A break came in the music. The room felt as if the air had been sucked out of it. A girl bumped into him, obviously high on something. She ran her hand over her boyfriend’s naked chest. Still dancing, she held the light stick against his stomach. Suddenly the music started again.

He felt someone grab him from behind. He thought it was Katherine; he turned, and it was Beatrice. She was holding another dancer’s hand and she didn’t really look at him as she shimmied to the bar, her hands raised in a kind of dance move. She broke free from her friend and she began to dance to the music. Wherever she’d been, she knew how to move in a way that only dancers, trained dancers, have. It was a feeling that she controlled her body perfectly, yet was out of control slightly, so that the energy moved across her and then back again in a wild let-it-all-go step that was meant to go with the trance music.

There was a break with just the beat. He tried to catch her eye, but she was completely absorbed. People made room for her and her partner.

He looked around as best he could to see if her husband was in the place, but he couldn’t see him. So much older than the kids here, he knew the general would stand out easily. But Russell didn’t see him.

The music picked up speed. Beatrice was sweating. He could see the sheen on her face; her blond hair had been braided, the braids flew.

The barman tapped him on the shoulder. Russell turned, paid for the drinks, and left with them. He saw Katherine nearby. She’d seen Beatrice and clearly recognized her. He moved through the crowd and handed Katherine a drink. She turned to look at him. He tried not to register shock. Or was it something else on his face? Excitement? Lust? All of them?

“That’s what’s-her-name. The general’s wife. Look at her!” Katherine said. She leaned into him and yelled over the music, obviously surprised to see her here.

He turned and looked at Beatrice again. He thought she noticed them. He wasn’t sure. “Jesus, she can dance,” he heard Katherine say. He felt her put her arm around him. Another powerful break came in the music; all the turntables were playing now. A James Brown tune dominated the mix; it was propped up by sitar music.

Beatrice spun. Her midriff flattened. She started a new series of moves, more controlled, shaking her hips to the sitar music then undulating. All the young men at the bar were transfixed now by her dancing and her beauty. It seemed as if she were getting bigger, but it was just the lights that had moved. Someone on the catwalk had turned a spotlight down on them; a purple light hit Beatrice and her companion.

There was a complete stop to the music. You could feel the silent beats building as everyone expected the music to come back. It didn’t on the first beat, or the third. The lights started to come on as if the night were ending, five beats… He watched Beatrice slow, then slow again. She was looking at him on the seventh beat. On the ninth, the house lights went dark. Only one single spotlight was left on. Then suddenly, the music came back on, thundering. The famous break in “I Feel Good” came up. So good . . . so good, that I gotta yoouuu.” The crowd went wild. The breaks worked their magic. Everyone in the place yelled excitedly.

Beatrice had looked directly at him then, as if she’d been dancing all along for him. They played “Make it Funky.” He took a drink and for a moment he thought they would move away from the bar, because Katherine was pulling him to a place where they could dance. He turned to look at Beatrice; she was coming through the crowd toward them, as James Brown sang “Like a Boom-er-ang.”

Beatrice stopped in front of him and draped her arms over his neck, and they started to dance. It happened like that. He didn’t think he stopped dancing for the next hour. By the time he remembered Katherine, she’d left.

Later he checked his cell phone messages; she had left him several. “You’re a shit,” she’d said angrily. Of course she was right. But there were others, too. She said she was sorry. She said she didn’t mean it. She said he should call her.

He did, a week later, but she’d gone to Chicago. He left a message at her office, telling her he was very sorry. He felt guilty for using her. He was truly sorry about that. His affair with Beatrice Selva started that night at the Q Bar.

TWELVE

De La Madrid’s press secretary, an ingratiating American called Nesbitt, called Russell’s office the next morning to set up an interview.

“Antonio is dying to speak to you about the crisis. He has a free hour in the afternoon around what they call tea time here. These people—” Nesbitt said in an exasperated tone. They were meant to share a moment together—savvy Americans handling the inept Latins. Russell said nothing, and Nesbitt went on, in a more reserved tone. “We could send a car?”

“Fine,” Russell said. “Four o’clock, then.”

“See you then,” Nesbitt said.

Russell put down the phone and tried to collect his thoughts. He’d been doing his homework on the economic crisis. His newspaper had been doing most of what serious reporting had been done on the crisis in Latin America. They ran some kind of story on it almost every day. The U.S. papers were writing about it, but only sporadically.

In the meantime, the regional economy was falling apart. Governments and businesses had borrowed too much from the developed countries and now, with commodity prices having crashed, they couldn’t pay the interest on their massive loans. Guatemala was no different. Russell suspected that the currency might collapse altogether; it was only a matter of time.

He stood up and searched the office for his briefcase, found it, and pulled out his notes on De La Madrid. But he found himself staring out the window at the traffic. Why did Beatrice’s husband allow her to go out at night alone? How could she possibly manage to stay out until four in the morning, as she had with him?

He hadn’t wanted to think of her husband at breakfast, or later on the way to his office. He had dwelt on the coming weekend instead. Beatrice had agreed to meet him. He told himself only that the general was bound to find out, sooner or later, that Russell was having an affair with his wife. He expected Selva would come to his office, or apartment, and try to kill him. He didn’t really care.

Death didn’t scare him. The only thing he thought about being killed was that the desire to lose himself—this inexplicable search—would finally end. He wouldn’t have to feel driven anymore. It would come to a conclusion in the street, or at his desk, or in a parking garage, with Selva pumping bullets into him.

He spoke with Nesbitt for a moment in an outer office. They were on the twentieth floor of one of the tallest buildings in the city. De La Madrid’s family owned the building as well as the bank that it housed.

The upper floor was grand, its wood floors polished like glass. Secretaries glided past them like specters dressed in Chanel and Ann Taylor. Nesbitt was natty, married and twice divorced. Somehow Russell learned all this in the matter of a few minutes, as they waited for Antonio to appear. Apparently, Nesbitt said, his boss had snuck his barber into the office for a quick haircut.

They made small talk. Nesbitt droned on about his Guatemalan problems: the maids, the water, his bowels. It was the predictable conversation. Outside, through the windows, Russell could tell it had gotten very windy. In the distance was the Volcan de Agua, barely visible through the mist of diesel smoke. Behind the volcano was the lake where he and Beatrice were to meet.

He longed for the weekend.

“I’ve found that Pepto-Bismol works if you. . . .” Nesbitt was telling him.