He girded himself for a quick scan of their faces. Blank, all of them. They were listening, he could see, but without any sense of where he was headed. He was trying not to startle them, trying to creep up to the thing that needed saying, and in this way give them the chance to anticipate it, to prepare themselves for it, but it wasn't working. He needed their help for it to work, and none of them was equal to the task.

"Fifty, sixty, seventy days," he said. "Somewhere in there, I can't remember-that's as long as anyone can last without food. And even before that, long before that, things start to go wrong, start to fail, break down. So let's say we're talking thirty days, okay? Which is what? Four weeks or so? And if it's not the Greeks, if it's our parents we're waiting for, how long will that take? Realistically, I mean. Another week before they expect us home, maybe a week beyond that before they really start to worry, then some calls to Cancún, the hotel, the American consulate-all that's easy enough. But then what? How long to trace us to the bus station, to Cobá, to the trail and the Mayan village, to this fucking hill in the middle of the jungle? Can we really depend on it being less than four weeks for all that to happen?"

He shook his head, answering his own question. Then he risked another glance at their faces-but no, they weren't understanding him. He was depressing them-that was all-frightening them. It was right in front of them, and they couldn't see it.

Or wouldn't, maybe.

He gestured toward Amy's body, kept his arm out in front of him, pointing, long enough so that they didn't have any choice. They had to look, had to stare, had to take in her graying skin, her eyes, which refused to stay shut, the burned, raw-looking flesh around her mouth and nose. "This-what's happened to Amy-it's terrible. A terrible thing. There's no way around it. But now that it's happened, we need to face it, I think, need to accept what it might mean for us. Because there's a question we have to answer for ourselves-a really, really difficult question. And we have to use our imagination to do it, because it's something that'll only start to matter as the days go by here, but which we have to answer now, beforehand." He scanned their faces again. "Do you understand what I'm trying to say?"

Mathias was silent, his expression unchanged. Eric's eyes had drifted back shut. Stacy was still clasping Amy's hand; she shook her head.

Jeff knew it wasn't going to work, but he still felt he had to raise the issue, felt it was his duty to do so. He plunged forward: "I'm talking about Amy. About finding a way to preserve her."

The others took this in. Mathias shifted his body slightly, his face seeming to tighten. He knows, Jeff thought. But not the others. Eric just lay there; he might even have been asleep. Stacy cocked her head, gave Jeff a quizzical look.

"You mean, like, embalm her?"

Jeff decided to try another approach. "If you needed a kidney, if you were going to die without it, and then Amy died first, would you take hers?"

"Her kidney?" Stacy asked.

Jeff nodded.

"What does that-" And then, in mid-sentence, she got it. Jeff saw it happen, the knowledge take hold of her. She covered her mouth, as if sickened. "No, Jeff. No way."

"What?"

"You're saying-"

"Just answer the question, Stacy. If you needed a kidney, if you-"

"You know it's not the same."

"Because?"

"Because a kidney would mean an operation. It would be…" She shook her head, exasperated with him. Her voice had risen steadily as she spoke. "This…this is…" She threw up her hands in disgust.

Eric opened his eyes. He stared at Stacy with a puzzled expression. "What're we talking about?"

Stacy pointed toward Jeff. "He wants to…to…" She seemed incapable of saying it.

"We're talking about food, Eric." Jeff was struggling to keep his voice low, calm, to contrast it to Stacy's growing hysteria. "About whether or not we're going to starve here."

Eric absorbed this, no closer to comprehending. "What does that have to do with Amy's kidney?"

"Nothing!" Stacy said, almost shouting the word. "That's exactly the point."

"Would you take hers?" Jeff asked, and he waved toward Amy. "If you needed a kidney? If you were gonna die without it?"

"I guess." Eric shrugged. "Why not?"

"He's not talking about kidneys, Eric. He's talking about food. Understand? About eating her."

There was no more hiding from it now; the words had been spoken. There was a long silence as they all stared down at Amy's body. Stacy was the one who broke it finally, turning to Jeff. "You'd really do it?"

"People have. Castaways, and-"

"I'm asking ifyou would. Ifyou could eather. "

Jeff thought for a moment. "I don't know." It was the truth: he didn't.

Stacy looked appalled. "You don't know?"

He shook his head.

"How can you say that?"

"Because I don't know what it feels like to starve. I don't know what choices I'd make in the face of it. All I know is that if it's a possibility, if it's something we can even agree to conceive of, then we have to take certain steps now, right now, before much time passes."

"Steps."

Jeff nodded.

"Such as?"

"We'd have to figure out a way to preserve it."

"It?"

Jeff sighed. This was going exactly as he'd anticipated, a disaster. "What do you want me to say?"

"How about her?"

Jeff felt a tug of anger at this, without warning, a righteous sort of fury, and he liked the sensation. It was reassuring; it made him feel he was doing the right thing after all. "You really think that's still her?" he asked. "You really think that has the slightest thing to do with Amy anymore? That's an object now, Stacy. An it. Something without movement, without life. Something we can either rationally choose to use to help us survive here, or-irrationally, sentimentally, stupidly-decide to let rot, let the vine eat into yet another pile of bones. That's a choice we have to make. Consciously-we have to decide what happens to this body. Because don't trick yourself: Flinching away from it, deciding not to think about it, that's a choice, too. You can see that, can't you?"

Stacy didn't answer. She wasn't looking at him.

"All I'm saying is, whatever our decision might be, let's make it with open eyes." Jeff knew that he should just let it go, that he'd already said too much, pushed too hard, but he'd come this far, and he couldn't stop himself. "In a purely physical sense, it's meat. That's what's lying there."

Stacy gave him a look of loathing. "What the fuck is the matter with you? Are you even upset? She's dead, Jeff. Understand? Dead. "

It took effort to keep his voice from rising to match her own, yet somehow he managed it. He wanted to reach forward, to touch her, but he knew that she'd recoil from him. He wanted both of them to calm down. "Do you honestly think Amy would care? Would you care if it were you?"

Stacy shook her head vehemently. Amy's mud-stained hat started to slide off, and she had to lift her hand to hold it in place. "That's not fair."

"Because?"

"You make it seem like it's a game. Like some sort of abstract thing we're talking about in a bar. But this is real. It's her body. And I'm not gonna-"

"How would you do it?" Eric asked.

Jeff turned toward him, relieved to have another voice involved. "‘Do it'?"

Eric was still lying on his back, his wounds seeping those tiny threads of blood. He kept pressing at his abdomen, probing-a new spot now. "Preserve the, you know, the…"Meat was the right word-there wasn't any other-but it was clear Eric couldn't bring himself to say it.

Jeff shrugged. "Cure it, I guess. Dry it."