The place was nothing but wind. Grey skies, constant drizzle, and wind, incessant wind, blowing across the entire width of the Patagonian plains from the Andes in the west, all the way over the miles of rocky hills and scrub and finally butting up against this depressing little collection of shacks and decrepit buildings that was the village of Ultambacca, huddled on this rocky cliff overlooking the dark and surly South Atlantic as if it had been blown here and was just barely hanging on.
The end of the world.
EcoVentures had fucked up this time, Caroline thought. There was nothing to see here and nothing to do, and no matter how green and trendy they made their new hotel, not even the most dedicated, whale-crazed eco-freak would last more than a couple days beneath that glowering sky and incessant wind. She'd never seen a more raw and depressing place.
At her room in the drafty stone house that served as the only hotel in this forlorn wilderness, Caroline stared out the drafty French doors at the ocean below. She tried not to glance at her watch. Herrera should have finished his negotiations by now and she was frantic to get out of this place and back to Buenos Aires. Octavio Flores' land was the last bit of real estate EV needed for their project, and as soon as Herrera dropped the signed contract in her hand she was ready to head back while there was still light: Puerto Madryn to Buenos Aires, and from there, home. She simply couldn't face another night here with that cold outhouse and no hot water, no electricity, and the wind whistling through the stone walls all night long. She was sick of the smell of the kerosene lamps and the feel of the damp sheets on her sagging mattress, and she didn't want to eat one more meal in the Casa Menendez's primitive dining room that resembled nothing so much as a subterranean cave. Even there the wind found its way through the stone walls and around the religious carpets hung like tapestries to stop it, and moaned and whispered as she ate.
This was not the kind of foreign travel and exotic adventure she'd imagined when she'd signed on as EcoVenture's Assistant Location Manager for the Patagonian Project. She worried about fleas.
The French doors were nailed shut against the wind, and though the thin glass panes were caulked with bits of moss and dried seaweed to keep them from rattling, they rattled all the same. The thin white curtains were never still.
Moss and dried seaweed! As if she were living in the stone age or huddled in some Mongolian yurt. And this the best room in the best house in town, Doña Menendez's daughter's room in Doña Menendez's own home, given to Caroline to appease the Yanqui lady's fine sensibilities.
Outside she could see a few more of the sad, bedraggled houses these people lived in—more like stone huts, really, or little shacks—built from the flat pieces of rock and slate that littered the ground and the hill behind her. Beyond the huts the land fell away down to a stony beach covered with plastic refuse and gobbets of oily tar, where a few battered fishing boats were drawn up and turned upside down against the rain. Nets were strung on pieces of driftwood though God knows why. They certainly weren't going to dry in this place, and stretched between pieces of driftwood and scrap lumber they looked like nothing so much as spirit catchers, and spirit catchers that had no more luck than the fishermen did.
It was supposed to be a fishing village, but they didn't seem to fish very much, or venture out very far from shore when they did. The Atlantic was too rough and cold here, the harbor hardly a harbor at all, just a little cover ringed with stone. Occasionally she could see icebergs in the foggy distance when the rain wasn't too severe, and sizeable chunks of ice bobbed in the water. There were supposed to be seals and penguins too, and of course whales—humpbacks and southern rights, orcas, and even sperm whales too, she'd been told, though so far Caroline hadn't seen a single living thing, not even a sea bird. The whales were the whole reason EV wanted to put their resort here, so she had to assume they knew what they were doing, but to hr it was hard to believe there was anything living in that water.
She told herself to calm down and relax, but she was angry at herself. She'd been an idiot to take this assignment. She'd thought this would be a big opportunity to show EcoVentures what she could do. Jack hadn't wanted her to go, but Jack never wanted any sort of success or independence for her. Caroline had jumped at the chance to be away from him for a couple of weeks just so she could think about their relationship. She'd imagined evenings in Buenos with sophisticated lawyers, sipping Argentinean wines and brokering deals with colorful villagers. She'd never imagined that Ultambacca would be such a primitive shit hole, or that she'd have to squat in dirty huts with a bunch of primitive Ona half-castes with callused hands and broken nails. The wardrobe she'd brought was embarrassingly useless, intended for business dinners in elegant hotels. And Fausto Herrera, the lawyer EV had assigned to her, was an oleaginous caricature of a Latin playboy, fawning, effete, and not to be trusted. But he spoke the language and she didn't. He knew the customs and she didn't, and these people didn't like dealing with females anyhow, especially not Yanqui females. So Señor Herrera did everything while Caroline stayed in her room and slowly went crazy.
Down on the shore she watched two men hauling in a net. It was heavy work, dragging the net up onto the stony beach as the wind blew in their faces, then dropping it and going down to the water to grab the next section and repeating the process. In the end she knew they'd find one or two fish in the net and that would be their reward for a morning's work. That's what this place was like, brutal, raw, desolate, a stingy and ungenerous land.
She turned from the window and went to her dresser--Dona Menendez's dresser, actually--where she found her cocaine hidden in her underwear. The foil was wrinkled and brittle from use and the white powder had started to cake up from the constant damp. Caroline carefully broke up the chunks with a manicured fingernail and crushed them into as fine a powder as she could manage. She had to be careful. If Fausto came back soon with the completed contract, then they could leave for Puerto Madryn immediately while there was still daylight and she wanted to be awake for that. If not, she didn't want to be so coked up that she'd be awake for their last night in this hell hole, trying to play solitaire by candlelight.
What the hell, she thought. This boredom was worse than anything. She scooped up a hit with the nail of her little finger and sniffed it into her nose.
Good stuff, good stuff. Very clean and pure, much better than what you could get in the States, and she felt the icy rush lift her up and open her senses. The sound of the wind was suddenly much clearer and distinct, the pounding of the surf rich and almost musical. She stood there by the dresser, waiting for the icy rush of the cocaine to wash away the chronic feelings of fear and loneliness that nagged at her constantly and without relief.
But this time the drug only seemed to sharpen them and make them more acute, and Caroline felt tears gather unexpectedly in her eyes, surprising and alarming her. She thought she'd reached a kind of understanding with her unhappiness or at least a temporary truce while she was on assignment here, but instead her sadness had just smuggled itself along and the dreariness and isolation of this awful place set it off with new strength and vigor.
She fought down the tears and the swelling feeling of despair.
Not now!
she thought.
I'll deal with them later, when I'm back with Jack, or at least on the plane home with time to think.
So she pushed them away and refused to let them come. She wiped away the tears with the back of her wrist, then neatly folded her stash and put it back into an empty tampon and put it away.
She'd always been cursed with beauty. She knew it had helped her too, but because she was beautiful she'd had always had to work harder for people to take her seriously. Beautiful, all A's, honor role, and even cheerleader too. In college she'd been almost obsessed, turning off her social life while she drove herself to perfection. And then in her job she'd worked even harder, showing the male buddy network she could compete while delicately deflecting their hints and comments. She'd made herself professional, but at a price, and it was the price that had caused the tears.
And then there was Jack. There was a chance they could make it work this time and turn what they had into a relationship rather than a committee of two. But just thinking of how much he fell short of what she really wanted made her sad again.
That's why she hated this place so much. It looked just like how she felt inside.
She knew what she needed, what almost always worked. She threw a glance at the door to make sure it was locked. It would be just like Herrera to show up at the worst possible time, but she could always tell him she'd been napping. She'd risk it. She really needed some relief.
The piece of scrimshaw stood right there on the dresser. Her new-found Argentinean friend.
She hadn't dared bring any sort of device with her. Who knew who might go through her things? But this little gem had been right here on Doña Menendez's dresser as if waiting for her: an elegantly curved piece of whale tooth about eight inches long and just the right thickness, creamy white and tapering to a gently rounded point. It was incised with Ona patterns and polished smooth as glass, warm to the touch with the living feel that only real ivory has. It felt good just holding it.
She had a name for it. To herself she called it
