The Fugitivities, стр. 86

the capital he checked into the Villa Gramaldi, the American youth hostel. There was a terrible smell in the bathrooms. Someone said it was something in the drains, an ineradicable stench. Jonah quickly headed out to explore the city but there was very little to see in terms of sights, and he ended up drifting through residential neighborhoods with no distinctive character. He thought of Salvador Aussaresses. He could have lived comfortably on any of these neat tree-lined blocks. In the roundabouts there were bustling traffic and signs for an upcoming concert by Shakira. She was performing at the Estadio Nacional, the stadium where Pinochet had set up his open-air detention center and tortured people in the locker rooms. As far as he could see, there were no black people anywhere at all.

He would later reflect that the end decisively came into view in the cubicles of that sad locutorio in Santiago. He had joined the others plugged in at the long bank of numbered computers with their telemarketer headsets. He gazed into the screen with placid relief, allowing random media to wash over him as he clicked. He had no real desire to check his email. What he wanted was the feeling of being online itself, the narcotic, effortless involvement in the hive mind. Soon enough, however, he had scrolled through all of the homepages for websites that he could think of. He ran a search for massages in Santiago. That led to more links for sensual massages. Cascades of glossy thumbnails, unlikely names, and numbers. He stared at them quizzically, then abjectly. He jotted a few down in his notebook. Downstairs, he used a phone booth to make the calls. The first one was so confusing and aggressive that he hung up right away. The second was a soothing, laughing voice. He asked for directions. He went back upstairs to check the address. It was in a suburb to the north of the city. He went back down and hailed a taxi that took off speeding along curvilinear avenues leading out to the north of the city. They pulled up to a corner in what appeared to be an affluent neighborhood. He rang the intercom in the entry hall of a residential tower. A young woman’s voice buzzed him in. It was not the voice he had heard on the phone. A dark-skinned woman opened the door. Venezuelan, maybe. She was in her underwear, a green G-string and a black padded bra. She had a sweet smile and very distant eyes. Her thighs were striated in cream-colored marks. She took Jonah by the hand and led him into a living room. A large black leather couch dominated the room. Facing it was a coffee table with a shallow dish full of candies and a large flat-screen television. An episode of The Cosby Show dubbed in Spanish was playing at very low volume. She sat him down on the couch and asked how long he wanted to stay. He said he wanted whatever the usual was. She chuckled and put her hand on his groin. She told him to relax. She kissed him on the cheek and told him to put the money on the coffee table. She was going to freshen up and would be back in a moment. He heard her go upstairs and close a door. The Huxtables were revolving around the studio set warbling in Spanish. He looked around the room. There was a faint breeze coming through the bars of a window full of boxed begonias. He looked at the pile of bills on the table. He heard a sink faucet running upstairs. Then he was up and making his way to the door, to the hall, down a flight of stairs. Outside, he started flat-out running. He ran as fast as he could, until he got back to the large avenue where the taxi had dropped him off. Across the avenue, there was a park with a large public fountain. He stood at the edge of the fountain facing the water. The jet of water clapped and splattered in his ears. The spray beaded in the sun and he put his hands into the fuming iridescence.

The ATM never lies. This one informed Jonah that his money was almost out. All those savings from Uncle Vernon’s years of patient, steadfast labor. God only knows what he had sacrificed to get those funds and keep them in his account for his family. What he refused himself. What daily humiliations he put up with. And Jonah had spent it carelessly, without anything to show for it. His head wasn’t right. Or was there still time to get it together, to do something righteous? To do justice to Nate’s vision. To connect with Isaac again. To make a work of art, to make something for Phineas. To make use of the impasse he had driven himself into. If he could just get around to really sitting down and sticking to it. If he could reach understanding of self.

If it wasn’t too late. At Santiago Central Terminal he boarded the international overnight route on the intercity bus. Destination: Buenos Aires. He felt hopeful. Rising and falling, up and over the Andes, the bus lurched and groaned along perilous roads. Jonah thought he heard each soul among them praying for the driver to stay awake, to see them through their voyage to the end of the night.

Somewhere in that night, as he lay balled up and shivering, the feverish questions came circling, wheeling shadows like the condors. What a random place to perish! And if it did happen, what could anyone say? What account could he give for his brief season on Earth? With everything given him, every chance and opportunity, every gift, what did he have to show for it? Nothing.

But it wasn’t true. There was one person who could say more than a good word and say it true. Arna, of course. And he could see her