21
cinnamon
THE HOSTAL SALTA SEEMED LONELY AND depressing after the Martirs left. When Alejo and Wara pulled up in front of the hostel in a white taxi, the street lamps were already gleaming upon the darkened sidewalk, though people still hustled by in both directions. Wara supposed it must be around seven o’clock—one hour after she had waved good-bye to the family who had been like her own. She had barely been able to make out each face, peering through the tinted windows of a sleek double-decker bus about to depart for Lima, Peru.
Alejo had convinced his family to follow his plan, then had them call a friend from church to bring clothes from the market and food for the trip.
All of the kids’ clothes and toys stayed behind. The faded photograph of missing Alejandro from Nazaret’s dresser. Anyone who brought things from the Martirs house could be followed back here to the hostel.
The younger kids climbed onto the bus at Sacaba with huge tears in their eyes. Silky gray rain clouds swirled across the evening sky, threatening a downpour as the entire Martir family boarded the bus that would take them away from Bolivia.
Nazaret sobbed as she hugged Wara, hesitated, and then threw herself at her brother, weeping against his chest. Alejo’s back had been towards her, but Wara had seen him put his arms around Nazaret until she pulled away.
Now, Wara stepped out of the taxi and slammed the door, facing the unlit stars of the hostel. She and Alejo, who had tried to kill her, were alone here together, and Wara had never felt so strange.
The faded pinstriped sheets and lumpy pillows were still waiting. Wara felt even more depressed as she entered their hostel room, realizing that Alejo was now her only company. Maybe she could call Nazaret on her long bus trip later, just to hear the sound of a known voice. Alejo had picked up several more cheap little prepaid cell phones from the VIVA shop, and given three to the Martirs, plus one to Wara. Wara had made one call to the Bennesons, to ask them to call her on this number as soon as there was any news about Noah. Explaining why they shouldn’t give the number to anyone else had been tricky, as was trying to tell them why she wasn’t at home in the apartment below theirs, and couldn’t come back for safety reasons.
Why am I here with Alejo, instead of letting the U.S. Embassy pick me up and take care of me until I know about Noah? After hanging up with the Bennesons, the question had bothered her.
Because the Embassy doesn’t even seem to believe what is going on, Wara realized. You don’t know them. Alejo is a Martir—and you know him.
That’s crazy! Wara had scolded herself. He’s one of them!
Alejo closed the door and turned on the light. Thirty seconds of silence filled the room, as both of them sunk down onto one of the beds, listless. Then he sighed and asked: “Do you want to go to La Paz? The search and rescue efforts are working from there, and it’s the closest major hospital.”
Wara stared at him, feeling very weary, having a hard time understanding what he was saying. Did she want to go to La Paz?
Of course! If they find Noah that would be where they would take him, the best major hospital. Noly said that Noah’s parents were going to be in La Paz, waiting.
But Wara couldn’t decide what she wanted to do at all, except that she wanted to see her best friend who she loved again. “I don’t know,” she finally said hoarsely. “What do you think?”
Alejo looked away. “They’ve been searching for two days now, and they should be done soon. Noah lived here; the funeral will—would be—in Cochabamba. I think you should stay here.”
His words hit Wara like a punch in the gut. Everything Alejo said sounded so logical, but the cold reality of making such a decision based on the fact that the funeral would be here…For a moment she couldn’t breathe. It took her a long time to collect her thoughts and say, weakly, “Ok.”
All day she had waited with bated breath, feeling that any phone call could bring news that Noah had been found, alive. But hearing Alejo say that he expected the news would be about the funeral brought Wara back down to reality with a very painful crash.
After a long while she heard Alejo say, “I told Danny downstairs that we’re checking out tonight. We need to move to another place—it won’t be that hard for the guys to show our picture to reception at all of the cheap hostels in Cochabamba, and the longer we stay in one place, the more time they have to do that.” His voice sounded tight, but calm, not as bone-weary as Wara herself felt.
“Alright,” she managed. Her eyes were closed, and she felt her breathing slow, suddenly so relaxed she felt almost one with the sagging mattress underneath her. She cleared her throat and mumbled, “Right now?”
The thought crossed Wara’s mind that if she never got up off this bed again, that would be perfectly fine.
“Yeah, right now,” Alejo said, almost sounding apologetic. “We need to get going. And besides, now’s a good time. We’ll be going under cover of darkness.”
Wara cracked open her eyes and raised one eyebrow at him. His hazel eyes were watching her, expression unreadable. “Fine,” she answered him, sliding her eyes back shut. “But I think you’ll have to pack my bag for me.”
A joke, since her belongings consisted of two changes of clothes the Martirs’ friend had brought her from the market, along with a toothbrush and shampoo.
Alexis’ shiny-reared sweat pants and wombat shirt had found their final resting place in the bathroom trash can.
Wara realized that Alejo had actually gotten up and was bringing her toothbrush from the bathroom. He made sure it was inside the brown plaid bag that had also come from the market, and then slung that and a black backpack that had been brought for him over his shoulder.
“Ready?” he asked, standing near the door. “I promise you can sleep when we get to our new place.”
Wara sighed loudly and rolled off the bed, hanging on to the side until she was steady. Her bleary gaze fell on Alejo, and she thought he didn’t look quite as threatening now that he was no longer wearing the military-style cargo pants and sweaty gray t-shirt from up on the mountain. He actually looked rather normal now in dark jeans, a hunter green hoodie, and leather tennis shoes.
“Are they going to find them?” she asked groggily, as she followed Alejo out the door into the hallway.
Without turning around, he answered carefully, “I don’t think so. I would never forgive myself.”
Their taxi sped along the highway towards Sacaba, the same route they had taken to say good-bye to the Martirs. Not even halfway to Sacaba, Alejo directed the taxi driver to veer off the highway towards a gravel-covered incline. With a sharp tap of the brakes, the driver darted in front of oncoming traffic on the highway’s opposite lane and bumped onto the more uneven road. He then punched the gas, letting the shiny, newer taxi climb up towards wherever their final destination would be.
Spanish pop music filled the clean, gray interior of the taxi, and the young driver, wearing a peach polo shirt, tapped a muscular forearm against the steering wheel to keep rhythm. This under-maintained road took them higher and higher up one of the mountains at Cochabamba’s northern edge, the bumps and ruts jolting the taxi with more violence the farther along they went. Three iridescent CDs hung from the top of the windshield on gold cords, dangling and swaying with each jolt of the car.
“A los moteles, no amigo?” The taxi driver’s eyes met Alejo’s in the rear view mirror.
“Yep,” Alejo nodded to him, mouth turning up. “El Cupido.”
Wara glanced over at Alejo sharply. They were entering an area where the dusty road was pock-marked with rocks and shaded by eucalyptus trees. On either side, brightly-painted walls rose up, sporting neon signs with names that did not appear to be those of respectable hotels: Safari, the Oasis, the “Park Drive-In”, and Lover’s Paradise.
Wara stared in disbelief, and then her eyes fell upon a towering sign of a glowing cupid, complete with heart-tipped arrows. And underneath, a giant closed gate painted the color of red hot candies with an enormous pink heart.
Oh, this was not good. Someone had once made a comment to her that in some part of Cochabamba there were “motels” where one could pay for rooms by the hour, usually for romantic encounters. The taxi that held Alejo and Wara had pulled up in front of the looming hot pink heart, which now filled the entire windshield. Their taxi driver honked twice merrily and waited, still tapping the steering wheel to the rhythm.
You have got to be kidding me, Wara gaped, then snapped her mouth shut and whirled towards Alejo.
“What is this?” she hissed.
He tried to appear unfazed, obviously having known Wara would react this way. “This is the only place where you can stay without having to show ID,” he whispered in her ear. Alejo scooted closer and slung an arm around her shoulder. “Just act natural, ok? I had to lie through my teeth to get Danny back at the Salta to let you stay without ID, and he only did it because he’s a nice guy. We’ve got these nice, dark tinted windows. That’s why I picked this taxi.”
Alejo motioned fluidly towards one of the windows, as if waiting for Wara to take in how they were invisible to prying eyes outside the taxi and stop being angry that he had brought her to a motel called El Cupido. Then he continued, squeezing her close against his side for the taxi driver’s benefit. “Probably just some kid will come out to take our money, and then we’ve got a room. If the guys from my team would come here, no one has got our ID. Plus, this place is pretty secretive. I’m sure you can imagine why”
Wara swallowed hard. She closed her eyes and counted to ten, mortally embarrassed, doing her best not to rip herself away from Alejo’s grip. Just when she thought she couldn’t stand it a moment longer, the huge wooden door of love swung open by some invisible hand and the idling taxi drove inside.
The courtyard they entered was grassy, shaded with trees, and mostly dark. Off to the right, Wara could see a long row of motel rooms, each sporting a pair of hearts painted on the red hot, numbered doors. Stifling a groan, Wara leaned her head back onto the seat back. Alejo winked at the driver, who seemed to be enjoying this.
“You’ll talk to the boy for us, right? Just slit the window so no one’ll see us.”
“No problem,” the guy in the peach shirt nodded, and with one touch of a button the cobalt glass glided a few inches lower, revealing a brief glimpse of a young boy with chocolate skin and a tattered green Hulk t-shirt.
“Si, amigo?” he said into the taxi, and Wara was shocked by the squeakiness of the kid’s voice. He couldn’t be more than ten years old. What was he doing in this kind of place?
“Ask him how much for two days,” Alejo told the driver.
“Five hundred bolivianos,” the taxi driver announced after consulting with the boy outside. He raised his eyebrows at Alejo in the mirror. Alejo pulled out a fat wad of red one hundred boliviano notes from the pocket of his jeans and peeled five off. The driver passed them through the cracked-open window and the kid counted the money, crisping the bills in his hand with the efficiency of a Los Vegas casino employee.
“Number six,” the kids squeaked, and passed something metallic and jingly into the interior of the car. Alejo snatched the item from the driver’s burly fist, and Wara saw it was a single silver key, attached to a key chain with a cherry red, puffy, lace-trimmed heart. Alejo started to hand her the key, saw her face, and then lowered his eyes, stuffing the key into the pocket of his hoodie. The driver sealed the window shut with a soft hiss, and then slowly pulled across the grass to leave them closer to the heart doors. Without a word, Alejo opened the car door for Wara, then paid the driver.
“Don’t look behind you when you get out,” Alejo breathed into her ear, and Wara’s cheeks flamed as she exited into the cool night. She gathered her composure and followed Alejo, forcing herself to stare at the double hearts ahead instead of behind her, where she thought the boy who had taken their money might still be watching in the darkness. But then again, the kid was probably already back inside watching cartoons, so used to this life that there was absolutely nothing exciting about the arrival of yet one more couple.
“See, that wasn’t too bad,” Alejo said under his breath as he jammed the silver key into the lock. The plush heart bobbed around wildly as he turned the key to Motel Room Number Six. The wooden door swung open, immersing Wara in a warm glow of cinnamon red.
The entire interior of the room was varying shades of red. Lit, neon red Christmas lights ran around the ceiling, and the walls were cherry red and white stripes, crisscrossed with painted cupids, arrows ready to fly. Shaggy, worn crimson carpet blanketed the floor, cushioning Wara’s ankles as she warily stepped inside. And in the center of the room sat a double bed, fire-truck red satin comforter shimmering under a gaudy gold headboard in the shape of a heart.
Alejo gingerly closed the door behind them and flipped on the light, causing Wara to gasp. A monstrous, cheap crystal chandelier exploded with light above them, and every diamond-shaped light bulb was red, spreading a rosy scarlet hue across everything in the room, including Alejo’s face.
“What do you think?” he had the audacity to ask with a crooked grin. Wara didn’t know whether to laugh or run out the door. “Of course you can have the bed. I’ll take that couch.”
Wara followed his gaze to the wall, where a plush couch, the color of cinnamon red hot candies, snuggled against the wall. Next to it, a wicker chair with a matching footrest was adorned with cushions to match the couch.
It was all just too much.
“I hate it!” Wara responded to his question, turning in a slow circle around the room. “I have never seen anything so ugly in my entire life. It’s…indescribable.”
“I’m sorry I had to bring you here,” Alejo said, seemingly feeling bad for her. “It’s just that it really is the best spot to hide…”
“Yeah, your reasoning does make a twisted kind of sense,” Wara sighed.
Noah would have chuckled at this, and for sure he could have written a hilarious song about this room with this Taylor guitar. Nazaret would have been shocked, then dissolved into a fit of giggles.
Wara missed both of them so much, and felt awfully, terribly alone.
Alejo hauled the wicker chair over under the room’s only window, a long, rectangular-shaped opening that ran higher than the level of their heads next to the door. He pulled aside the gauzy red curtain and peered outside, probably checking for any bad guys. The gaze he fixed on her as he stepped down from the fuzzy red couch was so like Nazaret’s that for a moment she blinked, forgetting he was really so different from the other Martirs.
“Were you really good friends with all those guys I saw up there?” she asked.
Alejo dragged the wicker chair back to the corner and sat down, considering how much he was going to tell her. Finally he said, “Most of the guys that were there at first—the guys that carried you up from the road--were only there for the weekend, for training. I wasn’t only in charge of my team, but of training all the guys in most of South America. That’s why they’re going to be so mad.” That last sentence was muttered. “Four of the guys were on my team—we were like brothers. Gabriel, Stalin, Benjamin, and Lázaro. Well, not Lázaro. He’s new. But Gabriel and Benjamin and I shared a house together in Coroico. And Stalin and I have been friends for ten years.”
The memory hit her, leaving a sour taste in her mouth: Alejo worked with Lázaro. Back when she knew him, Lázaro had said he was a Christian. Wara did not even want to think how he had reached the point of becoming a radical Muslim who was about to cut her throat.
And she really didn’t want to talk with Alejo about it.
She wandered over to the bed and collapsed on it with slumped shoulders. She felt sick and weary to the bone. Wara twisted Noah’s silver ring on her finger, her only comfort in this awful place.