Ultimate Excursions Prologue

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PROLOGUE

NIGHT FALLS QUICKLY IN CUZCO. It was getting dark when Mark and I stumbled back into our buck-a-night room. It had been a long day of drinking, and now it was time to smoke the cocaine paste Mark had bought from the Peruvian with the broken nose. Broken-nose called it bahsay, and it looked like a lump of dirty cookie dough. Mark pulled the water pipe from under his pillow. “Not quite sure how you smoke this shit, but I’m confident in my ability to figure it out,” he said, grinning his crooked grin. He took off the broad-brimmed leather hat, laid it beside him on the cot, and massaged the scalp under his curls. He pulled the lump of paste from its newspaper nest and tossed me the bag of gold-colored weed. “Roll up a few numbers, Timmy. We’ll need them to bring us down a little off this shit.” I poured a careful measure of pot into a rolling paper resting on a book in my lap. My eyes didn’t focus well, and I rolled with exaggerated care as Mark placed some bahsay in the pipe’s metal bowl. “Prepare for blastoff,” he said, holding his “I Love New York” lighter under the bowl. Someone pounded on our door three times in rapid succession, making it rattle in its frame. “Abre la puerta!” a voice barked. I leapt to my feet. Paper and pot fluttered to the ground. “Oh, shit, Mark. It’s the cops! We’re screwed. Come on, let’s flush this stuff.” I grabbed the baggie of weed and headed toward the toilet behind a plywood partition. Mark looked up at me, the ball of paste in one hand, the water pipe in the other. A grin played at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes were dancing. “Timmy, m’boy, you are one fretful unit. Relax. Whoever it is will get bored and

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split.” He flicked the lighter to life. The door rattled in its frame. “Abre la puerta ahora mismo!” The voice had grown angrier, more insistent. I dropped the baggie in the toilet and flushed. Water filled the bowl and overflowed on the floor. The baggie floated serenely on the surface. I grabbed it, shook off the water. “Mark! We gotta eat this shit, and fast.” The pounding on the door was constant now. It echoed the pounding in my head and chest. “Jesus, Timmy, what’s gotten into you? I swear, it—” “Listen to me, Mark.” I was almost hyperventilating. “I’ve done every crazy thing you’ve wanted on this entire fucked-up trip. But I’m not going to jail for you. Get it? Now eat.” Mark stopped smiling. He looked tired. “So this is really what you want? Whatever. It doesn’t matter anyway.” He popped a hunk of the bahsay in his mouth and washed it down with aguardiente, then passed me the bottle. I ingested a wad of weed, chased by a swig of the noxious rotgut. The resulting sludge lodged in my throat, and I took a bigger swallow to wash it down. Mark grabbed the bottle and downed the rest of the bahsay. I forced down the last of the pot just as the door swung open. A drunk stood at the threshold, his tattered clothes hanging from him in vomit-spattered strips. “Oh, señores, disculpe la molestia. Estoy equivocado.” He tipped his stained fedora and staggered off down the hall. I let out a big sigh and fell back on the bed. “What’d I tell you, Timmy? No problema.” Mark’s grin returned, and then he started laughing. I found myself laughing too. We laughed until we fell on the floor, practically peeing our pants. We laughed for a long time. Whenever we came close to stopping, we’d look at each other and lose it again. We sat sprawled on the floor and drank some more aguardiente. I mopped up the toilet water with a towel. Night was descending outside our window.

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“Come to think of it, I ate a lot of that bahsay,” Mark said. “Not sure how strong it is, but I can feel it getting to me right quick.” His hand was trembling like a tuning fork. “Like you always say, you’re a man. You can handle anything,” I said, taking a swig of aguardiente. The waves of relief were still washing over me. “No, man, I may need some help here. I’m feeling weird. Maybe I should puke it up.” Mark stood, weaved toward the toilet. He leaned over and stuck two fingers down his throat. He gagged, but nothing came up. “Shit. Throat’s closing up. I can’t puke. What do I do now, Timmy? Help me figure something out.” He took a staggering step toward me, then stopped. He bent at the waist, hands resting on knees, then lifted his eyes, looked right at me. “My heart, man. It’s beating so fast. It hurts. Help me. Please?” I tried to help. I tried. I tried. I tried. But when I stood to take a close look at Mark, the day’s drinking made it hard to focus, not to mention all the pot I had eaten. My thoughts had begun to slow, to branch off into infinite dead ends. I heard—or perhaps felt—the room humming. Outside this whitewashed bubble, everything seemed so dark. I knew I should go to Mark. Mark had asked for help. But I couldn’t move. I felt like a rooted tree. Mark was standing at the window now, head bowed, breaths coming fast. “You okay, man?” I asked, then wondered if I’d actually spoken or only thought it. My mouth was so dry. Mark turned toward me, his face white, white, white, sweat pouring down it. “Shit, man, my heart, it’s like . . . I can’t believe how fast . . . you gotta help me, Tim.” He leaned out the window, which looked out on a corner, and took a deep breath. Or tried to. My head was gigantic, but light as cotton candy. I tried to rotate my eyeballs to look into my skull, and I could almost do it, but not quite. Now I was sitting in the corner with my knees drawn up to my chest, rocking back and forth. I heard a moaning sound, haunting and grief-stricken, then realized it was coming from me.

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Mark was slumped over against the window. “I’m really dizzy, man, I’m so dizzy, it’s like . . . you’re fucking useless, aren’t you, Tim? At least help me to the bed.” The humming had grown louder, so loud I could feel it in my fingers. My mouth was dry, so dry. My eyes felt full of sand. Mark had asked for help, but I could only sit in the corner, rocking back and forth. He’d called me useless. That made my face burn. Rocking helped. It felt so good, so comforting. I looked for Mark. Some time must have passed. There he was, lying on the bed. His back was arching at an impossible angle, and his face was getting darker. A kind of cough-breathing sound was coming from him. “You okay, man?” I tried to ask. My mouth was so dry I couldn’t make real words come out. My saliva felt like glue. Mark’s arms started flailing around, like they were spiking a series of volleyballs. The left arm, all ropy muscles and veins, slammed down on the bedside table—so hard the wood splintered. No, that was Mark’s arm splintering. Some jagged bone stuck out below the elbow. Blood had spattered everywhere. Mark’s back arched higher and higher. His body did a crazy horizontal dance. I heard another crack as Mark’s other arm shattered against the wall. Finally I was moving. I flung myself on top of Mark, but it was like jumping on to a bucking bronco. I landed hard on the floor, and by the time I picked myself up to a kneeling position, Mark had stopped moving. His face was purple and his tongue was hanging out. Only the whites of his eyes showed, and there was foam all around his mouth. I scrambled to my feet. The room dipped and spun. I licked my lips and glanced around. It was night, but if you looked closely, some dark blue lingered on the edge of the sky. I saw Mark lying there in the glow of a streetlight. But the corners of the room were dark, and suddenly that felt all wrong. I crossed the room and turned on the overhead fluorescent light, looked at Mark, and knew then that it really had happened. Outside, I ran staggering down the street to the gringo restaurant. Strange sounds escaped my throat. I wasn’t moving well. Blood was caking on my clothes. Then I was in the restaurant, and a white guy with a ponytail stared at me with wide eyes.

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“My friend,” I managed to croak. “I think he’s killed himself.” I collapsed onto a chair, laid my head on the table, pressed my arms against the sides of my face, and sobbed. “Where?” the white guy asked, his hand on my shoulder. American accent. “Take me to him. Now.” “We’re Peace Corps Volunteers,” I said, head still buried. “Call them. In Quito. Tell them to come fix it. I want to go home.” The American pulled me to my feet. My legs were rubbery, and the guy supported all my weight. He guided me back to the pension. Our room was full of Peruvians. As if by magic, word had spread. The people of Cuzco had come to look at the dead gringo. Among them, I noticed a one-eyed man with long, greasy hair. He was kneeling near the foot of the bed where Mark lay. He was mumbling to himself. In one hand, a small piece of glass glittered. Even from across the room, I could see that Mark’s pockets had been turned out and his wallet was gone.