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He was right.
"You bring block?" he asked.
"No."
"Fuck. This is stupid. I don't want malaria."
"I wouldn't mind it," I said. I had a distant and untested fascination with sickness like that, that would bring you to the brink but not over, if you were strong.
We debated. Continuing on meant an unknown risk – the place could be swarmed with mosquitos any second – but going back to the car meant that we'd truly done nothing, and we would never do anything. If we couldn't pull off the road and walk through a field to the ocean then we were worth nothing.
We walked on. The ground was hard and brown and dotted with seashells. There were shells all the way back to the highway, the road lined with them, white and broken.
"You see all the shells?" Hand asked.
"I know."
"This whole area was underwater."
After a few minutes we could see the ocean. It was the lightest blue, a dry and sun-faded blue. We walked closer, a few hundred yards from the shore, and saw a group of small houses, all of the same design and standing in formation – some kind of development, between us and the water. About fifteen of them, cottage-sized and neatly arrayed, on a sort of plateau, separated from us and from the beach beyond by a moat, sixteen feet down and filled with what seemed to be -
"Sewage," I said.
"I know."
"Brutal."
The builders had run out of money. It was a resort-to-be, but without any sign of recent work. There were no vehicles or trailers. Only these small homes, well-built, windowless and sturdy. Each one big enough for one bedroom, a sitting room and a small porch. We got as close as we could before the moat asserted itself without solution. The water in the moat was too deep and dirty to wade through, and too wide to jump.
"There is no reason for this moat," said Hand. "Someone built this moat and even they don't know why."
There was a man. He walked into view on the other side of the moat, among the houses. He was Senegalese, bone-thin and holding in his hand some kind of electric device, black and with a long ante
"Security," Hand said. "They've got someone guarding the whole place."
"We should leave."
"No."
We were watching the man and he was watching us.
"Let's pretend we're leaving and see if he leaves," I said.
"Fine," Hand said.
We turned and shuffled away. Was he armed? He could shoot us if he wanted to and no one would ever know. We sat behind a pair of thick shrubs.
"Pilar looked thin," I said.
"She did?" Hand said, trying to balance a thin stick between his nose and upper lip. "I thought she looked normal."
"You're blind."
I dug a small hole and put a scallop-shaped shell inside, and buried it. Then I retrieved it, and set it back in the exact spot I'd found it.
"This is slower than I thought it would be," I said.
"It's good though," Hand said.
"We're still wasting time," I said. "We still have $1,400 or something."
"You're the one who's got to decide what he wants to do. I'm along to help, but for example what are we doing here?"
"I know what I want to do."
"Well which is it? What is this, for example? This isn't helping with the money thing. There's no one out here. And we've already been swimming today so -"
"We saw the water and wanted to walk. And now there's this moat and we have to – you know."
"I guess," he said.
Under the shadow of Hand's back, ants walking in a loose capillary line. Hand got up quickly, convinced they were red.
"I just like it out here," I said.
I did. I pictured myself in one of those half-built homes, squatting and on the water. I could have a car, park it behind the warehouse and live here, for free, under this sun and with this water, protected by this moat -
I stood and the man was gone.
"Let's go," Hand said.
We walked alongside the moat, hoping to find a narrow place to cross, to get closer to the homes and then to the beach beyond. We soon saw a clothesline threaded between one porch and its adjacent tree. Shirts and pants hung from it, and on the porch towels and an Indiana University umbrella.
"Jesus," I said. "Someone's living here."
"Makes sense."
"But why does the security guy let them?"
"We could plant some money in there," Hand said. "Put it in a pair of pants."
"Yeah, on the clothesline. That'd be good."
We went around the entire moat and at the far right end found an area where we could get down the bluff, about fifty feet, and over the water. There was a rocky sort of path sloping right and after taking off our shoes in case we landed somehow in the moat, we descended, sliding and jumping, and soon found ourselves jogging slightly, as if descending stairs in a hurry. The path was now dotted with large flat rocks, like overturned di
We hopped from the middle to the side, into wet mud, the ground like wet velour. Then up the middle bluff, only twenty feet or so, and we were now amid the resort. The homes were unfinished inside, slate-grey adobe, dark and cool. We stood, turning in place, taking it in.
"I'm glad we did that," I said.
Hand nodded and stepped over a pile of plywood boards.
I tried to picture the complex as it was intended, in final form. The moat was an expansion of a stream that ran from the home next-door, a huge compound behind a high stone wall. There would be footbridges over the water, and lush gardens would be planted, narrow paths lighted by low tasteful fixtures rising from the tended lawns. But for now it was dry, with great piles of tubing and cinderblocks resting unused.
"We could stay here tonight." I said.
Hand looked around. "We could."
"We'd need some netting or something."
"Get some in Saly or Mbuu."