This was their last Saturday. Beverly was very excited about heading down that night into the Sacred Valley of the Incas, even with Andrew. They were getting a ride with a Peruvian friend they had met, Fernando La Rosa, an artist from Lima who lived in Urubamba. He had a little Datsun pick-up that would get them to Pisac and tomorrow, they could go to the mercado there and buy some things to take home with them. She needed a patchwork alpaca vest for her mother, maybe some folk art thing for Dad and a few trinkets for friends. 

 

Her money was nearing an end. Andrew had more but she didn't feel like borrowing anything from him. She had gotten to dislike him a lot on this trip. When they both had graduated from Loyola in anthropology, they had been very close friends. He had tried to get her to sleep with him once and, although she wasn't interested, she was flattered. Their friendship was more important, she had told him, and, because he had backed off that way and still hung around with her, she thought the matter settled. 

 

They had been traveling all around Peru for three weeks and this last week to Macchu Picchu and back to Lima would be the end of the trip. Of that she was glad. She loved being enveloped by new places and exotic cultures but things with Andrew had gotten horrible. Two nights ago in Cuzco, in a pension they shared, he had raped her. There was no other word for it. He had gotten into her bed while she was sleeping and stuck her like a pig. She had begun to back off from him during the trip because of his ignorant racist comments about dirty Indians and why don't they use soap, stupidity she wouldn't answer, and his impatience with people who did not understand English. She now found him utterly repulsive. She wanted to dump him as soon as possible. Back in Chicago, she'd deal with him somehow but, right now, she was too afraid to travel alone and six more days wouldn't kill her.

 

She and Andrew sat in the open back of the truck, their backs and packs against the cab, while Fernando drove with his companera in front. First, they had to rise above Cuzco, above the monumental stones of Sacsayhuaman, to reach the hills and the pampa before the winding, snaking curves down the mountain into the Valley below. As they reached the wide pampa, Bev, silent with Andrew for three days now, distracted herself, watching the Milky Way, a thick white slash cutting deep into the indigo sky. The pick-up came to a halt and she looked forward. In the road stood a crowd of people, a bright light coming from their center. The beautiful naked body of a young woman was illuminated by the lights of the truck. Two men held her from underneath her armpits and, as they passed, Bev realized that the girl was a corpse, being examined by coroner and witnesses. Andrew began to take photos but, with one unchallenged movement, she hurled his camera outward, as far as she could, into the immense, foreign darkness. He said nothing and did nothing, either then or later.

 

They drove on, circling downward, spiraling round and around, to finish what was begun.