I’m third in line at the Aerolíneas counter. I used some of the flight time to brush up on the bit of Spanish I’d picked up from Jorge, a tech coach from Chile who’d worked with the team for years. Equipaje. Right, luggage. I should have gone LAN Argentina, but Aerolíneas was so much cheaper. I have money saved, but I don’t know how long I’ll be here.

I approach and mumble something in Spanish. The airline representative says something in Portuguese, then immediately switches to English when I don’t respond.

“Hello, how can I help you, miss?”

“I’ve lost my luggage.”

“Okay, excellent. Where you are flying from?”

“Spokane, Washington,” I say. “I connected through Lima.”

“Excellent.” She returns to her computer with a great flurry of typing. “Flight number please? Name?” I give her my real name, hoping it’s the last time I’ll have to say it for a while.

“Excellent,” she tells me. Apparently my name rings no bells. It probably wasn’t a story here. I’ve lost any sense of proportion.

“Okay.” She smiles, and I want to hug her for some reason. Perhaps because she’s the first person I’ve spoken to in so many hours. “Your luggage was sent to São Paulo. But it’s no problem. You write for me here the address where you are staying and we send it there, one day, two days, maybe, but no more.”

I write it for her.

She nods approvingly. “Palermo Soho. Is nice. You know it?”

I shake my head.

“You will like it.” She smiles.

I make my way to the buses heading to the city center. The air outside is pleasant, almost balmy. I’ve left behind winter too; it’s spring in the Southern Hemisphere, soon to be summer. It dawns on me that I don’t have so much as a change of underwear in the gym bag I used as my carry-on: a ghastly rookie mistake for someone as well traveled as I am. I don’t know how to pack for this new life any more than I know how to live in it. I have only the minimal toiletries I bought for the flight and my wallet and passport. I have my Spanish classes and my tour guide orientation in two days and I have only the—surely ripe—travel clothes on my back.

I wearily file onto a bus, and at first I don’t know what it is that feels so different, that washes me in relief. Then I realize: anonymity. No one’s eyes are following me as I move, there’s no ripple of alarmed whispers as people recognize me and point me out to their companions.