"The flesh," she agreed, eyeing my crotch.

I tried not to look at her body. "You could always pray for strength," I suggested at last.

She shook her head, a triumphant smile on her lips. "I pray. But no help ever comes. Why do you think that is?"

"Maybe you've stopped trying," I offered.

She nodded. "I'm just no good. I never will be. Maybe that means I'll go to h.e.l.l." Her body tensed at the word, shivered. "So be it. I don't know any other way to be."

She stepped out of the silk, her thighs sliding against each other. She took the book, put it on top of the shelf. "If you're a friend of Pitt's," she said, and clasped my hand, cupped it to her breast, "if you know him as I do, you will understand that."

"I can't," I said, but didn't pull away.

"You know," she said, her face close to mine, her eyes burning a path through my skull, "he hates it when I dress this way."

"You mean naked?"

"No, silly. The niqab. Says that he's got nothing to be jealous of."

"Then why do you?"

Her mouth quivered. She looked like she was going to cry. "Because I love him."

She grabbed my head with both hands, pulled me down to her mouth. Her tongue slithered between my teeth. I wondered how she could stand it. When did I last brush? I couldn't remember. Yes. I could. A year ago. The day we arrived in La Paz, Kate and I, the baby in tow. Pain stabbed at the back of my brain, and I stuffed the memory down as far as it would go. I stroked an open palm down her lower back, across her hip and up between her thighs.

"Like that," she hissed, and ran her fingers through my hair.

To avoid her mouth I kissed her neck, trailed my way down to her left nipple. I sucked on her breast, t.i.t flesh filling my mouth, rubbery against my teeth like moldy cheese, and choked on a mouthful of milk. She pulled away but I held her tight, swallowed. When she was dry, I took my mouth away. There was milk in my lungs. I stifled the cough.

"No idea where he might have gone?" I asked.

"Gone?" She ground herself down on my hand.

"Pitt."

"Something heavy," she sighed into my shoulder.

"Heavy."

"On his soul."

"You mean like guilt?"

"What else would I mean?" She pushed me away, as though trying to control herself, then clutched at my back, clawed my scalp and dropped backward onto the bed, pulling me down on top of her.

"About what?" I asked. I drove the knee of my dirty jeans between her legs, bent to kiss her other breast, avoiding the nipple this time.

"Wish I knew." The words escaped from her like air from a deflating balloon.

I caressed her cheek. Her face was wet. "What did he say?"

She stifled a sob. "He quoted Camus."

I lifted my head. "Who?"

"Camus. The French philosopher."

"Who said what?"

She was suddenly cross. "What is this, lecture time?"

"It could be important. What did he say?"

She unbuckled my belt but I stopped her.

"'The only true philosophical question is suicide.'"

"Meaning what?"

"To live or to die. It's a choice. You have to choose."

"And what was Pitt's choice?"

"He didn't say."

I nibbled her neck just under her ear. "Then how do you know he has guilt?"

"I know what guilt looks like. I look in the mirror every day." She shoved me up onto my knees and grabbed for my pants. "Now shut up and f.u.c.k me." She had my belt undone and my c.o.c.k in her hand before I could stop her.

Her feather touch clouded my brain, thickened my tongue. "Where would he go?" I asked.

"G.o.d, it's huge," she said. "You live up to your nickname, I'll say that."

"We were talking about Pitt."

She tickled me in the wrong place. I gasped.

"It matter to you, baby, where he is?"

"It does. Yes."

She bent to take me in her mouth, but I covered myself with my hand.

"Hard to get." She laughed, husky, deep in her throat. "I like that."

I wasn't, actually. Hard to get. Just not worth getting. But that wasn't the point. Even though Pitt had screwed me over, and big time, I couldn't bring myself to return the favor. I'd already f.u.c.ked his mom plenty. I stuffed myself into my pants, zipped up.

She sat up on her knees and c.o.c.ked her head to one side. "You're serious."

"I said I was, didn't I?" It came out more tartly than I had planned.

She trailed a finger along my shoulder, came up behind me and pressed herself against my back. She took hold of my sweater and pulled. I put my arms in the air and let her yank it off me. She reached under my armpits, began unb.u.t.toning my shirt. Her lips brushed my neck.

"Said something about volunteering," she murmured.

"Volunteering?"

"Save the planet, all that c.r.a.p."

I took hold of her wrists. "You know where?"

She struggled. I didn't let go. I leaned my head back, kissed her.

She said, "Pitt always comes home. Eventually."

"Not this time," I said.

"What makes you say that?"

"Call it a feeling."

"Is it your fault?"

I nodded. "Maybe. Maybe not."

"But you have to know for sure."

I have to know how he deals with his guilt. But I wasn't about to tell her that.

I nodded and let go of her wrists. She got up, went to the rolltop desk. She bent forward, her bottom aimed at me in silent invitation. I looked away, closed my eyes, peeked.

"He keeps the things he wants to hide in here." She lifted the pigeonholes to reveal a secret compartment, and removed several business cards. I was out of the bed and s.n.a.t.c.hed the cards from her hand before she could turn.

"Finally," she said. "A man who knows what he wants."

I stuffed the business cards into my jeans pocket, draped my sweater over my shoulder. I pinned her arms to her sides and inched around her to the door.

Her mouth opened wide. "Amazing. But how?"

"What's that?" I said, one hand on the doork.n.o.b.

"You're so strong."

In her Boston tw.a.n.g I heard my ex-wife gloating to my face outside the courthouse door. The rage made me h.o.r.n.y. I could have f.u.c.ked an entire harem and had energy left over. But not for this woman, and not for anyone like her.

I opened the door and the singed cat twisted its way into the room, meowing. A little hand snaked through the open door, clamped down on the animal's tail, pulled it back outside. I kicked at the hand with my shoe. The cat hid under the bed.

"No," I said. "I'm not."

FIVE.

Volcanic Volunteers.

Two of the business cards were in Spanish. One was a high-cla.s.s brothel downtown. Another belonged to Hak Po. The third announced itself as Volcanic Volunteers. A picture of a happy smiley sun setting over a lake in the mountains adorned the card. The address was in Miraflores, right on Avenida Larco, the heart of the tourist district.

It was an hour walk from San Isidro to Miraflores, and I didn't like exercise. I was committing suicide by cowardice, dammit, and I saw no point in slowing the process. Today, though, I needed to clear my head, so I consoled myself by breathing the city's toxic fumes and holding them deep in my lungs.

What did it mean? Pitt? Volunteering? What was he doing with a bunch of no-good do-gooders with a self-righteous att.i.tude? Look at me, look how good I am. I spent a week playing basketball with street kids in Lima, now let me into Harvard or Princeton, please, pretty please with sugar on top?

That wasn't like Pitt. That wasn't like Pitt at all. Pitt was more like me. Sc.u.m of the earth, didn't care who knew it. Take what you need and f.u.c.k the rules, 'cause if you don't, somebody else will.

Why did I give him Kate's postcard? I'll bet he still had it. Her cell phone number. Everything. She had said she'd found peace volunteering. No way that was a coincidence. I pulled back my sleeve and put out my cigarette. You a.s.shole. You could at least have kept her number. Then you wouldn't have to traipse halfway across f.u.c.king Lima to talk to some holier-than-thou morons.

I found the volunteering office sandwiched between an internet cafe full of perky blondes yabbling in Swedish and a chifa joint that sold Peruvian chow mein, guaranteed diarrhea. To get there I had to run the gauntlet, the Shiny Happy People Zone, tourism central: overpaid stockbrokers from New York and London drinking resealed bottles of tap water, eating "guaranteed clean" imported salads slathered in human fecal material, congratulating themselves on how clever they were. They'd seen Machu Picchu. Deepest, darkest Lima, Peru, had changed since Paddington Bear made his getaway.

I cupped my hand to the gla.s.s door. Stairs led to the second floor. I depressed the dirty yellow b.u.t.ton on the intercom.

"Si?"

"This Volcanic Volunteers?"

"No hablo ingles."

"Cut the c.r.a.p, b.i.t.c.h, I know you speak English. I want to volunteer. You going to let me up or aren't you?"

A long pause. I was about to punch the b.u.t.ton again when the buzzer sounded. I opened the door with a click, let it swing shut. The stairs were dirty and covered in speckled linoleum, the kind that's supposed to look like marble but winds up looking more like bird s.h.i.t.

I reached into my pocket for my soap dish. A glint of gla.s.s above. I kept my hand in my pocket. Security camera. Interesting. It's true you can't be too careful in Lima. But a volunteering organization with a security camera in the stairwell? This was the tourist district, after all. The hotels bribed the police to keep a watch on this part of town.

On the landing, only one door. Locked. So I knocked: shave and a haircut, f.u.c.k you. A distant shuffling approached, like an ancient, dying animal. A key rotated in the lock, the door opened a few inches. A freckled face surrounded by a dandelion head of frizzy orange hair peered at me through a pair of brown plastic gla.s.ses.

"I help you?" The accent was German, Bavarian perhaps, thick and guttural.

"You always so rude to people who come here?" I asked.

"You call every woman you meet a b.i.t.c.h?"

"What do you think?"

She laughed. "You are not volunteer we want. Sorry."