’ve taken her home. I could have, maybe, if I had more experience. If I knew how to manhandle the situation right. It never works out for me.”

“It worked out better for you than it did for her.”

“She’ll be all right when she gets back home. I hope I’m the one that finds her first.”

“And if no one finds her?”

“Someone will. She’s gonna make it. If you knew her like I knew her, you’d believe me.”

Gray shadows slunk through the darkness as my eyes adjusted, until I could make out the lump of Kenny on his bed. I pushed myself up on my elbows. An implacable contempt, for Kenny and for everyone too naïve to accept the truth, had reared up within me. “You don’t think she’s alive; you’re just too stupid to imagine her dead.” I put on my high-pitched stupid-person voice. “
How can she be dead? How can anyone be dead? I’m not dead
. You feel dead, sometimes, at night, right before you drop off, when you’re blind with the dark and you can’t feel your fingers and the noise from outside the apartment is fading away—but even then you can still think, and when you stop thinking you start dreaming, and when you stop dreaming then, bam!—you’re awake again. You’re not dead.
I can’t die, so nobody can
. That’s what you say. You’re lying to yourself. Lucky you’re so easy to fool.” I let myself fall back onto the bed.

“That’s not what I think. Not even close.”

“Grow up and face facts. For all we know she’s dead, and you will be too someday, lost forever, just like she is.” I knew I was not so cynical—at least about Hilary—when I was with Pilar.

“You trying to freak me out? ’Cause forget it. I’m a twenty-six-year-old virgin. Nothing scares me.”

“What if you died without ever getting any?”

“That doesn’t scare me.”

He rolled over and refused to say anything more, either in defiance or in surrender—no wonder he was still a virgin.

We’re all doomed together, I reminded myself. Everybody gets sentenced to death eventually, and if the rest of humanity can handle the prospect of endless oblivion, so can I. But if death were truly endless, isn’t it inevitable that, every once in a long while, a flicker of consciousness would disturb our rest? Just once in a billion years? Isn’t that exactly what happened when we were born? Multiply those occasional flickers by forever, and what you have—you can’t escape it—is eternal life-in-death. Such reasoning often drags me rationally to terror at night. I sleep much better in someone’s arms; too bad I can never make anything last.

Morning pulled the tide of my emotions from depression to ecstasy; I would beware of the next mood swing, but for now I was in La Paz. “Get up, Kenny,” I said, showered and shaved and tired of watching him pollute our room with his snoring. “Today I’m showing you the city.”

He winced at the overhead light but still crawled out from under the covers. I told him to dress in several layers of clothing, including a wool sweater, and to bring gloves, a hat, and sunscreen as well. The mornings in this arid highland were frigid, but the sun was strong and the air thin, so midday brought heat and sunburn. He admitted that all he had were his jeans, a few T-shirts, a rugby shirt for special occasions, some underwear and socks, and a North Face knockoff anorak for warmth. I lent him the uglier of my two sweaters. It was as tight as a wet suit over his belly and the sleeves petered out at his forearms, but Kenny was not one to fret over looking ridiculous.

“Keep your wallet in your front pocket and your hand nearby,” I said, as he splashed water on his blotchy face and over his tufts of hair. “Ignore any squirts of mustard or saliva, taps on the back, shouts in your face, or fingers pointed to the sky. They’re all trying to draw your attention from your wallet.”

“I take the New York subway every day,” said Kenny.

“New York’s a Double-A farm team compared to La Paz,” I said, and told him about the time a middle-aged beggar staggered to her feet, shook the dust off her petticoats, and tossed me her baby, wrapped up in its cotton blanket.

“What did you do?”

“I caught it. What else could I do? Then I swore at her in English, like a lunatic, and stamped my feet. I was also leaning forward, to protect my pocket, but it must have looked like I was going to punt the kid, and the woman screamed. So I just put the bundle on the ground—gently—and backed away. At lunch I told my waiter what happened and he said she must have been from Peru. He said a Bolivian would never do such a thing.”

“You got to catch a baby,” said Kenny, as he twisted down one final recalcitrant lock. “Should I bring my Spanish book?” He had left the
Idiot’s Guide
open and facedown on his night table.

“No,” I said.

Antonio the desk clerk was already installed behind his computer, looking baggy-eyed and unshaven, as if he’d spent the night there.

“Good morning, sirs,” he said in Spanish. “Would you like me to call a taxi for you?”

“No, thank you,” I said.

“Would you like to talk to our travel agent? Perhaps you’re interested in a tour of the city.”

“We’re going to walk to the Witches’ Market,” I said, and he drummed impatiently on his keyboard. I wasn’t doing my best to inject dollars into the starving Bolivian economy.

“The Witches’ Market? Well. The Witches’ Market. What time are you planning to be there? Perhaps I can arrange for a guide. You’re going there right now? Very good!”

“What’s he saying?” said Kenny.

“He’s trying to sell us a tour.”

“Perhaps,” said Antonio, “the guide would be able to satisfy your desire to learn more about the very successful political party Condepa.”

As he watched my reaction, he smiled, self-satisfied, like a concierge handing over impossible-to-get theater tickets.

A pair of German tourists flipped their keys on the desk with a cheery “Buen día” and breezed past us and out for a day of sightseeing. The draft from the open door chilled me. Kenny started to follow them, then halted, confused, when he realized I wasn’t coming.

The clerk stood up still straighter, perhaps forgetting that I knew how short he really was.

“Condepa?” I asked.

“We at the Gran Hotel París try always to anticipate the desires of our guests.”

“You spoke to our taxi driver.”

“I have many contacts within the various transportation organizations of the city.”

His body was rigid as he spoke; his only movement was the idle tapping of one finger on the computer keyboard, the mad, unconscious twitch of an otherwise perfectly controlled professional.

“We’ll return from the Witches’ Market at noon,” I said. “Perhaps you’ll let me invite you to lunch.” Maybe that would loosen him up. Lunch is cheap in La Paz, and I could write it off as a business expense anyway.

“Thank you.”

“What did he say?” said Kenny as we left.

“He wanted us to know that he knows something,” I said, “but he’s pissed we didn’t order a city tour or at least a taxi. He takes kickbacks. You would too, if you made his salary. We’ll buy him lunch later, when his shift’s over. He might have information.”

We cruised the north side of the Plaza Murillo, waiting for a break in the gusts of traffic so we could cross.

“Where are we going?” asked Kenny. “I’m cold.”

“To the Witches’ Market.” I saw my chance and sprinted across the street. Kenny, to his credit, stayed practically in my shadow and made it easily as well. He must have grown up in the city.

“Can I buy a hat there?” he asked, when we were safely across.

“You can get one on the way. The Witches’ Market is where you buy what you need to make an offering to the Indian God, the Pachamama. Stone frogs, for example, or llama fetuses.” I paused. At this point, the newbie’s eyes should shine in delight as he contemplates his encounter with an authentically outlandish culture, but Kenny’s remained dull and waxy. “Do you know what
fetus
means?” I asked.

“Can these witches tell the future? Can they find people?” He stuffed his red, cold-swollen hands into the pockets of his jeans and hunched his shoulders.

“They aren’t 900-line witches. They’re religious, and they’re real. We’re talking about a living pre-Columbian culture in the heart of one of the biggest cities in Latin America. This is a four-star, cross-continents-to-get-to-it sight, even if nobody in the U.S. has heard of it. You’re luckier than you know.”

We crossed again to the stony plaza in front of the cathedral, across the square from the Hotel París. Shoeshine boys, their heads covered in black wool caps just a shade darker than their skin, darted toward us and retreated as I waved them away. Kenny didn’t notice; he was watching his feet move, as if he didn’t trust them to keep going forward. A woman selling lottery tickets interrupted her sales pitch to stare up at his pasty, high-altitude face.

“My mom’s Catholic,” Kenny said, once we were already safely past the cathedral. “Maybe we should’ve gone in.”

“You wouldn’t understand what they’re saying.”

“I could pray.”

“Pray on the street. Pray as we walk.” I had no affection for the cathedral. It was a dark, oppressive, pseudo-Gothic hulk, not even two hundred years old. I gave it one star in my guidebook. It’s official Caravan Guide policy always to give a capital city’s cathedral at least one star, even if it looks like a Pizza Hut.

“Maybe I could do it better if I was holding something, like a fetus or a stone frog. Are they expensive?”

“You can get a good small one for five bolivianos. Less than a dollar. For a frog, I mean. I’ve never bought a fetus.”

We turned and began our descent down a quiet side street to the avenue known as the Prado, at the bottom of the city. La Paz is shaped like an open book; the Prado is the fold. From there, we’d climb up the page a handful of blocks to Calle Linares.

“I bet a witch has all sorts of information,” said Kenny, as he gazed out across the street and then up over the urban valley, to the scrubby brown hills that shelter La Paz from the altiplano winds. “I bet we learn something today.”