Fortress

I woke up around 12:30 PM in a closet. Andrea snored and sweated next to me. Shirts, pants, bras, coats, luggage, shawls lay haphazardly across us – unnecessary blankets for a hot New Year’s Eve in Valparaiso, Chile. I massaged the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger, rolling sleep-crust out of the corner of one of my eyes. I flicked the crust on my duffel bag and Andrea farted. I stood up and bumped my head on something.
“Ow,” I said. Andrea muttered something incomprehensible.
“Huh?”
“It’s so hot,” she said, “I couldn’t sleep at all.”
I blinked a few times, scratched my head and shuddered involuntarily.
“Why are we in a closet, by the way?” I asked.
“It’s the only comfortable spot Stefan said was open for us to sleep. Don’t you remember? Were you really that drunk last night?”
“No – just sort of out of it, I guess.” I was actually wasted. Probably. Who knows.
I gently pushed the closet door open with my finger and stepped into the kitchen. Sunlight poured through the venetian blinds, splashing across the linoleum floor. A handful of snoring Chileans were strewn about, including Marcelo, my best Chilean friend. As I recall, he was snuggling with one of the knobby, wooden legs of the kitchen table. Upon hearing my footsteps, he yawned and stretched his body and limbs in a series of arcs, joints and bones cracking and popping. He squinted and smiled a huge, cartoonish grin and held out his hand for a hi-five, which I reached over and slapped. I heard a pair of flip-flops clip-clap-clip-clap-clip-clapping down the hallway. I looked up and saw a tall, well-proportioned, short haired girl emerged from the hall, sending a text message with little beeps from her cell phone. I didn’t remember her from the night before.
“Buenos dias,” I said. She laughed.
“Buenas tardes,” she said. Oh yeah – I guess Noon had passed. A cloud momentarily eclipsed the sun, somewhat assuaging the light in the room.
“Que haces?” I asked.
Not looking up, she replied with a maelstrom of Chilean Spanish which seemed to suggest that something was irritating her in some way or another. I shrugged, assuming the gesture to be vague and universal enough. Marcelo said something to her that was apparently hilarious, as she doubled over with laughter. She said something just as funny, which sent Marcelo into a fit of laughter. He rolled around, creaking the floorboards beneath him. She clip-clap-clip-clapped out of the kitchen and into another room. Marcelo looked up at me.
“She’s cute,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, “yeah she is.”
Marcelo was a lifesaver to Andrea and me when we first arrived in Santiago. Not only was he our first bilingual friend, but he helped find us an apartment and gave us free internet access at the Café where he worked. He also furnished our apartment with a couple of flip-n-fucks he wasn’t using. Andrea and I would pull our flip-n-fucks into the living room to use as chairs during the day, then drag them into our respective bedrooms and unfold them into beds by night. Although it was common knowledge that Marcelo had a mammoth crush on me, I always accepted it as flattery. Besides, he seemed to make it his unyielding duty to fix me up with his cute female friends, so I was never quite sure where his intentions lay.
“You should talks to her, maybe get her number,” he said.
“You mean I should talk to her,” I corrected.
“Oh, come on,” he whined, “we’re on vacation! No grammar!”
Andrea slithered through the closet door, a cigarette dangling from her lips, last night’s makeup smeared across her face.
“It got cloudy,” she said, staring at some fixed point which may or may not have existed. She shook out of it after a few seconds and looked down and formed a cartoonish grin, akin to the one Marcelo had given me a few moments earlier. “Hi Marcelo!” Marcelo reached his arms toward Andrea for a hug, which she scurried over to reciprocate. I rooted around the kitchen to find my backpack.
“What are you guys up to today?” I asked.
“I think I wanted to grab lunch,” said Marcelo.
“Right on. I’ll probably pass on lunch, though.”
“What will you do?”
“I dunno – probably walk around and check out the hills for awhile. Plus, there’s that – remember Andrea? From back in September? – that weird grey building that looks like a prison, or whatever. I’m gonna go see what that’s all about.”
“Ahh…yeah, you were obsessed with that thing,” Andrea said, plopping into a chair.
“Oh, we can come with you?” Marcelo looked at Andrea and nodded.
“No, let’s just go and get lunch, the two of us,” she said, “Sam likes to walk around by himself and listen to music for hours on-end; it’s really weird.”
She smiled at me in that sweet, understanding way that I’ve loved all ten years we’ve been friends. I gathered my things.
“I’ll send you a text later,” I said.
* * *
Clouds accumulated across the sky in layers of grey, white, and whatever limited rainbow exists between the two. I hiked an unremembered street, which was paved up a severe incline. Stray dogs patrolled the street, panting and wagging their tails, trotting mechanically down the hill. I paused to turn around and gaze at the Pacific, or at least the bay which cradles Valparaiso. The water was obscured by fog, but the color palate of paint coating the thousands and thousands of houses built up along the hill took whatever breath I had away, as it always does in Valparaiso. Downtown’s traffic purred in the distance and tugboats occasionally tooted into the valley. I checked my phone for texts. I turned to continue my climb.
About an hour walk to the enigmatic grey structure, I estimated. I plodded onward, listening to Mahogany, some band from Brooklyn that was influenced by Bach and the Cocteau Twins, apparently. Good hill-climbing music, I suppose. A soccer ball rolled in front of me. I looked around and saw two kids running toward the ball and then slowing down. I stopped the ball with my foot, turned toward the kids, set my aim, and corner-kicked it to the younger kid, or maybe just shorter kid, who had begun waving his arms and hopping up and down. The ball flew over to him and he head-butted it to his left and chased after it. His friend skipped over to him and dispensed orders or advice, from what I gathered from his tone. I carried on up the hill.
Two or three blocks passed. Smoke rose from a grill across the street, surrounded by three surly men, peppering meat and jostling one another, swilling beer and laughing. They stared for a moment at the lanky gringo climbing their street. I quickly looked away. A load of clothes was hanging on a clothesline on my side of the street, blowing softly in the wind. I continued to climb. Houses became more and more scarce and dilapidated. More and more people stared, children leaning against them, asking questions. The grey building, as it came into focus, appeared to be substantially fortified. I recall a barbed-wire fence coming into view, but maybe I just assumed it was a barbed-wire fence. The clouds seemed to have no intention of letting the sunlight penetrate. I heard a gunshot. Or perhaps just imagined it. The pavement turned to dirt and the houses started to taper off, trees cropping up in lieu of residence. I turned around once again to face the tiny city below me. The purr of city traffic was now a mere hum, competing with the wind for volume. The boats were docked and the colorful houses became obscured by the grey roofs which topped them. I looked to my left. A crude set of soccer goals, constructed of crooked branches, faced each other at close proximity. My phone vibrated. I glanced back up at the fortress, now shrouded in fog and mist. I turned around and headed back down the hill, checking my phone. It was Andrea, telling me that our friend Carol had arrived.
* * *
Marcelo, Carol, and Andrea leaned against a ledge by the beach as I approached them. They smiled and pushed off the ledge one by one, so we could hug and dispense the customary Chilean cheek-kiss.
Carol was our other bilingual friend, though she typically got irritated with Andrea and me when we spoke English. Dark, round, with Mapuchi bone-structure, Carol was quite beautiful and exotic-looking. Too bad she has a girlfriend, I would often remind myself.
As the four of us stood around, chatting and gesturing and igniting cigarettes, a wave of sunlight suddenly washed over Valparaiso. Beams of light blasted through the clouds which had been lurking above the city during the afternoon.
“Que bonita,” I heard a woman say, as she walked by us. Her children skipped and cheered behind her. The city’s collective spirit seemed to revive all at once – the people around us began talking more, we all smiled, our conversation seemed to become more interesting, and we all decided to celebrate by picking up some alcohol at a grocer’s, sit on the rocky beach and start getting drunk. Andrea and I split a six-pack of Escudo, Chile’s Budweiser (or Coors, I guess) while I bought a bottle of mango-infused pisco for myself. Marcelo and Carol bought several six-packs of Escudo, as well as a few bottles of wine.
We crossed over large chunks of rocks – practically boulders – looking around for the perfect spot. Although we didn’t manage to find rocks which would perfectly accommodate each of our chiropractic needs, whatever those were, we found a nice spot a few yards from the water. The clouds were practically non-existent now, as though the sun had burnt them away as it began its descent toward the west. Further down the crescent of the shore were some stone ruins, which must have at one point been a dock. They were covered in massive, brown sea lions, some flopping around on one another, others sunbathing. Andrea and Carol were laughing behind Marcelo and me, tossing small stones into the water. Marcelo and I marveled aloud at how pleasant the day was turning out to be. I broke the mango pisco’s seal with a small burst of satisfying little snaps, flicked the cap into a tiny cavern in the rocks, and brought the bottle to my lips.
“I love Valparaiso,” said Marcelo.
“We came here our second week in Chile,” I said, “and we’ve been planning on returning ever since. We’ve just had so much work lately.”
“How are your class going?”
I resisted the temptation to correct him, which was sort of ironic, since we were talking about the English classes Andrea and I taught, and we always correct on the spot in the classroom, but hey – we were on vacation.
“Not bad – sometimes it can be difficult to make business English fun and exciting, but my students are all really cool. Well, with the exception of Pablo; he sorta sucks.”
I continued to take sips from the bottle of mango pisco, shuddering with each large gulp, feeling that weird dichotomy of warmth and poison that alcohol provides. Children skipped across the rocks, stray dogs travelled in packs, smiling and wagging their tails, and Marcelo reclined on his rock. Andrea called me over. I leaned my bottle against Marcelo, telling him to help himself, and I took a few giant, awkward steps over the massive sea rocks and perched next to Andrea. We mused about how pleasant the afternoon had turned out, just as Marcelo and I had done. We talked about the first time we arrived, when we were only hanging out with English-speakers and how much progress we had made.
“Well,” I said, “we are still hanging out with friends who speak English. So I don’t know how much progress we’ve really made.”
“True, true,” said Andrea, laughing. “But still – we don’t speak that much English around them.”
“We don’t really have to,” I said, “it’s weird to think that we live in Chile, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” she said, “I don’t even think about it anymore. We’re just sort of…here.”
Marcelo and Carol crawled over some rocks to join us. We clanked our beer cans, wine bottles, and pisco bottle together in a weird, somewhat discordant clank, proclaiming “Salud.” The sky began to turn orange, painting the incoming clouds pink and purple.
* * *
Being substantially drunk at this point, I could hardly distinguish one person from the other, aside from those who I arrived with, so to pass a few seconds’ time I checked my phone for text messages and didn’t have any and I slid my phone into my back pocket and staggered around from room to room, looking for a cute Chilean girl to hopefully ring in the new year with, but Calina, the girl with the flip-flops who I saw earlier in the morning – the main girl I was after, I had decided at some point in the last few minutes – was engaged with dinner preparations in the kitchen, talking to what seemed like as many as six people at once, mostly guys, so I wrote her off for the time being since I didn’t really have any sort of flirtatious gambit up my sleeve and I turned around to walk through the hallway, brushing against a wall as I walked and I passed by Stefan, the curious looking Chilean guy with a mullet and a thick, almost Cro-Magnon eyebrow who told Andrea and me to sleep in the kitchen closet the night before and I managed an “hola,” and he looked sheepishly away from me, smiling and chuckling a little – I think I had talked briefly about Chilean hip-hop with him the night before, so I wondered if I had said something stupid or weird, but quickly dismissed the thought and peeked inside what I assumed was a bedroom, where Marcelo and Carol were laughing loudly, thoroughly drunk, snapping pictures of everything in sight, including a prominent poster of Michelle Bachelet, Chile’s president, which sat proudly in the middle of the wall, the words “Estoy Contigo” beneath her and I thought about saying hi to them, but they seemed to be busy having a good time and I didn’t want to cut into their fun, exotic Latin American energy or anything, and besides, I hadn’t seen Andrea for awhile and I needed some gringo solidarity, so I stepped outside the house and onto the porch, and although Andrea wasn’t there, I got distracted by the hilly streets, which were filled with packs of people singing, laughing, shouting, jumping on each-others’ backs, screaming into the air, the dark hills covered in glowing pock-marks from grill fires, blinking with the silhouettes of people swaying and dancing around them, filling the night with an uncontrolled energy which made me sit down on the porch steps and take a drink of my wine or maybe someone else’s wine and watch the hills for an uncertain amount of time, when suddenly I saw the dark shadow of the grey fortress, which I intended to trek to earlier in the day, an enigmatic behemoth of a shadow which seemed almost like a live atomic bomb waiting to blow the city of Valparaiso into a million pieces, but the amount of beer and wine and pisco I had consumed over the course of the afternoon still brought upon me feelings of regret for not making it all the way to the fortress – hell, I thought, I could have at least made it to the no trespassing sign – whatever the translation was in Spanish – which I had decided surrounded the fortress, which became more and more foreboding the more I thought about it, though my thoughts were interrupted by a voice, followed by furniture scooting across the floor, shoes squeaking, and excited squeals – dinner was ready, so I stood up, balancing myself on the metal railing to my left, and stepped inside, holding onto my wineglass (or again, maybe somebody else’s wineglass) and I hung around the back of the hallway while people were served, waiting my turn, since I felt sort of like an outcast at the party, in the city, in Chile, and about ten minutes passed and I had about three ribs on a plate in front of me, salt and pepper sparkling in a moat of sauce surrounding them and the meal was over in what seemed like a matter of minutes, perhaps brought to an end prematurely by the sound of fireworks exploding outside, which sent people running and tripping and stomping over to whatever windows were available, the voices of the party shifting from the right speaker to the left speaker as they watched bright, fantastic lights as they popped, snapped and exploded into streams of multicolored nebulas, eliciting cheers and shrieks of marvel and wonder, not just from the Chileans and probably Andrea, who I still hadn’t seen for quite awhile, but from me, as it was a pretty spectacular display – so spectacular, in fact, that I passed out immediately afterwards on a spare bed that I knew I had to secure and I think I slept through the countdown, or maybe I just forgot it.
- - - - -
…and get hard in a hot tub even though it feels good and it’s really hard and it’s really hard to masturbate and get hard in a hot tub even though it feels good to masturbate and get hard in a hot tub even though it feels good and it’s really hard to masturbate and get hard in a hot tub even though it feels good to masturbate and get hard in a hot tub even though it feels good to masturbate and get hard in a hot tub even though it feels good and it’s really hard to masturbate and get hard in a hot tub even though it feels good to get hard and it’s really hard to get hard and it’s really hard…
- - - - -
I was half asleep and half awake when I awakened from a weird, recurring hot tub dream and I reached down to grab my penis and fire off some civilizations onto my chest when I felt stubble and an ear and I ran my fingers through his hair and my penis was flaccid as he bobbed up and down on it, sucking hard, as though he was trying to suck melted asiago cheese out of a slimy manicotti noodle and I said “What the fuck?” and pushed the man’s head. He started to push himself off me, stretching my dick with his mouth, releasing and snapping it against my leg and he tripped and fell and scampered for the door like some sort of slippery otter, sliding through the door before I could turn on the light and identify him. I reached down and felt my dick, which was covered in spit and slime. I used a sheet to wipe it off and I smelled the sheet because I always smell stuff and the guy had nasty breath, or nasty spit, or maybe my dick smelled, and I said “What the fuck!” again, though louder and more exclamatory this time around. I could hear people talking and shouting and singing in the other rooms of the house.
I took a deep breath.
I reached down and felt around for my pants, which were bunched up around my thighs, giving the revolting degenerate just enough time to suck and slip away, I figured. I pulled my pants up and realized who had been in the bedroom with his mouth around my dick. Andrea cracked the door open, letting in a houseful of chatter.
“Sam, what’s wrong,” she said over the noise, “did you yell just now?”
“Marcelo was just in here, sucking my dick while I was passed out, I shouted.” Andrea’s eyes widened and her lips formed an O, which was expanding while she turned her head to close the door. The door shut, muffling the laughter and commotion of the party and Andrea composed herself and faced me, cocking her head a little to one side.
“Sam,” she said, “are you sure it was Marcelo? There are quite a few shady people here.”
“It had to have been Mar,” I shouted, even though the door was shut and I didn’t need to speak over anyone. I was not listening to reason or alternatives; my mind was made up; my mind was still floating in a pond of pisco, beer, wine, and who knows what else. Semen, perhaps? Did he jam his cock in my open mouth? Did I snore on it, my lips flapping around the shaft like in cartoons, when Bugs Bunny falls asleep while eating a carrot? I shouted something. Probably “fuck.”
“I’m so sorry, Sam,” said Andrea. I have no idea how she managed to remain so calm. “I don’t think it was Marcelo, though. I mean, that Stefan guy was talking about how cute you were earlier. So was Pedro.”
“What the hell?” I demanded.
“Sam, I’m sure we’ll figure everything out. Let me go get Mar.”
“I swear to God, I’m gonna kill every fucking faggot in here!”
Andrea’s sympathetic countenance suddenly fell flat.
“Sam,” she said sternly. She gave me a glare of admonition. Oops. Even in my rage, I knew my choice of words was over the line – especially in front of someone I knew fought so vehemently for equal rights.
“Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “That was uncalled for.”
“Oh, Sam,” said Andrea. She wrapped her arms around me and I hugged back. At that point, Marcelo walked into the room, looking concerned.
“Guys, what happen?” he said. I pulled away from Andrea’s hug. I didn’t want her to sustain any tornado damage.
“I don’t know, Mar,” I said, looking him straight in the eye. “I was passed out. Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
“I was on the porch with Carol,” he said, “I haven’t been inside for maybe an hour.”
“You fucking liar,” I shouted, “you were in here, sucking my dick while I was passed out. I fucking saw your hair.”
Marcelo opened every pore and orifice in his face and his eyebrows drooped down with disbelief.
“What are you talking about?”
“You heard me – you’re constantly flirting with me, and…and you decided, ‘what the hell – it’s New Year’s – I’m gonna make a move on Sam.’”
I could almost feel his heart break in two.
“I didn’t do that, Sam!” he shouted, sniffling, “you’re one of my best friends! I would never do that!” He looked over at Andrea, who looked simply miserable – as though there was absolutely nothing she could possibly do to simmer me down.
“Then who did,” I said, “I mean, I woke up, felt something happening to my penis, sat up, and someone ran out of the room. I mean, Mar, you’re always flirting with me and hugging me, anyway, and it really bugs me.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Sam?” he said, “you’re drunks!”
“You mean, you’re drunk,” said Andrea, correcting him a little tactlessly.
“Why are you correct me, Andrea,” he said, “this isn’t the time! What the fuck?”
I honestly laughed a little when Andrea corrected him; I think she did too. It was a nice, albeit utterly bizarre moment of comic relief.
Carol walked in the room.
“What happened?” she asked, in English. I didn’t feel like explaining everything again. I had had enough.
“God, I don’t even care anymore!” I shouted, knocking something over and breaking it. Someone tackled me and I forget happened next.
* * *
I woke up next to Carol, who was laying across a sleeping bag, staring at the ceiling. We were in the same room. I turned and faced the ceiling. I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and turned to face Carol.
“Hey,” I said, “do you know when the next bus back to Santiago is?” Carol continued to stare at the ceiling. “Because I don’t think I’m welcome here.” She shook her head and continued to stare. I wasn’t sure which of my sentences she was responding to. Quite possibly both of them. The door opened, a crack of sunlight casting shadows across the bedroom walls. A tall Chilean guy said something in Spanish to Carol, who responded in Spanish, addressing him as Pedro. A few other voices on Carol’s side spoke as well, and got up to leave the room. Carol followed them. Pedro fixed a stare at me, unblinking. He looked like he had never been more disappointed in anything or anyone in five-hundred lifetimes. He held the door open for Carol and the others. He finally turned his glare away and left the room, leaving me in the dark.
* * *
I staggered down the street, toward the coast, the traffic, the bus station. I was dressed in a wife beater and a pair of jeans with holes in them. I left my bag at the house – all I had was a change of socks and underwear, anyway. The sun was bright and hot and I squinted so hard that it began to hurt, as though I was trying to crush the town with my eyelids. I got to an abandoned church on the corner when I heard Andrea call my name. I turned around. She was walking down the street, cigarette dangling from her lips, cocking her head a little to the left. She was holding my bag. I looked behind me and found a stoop for the two of us to fit on. I leaned against it until she reached me.
“Don’t you want your bag,” she asked.
“Eh – may as well take it, since you brought it to me. Just socks and boxer briefs, though. Thanks.”
We sat down and sighed collectively.
“How ya feeling, cap’n?” she asked. I just stared at the ground and shrugged.
“I basically got kicked out of the house for getting raped,” I said. “I honestly have no idea how I feel – I’m really not looking forward to dealing with whatever conclusion I may come to, though.”
“It’s such an ugly situation,” she said. She rested her head on my shoulder and took a drag from her cigarette, accidentally blowing smoke my face. This cheered me up a little. We both started chuckling simultaneously.
“Sorry,” she said, in-between little fits of coughing and laughter. I kissed her on the head. When the laughter subsided, I continued.
“Man, I think I really fucked things up with Marcelo,” I said. Andrea nodded and took another drag from her cigarette. “Damn.”
“I don’t blame you for thinking it was him, though,” she said, “I mean, I’m sure he’ll come to understand that in time. But you’d better stay away from him for awhile; you really did hurt his feelings.”
I buried my face in my hands and pulled the skin that covered my cheekbones.
“I believe you though, Sam,” she said, “I don’t think you’re lying about what happened. I just don’t think it was Marcelo.”
I sat up and placed my hands on my knees.
“So that’s what they’re saying?” I said, “that I made it all up?”
Andrea looked down and cracked one of those half-smiles that isn’t really a smile, but an affirmation. I closed my eyes and shook my head. I mean, was it really just a dream? Did I really make this up, strong as my convictions are that this really did happen to me?
“I believe you,” I heard Andrea say again.
I stood up suddenly, almost falling, and sat back down.
“Thanks Andrea,” I said.
* * *
I sat on a bench in some park downtown, an unopened bottle of mango pisco lodged into the crotch of my jeans; some food/liquor mart happened to be open, even though it was New Year’s Day. I listened to Teenage Fanclub on my headphones. I watched children chasing birds around. The trees in the park were tall and green. A group of four or five punk rockers sat in the grass in a little half circle, singing some song that sounded a lot like Teenage Fanclub. I had the volume up really high, though. The next bus to Santiago was at 8:00 in the evening. It was 11:00 AM. I closed my fist over the thick pisco cap when I felt my phone vibrate against my thigh in my left pant-pocket. I squirmed and popped it out with my thumb. It was Andrea.
* * *
I nodded on the front porch as Andrea adumbrated what was about to take place, which was essentially a trial of sorts, to find out who the culprit was, or if it was just a ghost, as the house’s residence had jokingly conjectured.
“I’m not looking forward to this,” said Andrea.
“Yeah, I’m not particularly looking forward to it, either,” I confessed.
Once seated inside, people in the house started to gather in an awkward circle in the room in which the incident had taken place.
Couldn’t they have picked a better courtroom, I thought.
Once everyone was inside, Pedro began to speak. Marcelo and Carol translated for the room, as I was about to hear a set of vocab words and conjugations that I really hadn’t anticipated back in the Dallas Airport back in September, when Andrea and I thumbed through our Lonely Planet Spanish-English dictionary, waiting for our flight to Santiago. Pedro finished what he had to say.
“Okay,” said Carol said to me, “You understand that this is a very, very serious situation, right? You are essentially accusing somebody of rape. You know this, right?”
“Of course I do,” I said. Pedro spoke again.
“What time did this happen?”
“I have no idea…”
“It was about 1:30 when I walked in,” said Andrea, “So it must have happened shortly before then.” Carol checked something on her cell phone.
“Okay,” Carol said, “I was outside with Marcelo around 1:15. Because – remember Mar? We were talking to Mariela on the porch then. On my cell phone. See?” She showed him the time and he nodded.
“A, um, lot us was outside,” said Calina, the clip-clap flip-flop girl, “who wasn’t?”
“I don’t know,” said Stefan, via Marcelo.
“Were you outside with us, Stefan?” asked Pedro, via Carol.
“Si, si,” He said. He was tearing up an empty pack of cigarettes, building a little hill on the floor.
“But…you come in here for grab something?” asked Calina. I thought it was nice that she was practicing English, even in such an uncomfortable situation. I didn’t correct her.
“I came in to put on some cologne,” he said, via Marcelo. It was then that I remembered a very distinct smell.
“I do remember there being a strong smell of musk,” I said.
“Musk?” the room asked.
“Um…I don’t know. It’s a very specific type of smell, I guess. Not really sure how to translate it, though.”
“Oh…okay,” said Marcelo. He went on to explain to the room, in Spanish, what musk apparently was. Everyone nodded. Even Stefan.
“So, did you do it?” asked Pedro to Stefan in Spanish, which I understood. I thought he was jumping the gun a little quickly, but the two were apparently good friends, so perhaps he was trying to prove him innocent as quickly as possible, while still playing the fair and impartial Samaritan.
“No,” Stefan said, via Carol, “I mean, it’s an ugly situation, but I didn’t do it. I mean, something like that would ruin my life, if someone were to find out about it.”
His explanation smelled a little like musk.
“So, who did it, then?” asked Pedro in Spanish. The room sat in silence, everyone looking down, crumpling cellophane, checking for text messages which didn’t exist, and so on. Did everyone in here suck me off while I was passed out? I immediately dismissed the jocular thought and looked down myself. I glanced to my right, where Stefan was sitting. He was tearing up another empty pack of cigarettes, letting the pieces fall like snow on his hill. I wondered if he would put a fortress on top. I spoke.
“Look,” I said, “nobody is going to admit that they actually did this. I mean, like Stefan said, being labeled as a sex offender ruins a person’s life. Even if they do deserve it. And I do think you did this, Stefan.” Marcelo translated all this for me. I looked at Stefan. He nodded.
“Well,” said Pedro, who was ready to wrap this up and get this dramatic, falsely accusing gringo out of here, “I guess we’ll never know. I’m sorry this had to happen to you, Sam.”
I shrugged. Had anything really been solved? Did I acquiesce too early?
Chairs scooted, people stood up, people helped other people off the floor, and so on. Andrea, Marcelo, Carol and I started saying goodbye to everyone. I gave Marcelo a big hug and a kiss on the cheek.
“I know it wasn’t you,” I said, “I’m so sorry, amigo.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, “we go out in a few days and get cosmopolitans. Promise?”
“Most definitely.”
I even hugged Pedro, who I didn’t particularly care for.
“I’m sorry Sam,” he managed in English. We pulled away and he looked me up and down. He patted me on the back.
“We ready?” asked Andrea. She, Marcelo, Carol and I headed out the door.
Nobody said bye to Stefan.
* * *
I walked along the street and past the abandoned church, my stagger having subsided a bit after closure, if you even want to call it that. I insisted that I take the late bus, rather than chance an awkward car ride with Marcelo and Carol, even after we’d made up. I approached a crossroad, the perpendicular street paved along a severe incline. I recognized the street as one of many I had traversed the day before on my walk. Or was it? I came to a street sign and leaned against it, looking across the hilly crest of Valparaiso. An intestinal tract of streets and alleys wormed tortuously around a rainbow of painted hoses houses and sheds. The hot sun extracted the rank, disgusting smell from the beer cans, the half-eaten hot dogs, the wet brown bags cast down from the excited drunks the night before. I screwed up my face and looked up toward the top of the hill. The grey fortress sat atop the hill in clear view, without a cloud concealing it.