Marlena told her daughter, “Walter must be getting things ready.” Esmé still wasn’t looking at her, except by accident.
“We are hurrying now,” Black Spot said. He motioned to them to make their way posthaste onto the boats. A few minutes later, the two boats were speeding across the lake, the cool breeze soothing throats that had so recently been swollen with the irritation of delays and cheroot smoke. I sat at the prow of one boat, trying to warn them to go back.
We drifted among islands of hyacinth, into one narrow inlet after another. The canal turned and twisted like a waterlogged hedge maze. After innumerable detours, the boats floated toward a makeshift ramp constructed of reeds latched together and set atop treadless truck tires.
“Are we sure this is steady?” Heidi said as she stood to climb out.
“Very safe,” Black Spot answered.
Moff sprang out first and extended his hand to help the others. In single file, they walked through a slim cut in the thick reedy banks. The air had warmed, and the mosquitoes were stirred to action by their footfalls. Hands slapped at legs, and Heidi brought out a small pump bottle of one hundred percent DEET, which everyone gratefully partook of. Vera, who had on thick-soled sandals, sprayed her feet, and unbeknownst to her, the repellent dissolved her coral nail polish, which she then smeared on her opposite foot, which she also did not notice.
A little ways in was a one-lane dirt road, where a truck bulged over the sides. “That must be at least fifty years old,” Bennie said. Two young men waved. They seemed to be acquainted with Black Spot and Salt, who walked over to them and began chatting energetically. And in fact, they did know each other, for the truck driver was Grease, Black Spot’s cousin, and the other man was Fishbones, the thin man who had piloted the longboat with the luggage the day before. My friends noted that all four men were behaving rather oddly, throwing nervous looks toward them. Ah, the travelers surmised among themselves, they were doing their best not to give away wily Walter’s Christmas surprise.
Rupert pointed to Grease, and said to Moff: “Hey, that’s the guy who asked me back there to show him my card trick. What’s he doing here?”
“Can’t be the same guy,” Moff said.
“Why not?”
“Because that guy was there, and this guy is here.”
“Well, we were there, and now we’re here.”
Rupert waved his arm back and forth in the truck driver’s direction. When Grease saw him, he waved back tentatively.
“See?” Moff said. “Not the same guy.”
Black Spot returned to the tourists. “Now we are climbing into the truck, we are going to a very special place. Up there. Very nice people.” He pointed toward the mountain.
“Cool,” Wyatt said. “I love to see how people really live.”
“Me, too,” Vera agreed. “Real life.”
“Is that where we’re having lunch?” Rupert said.
“Yes, we are fooding there,” Black Spot said. “Very special lunch we are making for you.”
My friends peered in. The truck’s sides were made of broad timber planks, and over the top was suspended a dark rubberized tarp to provide, they supposed, protection from sun and rain. Both sides of the truck bed were lined with wicker benches, dented in spots, and in the middle of the floor were two monstrous twelve-volt batteries, a funny long contraption into which one of the batteries was set, and baskets and knotted-rope slings of food supplies.
“There aren’t any seat belts,” Heidi observed.
“There aren’t any seats!” Vera grumped with a disparaging look at the low benches.
“We’re probably not going that far,” Wyatt said.
“I’m sure Bibi wouldn’t have picked something that wasn’t both interesting and safe,” Vera said. Heidi was standing at the back of the truck, and she listened intently to assess what she was getting herself into. Moff got in ahead of her, then pulled her up, appreciating the way her breasts rose and fell with a nice little jiggle. Meanwhile, Black Spot and Fishbones quickly lugged the longboats out of the water and tucked them into the brush. A moment later, there was no evidence of the boats. The two men climbed into the cab with Salt and Grease, and off the truck went, brushing past overgrown shrubs and snapping off branches that were in the way. In the truck bed, the travelers jounced and yelped over each bump. They had all grabbed on to the side slats to brace themselves. Because of the large, dark tarp, they could see only from the rear: the wake of dust, the dense green of untamed ferns and colorful flora.
About a half-mile later, the driver shifted down, and with groaning gears and churning engine, the ancient truck began a laborious winding ascent up the mountain. My friends lurched and tilted like bowling pins about to keel over. Roxanne clutched the side and stood, trying to get a shot of everyone being jostled about like cattle. She joked about the “ultra-deluxe bus” that was taking them to a “Christmas surprise.”
Wendy shouted back with her own commentary: “This better be good!”
Half an hour went by, forty-five minutes. A most curious thing should be noted here: My friends never considered that this journey might possibly be dangerous. Instead, the unorthodox truck and the difficulty and roughness of the passage further convinced them that the surprise must indeed be worth the trouble, and extremely rare, that is, unavailable to most tourists. They liked adventures off the beaten track, especially the males, all except Bennie. This was exactly what they had been hoping for, instead of endless shops and factories. With each arduous mile their expectations grew. As they shared bottles of water and candy bars, they mused over the possibilities. An ancient city buried in the jungle, the Machu Picchu of Myanmar! Or perhaps a village filled with those “giraffe-necked” women who were so famous in these parts. Or it could be a Shangri-La of such magnificence and splendor that nothing like it had ever been seen, even in the movies.
The only complaint was from Roxanne, who lamented, “I wish I could see where the hell we’re going so I could film this stuff.”
At last the truck came to an idle. The passengers stuck their heads out. The trees were much taller here, and the canopy was so dense that only thin slants of light fell in. The road continued upward to the left, but my friends saw two of the men jump from the truck’s cab and approach a mattress-thick wall of brush and tangles along the mountainside. The taller one gave a shout, and together they grasped handholds of vines, which, with a grunt, they slowly lifted. The moving vegetation revealed itself to be a gate of greenery, strands and branches of bushes, ferns, bamboo, and vines, lashed together onto a lightweight frame. This was placed all the way to the side, so that my friends, some of whom had climbed down from the truck bed, could now see an opening, a leafy archway leading to an unknown world, what seemed as fantastical to them as the entry into Alice’s Wonderland. The men in the cab gave a shout for everyone to climb back into the truck. The travelers hoisted themselves in, the truck reversed, and with a gunning of the engine, it aimed its nose toward the opening. It seemed impossible that it could fit through, but the vegetation gave way with scrapes and snaps, and the truck squeezed through the resistant portal like a newborn bursting its mother’s perineum.
They had entered a green-veined new world, a vibrant, single-hued world of wildlife that quivered and breathed. Everywhere the travelers looked, it was choked with creepers, vines, and liana hanging, winding, and snaking their way through, making it seem that the jungle ended only a few feet in front of them. It was disorienting to see so much green. The tree trunks were mossy and bedecked with epiphytes: ferns, bromeliads, and tiny pale orchids took root in the soil-rich nooks and crannies of trees. Birds called warning. Somewhere in the distance, a branch creaked with the weight of an unknown creature, possibly a monkey. With small intakes of breath, my friends registered their astonishment.
“Amazing.” “Heavenly.” “Surreal.” It was their unanimous opinion that Walter—and I, posthumously—had done a superb job in taking them to such a spectacular haven for
their Christmas gift. Lunch no doubt was in those baskets and would be served picnic style. But where was Walter, anyway?
“Where’s Walter?” Moff asked.
Black Spot pointed ahead to an opening through a web of green. “We are just going up this way.” By now, Grease and Fishbones had finished replacing the leafy gate. From here on, Black Spot said, they would walk. Walk? My friends were puzzled. What more besides this was there to see? What could be farther ahead? Well, obviously, something even better. Without questioning their new leader, they began to trudge through the tricky undergrowth, stepping where Black Spot had slashed out a path.
Bennie wiped his brow. “Walter said we’d be doing a bit of walking—talk about understatement.”
Like good little schoolchildren, they followed Black Spot into the rainforest. They did not even know his name. Yet they went blindly, willingly, going closer and closer to a tribe that had been waiting for them for more than a hundred years.
10
NO NAME PLACE
Poor Harry. He lay on a wooden chaise longue on the deck outside his newly repaired cottage. He was more peeved than worried that Marlena and the others had not yet returned. It was Christmas Day, for God’s sake, and here he was alone, mired in boredom, while they were gallivanting about like elves, getting red-nosed on Burmese beers—and, oh yes indeed, no doubt telling jokes about last night’s fire. Wherever they were, he groused, it was damn inconsiderate of them not to ring him with news of their whereabouts. Though, come to think of it, was there even telephone service in a remote resort like this?
Harry wondered whether he should ask, and I reinforced this thought with a surge of urgency. He jumped to his feet, and I applauded. Off he went to find Heinrich. But from dock to dock, he encountered only the help. “Telly-phone,” he overenunciated, and shaped his hand into the universal sign for a handset, but this received only shrugs and downcast looks of regret. His headache from last night’s binge began to throb more intensely. How in hell did he get talked into coming to a country that didn’t allow cell phones?
Back at the bungalow, so as not to be consumed with frustration and self-pity, Harry turned his attention to profit-making work. He had brought with him the rough draft of his book-in-progress, Come. Sit. Stay. It was meant to be a collection of light commentary and anecdotes on the interactions between humans and dogs, a mix of topics relating to human and canine personalities—not the sort of book he would have chosen to write, mind you. But an editor had come to him with the idea after he had won his third Emmy. There was a good market for it, she said, along with a bit of dosh—enough, he calculated, to cover the down payment on a ski chalet at Squaw Valley, and it was all his, provided he turned the manuscript in within the year. Flush with Emmy pride at the time, Harry had responded, “Easily done.” Now he judged he was insane to have agreed to such an impossible schedule. He read the notes from his editor, suggestions that she said might serve as a springboard: “What happens when you place a calm Lab with a restless person? Or an anxious border collie with a relaxed person? How about an assertive terrier with an indecisive person? Who affects whom? Could some combinations be therapeutic?”
What idiocy. The misguided dear was barking up the proverbial wrong tree. He paused to think how to set things in a proper frame of reference. . . . Perhaps something to do with personality and adaptability in different species . . . He began jotting notes: Explain the science behind that, ergo, the paleoanthropology of hominid Erectus before and now. Yes! Add the biology of species diversification—some basic Darwinian analogies to make the whole thing have an impressive foundation. Brilliant. Roxanne wasn’t the only one who knew a thing or two about Darwin. What else could he say to set himself apart from that barmpot on the other channel who also called himself an animal behaviorist?
Harry created two columns, “Humans” and “Dogs.” Under “Humans,” he wrote: “Social hierarchies & birth order issues; evolved language yielding shared social intelligence; public conscience, morals, ethics; goal-setting; the ability to discern and judge; therefore, a need for meaning.” Under “Dogs,” he put down: “Social hierarchies beginning in blind neonate stage; changeable temperament (and personality!!) in puppyhood; four-month window for hardwiring social behaviors via environment; operant learning modalities; food-motivated; seek-to-please submissive traits . . .” The columns weren’t exactly equivalent, he considered. Still, it was a bit of all right, an excellent premise: species differentiation in a social adaptability framework.
He pictured himself expounding on these points with his ideal reader—Marlena, yes, why not? He imagined her look of total adoration in listening to them, the synergy of them upon her open mind, how they would transform her, sending tingles into her heart, then ripples into her sexual organs, creating massive, massive . . . boredom . My God, this was all rubbish.
He pictured Marlena’s face once again—how unreadable and distant it had looked the night before. What bloody good was human adaptability if people weren’t willing to change? Wasn’t that why no penal system really worked to prevent crime, why people went to psychiatrists for years without any intentions of overcoming their obsessions and depressions? Humans had this extraordinary fondness for their own peccadilloes. That’s why you couldn’t change a Republican into a Democrat and vice versa, why there were so many divorces, lawsuits, and wars. Because people refused to adapt and accommodate to others even for their own good! Precisely so! When it came to their own needs, humans, and women especially, were more territorial about their bloody psyches—their so-called needs—than dogs were over their raw meaty bones.
That was the core problem with every woman he had ever loved. Oh, in the beginning, to be sure, she appeared to be amazingly flexible, telling him that it did not matter what restaurant or movie they went to. But later, once she moved in—guess what, she hated sushi, loathed it, didn’t he ever notice? And while she was always late to every engagement, she wanted him to phone if he was going to be delayed by even a minute. “What good is a fucking cell phone,” the last one fumed, “if you never turn it on?” Criminy, none of them knew anything about encouraging behavior, only about criticizing it. It was all about her, her needs, her perceptions. If she felt he was insensitive, ipso facto he was. If he argued he was not, ipse dixit, the proof was in his protesting about it. What’s more, the woman always had to come first, no matter how busy he was with his television show. Everything became a proving ground for what was most important—to her. With the last one he dated, he could not go skiing for a weekend with Moff without its becoming a “negative statement” about the relationship. Whose negative statement?
With respect to turnarounds, his ex-wife was practically a multiple personality. His kitchen, for example—as his newly bedded girlfriend, she had loved it to pieces, adored it, had openly gushed and admired it for its original 1920s fixtures, as well as that gorgeous gem of a stove that looked almost exactly like an O’Keefe & Merritt, which would have been worth thousands had it been authentic. As newly wedded wife, she began hectoring him about her kitchen, its defects and disasters. Oh no, she could not possibly be content with what she derided as “a splash of paint here and there.” She would not hear of refacing the cabinets; the kitchen had to be gutted, top to bottom. She wanted custom cabinetry, a La Cornue range with burners hot enough to weld trucks together, a butcher-block island with a pre-tarnished copper sink, a rubbed marble top that looked as if Italians had been kneading dough on it since the Renaissance. Then there was the matter of the floor. No, she did not think the 1950s linoleum floor was friendly and fun or full of interesting history. She said it looked like “rivers of barf.” “I beg your pardon,” he had said. “Barf? What sort of Americanism is that?” She went on to say she wanted the floor to be limestone tiles embedded with tiny fossilized sea creatures. He had joked, “Pray tell, what for? So they can mingle with dropped fusilli in a sea of spilled pesto sauce?” It was the wrong thing to say. Then again, everything was the wrong thing.
With the amount of money spent on the kitchen, they could have dined at Chez Panisse every night for years. And in fact, they nearly did, since the dear wife rarely cooked.
He imagined Marlena seeing his kitchen for the first time. “Charming ,” she would no doubt utter, “quite charming.” She would run her manicured fingers along the marble, wiggling her lovely arse up onto the cool counter and lying down with a come-hither look. The remodeled kitchen might have some advantages. It had had them with other women he had dated, though he had promptly discovered it was not advisable to make love on a cool, narrow counter. Perhaps it was best to imagine Marlena leaning against it, washing dishes, her backside facing him. That was nice, very nice.
Despite what had happened the night before, she was still good for sexual daydreams. His last girlfriend said it was abnormal and disgusting that he thought about sex every hour and with every woman he met. It must have been madness and too many martinis that led to his confessing that. He wouldn’t make that mistake with Marlena. No relationship needed to be that honest. Keep some of the mystery, better for romance that way. At least the divinely mature Marlena would have no issues about popping out more babies. Talk of babies killed the lovey-dovey factor. Yet with the younger lady friends, the need to replicate themselves seemed to raise its ugly head at inopportune times, usually once they had finished making love and when he was two seconds from becoming happily unconscious. This was despite the fact that he had culled only those women who said that having babies ranked well below seeing all the continents of the world. He had asked specifically: Which would you rather have, an eructing baby or a trip to Antarctica? They all opted for the ice floe. But about three months into the affair, four at the maximum, the girlfriend would tease about having a “baby version” of Harry. They each used that exact imagery. Peculiar, wasn’t it? They loved him so much they wanted to miniaturize him, then watch him grow from itsy-bitsy babyhood to handsome young man, ready to change the world.