“It remains to be seen what other charges may be brought,” he went on, appearing next to Bella as they led a group of mud-caked women to the group of tents erected on the vacant lot.
“Who is it? Hello? I can barely hear you,” said Varas into the static on his cellphone.
“Varitas, don’t you recognize my voice? What ingratitude!”
“I seem to recall that you’re the editor who fired me from his newspaper,” Varas said.
“Always so free in your choice of verbs, Varitas.”
“In their appropriate use, Eduardo.”
“Listen, could you come to the office? If I remember right, you’ve got quite a story to tell . . .”
“The one you’re watching right now on TV?”
“Such a joker, Varitas . . .”
Varas began inspecting his fingernails and then scraping under them with a toothpick until he heard the man on the other end clear his throat.
“Are you still there?” Eduardo asked nervously.
Varas maintained his silence. After a bit, once assured there was no more dirt under his nails, he replied.
“If there’s no eruption, maybe I’ll drop by tomorrow around noon.”
“Eruption my ass. I just got done interviewing some French experts who say it could be today or it could be in seven hundred and fifty-five years. First thing in the morning, Varitas, first thing in the morning, we’ll have to see what happens with the elections . . .”
Holmes didn’t even bother answering Vinueza’s call, because he was boarding a plane for Santiago de Chile. He was taking advantage of being in the same continent to visit the commissioners who had brokered an accord between Chile and Argentina to convert the summit of the Andes—he had enjoyed this description in one particular newspaper—into a virtual country open to multinational mining companies, a sort of no-man’s-land without taxes or royalties to pay. He liked it when the press did their work properly. This was an accord, signed and sealed by the two nations, that no one could dismantle. By comparison, the Ecuador thing was still a needle in a haystack. Too many black holes, too many legal vacuums that would interfere with exploiting the mines in peace. But there was no hurry, that was what satellite technology was for. He had at his disposal a map of Ecuador with all the mining deposits highlighted in a full range of brilliant colors—and there were a lot of them. It was just a question of time, of waiting for the right government to come to power, convincing enough investors, publicizing the benefits, and getting the credulous inhabitants of the country to believe in them. He could do all that in a single day’s work, but not today, not now, sometime in the future. Ah, the future! The future opened before him, a vast potpourri of opportunities. He found his seat and, once buckled in, asked the stewardess for a glass of champagne.
“I don’t know, Bella, you tell me. What do I do to stop thinking that?”
Varas smiled. He was riding in the copilot’s seat of the taxi taking them home. In back, Benito and Bella were absorbed in a tangled discussion of cages and permissions to do who-knew-what with whatever they had in their heads. The sky was bright blue and the sun was an immense golden ball that cast its light on the city without leaving the tiniest patch of shade in which to take cover or escape. Escape? Escape did not seem to be anyone’s priority in this car, as it nosed forward through the packed streets of the center of Guayaquil.
Gabriela Alemán was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on September 30, 1968, and is the daughter of an Ecuadorian diplomat. She received a PhD at Tulane University and holds a Master’s degree in Latin American Literature from Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar. She currently resides in Quito. Her literary honors include: Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006; member of Bogotá 39, a 2007 selection of the most important up-and-coming writers in Latin America in the post-Boom generation; one of five finalists for the 2015 Premio Hispanoamericano de Cuento Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia) for her story collection La muerte silba un blues; and winner of several prizes for critical essays on literature and film. Her books include the short story collections Maldito Corazón (1996), Zoom (1997), Fuga Permanente (2002), La muerte silba un blues (2014), and Álbum de familia (2016); her novels include Body Time (2003), Poso Wells (2007), and Humo (2017).
Dick Cluster has translated four books for City Lights: In the Cold of the Malecón and Other Stories (2000) by Antonio José Ponte, Frigid Tales (2002) by Pedro de Jesús, A Corner of the World (2014) by Mylene Fernández-Pintado, and Poso Wells (2018) by Gabriela Alemán. His own novels include Return to Sender (1990), Repulse Monkey: Book 2 in the Alex Glauberman Mystery Series (2015), and Obligations of the Bone: Book 3 in the Alex Glauberman Mystery Series (2015).
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