A Blind Spot for Boys

  But did I leave? No, I walked back to the deserted lounge with its dim lights and fire banked low. A room couldn’t have sparked with more romance. We sat at opposite ends of the couch, where he’d left his backpack.

  “So,” Quattro said from his side of Siberia, “your photos?”

  I’m not sure what I loved more: how he had tracked our conversation, remembering exactly where we had left off, or how he actually wanted to see my work. I fished out the camera and cued it to the photos I’d shot today. Our hands brushed each other, and I could have sworn that Quattro swallowed hard at the touch. I know I did.

  “These are awesome,” he said after a while, his voice deep and gruff. If I closed my eyes, I could easily imagine him sounding exactly that way after hours of kissing. What was I thinking? Luckily, he just cycled through the photos without noticing my discomfort. Finally, he reached the series I’d taken of the soccer game. “You really captured… I don’t know, real moments.”

  Pleased, I smiled at him. “That’s what I was hoping to do.”

  He handed the camera back to me. “Like this one. Those kids had moves.”

  “The best thing is,” I said, then cleared my throat to shake out its huskiness. I tried again. “The best thing is, none of them are letting the flood bring them down.”

  “You aren’t either.”

  “You must be going deaf.” I thought guiltily of my grumbling earlier that night about having to down yet another PowerBar for dinner.

  “You’re still having an adventure.”

  Was I? I’d preached at the pulpit of girl power with the best of them, bragging to my friends that I was going to travel the world, enjoy an amazing career or two of my own, and never settle down until I was thirty. I’d reminded Dad that he’d always wanted a shake-your-soul kind of adventure. But I had let one bad breakup scare me off relationships and allowed a bad attitude to drag me down here in Peru, when, really, Quattro was right: I was in the middle of an adventure.

  “We are,” I said slowly, then grinned at him.

  “So did you fulfill your purpose on this trip?” Quattro asked, smiling sheepishly at his question. “You know, Stesha’s tours and all that?” He shrugged and ducked his head. “She told me that people always come on them with a purpose.”

  Back on the morning I’d encountered Quattro slipping out of the cathedral in Cusco, Stesha had told me as much: Figure out why you yourself are here.

  “Did you?” I countered, because it was easier to hear his answer than to be aware of the silence in my own. “Fulfill your purpose?”

  “Not yet, but I will,” he said, nodding his head firmly as though making a pact with himself. He angled a cautious look at me. “I’m going back to Machu Picchu.”

  “But it’s closed.”

  “I know.”

  “Isn’t it dangerous? I mean, the trail looked like it was going to be washed out.”

  “But it hasn’t been.”

  “You’ll be arrested for trespassing!”

  “Unlikely.”

  “Your dad’s cool with this?” I asked. The wood in the fireplace crackled.

  “He doesn’t know. Besides, he’s the one backing out when he promised…” Quattro’s expression shut off then. Just when I thought the conversation was over because I had trespassed into no-woman’s territory, he confessed in a low voice, “My mom told Dad that she wanted her ashes scattered somewhere beautiful and remote.”

  “So what better place than here?”

  “And this”—he gestured to the mountain somewhere behind us, lost in darkness—“this was supposed to be our way of saying good-bye to Mom.”

  Quattro now removed a metal canister from the backpack at his feet, cradling it tenderly in his big hands.

  “That’s her?” I asked, raising my eyes to his as he entrusted me with the real reason for his pilgrimage to Machu Picchu with his father.

  “I carried her almost every step of the way.”

  The tiny container looked too insubstantial to contain a woman’s life. My eyes watered, and I wiped away the tears. Quattro shot me a rueful look and said, “My parents never had a Fifty by Fifty. They had a One. My mom—all she ever wanted to see was Machu Picchu. Since I was a kid, she had a postcard of Machu Picchu on our fridge and would tell us, ‘We’re going there one day.’ But she wanted me and Kylie to be old enough to walk the entire trail and to remember it all. So we waited until Kylie was twelve.”

  And then it was too late.

  Or was it?

  “You’re going?” I asked. “Tomorrow?”

  He shrugged.

  “By yourself?” Why did I ask when I already knew his answer as much as I knew what mine should have been: Let’s go. Together.

  But I hesitated too long as every objection formed in my mind—it was dangerous, my parents would ground me forever. So instead, it was Quattro who said those words: “We should go.” And he placed the canister carefully in his backpack, rising from the sofa as if he had revealed way too much.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Well, my dears, I am being ousted,” Grace announced dramatically the next morning as she returned to the casita, all banging doors and clomping feet. I yawned, tired from waking myself up at four on the off chance that Quattro might sneak out. I wasn’t sure what I would have done. But as it turned out, Christopher had suspected Quattro’s plans and hidden his hiking boots. I hadn’t seen Quattro since he grabbed his boots from his dad and stormed out about an hour earlier, with Christopher following close behind.

  “What’s going on?” Dad asked, setting down a travel memoir that he had found in the lounge this morning. He was making notes on hotel stationery.

  Without breaking her stride, Grace walked directly toward her bedroom and began tossing her few remaining possessions onto the bed. “Orders of the military. Can you believe it? I knew I should have hidden, but one of the armed rascals actually cornered me when I was loading the final sandbag. This… this is ageism! You know, if we were in the States, I might hire a lawyer.”

  “But we aren’t,” Mom said in a placating tone. “So what exactly happened?”

  “Another helicopter is flying in this afternoon, and apparently the Peruvian government doesn’t want an international crisis on their hands with any old people keeling over. So they’re insisting that every single elderly person be evacuated. Elderly!” She threw up her gnarled hands, looking like Yoda, a character not exactly known for his youthfulness. “I’m not like one of those senior citizens who take the train to Machu Picchu. I’m sorry, but did I or did I not complete the Inca Trail on my own?”

  My mom exchanged a look with me, both of us smiling slightly. Right then and there, I promised myself that I’d be this spry and spunky at Grace’s age.

  “Since there are so many gray-haired wonders walking around town, your age-group’s been delayed. Lucky you,” said Grace to Mom, with a wistful sigh. “Well, put on your best clothes. I’m taking everyone out to lunch.”

  “I wouldn’t trust anything being served at a restaurant,” Dad said, grimacing.

  On the third day post-flood, the restaurant scene in Machu Picchu Pueblo had become one giant gastrointestinal health hazard. Intermittent electricity shut the town down for hours at a time. No one with a working brain cell was about to touch a morsel of food that wasn’t prepackaged in plastic, not to mention the fact that the few sketchy restaurants that remained open for business had quadrupled their prices. Besides all that, there was no such thing as “best” clothes—only dingy clothes that were gray and grayer from being washed with hand soap, then dried stiff overnight.

  Who was I to complain? I’d grown oddly attached to my rain gear. It did the job, keeping me warm and dry. Who’d have known that I’d choose survival over style? But now I wondered why great rain gear couldn’t be chic and shapely. Maybe I should try my hand at designing a line. Why not? There was nothing and no one to say that I couldn’t.

  “Don’t worry about food. I got it co
vered,” said Grace as she sashayed to the bathroom with an impish expression. Over her shoulder, she added, “Bring your camera, Shana. Hotel restaurant. Eleven thirty.” She flashed a pirate’s grin: huge, smug, and slightly dangerous. I vowed to practice in the mirror until I perfected the same.

  Only Grace could have sweet-talked the surly and overworked hotel manager into allowing her to use the kitchen. What she intended to prepare was beyond my imagination, since we had scavenged only precooked food-like substances.

  The dining room may have been filled with chatter from the other tourist groups, but our long, communal table felt lifeless without Stesha and our porters. Despite showers and sleep, the Gamers looked travel worn. There was no bounce left in Helen’s hair, and I noticed that she hadn’t bothered to clean her engagement ring. No one had seen Quattro or his dad since they’d left this morning. Maybe they had gone back to Machu Picchu together. I couldn’t wait to find out.

  The door opened, and I swiveled to see if it was Quattro. No, just Ruben. We greeted him with a standing ovation, not minding that we were being stereotypically loud American tourists. Who cared if a few other tables stared disapprovingly at us for causing a scene? Ruben hadn’t just gotten us up and down the Inca Trail safely. He was a hero for helping the town itself.

  From the kitchen, Grace strolled out holding a tray with tiny bowls of steaming noodles. “Top Ramen à la Grace.” Then she asked Ruben, “Now, admit it. Aren’t you glad I had these in my backpack all this time?”

  The mere notion of hot noodle soup was almost enough to make me lose all semblance of manners, swipe a bowl from the tray, and chug it down, noodles, salty broth, rehydrated vegetables, and all. Mom poured Grace a glass of beer and raised her own in a toast: “To our chef!”

  But Grace had her own agenda. First, she corrected Mom, “To our guide!”

  After we applauded again, Grace waved her hands to shush us as she stood behind her chair. I assumed she was going to make a speech about Ruben or our group, the Wednesday Walkers or Stesha. But Grace surprised us by clambering onto the chair, then stepping carefully into the middle of the table between the dishes.

  “Grace? What are you doing?” Mom said, jumping to her feet with her arms outstretched, ready to catch Grace in case she took a swan dive. I scrambled to the opposite side of the table.

  “I think you should get down,” Hank said as he stood, too.

  “Well, I think it’s long past risk-taking time, bucko,” Grace retorted as she untucked her floral-embroidered T-shirt. She glanced around for a safe place to set her glass but ended up handing it to me.

  “Grace, what’re you doing?” I asked, genuinely confused, staring up at her as she unbuttoned her hiking pants. “Um… Grace?”

  Dad cleared his throat uncomfortably but didn’t say a word.

  She unzipped her pants.

  “Grace?” Helen asked. “Do you think this is a good idea?”

  I hissed up at her. “I mean, we aren’t exactly the Wednesday Walkers.”

  “Now that’s the truth” was Grace’s tart reply.

  “And you’ve got an audience,” I continued, my eyes darting around the dining room.

  “The more, the merrier.”

  “No offense, but I’m not sure this is the last image I want to have,” Dad said, looking down at his lap.

  For the record, Grace was in remarkable shape for a septuagenarian. How she’d managed the mountains without succumbing to the altitude or the trail’s steep angle, I have no idea. However.

  She let go of her waistband.

  “Grace,” groaned Mom, as she shook out one of the linen napkins and held it behind Grace. That did little to conceal or camouflage her tight compression shorts. Seventy-year-old buttocks are seventy-year-old buttocks, whether in grandma underwear, in the buff, or tucked into tight spandex. The expressions on the other diners’ faces morphed into dismay. I didn’t blame them.

  Dad covered his eyes.

  “You’re going blind. What are you hiding for?” Grace demanded as she wriggled her hips.

  With a final swivel, her pants pooled at her ankles.

  Her ankle.

  There, standing before us as proud as any perfectly proportioned Aphrodite fresh on the clamshell, was Grace, glorious in her hiking boots that sheathed one foot… and one prosthetic leg attached at her knee.

  Glancing around the table at one shocked person after another, Grace’s eyes finally rested on my father. She said, “I promised the Wednesday Walkers that I would complete the Inca Trail sooner or later. And a promise is a promise.” She considered Dad hard before her gaze bore into Helen. “My husband was there for me during my first bout with cancer. We never imagined that the second would lop off my leg.”

  Dad was still dumbstruck in his front-row seat before this miracle. Grace smiled kindly at him and said, “You look like you need another round.”

  “You walked the entire Inca Trail,” Dad said, slow to comprehend.

  “Every step of the way.” She beamed at me. “I had good company.”

  “You’re sexy to the end!” I called, raising my bottle of water. That seemed like the only appropriate toast.

  We all cheered. At that moment, Quattro strode into the restaurant with his dad, both of them looking bleak and angry until they did a double take at Grace, half-naked on the table. The sight of their shock made us all laugh again.

  “Now you may take a photo,” Grace told me after hiking up her pants and buttoning them. She posed on the table, hands in the air, an impish grin lighting her face.

  After Grace’s big reveal, everyone demanded to know how she’d managed the trek. Casting a glance around to make sure no one was eavesdropping, I asked Quattro my own burning question: “Did you go…?” But he shook his head, lips thinning as he glowered at his dad, then ate his ramen noodles in stoic silence. The conversation turned to the clear skies and whether they would hold long enough for the helicopters to land. That brought us right up to the four thousand tourists packed into this tiny town, each of them vying for a spot on the helicopters. The dank smell of tension permeated the streets.

  Mom joked, “That’s the scent of the unwashed.”

  We all knew better. My own sense of uneasiness only increased at the end of lunch, when Helen piped up to say that her dad had worked in a bunch of different emergencies, and that there was a tipping point when fear and desperation led to riots and worse. As we all accompanied Grace to the helipad, I could feel the entire town teetering on that sharp tipping point.

  A crowd of gray-haired senior citizens was already waiting, most clinging to their luggage even though the orders had been to leave behind all nonessential items to maximize the number of people who could be squeezed onto the helicopter. One push on the flimsy gate that separated the impatient crowd from the path to the helipad, and the barrier would topple. And then all these elderly people who the Peruvian government wanted to protect would be trampled.

  “You should grab the first helicopter that you can tomorrow morning,” Grace urged us. I shot a quick glance at Quattro. The days were dwindling, if he wanted to honor his mother.

  Now an armed Peruvian soldier, menacing in his military fatigues, pointed at Grace. As though we were planning on sneaking aboard the helicopter, he snapped, “Only her.”

  I lifted the camera to capture this farewell and framed Dad enfolding Grace in his arms, telling her in a tear-clogged voice, “I’m so sorry.”

  No one, least of all Grace, had to ask him what he was apologizing for.

  “It feels like this place is going to implode.” Grace’s frown deepened. “You should go back to the casita now.”

  Mom smiled patiently at her. “We’re your groupies, haven’t you figured that out yet?”

  “Yeah, and we’re demanding an encore performance,” I said, giving Grace a last hug.

  “Don’t tempt her!” Dad said; his old teasing tone was back. A glimmer of a smile danced on his lips before he handed Grace over to the
soldier. On the basis of that expression alone, I felt like my family had already been airlifted to safety. But when I saw the forlorn look on Quattro’s face, I made up my mind: I was going with him to Machu Picchu.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Other girls sneak out late at night to party or fool around with their boyfriends. But I was preparing to sneak out before dawn to hike to ancient ruins with a friend who was on a mission.

  From the thick rug where I lay swaddled in comforters, I could trace the barest hint of pink lightening the sky through the window slats. Only a few clouds blocked the stars. If Quattro didn’t attempt to break into Machu Picchu this morning, he might never get another chance.

  Just as I was debating about whether to wake him, the door to the walk-in closet where he had been sleeping opened slowly. Quattro padded out to the living room in socks, holding his hiking boots. He must have slept with them so his dad couldn’t hide them again. Last night, I had noticed that he’d stashed his backpack and rain gear behind the couch. He collected them now, as I rose from my nest of comforters and tiptoed after him.

  “You can’t come,” he said in a low voice after I shut the front door softly behind us.

  “Excuse me, free country,” I reminded him as I laced up my hiking boots.

  “No, this could be dangerous.”

  “Rule number one in hiking: Always go with a buddy.”

  He continued to shake his head.

  Unstoppable now that I had committed to this, I continued, “Or no, because you want privacy? If it’s that, I’ll walk with you up to the point where you want to”—I paused, uncertain how to phrase it—“be with your mom.” Then more firmly, I said, “I’m going with you.”

  He finally relented with a grudging “Fine.”

  We set off across the bridge that connected the hotel with the rest of the pueblo, skirting the barrier that blocked the road to the heritage site I thought I’d never see again. It was a good twenty-minute walk along a dirt road next to the river before we got to the trailhead. Time had done nothing to tame the seething river, and I was glad we’d be leaving it behind before long for the steep uphill climb. I stopped in front of the footbridge we had crossed three days earlier, still under assault. My pulse raced. If either of us slipped and fell into that deadly whirlpool, there was even less of a chance of survival. We only had each other.