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Authors: Jeff Soloway
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to swell the journalistic ranks of the trip by including, in addition to the superstars, several Guilford regulars, including myself. “Who knew Ecuador had a rain forest?” Marianne Hill, contributing writer for the
Sacramento Free Press
, asked, as a gaggle of us met at the airport in Miami, and several fellow regulars laughed with her in cheery camaraderie. I adopted the policy of shunning anyone I had met before and trying to chat up the full-timers at dinner. And why not? I had been writing chapters for guidebooks for almost two years—and several times on countries or regions in South America. I permitted myself to feel, for a change, that I deserved the freebie.
The trip proved more grueling than usual. On day four, the writers were loaded in motorized canoes and pushed down the river toward a traditional indigenous settlement (though no more traditional, we were told, than the ones we had visited the day before, upriver). I, however, decided that I had earned a break from high-humidity sightseeing. I hid in my hut, until I was sure the rest were gone, and then flung open the door to step out alone into the jungle wilderness.
But it wasn’t the jungle, really; from the threshold of my hut I could see not the green mosaic of the rain forest canopy but simply a clayey, tree-stump-lined dirt path by the river. And Pilar, one of the Guilford organizers, who was sitting on a stump.
She held something between her palms and seemed to be blowing, or whispering, into it. When she heard my approaching footstep, her body jerked, and she palmed the object like a cardsharp hiding a fifth ace.
“You missed the boat,” she said disapprovingly.
“What’s that in your hand?” I said, to cover my embarrassment.
She wiped an oily string of hair out of her face (there are no hot showers in the jungle), hesitated, and then showed me a picture of a jolly grinning couple, the man hoisting a pint of Guinness, the woman a half-pint. The man was a few inches shorter, but still he had rested his hand protectively on top of the woman’s head.
“My parents,” Pilar said. “They died when I was nine. They loved Ireland best of all.”
I didn’t know Pilar well, but on previous trips I had chatted with the other Guilford Girls, the squad of junior organizers in charge of keeping the journalists fed, happy, and on time to the next restaurant or attraction. All of them were fierce and indefatigable gossips who liked nothing better than to spill secrets over a Miller Lite at the Holiday Inn bar. They told me immediately that Pilar was from Spain and that her parents had passed away when she was a kid under mysterious circumstances, though whether the circumstances were mysterious to Pilar or only to the Guilford crew was unclear. The girls’ guesses included a murder-suicide after a quarrel, an accidental killing followed by a suicide, a double suicide, and a traffic accident. Afterward—and this part Pilar later confirmed—she was shipped off to live with an aunt in Miami.
The Guilford Girls at first tried to see the proud and lonely orphan in Pilar, but they gave up quickly, as she failed to exhibit the required air of humility and despair. Still worse, the girls couldn’t see much of themselves in her, which made the puzzle of Pilar, from their perspective, ultimately worthless, however interesting on a purely intellectual level. She never accompanied them to after-work happy hours, never complained about a boyfriend, never showed the slightest interest in getting married.
All I myself had gleaned about Pilar was that she was less perky than the rest but spoke perfect Spanish, which must have been why she was kept on.
“And now you’re showing your parents the jungle,” I said.
She nodded. She was making no effort to excite me about the landscape or adventure-tourism possibilities of the area; perhaps it was her day off. I should have left her alone, but she was good-looking and sensible and at the moment exuding that
Sacramento Free Press
, asked, as a gaggle of us met at the airport in Miami, and several fellow regulars laughed with her in cheery camaraderie. I adopted the policy of shunning anyone I had met before and trying to chat up the full-timers at dinner. And why not? I had been writing chapters for guidebooks for almost two years—and several times on countries or regions in South America. I permitted myself to feel, for a change, that I deserved the freebie.
The trip proved more grueling than usual. On day four, the writers were loaded in motorized canoes and pushed down the river toward a traditional indigenous settlement (though no more traditional, we were told, than the ones we had visited the day before, upriver). I, however, decided that I had earned a break from high-humidity sightseeing. I hid in my hut, until I was sure the rest were gone, and then flung open the door to step out alone into the jungle wilderness.
But it wasn’t the jungle, really; from the threshold of my hut I could see not the green mosaic of the rain forest canopy but simply a clayey, tree-stump-lined dirt path by the river. And Pilar, one of the Guilford organizers, who was sitting on a stump.
She held something between her palms and seemed to be blowing, or whispering, into it. When she heard my approaching footstep, her body jerked, and she palmed the object like a cardsharp hiding a fifth ace.
“You missed the boat,” she said disapprovingly.
“What’s that in your hand?” I said, to cover my embarrassment.
She wiped an oily string of hair out of her face (there are no hot showers in the jungle), hesitated, and then showed me a picture of a jolly grinning couple, the man hoisting a pint of Guinness, the woman a half-pint. The man was a few inches shorter, but still he had rested his hand protectively on top of the woman’s head.
“My parents,” Pilar said. “They died when I was nine. They loved Ireland best of all.”
I didn’t know Pilar well, but on previous trips I had chatted with the other Guilford Girls, the squad of junior organizers in charge of keeping the journalists fed, happy, and on time to the next restaurant or attraction. All of them were fierce and indefatigable gossips who liked nothing better than to spill secrets over a Miller Lite at the Holiday Inn bar. They told me immediately that Pilar was from Spain and that her parents had passed away when she was a kid under mysterious circumstances, though whether the circumstances were mysterious to Pilar or only to the Guilford crew was unclear. The girls’ guesses included a murder-suicide after a quarrel, an accidental killing followed by a suicide, a double suicide, and a traffic accident. Afterward—and this part Pilar later confirmed—she was shipped off to live with an aunt in Miami.
The Guilford Girls at first tried to see the proud and lonely orphan in Pilar, but they gave up quickly, as she failed to exhibit the required air of humility and despair. Still worse, the girls couldn’t see much of themselves in her, which made the puzzle of Pilar, from their perspective, ultimately worthless, however interesting on a purely intellectual level. She never accompanied them to after-work happy hours, never complained about a boyfriend, never showed the slightest interest in getting married.
All I myself had gleaned about Pilar was that she was less perky than the rest but spoke perfect Spanish, which must have been why she was kept on.
“And now you’re showing your parents the jungle,” I said.
She nodded. She was making no effort to excite me about the landscape or adventure-tourism possibilities of the area; perhaps it was her day off. I should have left her alone, but she was good-looking and sensible and at the moment exuding that
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