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of the hill, on the other side of the train tracks. Dad ordered a kind of hot toddy made with Pisco and black tea and local honey and lemon zest. He let me have one, too. First time for everything.
    A man grabbed a chair from an empty table and pulled it up to ours. Juan. In a fresh pair of jeans, hiking boots, and the same red thermal jacket. He ran a hand through his thick hair. He didn’t smile.
    “What are you doing here?” I asked.
    “Taking a roundabout way to meet you.”
    “All this mystery,” Dad said.
    Juan met his gaze. “I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t necessary.”
    “No, I guess you wouldn’t.”
    I didn’t understand. I didn’t like it. I wouldn’t stand it. “What’s going on?”
    “There’s people after a friend of your father’s and mine.”
    “The shaman,” I said.
    “Yes. The people are still looking for him.” He looked at my father. “You know what happened? With the guns?”
    Dad nodded.
    Our waiter stopped by. Juan ordered a bottle of Inka Kola. He waited until the waiter got well out of earshot before he continued in a lowered voice.
    “Our friend is organizing resistance.”
    I glanced from him to Dad and back again. “Against the mining company?”
    The corner of Juan’s mouth quirked up. “What makes you think it’s a company?”
    “I read some stuff.” Maybe the wrong stuff.
    “The mining is illegal. It’s not a company. It’s a type of—how you say—mafia. The government has laws against this, but it happens anyway. The miners use industrial techniques. Machines. They pollute the water. Destroy the land. We are fighting for the land. And for what grows on the land. Do you know what that is?”
    I shook my head.
    Juan clasped his hands. “What if I told you there could be a cure in the rainforest that could help people like your father?”
    I blinked at him. Remembered a movie in Dad’s collection. Something about finding a cure for cancer in the jungle.
    “We are hiking tomorrow,” he said. “You will see. Six o’clock, yes?”
    The waiter arrived with the bottle of Kola. Juan laid some coins on the table and took the bottle with him. He crossed the tracks and climbed the steps to the opposite sidewalk, weaving among the members of a band busy unpacking instruments. How anybody could play music at a time like this was completely beyond me. But then, maybe those people had normal lives.
    Dad drained the last of his drink. He kept his eyes on the musicians.
    I watched him for a minute. Wondered what he was thinking. “Is that guy for real?”
    “Never been anything but.”
    “And your shaman friend?”
    “If your mother and I had asked anyone to be your godparents, it would’ve been him and his wife.”
    They’d had another life. With friends and experiences. Before I came along. Before everything got so screwed up. This felt worse than Juan at the airport. Like I was a stranger in my own family.
    “Why didn’t you tell me before?” I asked.
    He didn’t answer. Which made me feel like I could scream. Not that he noticed. He just pointed to the band, who struck up some folk tune about someone named Pachamama.
    “The earth mother,” Dad said.
    That startled me so much I forgot to yell. “So they’re, like, hippies?”
    That earned a laugh. He ruffled my hair.
    He slept like the dead. I thought those exact words. I spent half the night mourning that I’d thought them, and the other half curled up in the fetal position like a candidate for a nervous breakdown.
    Six in the morning arrived along with a not-so-Continental breakfast and a chill in the air. We met Juan in the dark on the street. I thought we’d be heading out immediately, but instead we went straight to a tiny corner botica whose walls were lined with toys and candy. A twenty-something girl in a pink sweater yawned behind the counter.
    Juan told her how bad Dad felt. Described his symptoms. She sold us painkillers that would have required a doctor visit and a prescription back home.