imprint to reconnect, to stave off boredom, the boredom that was eating me away inside, the boredom of waiting for Carlos.
Where was he? No message? And then I thought again about Jack and Marbella and his infallible money-making scheme. I thought of the Taser in its drawer and the Glock in its spring holster inside my wardrobe.
I hoped, for Jack’s sake, that he didn’t have hypertension or arrhythmia.
10
November 1990
Green leaves glistened in the dew of the early morning. The sun rose quickly, casting its strong light into the valley and directly onto the lonely farmhouse where I was sleeping. The golden strands filtered through the gaps in the shutters, waking me slowly. I threw off the spotlessly clean single cotton sheet and sat on the side of the bed, trying to blink myself into consciousness. I wondered if Kieran and Juan Andres were awake yet. It had been so dark, so quiet that night that I had slept better than I had done since I arrived in Latin America three months before.
The flight from London to Houston, the quick change of planes to Cancun, the lost luggage and the night spent sleeping on a spare bed in a luxury hotel room shared by two black girls whose names I couldn’t remember. They’d won a four day trip to Cancun from a local Texan radio station and they were keen to help out a traveler in need, especially one with an English accent. Once the airline delivered my rucksack to me I’d headed to Merida, further inland in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, and the state capital. It was an interesting place, but the food had been terrible, and I picked up amoebic dysentery which followed me all the way to Chichen Itza. At the site of the famous ancient Mayan ruins and in the burning heat I spent at least an hour doubled-up on the ground in agony, my stomach grinding into me like razor blades.
The doctor back in Merida had offered me a questionable needle containing antibiotics, which despite my discomfort I declined. His office was dusty, hot and poorly ventilated, and I chose instead a large brown glass bottle filled with pills the size of gobstoppers and covered in green dust whose taste and texture made me want to vomit. The tiny black engravings on the label told me in Spanish that the pills were nearly two years past their sell-by date but this was better than being passed Hepatitis C intravenously or worse. When I remarked on the possibility of degradation of product through age and exposure to the sun, and that I might need to increase the dose accordingly, the doctor looked annoyed and told me that they were all he had and that I should be very grateful he was only charging me twenty American dollars for the bottle.
I took two pills three times a day, with immense difficulty. The pills were so large that they were virtually impossible to swallow, and if you split them into two, which I tried, they crumbled into fifty pieces which heightened the disgusting taste. After three days I threw the bottle away. Even dysentery was preferable to trying to propel foul-tasting dusty green tennis balls down one’s oesophagus.
The rest of Central America had been a blur. Guatemala was lovely, full of friendly Indios and smoky volcanoes, cheap Spanish schools where they taught one-to-one and breakfasts of frijoles with a healthy dose of chili, served by the matriarch of the family house at which I was staying. By the time I crossed the jungle border with Honduras my spoken Spanish was still terrible, but at least I could understand a little of what was being said to me.
My only memory of Honduras was that it was best swallowed without letting it touch the sides. The most interesting thing in the whole country was a giant lizard hanging on a wall somewhere, basking in the unbearably hot sun. Honduras was dirty and humid, the people poor and unhappy and the capital city, the unpronounceable Tegulcigalpa, felt so forbidding to a lone traveler that I did not dare venture out of my revolting hotel room for
Where was he? No message? And then I thought again about Jack and Marbella and his infallible money-making scheme. I thought of the Taser in its drawer and the Glock in its spring holster inside my wardrobe.
I hoped, for Jack’s sake, that he didn’t have hypertension or arrhythmia.
10
November 1990
Green leaves glistened in the dew of the early morning. The sun rose quickly, casting its strong light into the valley and directly onto the lonely farmhouse where I was sleeping. The golden strands filtered through the gaps in the shutters, waking me slowly. I threw off the spotlessly clean single cotton sheet and sat on the side of the bed, trying to blink myself into consciousness. I wondered if Kieran and Juan Andres were awake yet. It had been so dark, so quiet that night that I had slept better than I had done since I arrived in Latin America three months before.
The flight from London to Houston, the quick change of planes to Cancun, the lost luggage and the night spent sleeping on a spare bed in a luxury hotel room shared by two black girls whose names I couldn’t remember. They’d won a four day trip to Cancun from a local Texan radio station and they were keen to help out a traveler in need, especially one with an English accent. Once the airline delivered my rucksack to me I’d headed to Merida, further inland in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, and the state capital. It was an interesting place, but the food had been terrible, and I picked up amoebic dysentery which followed me all the way to Chichen Itza. At the site of the famous ancient Mayan ruins and in the burning heat I spent at least an hour doubled-up on the ground in agony, my stomach grinding into me like razor blades.
The doctor back in Merida had offered me a questionable needle containing antibiotics, which despite my discomfort I declined. His office was dusty, hot and poorly ventilated, and I chose instead a large brown glass bottle filled with pills the size of gobstoppers and covered in green dust whose taste and texture made me want to vomit. The tiny black engravings on the label told me in Spanish that the pills were nearly two years past their sell-by date but this was better than being passed Hepatitis C intravenously or worse. When I remarked on the possibility of degradation of product through age and exposure to the sun, and that I might need to increase the dose accordingly, the doctor looked annoyed and told me that they were all he had and that I should be very grateful he was only charging me twenty American dollars for the bottle.
I took two pills three times a day, with immense difficulty. The pills were so large that they were virtually impossible to swallow, and if you split them into two, which I tried, they crumbled into fifty pieces which heightened the disgusting taste. After three days I threw the bottle away. Even dysentery was preferable to trying to propel foul-tasting dusty green tennis balls down one’s oesophagus.
The rest of Central America had been a blur. Guatemala was lovely, full of friendly Indios and smoky volcanoes, cheap Spanish schools where they taught one-to-one and breakfasts of frijoles with a healthy dose of chili, served by the matriarch of the family house at which I was staying. By the time I crossed the jungle border with Honduras my spoken Spanish was still terrible, but at least I could understand a little of what was being said to me.
My only memory of Honduras was that it was best swallowed without letting it touch the sides. The most interesting thing in the whole country was a giant lizard hanging on a wall somewhere, basking in the unbearably hot sun. Honduras was dirty and humid, the people poor and unhappy and the capital city, the unpronounceable Tegulcigalpa, felt so forbidding to a lone traveler that I did not dare venture out of my revolting hotel room for
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