“But you don’t have a phone.”

I gulped the wine and shrugged my shoulders. “I tossed it. Sick of dealing with them all the time.” With what I hoped was an appealing sort of spunkiness, I tucked my hair behind my ears and met his eye. “So much for me. What about you?”

He held out one hand, then turned it. “I fix motorcycles.” His fingernails were ringed with black. Permanent-looking oil stains mapped the lines in his palm, his knuckles. “Show me any bike, and I can take it apart and put it back together, fix any sort of motor. Most cars, too. For ten years—since I was seventeen—I’ve worked in a repair shop, just around the corner from the Versailles. I used to think that was all I wanted to do.”

He pushed himself up to a seated position, slapped the crumbs off his hands, fixed me with his intense gaze. “I grew up in the jungle, a few hundred kilometers from here, in a village called Ayachero, along a branch of the Amazon. It’s five days by water from the closest village, no roads, the last outpost before the jungle. My two brothers—Panchito and Franz—they still live there, so does my mother.

“I miss it, Lily. I miss everything about it—my family, hunting, the animals, the air, the sounds. I’m seventh-generation Amazonian. My father and grandfather were famous jaguar hunters.”

“Jaguar hunters?” Holy crap—was there really such a thing? If so, I wanted to know everything . . . then again, was he bullshitting me now?

He shrugged. “Sure, I didn’t like killing them, but we had to sometimes. Once a jaguar comes and kills one of our cows or pigs, it won’t stop. They’ve got the taste in their mouth; they remember where their last meal came from. And they’ll keep coming back until they take everything—chickens, dogs—so we have to take them out. It’s us or them. Understand?”

I nodded. I understood us or them perfectly.

“So, Lily, listen. What I really want now is to be a jungle guide. This British guy came into the shop a few months ago—I fixed his bike—he’s got a lodge near Iquitos, in Peru. He told me, if you know the jungle like you say you do, just learn English. You’ll have a job with me.”

“You can get in touch with him?”

“I kept his card. And I have friends who do it. They’ve all learned English; they make a good living. So what do you think, Lily, will you give me an assignment so I can get started?”

I laughed. “You’re really serious about this.”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay . . . all right. Your first assignment is to write about why you want to be a jungle guide.”

He perked up, eyes blazing. “When’s it due?”

I laughed again. “Whenever you—”

“I can have it for you by the end of the week.” He picked up a short-handled knife and began to peel a brilliant red aguaje, slicing me a section of mustard-yellow fruit. The taste was subtle—a tart saffron. I wanted more.