State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [43]
“But what did Annick say?” Barbara leaned in close enough that Marina could smell her perfume, a mix of lavender and lime.
“She said that he died of a fever. That’s all I know. And I know that she buried him there.” The restaurant was dark with a cement floor and dried out palm fronds hanging over the bar. There were two pinball machines in the corner and they chirped and clanged even when there was no one there with the change it took to play them.
Barbara ran a tiny red cocktail straw in circles, nervously stirring up the contents of her glass. “I’m sure it would have been almost impossible for her to get the body back.”
“But people do,” Marina said. “I realize Dr. Swenson isn’t sentimental but I imagine she would have felt differently had it been her husband. Anders’ wife would have liked to see him buried at home.” She would have liked it had he never gone in the first place.
“Annick has a husband?” Barbara said.
“Not that I know of.”
“Did you speak to Annick about what should be done with Dr. Eckman?” Barbara was more inclined to do the talking. Jackie was busying himself with the hard salted strips of plantains that were served in the place of chips.
“From what I understand she doesn’t have a phone. She wrote a letter and by the time it got to Vogel he’d been dead two weeks.” Marina took a sip of some fruited rum punch Jackie had ordered for all of them. “She wrote the letter to Mr. Fox.”
Barbara and Jackie looked at one another. “Mr. Fox,” they said together ominously.
Marina put down her drink.
“Do you know him?” Barbara asked.
“He’s the president of Vogel,” Marina said, her voice even. “I work for him.”
“Is he awful?”
Marina looked at the girl and smiled. In truth she was irritated with Mr. Fox. He had gone ahead and sent her another phone and several different antibiotics and enough Lariam to see her through another six months in South America. If he had intended it as a message, it wasn’t a message that pleased her. “No,” she said neutrally, “not awful at all.”
Barbara waved her hand. “I shouldn’t have said that. But you have to understand—”
“We’re very protective of Annick,” Jackie said, nibbling the side off a plantain strip.
Barbara nodded vigorously, giving her long, jeweled earrings a good swing. Barbara had overdressed for dinner, wearing a sleeveless silk top in emerald green. She was such a pretty girl. It must be hard for her, Marina imagined, to have no place to go. “Of course you’d be upset about your friend. We’re upset about Dr. Eckman ourselves, but whatever happened it wasn’t Annick’s fault. It’s just that she’s very focused. She has to be.”
Now that Marina was in the Amazon it seemed that there was probably no end of things that could kill a person without any assignment of blame, unless perhaps the blame was assigned to Mr. Fox. “I never thought it was her fault.”
This news came to Barbara as a great relief. “I’m so glad!” she said. “Once you understand Annick you know there’s nobody like her. I was thinking that maybe you hadn’t been around her in a while, or you’d forgotten,” she said, seeming to know things she could not possibly know. “She’s such a force of nature. Her work is thrilling, but really, it’s almost beside the point. She’s what’s so amazing, the person herself, don’t you think? I try to imagine what it would have been like to have a mother like that, a grandmother, a woman who was completely fearless, someone who saw the world without limitations.”
Marina could remember that exact feeling. It was a thought so briefly held and deeply buried that she could barely dredge it up again: What if Dr. Swenson were my mother? She made a mental note to call her mother before she went to bed tonight, even if it was very late. “But what does that have to do with Mr. Fox?”
“He bothers her,” Jackie said, as if he had suddenly woken up and found himself in a restaurant, in a conversation. His blue eyes peered