Atticus

She stopped at the intersection of Avenida de la Independencia and the gray highway. A policeman in dark blue and sunglasses was sitting on a motorcycle just off the pavement, giving her a hard stare. Renata grew nervous and the Volkswagen stalled while still at the stop sign. She said, “This car doesn’t idle, it loiters.”

“Looks like he was trying to spiff it up at least.”

“Oh?” She waggled the gear shift into neutral and turned the ignition as she stared across the highway at the policeman.

His knuckles knocked twice against the front windshield. “You got some new glass here. You can tell from the rubber seal.”

She turned south onto the highway and looked into the rearview mirror. “Scott bought the car from a kid who got caught smuggling ganja in from Belize.”

“And what would ganja be in English?”

“Marijuana.”

“Oh.” His thumbnail gently lifted up a see-through sticker for Pittsburgh Plate Glass that was high up in the right-hand corner. “You can have the car if you want it.”

“Seriously?”

“Don’t expect it would make it far as the border, and selling it— Well, I’d be happy to know you’d put it to good use.”

She shifted to fourth gear as she said, “That’s really very nice of you. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

They rode in silence for a few minutes and then he asked, “The kid who sold him the car, is he here still?”

She frowned at him. “Hangs out on the beach, I think. Why?”

“Wondering; that’s all.”

She smiled. “You do have a busy mind.”

“Well, I try not to.” Atticus looked out his open side window at some pretty, preteen girls squatting in the dry weeds of a bus stop, licking the hot pepper sauce on pork rinds. Horseflies were walking around their mouths and their skirts were lifted up over their knees for the breeze. And then there was nothing but jungle and the scraggle of gray rock and charred black stumps and the fragile cornstalks that meant agriculture in that poor soil. Atticus kept thinking about the things Renata ought to have been telling him, the grief and unhappiness she ought to have expressed. She seemed flippant and preoccupied, and that was it. Oh, did he die? What a shame. No pain or misery or regret, nothing of what Atticus was feeling. Having gone along the highway for ten minutes, Renata slowed the Volkswagen until she saw a red flag hanging from one of a thousand just-alike trees. She then turned east onto a green alley that was being overgrown by hothouse plants that sought the rods of sunlight angling down through the green ceiling of leaves overhead. Exotic birds darted a few yards away and alighted. A great-beaked toucan jittered its legs on a high branch but didn’t open its wings. Iguanas were in the orange ruts of the road, getting information about the engine noise and then scattering wildly into the weeds or lumbering just off the road and following them with a tiny eye that was like a purple bead on a necklace. High grasses slashed away under the bumper, and dry sticks screeched along the doors so that Atticus had to raise his voice to ask, “How’d he find this place?”

Renata yelled back, “Eduardo, the shaman. I guess he’s a neighbor.”

And then they were in sunlight and green savannah and a sky as blue as shoe prints in the snow. Renata braked the car and killed the engine, and Atticus could hear the surge and groan and spray of a Caribbean sea just out of sight. “And now we walk,” she said. She pressed her high-heeled shoes off against the floorboard and then got out to unfasten her full skirt as Atticus took off his hot black cashmere coat and gray silk tie. She dug around in the back for other clothing and got into some cardinal red Stanford gym shorts and an overlarge white oxford shirt. A garden spade was there for some reason. She smiled at him and said, “I didn’t know Americans still wore braces.”

“They’re galluses,” he said.

“It’s a very smart fashion statement.”

“Antelope’s in the vanguard of high fashion. A lot of people don’t know that.”

She walked ahead of him but paused when she saw Atticus was staring at the right front fender.

“Was there an accident?” he asked.

She didn’t say.

“Wasn’t that perfect a match on the color is how I knew.” Hunching by the car, he swam his right hand over the surface, then got a penknife from his pocket and skidded the blade on a fender edge so a half-inch of red paint peeled up like the skin of an apple. “You got a paint job here that’s maybe a week, two weeks old. See how it peels up? Hasn’t set yet or it’d flake off.”

“Okay; you convinced me.”

Atticus shot her a rankled look.

“You knew he was a lousy driver,” Renata said.

Atticus hunched there with his hands on his knees as if he’d lost his wind. And then he straightened. “Yes, I did.”