They didn’t linger long in Lima, hanging around the foggy airport only until they could recover their luggage and catch the first flight to Cuzco on an antique Aeroperu 707.

That’s when they learned that their confirmed onward reservations meant nothing. Fortunately a few persuasive words from Carter to the female sump block of a scheduling clerk cleared the way, leaving Ashwood to grudgingly admit as how her companion might be of some use on the journey after all.

Nothing fell off the flying vibrator during the short flight, and the landing was smoother than it should have been, given the powerful crosswinds that usually scoured the high Andean plateau. The air on the tarmac was thin but free of the familiar pollutants. To the east the snowy peaks of the Andes delineated a pale horizon.

By afternoon they were both slightly woozy and nauseous. Their hotel provided cups of coca tea, the traditional remedy for altitude sickness. Carter drank only after being assured that there wasn’t enough serious stimulant in the brew to get a gerbil high. Within a few hours they felt well enough to try dinner.

Still, lingering aftereffects compelled him to keep his eyes averted from Ashwood as she hungrily devoured a disgustingly rare chunk of steak.

She smirked across the table at him. “Remind me again later how fortunate I am to have you along.” He responded with a wan smile. “Hey, if you want to puke, feel free. But not while I’m eating, okay?” She put her knife and fork down and rose.

“I’m goin’ up to my room. Y’all ought to get some sleep. Tomorrow we’ve got to try and find us a guide who won’t lead us around in circles to run up his bill.”

“I’m not sleepy,” he told her. “Mom.”

She started to respond, caught herself. “All right, sonny-boy. Truce. Do whatever you want, so long as you’re ready to go at sunup. But if you’re plannin’ on waiting around to sign autographs, you’re wastin’ your time. There’s no audience here for y’all.”

But she was wrong.

The woman who approached the table half an hour later did not ask for an autograph, nor did she gape simperingly at him as so many of his female fans were wont to do. Staring boldly and not waiting for permission, she sat down in the chair Ashwood had vacated.

The salubrious effects of the hot tea having banished the last traces of dizziness, he found himself debating whether to follow Ashwood’s advice and do the sensible thing or let his present situation continue to evolve. The woman was extraordinarily tall, almost his height. She towered over everyone else in the hotel. Her features were classical Castilian, her eyes saturnine. Shoulder-length black hair, black eyes, a slim upper body, and slightly wide hips completed his initial impression. Her attitude was a not unattractive mix of the sophisticated and the girlish: a twelve-year-old trapped in the body of an Amazon.

“Buenos … good evening,” he ventured. His Spanish bordered on the nonexistent. As it happened, his linguistic ignorance was not a hindrance. Her English was fluent, mellifluously accented.

“I’m Francesca. I live here. You don’t. You’re a norteamericano.”

“That’s right.” He was used to forwardness in women.

“You a tourist?”

“Yes.”

“You just get in?” She lit a cigarette. Everyone here smoked, he’d noticed. “I don’ mean to pry. You don’ have to talk to me if you don’ want to.” Her gestures, like her speech, were abrupt, hyperactive. “I’m not a whore. I just like talking to people. You here to see the ruins?”

Her energy was formidable. “Yes.” It was easier to let her ramble on like a runaway rocket than try to interject more than a simple acknowledgment or denial.

“I live here. Cuzco’s my home. What do you do?”

“I’m an actor.”

She nodded. “When I first see you I think that might be it. You are very good to look at.”

“Thanks. You’re quite a knockout yourself.”

She smiled, cocked her head sideways. “Mutual admiration is good.” She eyed the plate in front of her. “You not alone.”

“I’m traveling with a friend.” He saw no reason to elaborate.

“I unnerstand.” She looked around the nearly deserted dining room. “I come in here a lot, to talk with people. Cuzco is very provincial. The people here are either very poor or think they are very rich. Those who think they are rich are arrogant. Arrogance makes them dull. Tourists carry a different kind of baggage with them and can be so much more interesting. So I spend my free time visiting the hotels. It lets me practice my English.”

Her earlier disclaimer seemed to be the truth. An hour of casual conversation included nothing to suggest that she was in fact a loquacious nocturnal capitalist who was simply biding her time prior to venturing the expected proposition.

“I don’ have the money to travel,” she was telling him as they both nursed local coffee. “So I watch the television and read magazines. But it’s better to talk with someone who has actually been such places as Paris or New York or Buenos Aires than jus’ to read about them.”

He checked his watch. “Then I hope I’ve been informative as well as entertaining. I’ve enjoyed your company, Francesca.”

She ignored the hint, leaning forward across the table. “So tell me: what you gonna do while you in Cuzco? You mus’ go up to Sacsayhuaman, of course, and there are many interesting buildings around the Plaza de Armas.”

“My companion is doing all the planning,” he told her.

“I unnerstand. Are you goin’ down into the selva, the jungle, at all?”

“We might,” he murmured diffidently. “Like I said, my friend is handling our itinerary.”

“You really don’ want to go there. It is miserable, hot, and the insects will have you for breakfast if the snakes don’ kill you first.” She shook her head. “I don’ understan’ tourists. Machu Picchu, Cuzco, that I understan’. But why anyone would want to pile into a plane and go to Puerto Maldonado to sweat like pigs to see some macaws, that is jus’ crazy. We who live here have more sense than that.” She stared evenly at him.

“The only people who go into the selva do so for money: gold prospectors, oil engineers, poachers. An’ all of them would rather be someplace else. For many of them the selva is their last chance. Why would anyone go there who doesn’ have to?”

“Why do people go to zoos?” Carter finished his coffee. “As for me, I’m one of those people who like looking at animals.”

She shook her head disparagingly. “The animals in the selva don’ just look back. Most of them bite. Take my advice and look at the ruins instead. It’s safer.” She rose and he reflexively echoed the movement. It wasn’t often he had the chance to say good night to a dinner companion eye-to-eye.

“Maybe I see you around Cuzco,” she told him. “You goin’ to be at this hotel for a while?”

“As far as I know,” he replied truthfully.

“Okay. You don’ mind my talking to you, do you? All I want is to talk, not to sleep with you.”

Her bluntness delighted him. “Fine by me. The altitude makes me dizzy anyway.”

“I could make you dizzier.” She favored him with a strange, tight little smile. “But that I can have anytime. Good conversation is much harder to come by. Maybe I see you here again tomorrow night.”

“Maybe. Good night.”

“Buenas noches.”

He followed her with his eyes as she marched out of the restaurant. So did the maitre d’ and the remaining waiter. So did the clerk at the front desk. With her beauty, height, and regal bearing she would have turned heads in Manhattan.

It was exhausting simply to sit and listen to her and he discovered that he was suddenly very tired. The elevator carried him to the third and top floor. There was no action from the phone, no knock on the door as he undressed and readied himself for bed. The flight from Lima, the altitude, and the tea combined to counteract the effects of the after-dinner coffee and he quickly fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

He sensed the movement before he came fully awake: something small and active in the darkness at the foot of his bed. The rapid return of consciousness was accompanied by memories of every television documentary he’d ever seen on South American wildlife: enormous snakes, smaller venomous reptiles, giant bird-eating spiders, and lethal scorpions. They crawled and slithered through his mind in rapid succession, as clear and sharp and immediate as if he were scrolling through a CD-ROM encyclopedia.

Blinking furiously to clear sleep from his eyes, he lifted his head just enough to see a dark silhouette fumbling under the blanket near his feet. Uttering a silent curse, he jerked his body into a sitting position, back against the headboard, his knees drawn up close to his chest. Swinging his legs to his right he slipped out of the bed and looked around wildly for a weapon.

Clutching the dressing-table chair in one hand he cautiously approached the foot of the bed. By now his eyes had grown accustomed to the dim light. With his free hand he snatched convulsively at the blanket, prepared to retreat into the bathroom if necessary, and yanked it aside.

A dark, four-legged shape exploded off the sheet and vanished under the dresser.