Everything's Eventual

   The woman gave Escobar a small nod. Fletcher had seen her around the building, always garbed in shapeless dresses like the one she wore now. She had been with Escobar often enough for Fletcher to assume she was his secretary, personal assistant, perhaps even his biographer—Christ knew that men like Escobar had egos large enough to warrant such accessories. Now Fletcher wondered if he'd had it backward all along, if she was his boss.

   In any case, the nod seemed to satisfy Escobar. When he turned back to Fletcher, Escobar was smiling. And when he spoke, it was in English. "Don't be silly, put them away. Mr. Fletcher is only here to help us in a few matters. He will soon be returning to his own country"—Escobar sighed deeply to show how deeply he regretted this. ". . . but in the meantime he is an honored guest."

   We don't need no steenkin handcuffs, Fletcher thought.

   The woman who looked like the Bride of Frankenstein with a very deep tan leaned toward Escobar and whispered briefly behind her hand. Escobar nodded, smiling.

   "Of course, Ramón, if our guest should try anything foolish or make any aggressive moves, you would have to shoot him a little." He roared laughter—roly-poly TV laughter—and then repeated what he had said in Spanish, so that Ramón would understand as well as Fletcher. Ramón nodded seriously, replaced his handcuffs on his belt, and stepped back to the periphery of Fletcher's vision.

   Escobar returned his attention to Fletcher. From one pocket of his parrot-and-foliage-studded guayabera he removed a red-and-white package: Marlboros, the preferred cigarette of third-world peoples everywhere. "Smoke, Mr. Fletcher?"

   Fletcher reached toward the pack, which Escobar had placed on the edge of the table, then withdrew his hand. He had quit smoking three years ago, and supposed he might take the habit up again if he actually did get out of this—drinking high-tension liquor as well, quite likely—but at this moment he had no craving or need for a cigarette. He had wanted them to see his fingers shaking, that was all.

   "Perhaps later. Right now a cigarette might—"

   Might what? It didn't matter to Escobar; he just nodded understandingly and left the red-and-white pack where it was, on the edge of the table. Fletcher had a sudden, agonizing vision in which he saw himself stopping at a newsstand on Forty-third Street and buying a pack of Marlboros. A free man buying the happy poison on a New York street. He told himself that if he got out of this, he would do that. He would do it as some people went on pilgrimages to Rome or Jerusalem after their cancer was cured or their sight was restored.

   "The men who did that to you"—Escobar indicated Fletcher's face with a wave of one not-particularly-clean hand—"have been disciplined. Yet not too harshly, and I myself stop short of apology, you will notice. Those men are patriots, as are we here. As you are yourself, Mr. Fletcher, yes?"

   "I suppose." It was his job to appear ingratiating and frightened, a man who would say anything in order to get out of here. It was Escobar's job to be soothing, to convince the man in the chair that his swelled eye, split lip, and loosened teeth meant nothing; all that was just a misunderstanding which would soon be straightened out, and when it was he would be free to go. They were still busy trying to deceive each other, even here in the deathroom.

   Escobar switched his attention to Ramón the guard and spoke in rapid Spanish. Fletcher's Spanish wasn't good enough to pick up everything, but you couldn't spend almost five years in this shithole capital city without picking up a fair vocabulary; Spanish wasn't the world's most difficult language, as both Escobar and his friend the Bride of Frankenstein undoubtedly knew.

   Escobar asked if Fletcher's things had been packed and if he had been checked out of the Hotel Magnificent: Sí. Escobar wanted to know if there was a car waiting outside the Ministry of Information to take Mr. Fletcher to the airport when the interrogation was done. Sí, around the corner on the Street Fifth of May.

   Escobar turned back and said, "Do you understand what I ask him?" From Escobar, understand came out unnerstand, and Fletcher thought again of Escobar's TV appearances. Low bressure? What low bressure? We don't need no steenkin low bressure.

   "I ask have you been checked out of your room—although after all this time it probably seems more like an apartment to you, yes?— and if there's a car to take you to the airport when we finish our conversation." Except conversation hadn't been the word he used.

   "Ye-es?" Sounding as if he could not believe his own good fortune. Or so Fletcher hoped.