He reached out and touched her. She was warm to the touch. The warm shower he thought. It was a lovely feeling, her skin warm and clean and red from the tennis-lesson sun. Did she know what she’d done to him? She’d collapsed any will he had to stay away from her.

He watched her dress as he stood, tying his tie standing in front of a big mirror. He saw behind her the trees outside, gathering themselves in the patio and letting themselves go in the breeze, the way she had when they made love. A hungry, not-much-time lovemaking at first. Afterwards, they’d ordered room service, eaten, then they’d started out again. This time she was desperately slow. She told him she wanted to see how long they could make love before they had a climax. They would stop and talk, or just stare at each other. It was harder for him; he had to let her talk him away from that moment, and she had. Until finally—in a twisting of sheets and strange music from the little clock radio—he’d reached a place he’d never ever been. And it had changed him. He wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone now.

“I wanted to disappear,” she said, looking at him as he came.

He started to wonder about her. She suddenly had a strange angry vacant pathetic look in her beautiful eyes. She’s a sex fiend, he thought. That’s it. The woman I’m in love with is a sex fiend. Okay. Fine. He remembered the Hemingway character who said there wasn’t an answer for everything. There was no answer for Beatrice. There was no answer for most things, he thought, when you really got down to it.

“I want to be like this forever. No London. No Guatemala. No anything. No anything but this. Right now. Nothing,” she said. “Just making love.”

He could see her in the mirror. Her back was still wet. She’d come and put her arms around him as he tied his tie.

“Are you in love with him?” he asked

“Why?” she said. She let go of him.

He had replayed the lovemaking. He wanted to pin her down. He wanted to get to who she was. Mother? Lover? Sex fiend? Oxford graduate? Stripper? Who the fuck was she? He wanted to stop the manic driving passion that had gripped him since the moment he’d met her, even slow it down for a minute. He realized she’d been pushing him back from really knowing her. Every time he was on the verge of getting a glimpse, she would push him back from the door. Only when they were making love did she stop defending.

Beatrice, that country, there behind the blue eyes, the country that was youthful, but distant. He wanted in. Like Cortez, he wanted to steal it all, take everything she had. Sex only the tool of his colonization.

“Because. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just trying to get my bearings. You know… in this Beatrice country I’ve parachuted into. I haven’t much to go on. You are good in bed. You are a beautiful woman. You’re from England. You went to Oxford on a scholarship. You stripped for a living because you didn’t want to become an investment banker. You married this big shot. You came here to the jungle. Now you’re fucking my brains out in this hotel room. I’m trying to catch up, that’s all,” he said.

“You have me. You have this afternoon to go on,” she said. “You can start there.”

“Does that mean I’m a fuck toy? Is that the answer? I don’t mind. I just want to know, as I believe I’m risking my life.”

She looked at him. He hadn’t meant to joke like that; it had slipped out. But they both knew it was true. They were risking their lives. “Besides, isn’t that what someone does who’s in love, get to know the beloved?” he added quickly. “I want to know you. Why won’t you talk to me about yourself without getting angry?”

“You don’t like Carlos. I can tell. You should like him. He’s a good man,” she said, ignoring his questions, turning away from him. She went and picked up her Nikes by the bathroom door. “And he loves me.” She sat on the bed and put on her shoes, looking like a teenager. Moving her hands quickly. Her shoes looked brand new.

“I was frightened by what you did on Saturday, at the lake. And now today, when you called me at the office,” he said. “It was so . . . I don’t know, I didn’t know what to make of it. I don’t know what to make of you.”

She’d ignored what she’d done at the lake. She hadn’t spoken of it again.

“You made rules and then you proceeded to break them right away. You broke them again today, this morning, when you called me at work from your house. We were supposed to meet at my apartment on Friday. That’s how we’d left it, remember?”

“The rules won’t save us,” she said. “Nothing will keep us safe. Do you understand? This is doomed. It’s a small country. You have to accept that. Anyway, I don’t care if we’re caught. I need you.” She hadn’t gotten up off the bed.

“The fact is we barely know each other,” he said.

“You know that’s not true.” Her eyes searched his. “Not true. You. . . . We know each other, people like us. The moment we saw each other, you know that’s the truth. . . . The moment I saw you with that book. I knew we were alike.”

He thought for a moment about what Katherine had said about Nineteen Eighty-Four, and about Orwell. They had discussed Orwell on the way down from the city that day. Were they—he and Beatrice—Winston and Julia from 1984? Was Guatemala’s New World Order—its maquiladora, its uncontrolled diesel spew, its secret policemen—the future? Was that waiting for everyone now? Hadn’t Winston, in fact, been a journalist? Was he, Russell, now part of the memory hole and the newspeak? Of course not, he told himself. How could he be? He was fighting for something now. It was why he’d agreed to support De La Madrid. And he was also going to steal a treasure, which might not be morally right. What was he exactly? Adventurer? Journalist? Fuck toy?

He was all those things. How could anyone be only one thing in life?

“I want you to leave Carlos,” he said. He’d finished combing his hair, and he went to the chair in the other room and picked up his cell phone.

“I can’t,” she said.

He left a few minutes later. On the way back to the city, he knew he was being followed. It was a white Toyota with two men in it. He was sure of it.

SEVENTEEN

He’d agreed to meet Katherine at a tapas bar in the zona viva. She’d called him several times since she’d come back from Chicago; seeing her number, he hadn’t picked up. He’d been avoiding her. She’d called him that morning at work and he’d answered without looking to see who it was.

“I have to see you,” she’d said. “Please.”

“All right,” he’d said.

The few tables on the front porch of the restaurant/bar in the zona viva were packed, but Russell knew the owner and had called ahead for a table. Not seeing Katherine, he sat at a table in the corner near the entrance and ordered a glass of wine. Right away young boys—glue sniffers—descended on him, selling roses. The children leaned over the low railing of the restaurant’s deck, the kids’ pale faces disturbing. Russell bought some flowers and laid them on the table. He doubted the boys would ever learn to read, but they would hear about Harry Potter and dream of other children’s lives.

Two boys stared at him. He gave them a ten Q note, hoping they would leave him alone. One of the boys grabbed it before the other could. The smaller boy with no T shirt, just an open wool jacket, stared at Russell for a moment, stunned at the size of the bill, then turned to grab it away from his friend. The boy with the money was already halfway across the empty street by the time the other one realized what had happened.

The running boy dropped his roses as he made for an alley, the scattered red flowers ominous and beautiful in the street light.