“But you were going to—”

“He’s fine, Lily. He’s already back in the city, drinking his paycheck.”

I sat up, put on my clothes. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

“I’ve said all you need to know.”

“Need to know?” I hooked my backpack over my shoulders, slipped on my sneakers, and got to my feet. “That’s just bullshit. You owe me the truth, Ohms.”

“Where are you going?”

Good question. I glanced at the blackness outside our window. Couldn’t take off this time, couldn’t hop a bus, flag a cab, run away, nothing. My breathing came ragged in my throat. He took me by the hand and I let him gently pull me down next to him.

“Why did we land on the water? Why is there no airstrip?”

“The people let it grow over. It doesn’t take long. It’s a good idea.”

“But wouldn’t it have been safer to land—”

“If we have a real airstrip, the loggers would come, the narcos, the men of opportunity, remember them? Poachers would be everywhere, big machines, too. Now they have to come by river, which takes gas, but by plane it’s too dangerous, since there’s no estirón. You know what that is?”

I shook my head.

“It’s slang for a stretch of straight water—with no turns—long enough for a plane to land on safely. Ayachero’s on a series of bends. That’s why the pilot was shitting himself, that’s why I had to pay him so much.”

“So even those men of opportunity think it’s too dangerous to fly here.”

He shrugged. “They come by boat, or through the jungle.”

“But we did it.”

“I did what I had to do. We did what we had to do. There was no time to fly to San Solidad. It has a small airport, but Ayachero’s five days by boat from there. The funeral is tomorrow. The jaguar is out there, with the taste of human flesh in its mouth.”

In the hanging green darkness, something shrieked at the top of its lungs, followed by a mewling, disintegrating sound.

I got up and stood close to the window. “Omar, what the hell—”

“That’s a mono de noche, a night monkey,” he whispered. “He has huge pink eyes, but can’t see color.”

Another scream, heartbreaking. I took a step back; my heel kicked the mattress.

“Something got him,” he whispered. “Something’s eating him now.”

A menacing growl, a deep-throated thud-thud-thud.

“A crested owl, a búho, has his claws in his throat.”

I looked down at him, this Tarzan in glasses. “How do you know?”

He laughed. “Because I know.”

Something barked like a dog, but not a dog . . .

“What’s that?”

“Bamboo rat. Very ugly. Nose like a tumor. They’re in the cane, in the manioc fields.”

The sounds continued, rustling, cackling volleys back and forth; snorting grunts, low trills, moans, hoots, then a rhythmic cawing that momentarily silenced everything—before the deranged symphony started up again. This was the jungle at night, a major freak show.