No answer.

“You alive over there, A?”

“It’s not something I dwell on, B. More pleasant thoughts fill my mind.”

FrannyB guffawed. “Pleasant thoughts! Well, let’s not interrupt those, right, For God’s Sake? And speaking of pleasant thoughts, did you happen to remember—” Without making eye contact, he handed her a slim bottle of rum before returning to his work. “Oh, bless you,” she said with a satisfied sigh, as she dragged two chairs close to a clay oven and gestured for me to join her.

“Looks like you’ve been suffering some of the jungle’s delights,” she said, gesturing at me.

“What do you mean?”

“Your skin. All those bites. Hold on.” She disappeared into her strange home, then reappeared with a small glass bottle. “Iodine. It’ll set you straight.”

“Thanks,” I said, accepting the bottle and a plastic pouch of cotton. “So how did you come to live out here?”

“Just trying to be closer to the Tatinga. But once a week or so, me and A come down to Ayachero to teach and preach, as we call it, sew up whoever needs to be sewn up, help with the babies, whatever’s needed, so count on us, okay? I’m a physician, she’s a trauma nurse. For God’s Sake here keeps us flush with supplies.”

With an affectionate slap on Omar’s back as he walked by with a sack of yucca, FrannyB continued, “So this man was practically Tatinga when I knew him. Spent more time with the savages than he did with the Ayacherans. Jaguar hunting with Splitfoot and so on.” She gestured at me with the sloshing bottle. “But you, my new friend. What are you, twenty-two?”

“I’m nineteen.”

“Hoo, Omar! Got yourself a young one, didn’t ya!” He ignored her.

She offered me the bottle. I took a good swig.

“Tell me your story. You’re American?”

“Yes.”

“And . . . that’s it? Omar bought you in a market in La Paz?” She chuckled at her own joke. “How’d you end up here?” She eyed me like no matter what I said, she’d guess the truth.

“I was living in Cochabamba and met Omar, and we fell in love.”

She burped softly. “ ‘Fell in love’? Haven’t heard that expression in quite some time.”

“Stop your nosiness, B,” FrannyA said.

FrannyB ignored her. “Why didn’t you stay in Cocha? It’s a nice town. There’s electricity, roads, civilization. In a manner of speaking. What’s here for you, in this . . . this accursed paradise?”

“Omar.”

She leaned forward in her chair, jabbing at the air near me with her cigar. “Lily, do you have any idea where you are?” She glanced around like there was someone else listening to us besides the men and possibly FrannyA. “You’re in the land of Satan, that’s where you are.”

“What are you talking about?”

She got up and paced around her chair. “Have a look around, Lily. God is here—He’s everywhere—but especially here, the highest point for miles and that much closer to Him, but so is the devil.” She shook the bottle at me, her eyes watery and red. “I’ve seen him here more than anywhere. It’s the shamans. They’ve got a direct line to Lucifer himself, almost like I do to God. And these wild ones, these Indians running around naked and fornicating with their brothers and sisters and shooting their curare arrows and eating their dead—yes, they do that, as a matter of respect, if you can imagine—these Tatinga are turned to the dark side, even though they’ll show up for a sermon and a free cooking pot and a bag of salt. After a dozen years, we still don’t have them.” She leaned in to me, offered me another drink; I took it.