“Easy, easy,” he says, prying my arms off his neck. Our movements cause our perch in the trees to shake again, and we both go still. My body’s pressed against his with rain pouring down. Neither of us moves a muscle. Then, Mendoza looks up at my face, his inches from mine. “Are you all right?”
“I’m okay,” I tell him. I hurt like fuck all over, but that’ll wait for another time. “We’re in the tree. I think it cushioned our fall. We’re in the jungle. I don’t know where everyone else is. There’s a jaguar down there, though. And I’m missing the purse and the folders.” The words tumble out of me in a rush. It’s like I want to get all the bad news out of the way before he has time to process it.
His fingers push a damp lock of hair off my forehead and he studies my face with his good eye. The other is swollen shut and crusted with blood. “But you are all right?”
Was he hit on the head harder than I thought? I contemplate reminding him that I’ve lost the purse, but maybe that isn’t the smartest idea. “I’m all right,” I say again. I touch his forehead gently. “You’ve got a huge bruise, though. Are you okay?”
“Well enough,” he agrees, and tries to shift in his seat. As he does, the entire chunk of plane groans and shifts a few inches.
“We should get down from here,” I tell him, still clinging to his shirt. It’s kind of helpless and overly girly of me, but I am just so stinking glad that I’m not here alone. “But there’s jaguars down below.”
“They won’t bother us as long as we don’t seem too weak. They’re opportunistic predators,” he tells me, and glances down at my body.
“Oh,” I say. Should I try to seem less wimpy? I look and I’m still clinging to Mendoza’s front, and my breasts are pushed against his chest. And he’s looking, too. Right. I sit up slowly and glance around. “Afonso had a gun. Think we can find it?”
“If we can find Afonso,” Mendoza agrees. “Or what’s left of him.”
That sounds pretty grim. I feel bad, too, because I prefer the “what’s left of him” part of the scenario. I shouldn’t wish it on anyone, but life will be so much easier for me if Afonso is dead.
But then what happens to Rose?
I squelch the terrible thought and examine the tree. There’s a limb not too far below us. “Shall we get down and assess our surroundings?”
Little by little, we manage to get out of the wreckage and the tree. It involves a lot of crawling downward, testing branches, and clinging to tree bark. Mendoza’s steps seem to miss a lot, and I realize he’s misjudging distance because he can’t see out of his bad eye. There’s also a deep cut on my leg that I didn’t see before, and I wonder how many other “surprise” injuries we’re going to find.
By the time we make it out of the tree, my wrist is throbbing painfully and the rain has stopped. Mendoza stands next to me, and then wobbles on his feet. I grab a handful of his shirt just as he totters. “Whoa!”
He catches himself, and gives his head a little shake, as if to wake up. “I think I need to sit down.”
“You sit,” I tell him, pointing at the base of the tree. “I’m going to see if I can find the snack cart from the plane. We need to clean and bandage that eye of yours. It looks pretty bad.”
“I can help you look,” he says, ignoring my order to sit.
“No, you can’t,” I say, and tap his chest with my index finger. “If you topple over and hurt yourself, I can’t pick you up. Sit down and I’ll check the area. I won’t go far.”
Again, his mouth curves in a half smile. “You’re very bossy.”
I snort. “It’s because you’re a terrible listener. Now sit.” I wait, a stern look on my face until he throws his hands up and sits down, heavily, at the base of the tree. I point at it, then him. “If I come back and you’ve moved from this spot, I’m going to give you hell.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and rubs his head. I can hear the tease in his voice, though.
Once I’m satisfied that Mendoza won’t try to hurt himself further by “helping” me, I start picking through all the fallen debris. There are bits of unidentifiable parts everywhere, but I do manage to find a bag with some Hawaiian shirts. Under a nearby fern, there’s a battered water bottle, its contents intact. The drink cart might be somewhere around here. That’s good news, since I have no desire to venture into the jungle.
I take my findings and limp back over to Mendoza. He’s got his head tilted back against the tree, and manages a smile for me when I sit down on the ground next to him. “I saw your wrist,” he says. “It looks bad.”
“It’s not good,” I agree. “But I’m more worried about your eye.” I hold up the water bottle and give it a little shake. “This is the cleanest water for miles around, I’m thinking. We should use it to wash out your eye and bandage it.”