BOLIVIA
by David Veronese

The yellow paint on the walls of the room was the color of rancid butter; three beds, unmade with thin rumpled covers, were arranged haphazardly about the floor. At an old oak desk, marred and scratched and stripped of paint, Fausto sat, rolling a light bulb over a mirror, mashing down what looked to me like a good quarter ounce of rock cocaine.

Although the cheap gunny curtains in the room were drawn, and only a bleak light crept in around their frazzled edges, Fausto wore spectacles with lenses black as ink. His head was shaved, his face was drawn and he was very thin, as if he hadn't properly eaten for years. But he wore a clean white shirt, freshly laundered and ironed, and he turned the bulb with utmost precision, staring intently at his hand, pulverizing the weight into a fine powder, as if he were a great scientist crushing healing salts with mortar and pestle.

Boston John sat on one of the beds laboriously reading a comic book frame by frame. His lips were parched and he had developed a serious tic in his left eye. About twice a minute he took a sip from a large bottle of Coca-Cola.

On another bed there was a girl, someone I'd never seen. She wore a long gray leather coat with scuffed brown boots and blue jeans shredded at the knees. Her vanilla-ash hair was greasy and fell upon her shoulders. In her hands she held a scruffy little kitten with a red string tied about its neck. She dragged her thumb lightly behind the kitten's ear.

"Close the door behind you, fucker," said Fausto. "This is not the public bath."

"I closed it," I said.

"Well close it again," he retorted. "Until you make sure it's closed forever."

I sat down on the vacant bed. I looked at the girl. Her face was lightly pock-marked and her skin was dry. Her eyes were sad; the corners of her mouth drooped inconsolably. But otherwise she looked like an angel dropped unaccountably from the sky.

"I'm going up to the States next week,� I said to Fausto, �to San Diego. I found a shoemaker to hollow out the heels on a pair of shoes. Can you sell me about sixty grams?"

"You're going to take it yourself?" he said. He looked up from his holy task and studied the wall. "Where's your girl-friend, the little Mexican one? I thought she does all the transport..."

"It's a long story," I said.

"It will be a long story with a short ending if you take it yourself!" he interrupted. "When they see you at the customs -they won't even bother with the search. You're guilty, man. You were born guilty. Your face says: 'Please, officer, lock me up. No jury, no judge, no trial.' He let loose with an ungodly laugh.

Boston John wetted his finger and turned a page of the comic. He pulled a gentian-colored handkerchief from the pocket of his overalls and violently blew his nose.

"You got my shit ready, yet, Fausto?" he asked. His voice was hoarse. "How about a game of chess, Little G?" he said to me. "I'll spot you two pawns and a bishop."

I shrugged my shoulders. �I�ll take a pass.� I said. Boston John played the part of a friendly rube, and was about as trustworthy as a politician. My girlfriend Evelina�s sister, Angie, claimed she saw him wander into the restaurant of the Hotel Royale and palm waitress�s tips off the table while they nursed their babies. He stuffed the kerchief back into his pocket.

"If you are in a hurry, John-man, you are in the wrong place," abruptly announced Fausto to the room in his caustic accent. "Everything is slow here. The clock is dead, buried with the skeletons and the worms." There was a crackle as the bulb rolled over a big chunk of rock. "Do you see what I mean, John? This would have stuck in your ugly nose. God asks us not to waste..."

The girl looked up, catching me staring at her. I managed not to glance aside. She smiled at me and pulled the kitten up to her cheek, then rubbed her thumb over its nose. I felt something stab at my heart.

�Evelina got busted going over at Tijuana, with the last shipment " I said. "She had her old grandmother in the car � abuelacita - doesn�t speak a word of English, looks as straight as Whistler's mother. It's worked like a charm every time before. Must be half a million wetbacks going back and forth every day... How they got a line on them...?"

"Someone must have snitched 'em out," said Boston John. "Didn't you say she had an old boyfriend in San Ysidro, didn't much care for you."

I didn�t recall sharing this intimacy with him, but confessions fell fast and cheap in the long hallways of Bolivian night. "He didn't care for me, no...�

�Shut the fuck up, John,� barked Faust. �Don�t interrupt this sad story.�

I continued: �The bail is set at fifteen grand, we had our last buck � everything - tied up in what they caught her with. Soon as she got home she was supposed to wire me down plane fare. Now I've got to go get her out."

Fausto tapped the apogee of the light bulb's dome upon the mirror to free the residue. He peeled off some flecks with his thumbnail.

Fausto�s radar was unerring. "One problem with this story, Little G.�

�What�s that?�

�I don't give credit. Do not. I give nothing. And sometimes less."

"Come on, Fausto," I said. "I'm screwed here. How many thousand dollars worth of dough I've given you this year alone? Huh?"

"No man," said Fausto. "Forget about that lady. She's burned. You're going to need a new mule... And besides, if I front you the weight, which I won't, and you're stupid enough to try to move it yourself, you're still going to need the plane fare."

"I got the plane fare," I said. "Met this rich widow from St. Louis over at the Hotel Excelsior."

"Is she ugly?" said Boston John.

"No, not really, " I said without much conviction.

"Fess up, Little G," he went on. "Bet she's ugly as a lonesome prairie dog. Hey?"

I looked at the girl to see if she would disapprove the turn that the conversation had taken. She was lying on her back holding the kitten up in the air.

"Yeah, no shit," I said. �She even makes you look like Cinderella, John-man," I said.

"What's the plane fare to San Diego?" asked Fausto. He turned around in the chair and looked at me. In the light, his skin seemed greenish, as if he were oxidized with a patina of evil.

"I got enough to fly to Mexico City. I'll have to hitchhike or something up from there."

"You got three hundred dollars then," said Fausto.

"Roundabout."

"Okay. Tell you what. That will buy you sixty grams, yeah, special deal for idiots, and pure as snow. Cut it three times, four times, with mannitol or lactose, you got the bail money."

"I give you all my money - how do I get to Mexico City?" Fausto took out his billfold and thumbed through the wads of bills encased in it. He removed a large denomination note of Bolivian pesos--and began tightly rolling it into a tube.

"What the fuck do I care, man?" he said. "I'm not a travel agent." He leaned over the mirror and vacuumed up a long draught of the powder.

"Can't you do the lady from St Louis a few more times?" said Boston John. He was on his feet and walking over to the desk, his mouth literally drooling.

"To fuck her again would be a crime against nature," I said. �But I guess I�ve got no choice.�

I walked out with the sixty grams in a black plastic bag in my pocket. Fausto made me give him the whole wad, I had about fifty pesos left. I walked down the steep hill coming from the hotel and went into a little restaurant on the Plaza de las Armas. I sat at a linoleum-covered table and ordered a banana fruit drink and a shot of rum.

I drank until my money ran out. I went into the bathroom and took out the bag. I removed the snippet of tape and unrolled it; it looked pretty vast inside, a long white dream.

I sat down on the privy and took an army knife and a bottle cap from my pocket. I put a pinch of the flake in the bottle cap and crushed it up with the blunt end of a pocketknife attachment. My left nostril was dead; I held the cap to the right one and sniffed it up.

I went back to the table. The owner asked me if I wanted another shot of rum. He had on a bright red shirt and wore a thin moustache.

"No tengo mas dinero," I said.

"Is okay, mister. One I give you free." He poured a healthy jigger from a green bottle into my glass. Then he went back to the counter and began scooping out an avocado.

When I was drunk enough to go hit on the widow, I got to my feet and started for the door. I nearly tripped over the step as I walked out - instinctively I reached for the bag of coke in my pocket. Although no harm came of it, I went for the wrong pocket. There wasn't much doubt that I didn't know what the shit I was doing.

Evening was coming. I found a few centavos at the bottom of my pocket and stopped at a vendor with a pile of newspapers at his feet. I bought a cigarette from an open pack that sat on his stand. The headlines showed a picture of Allende standing with a helmet on his head holding a machine gun, a few minutes before they murdered him.

I didn't have enough money for matches; I cadged a light from the vendor. I walked across the center of the plaza, passing an iron bench and some dogs.

"Hello."

I turned around: it was the girl from the hotel. Her coat was too long for her; the sleeves hung past the fingers. She barely moved, in the twilight she looked like a statue, her face as pale as the moon.

"Uh� hi," I said. I was having difficulty speaking, the liquor was somersaulting ahead of the coke. �What�s your name?�

�Kathy Anne,� she answered. "Where are you going, Little G?"

She spoke softly, acquiescently. A pang of loneliness echoed deep within me. Wherever lay the truth, I wanted to think she was a little girl lost in a world too big.

"I guess I have to scare up three-hundred bucks," I said.

"Is your girlfriend really in jail?"

"It's God�s own truth." I looked at her again. I tried to focus on her face; I didn't want her to whirl out of my reach.

She started crying. I didn't know what to do. She pushed her sleeve against her eyes.

"What's wrong?" I said.

"I need some coke."

"I thought you were hanging with Fausto. He�s got enough to light up the city."

She shook her head. "He's too scary. He likes to sit in the dark and not talk. He thinks everything is death.�

�I believe it.�

�His hands are always cold. One time I cut my finger with a razor blade. He..." Her voice trailed off.

"Yeah, okay," I said. "We can go to my room. You got any money?"

"No."

"How about cigarettes."

"I�ve got some."

Juan Angel, the head clerk, was at the desk of my hotel. He was looking through the ledger book; a stub of pencil was tucked behind his ear.

"Your money, she coming today, Little G?" he asked. �You owe five days now.�

"No luck, Juan Angel. I checked the post office twice." "I keep your passport then."

"Sure."

We went up the stairs to my room. I turned on the light next to the bed and opened the windows onto the balcony. Far down the street I could see a couple of Indian vendors selling coca leaves at the entrance of the market. Big green lamps were glowing above their stalls.

I sat down on the bed and scooped some of the coke out of the bag and onto a broken mirror. I crushed it up with the back of a spoon. I could hear the girl breathing.

"Do you really sleep with women for money?" She sat down on the bed, not right next to me. I didn�t take her for being easy. She was shivering a little bit.

There was a half pint of rum on the floor. I took it with my left hand and drank some down - it burned like the devil. "You don't want any, do you?"

"No."

"Yeah - I sleep with women. If they want to give me money, I don't make a fuss about it. You never did anything like that?"

She frowned and thought for a minute.

"When I was in Quito I met a doctor," she said. She licked her lips and looked down at the faded wood floor. "He was a student actually... I sprained my ankle and had to go to the hospital and he attended me. He took an x-ray and wrapped the ankle in a bandage. When he was done he took my hand and held it against his heart. He asked me if I could feel it beating."

"Did you sleep with him?"

"Yes. He was gorgeous... He was everything."

"Did you have to pay for the x-ray?"

"Of course not."

"What happened to him?"

"I don't know. I never called him back." Her voice was sad and far away. �I guess I was scared of being happy. Sometimes you don�t know when the dream is over.�

I chopped up the coke with an old razor blade with one edge taped. I divided it up into eleven lines. Neither of us had any bills. She pulled a pale blue envelope from her jeans and rolled it into a tube. I couldn�t quite read the name of the addressee, but it wasn�t Kathy Anne. We started snorting up the lines, two each, then pass the tube.

"Who gets the last one?"

"It's yours, angel. It's yours."

She looked at me wistfully. She smiled just so. And as the drug began bombarding my body, I knew that I loved her and that I loved everything, and I even knew that it wasn't precisely real, or maybe even approximately, but how could that matter, here at the end of the world? The kitten's head peaked out from a pocket of her coat.

"Where do you live?"

"Nowhere I guess. I can't go back to Fausto."

"Where's your bags?"

"They got stolen in Cochabamba. Do you know Fausto?"

"I know him, yeah. Like you know anybody - not too well."

She took the kitten out of her pocket and lay back on the bed. She put it on her belly; it rested on its side, dazed.

"What's her name?"

"Mary Magdalene," said the girl. "I found her in a garbage can in the bus station.�

�Little G?�

�Yeah.�

�Where�s that widow live?�

�Forget it. They won�t let you past the lobby.�

�My clothes?�

I hesitated. �Yeah. Something like that.�

She took a deep breath. �You�re right...Do you have any milk? Kitty�s hungry."

"I'll get some from Juan Angel."

When I got back the girl was gone. Mary Magdalene was still on the bed, faintly mewling. I gave her the little plate of milk. Tentatively she lapped at it. The bag of coke was still in my pocket so I figured the girl would be back if she couldn't find anything better, or anyone stupider.

Nighttime was very cold on the Altiplano. I closed the window over the balcony. Across the street some Indian women were scurrying toward the market, barefooted, wearing broad-rimmed hats, with babies swaddled in cloths tied around their necks. I pulled on a sweater.

I removed the covers of the false heels from the shoes. The shoemaker had polished them: it didn't look right. I spent some time bruising and scuffing the finish of the leather. Then I lined the cavities in the heels with plastic from the bag and packed in the coke. I replaced the covers, and with a jeweler's screwdriver, I fastened them with tiny screws that went through the bottom of the heels.

There were a few grams left. I cut a rectangle from a magazine cover and wrapped them up and put the package in my wallet.

I passed the desk on the way out. Juan Angel was gone. A young boy, about fifteen, was sitting at the counter. His hair was slicked back with pomade and he had fine hands with slender fingers carefully manicured. He was just sitting there looking. I nodded and went out the door.

I headed down the street. Some people were sleeping on the doorstep of a building, covered with layers of newspapers and rags. I passed a little bar. A vendor was tending anticuchos on the sidewalk on an open grill. The smell of the meat reminded me of a long-ago Christmas. The smoke burned my eyes.

I walked on for about half an hour. I wondered about the girl. Desire is a fragile virus that has no remedy.

When I got to the Plaza Uruguay, I stopped and looked up into the sky. I could see the Southern Cross and some strange clouds drifting beneath the moon.

I walked into the lobby of the Hotel Excelsior. The high ceiling was ornamented with elaborate chandeliers, the light romantically dimmed. The widow was sitting there with her back to me, on a burgundy couch with goldenrod tassels. A wild fire raged beyond in a towering stone fireplace.

Boston John was next to her, his arm around her shoulder. A martini glass stood on a perch at her elbow. Their voices were not modulated, the words slurring. Boston John told an unintelligible joke and they both laughed raucously.

I walked back outside. In the distance I thought I saw a whirl of gray. I fought the urge to run after it, I felt fool enough already.

I looked back up at the stars. The mist of clouds was attempting to define itself in concrete shape. I knew what she meant. Your dreams can never come true until you decide to wake up.

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