Stopping, Matías turns and asks Jack, “What are you fighting with yourself about back here, Jack?”

Son of a bitch has been leading the way, eavesdropping while Jack has been talking out loud. Thinking openly without realizing it. He really is losing the plot. Hardest part of living is knowing you are going to die and then getting placed in this lethal situation you may have caused sooner than expected. Maybe that’s why people become thrill seekers. To overcome that. To push above and beyond what they believe to be a limit. Until you have no limits. At that point, you have conditioned yourself. Hardened yourself. Overcome what was humanly possible to overcome.

Jack asks Matías, “Am I talking aloud?”

“Only for the past two hours. On and on. Is this how you figure things out at your work?”

It is official, then: Jack has lost it. “I guess I do. I’ve been alone for some time. After my wife died, I just withdrew internally. I started to have conversations with myself. You know, just talking problems out. Dilemmas. Things that had happened at work. Interactions, occurrences, dynamics. I don’t know, I guess it became a habit. It’s very liberating to get the words out into the open.”

“Out into the open, with no one to reply? And you withdrew to here, Peru? To the Vrae Valley, cocaine central? Ha! Jack, you’re one crazy guy. You Americans—I don’t get it. You have everything at your fingertips. Now look at us, out in the jungle, fleeing drug runners and soldiers, like Tango and Cash.”

“Who?” Jack questions.

“Stallone and Kurt Russell—it’s a movie from the US.”

“Never seen it.”

“What? How about Big Trouble in Little China?”

“Nope.”

“Jack, you’re shitting me. This is un-American. Are you communist?”

“No, I’m not communist. I just never had time for leisure activities.”

“Ah, work, work, work. You never made time. Now look at you. Lost in a jungle in Peru, with a crazy soccer-loving truck-driver father. Abducted and forced to make cocaine. We’re making our own movie, huh, Jack?”

“Yeah,” Jack says. “Something like that. You know, when my mother said to run away and leave it all behind, I didn’t heed her words quick enough. I ran too late. I’m retirement age now. I’m just an old man. This is too much for a man my age to endure.”

“Ah, Jack, quit feeling sorry for yourself. There are people older than you in this jungle who survive on pure grit. Just keep moving. You’re seeing the world for what it really is. That’s good. We’re like Indiana Jones.”