66. Me Chauffeur

66.

Me: Chauffeur

Nerves pretends to rent separate rooms for himself and Mrs. Jones, but it is obvious they are shaking up. I go along with the comic routine.

In the morning we visit the Ariquipa Thieves Market. It is the Real Thing: dealing with honest-to-God thieves for really stolen merchandise. For me it is so real its unreal. Nerves buys some cheap stolen underwear.

All day long I drive like hell, leaving the mountains and entering the vast desert lying between the Andes and the Pacific.

Once or twice Nerves swallows a handful of pills and wants to drive. He does a macho Grand Prix thing for a half hour or so, but he can’t keep up the concentration and turns the bug back over to me. While he has the wheel, though, we are pretty close to death but I take it philosophically. It’s a nice day—probably as good as any to leave my fragile, temporary human shell—so I keep on smilin’ through.

We reach the sea after dark and go through the same “separate rooms” farce at a weird hotel in a nameless village which could be the spooky model for a Ray Bradbury “October Country” story. A cold wind is blowing the inhabitants through the empty streets like autumn leaves. An old scarecrow stops me to say how great the USA is but he snorts with disgust when he discovers the sad fact that this American doesn’t smoke and has no cigarettes to share.

I have tried to eat like my employers, but they do swallow the huge quantities of chicken and rice and stuffed cabbage and soda pop, so I am feeling rather ill and stagger off to bed early.

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