That Saturday afternoon, Katherine Barkley picked him up in her UN-issued Jeep, and they drove past the groomed concrete collection of shopping centers on the way out of the capital to the party. A red diesel-glow hung over a free trader’s dream of a skyline, bristling with gaudy bank buildings and Big-Business towers. Guatemala City was the biggest city in Central America. The diesel-smoke skyline was the carcinogenic byproduct of secondhand American school buses that had been shipped here, and were ubiquitous. Brightly painted, the “chicken buses,” as the tourists called them, spewed a rich black sulphur exhaust one could literally taste.

They passed the American-style strip-malls adorned with corporate logos: Papa John’s, Nike, IBM, Gap, PriceSmart. HBO posters hung neatly at every bus stop, telling passengers to enjoy Band Of Brothers. “War the way it should be,” Katherine joked.

They passed a huge green maquiladora with Korean script, saying only a Korean knew what. The prison-like factory was anonymous. The tops of its high walls, wrapped in concertina wire, looked ominous and terrifying. Above the wire, the iodine-colored sunset was fiendish and hysterical.

They listened to a pop station whose DJ kept saying, “We got your hot mix,” in bad English. “And there’s a shadow in the sky and it looks like rain,” Nelly warned everyone from Pop Land. They left the buses-crawling highway at San Lucas. It was cooler up there above the city, the little shanty towns dismal and uninviting.

They took the turnoff to Antigua and started to descend on a modern three-lane highway. Katherine smiled at him, her body language seeming to invite him to kiss her. She was dressed in jeans and a white blouse. “We got your Hot Mix.” It was verging on dark, but they could see the outline of the Volcan de Agua suddenly hulking by the road, a bad actor in this country’s play. She was talking about her work in the countryside, and all he could think about was taking her clothes off.

Crosby, Stills, and Nash came on, more “We got your hot mix.” It was a beautiful evening despite everything. He was randy; it had been weeks since he’d slept with anyone.

They passed the last of the handmade furniture places at the bottom of the hill, just before getting into Antigua proper. Now the wan, polluted light had gone dull, like dark water pooling on a stone. A few samples, handmade desks and chairs, were being carted in by young skinny kids pushing against the twilight’s swift angles. The boys looked like crude skinny cherubs come to life. Maybe you’ll sell tomorrow, Russell thought. Maybe tomorrow someone will buy them all. He had his doubts, though. Lately he couldn’t stop the doubts pouring in. Was he changing? Like all men, he hated change. Had his professors been wrong? It had seemed impossible when he first got here, but now he wasn’t so sure. He’d been two weeks in Argentina the year before, and what he’d seen there had scared him. He’d witnessed the complete collapse of a society.

There were red taillights and cars, and the sudden confusion of Antigua’s narrow colonial-era streets. The walls of houses and buildings, very close, still glowed from the sunset. The buildings’ warm colors felt soft and welcoming. Young shop-girls walked with their black hair pinned up. The town’s colonial architecture was a blessing of another century, before the ungodly cheap modernity and buck hysteria of the capital.

They stopped for a drink at the Opera Café. They sat in the back and talked about how it was to be a foreigner in a country, how they never, no matter how well they spoke the language, quite understood all the nuances. The language had its little side streets, didn’t it? Katherine said.

He didn’t tell her he wasn’t really a stranger to the country. Even his colleagues at the paper didn’t know about his mother. Or who his family was.

They drank Chilean white wine, good, cold, and expensive. He was not one to save money. If he had it, he spent it. Sometimes he would spend it all just to feel broke, something he’d never understood about himself. To have nothing but his job and the beer in his refrigerator and the wax on his floors. He didn’t want to collect things—he’d learned they could disappear as quickly as they’d come. He’d wondered if this sense of futility was what might be wrong with him emotionally. If he wanted things, he could have taken another trading job in Paris or London—not become a journalist in Guatemala. Things—TV, new cars, clothes—were somehow silly here, and beside the point. Here you lived by the minute or by the hour, but no more than that.

Somehow, in the tropics, the idea of the future seemed ridiculous—and yet it wasn’t enough. He wanted money. He wasn’t even sure exactly why. Now, thinking about what he’d done with Mahler, he had no explanation for his decision. He knew it was the adventure. It wasn’t the money, not really, he decided.

He liked to look at the movie posters and the cool people who came to the café, mostly young couples drinking coffee. He liked the red of the walls and the photos of famous singers. It was his kind of place, elegant, clean, sophisticated, with something extra, something that made him relax, took him away, a mixture of the right light and the black and white tile floor and the waitresses—in Indian garb, corte—who were very professional, never botching things.

They had only one drink, then decided to walk on to Carl’s place for the party. They might have been in a café in New York or San Francisco, except there were a few men with pistols strapped on just under their jackets sitting at the café’s bar. They were rough-looking. They stared at Katherine as they walked out the door. Dope, Russell thought. Real killers.

FIVE

Major Douglas Purcell U.S.A.R.

Blackwell Academy

232 White Blossom Road

Palo Alto, California 96601

April 2, 1988

Mrs. Isabella Cruz Price

Plantation “Las Flores”

Colomba, Costa Cuca

Guatemala, Central America

Dear Mrs. Cruz-Price,

We are in receipt of your letter of 15 January, which included full payment for this school year. Thank you.

In answer to your question: Yes, we have spoken to Cadet Russell about the results of the intelligence test he recently took, and we are aware of his concerns. As you may know, because so many of our graduates go on to the various private high schools that feed the United States service academies, we have, as a long standing policy, administered the military aptitude test, which is a prerequisite for entrance into these schools.

I’m happy to write that your son tested very high, and that we were pleased and gratified to report the results to both parents of record. We feel his long stay here at Blackwell has proven of real value to Cadet Russell and will hold him in good stead in the future.

However, I must take this opportunity to express my concern about Russell’s negative attitude towards both having to take the test, which he at first refused, and his troubling attitude towards the results themselves. It seems that he doesn’t believe the results—in fact, he says he’s quite stupid. Furthermore, he has stated to members of our staff that the test is a “gimmick to make him feel good about himself.” These attitudes are certainly unfortunate and of concern to us, as Russell has maintained a sterling record both academically and otherwise, until very recently. Perhaps there is something wrong at home?