Red Weather

5. The Indian Wars

18 5 TheIndianWars The moped crept, then sped up. Each time she turned or wove between two cars, Kira shouted, “Hold on!” When Neva leaned hard against her, she felt Kira’s thin body, bony beneath a restless layer of muscle. They took turns where they leaned so sharply Neva could’ve touched the street with her fingertips. The hotels and stores turned to houses, white stone behind walls and metal doors. Neva felt dizzy, not with the ride but with a sense of shock that she had climbed on, that she had done exactly the opposite of what she’d planned—to disappear, to hide while she searched. She knew it was more than cheap rent that had made her come with Kira. They pulled up in front of the only house on the street that had no broken glass lining the roofline. Stucco painted a glaring yellow, with red Spanish tile on the roof. A few broken ones lay on the sidewalk leading to the door. Kira kicked them into the patchy grass. “Bright, isn’t it?” she said. “Everybody calls it the ‘Yellow House.’” Deborah, the woman with dark hair and missionary clothes, was in the kitchen. “Oh hi,” she said, motioning her in. Neva followed her into a large, square kitchen. “You found her!” she said to Kira. “You were looking for me?” “We thought you might like to come to dinner. I’m Deb,” she said, wiping her hands on a blue and white dish towel and leaning across the table to shake Neva’s hand. “We thought we ought to tell you about Ralph,” Kira said. “Did you rent the room?” Deb asked her, glancing at Kira, who shook her head. “Well, that’s probably for the best. We were going to leave a note at your hotel.” “How would you know which one?” Neva asked. Deb shrugged. “It’s a small town.” But Coatepeque City was huge, not as big as Atlanta, more like 19 Birmingham. Highways and rushing traffic, and parts you could get to only by taking the bus and changing twice. Deb noticed Neva’s raised eyebrows and said, “I don’t mean Ciudad Coatepeque. I mean the expat community. You’re looking for somebody, you ask around. They always turn up. A lot of foreigners stay at the Presidente. We didn’t think you were American at first—we figured you were there or at the Mirador. Do you like it—the Mirador?” Neva nodded. The hotel was nearly empty. Her tiny room had a miniature fireplace in the corner. A chilly red tile floor that stung her feet when she got up in the middle of the night to pee, stumbling out of an impossibly deep sleep, so thick with dreams it took her most of the morning to shake them off. She hadn’t slept like this since childhood, since before her parents left. Each morning she sat in the Mirador Room for which the hotel was named, with its view looking down over the city. The husband from the young couple who ran the hotel would bring her a cup of dark, muddy coffee and a tall glass of steaming milk to mix into it. The first morning she had gulped it down, feeling it rush into the tips of her cold fingers, the empty space beneath her ribs. “So do you want to see the room? I’ve got to do a couple of things here,” Deb said, chopping as she spoke. “I have to throw these peppers in in exactly two minutes, but then I’ll take you up. Can you stay for dinner? We’ve invited a few people . . .” Something popped in the large skillet on the stove, and Deb jumped back. It was a huge kitchen with a large, blocky wooden table in the center, on which were piled paper and plastic bags, a toaster oven, a blender, a basket of fruit, a mound of vegetables. Brown sauce had slopped from the skillet and was baking into a crust on the stove top. Peppers, tomatoes, and pear squash were piled on the counter. “Our last housemate left a bunch of stuff; so there’s sheets—things like that. She left some clothes—her husband’s kind of conservative.” Deb turned to look Neva up and down. “I don’t know if any of it would fit you—Kira’s too tall and nothing really suited me. But we can take any stuff...