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it made her laugh in one great burst.
    There were animals everywhere. Underfoot there was always something moving—lizards, crickets, mice. There were iguanas. They could see them scurrying through woodpiles and through the forest. In the thin trees below their hotel they saw an iguana being chased by a yellow truck plowing away the underbrush.
    The woman at the mercado had dirty blond hair, like margarine full of crumbs. Pilar and Hand bought ice cream from a freezer in the market. They tore the thin shiny plastic and ate the chocolate coating first, then the white cold ice cream. The sun made it soft.
    At night they jogged through the alley behind the neighboring hotel, El Jardín del Edén, and down the dark dirt road to where the loosely strung Christmas lights smiled between columns, and techno taunted from speakers hidden in the armpits of trees. Most of the restaurants were still open, their attached bars ill attended. At the end of the road, past the pay phones and the surfers waiting patiently in line next to the local women, toddlers at their feet, they stopped into the Earth Bar, its half-heart-half-globe logo hung low over the open doorway.
    Inside, people holding drinks. Shirtless thin tan surfers and white men, young, with black dreads, were barefoot or wore sandals, always with woven bracelets, beaded necklaces. The women were more varied. Plenty of the surf-girl sort but also backpackers of the Scandinavian breed—white-blond hair and bikini tops, plastic digital watches, reckless sunburns.
    Pilar and Hand stood hip to hip by the bumper-pool table and drank very cold Imperials. The first two went quick— they realized how hot it was and how thirsty they were. They took their third bottles onto the deck, facing the black ocean. The darkness was close and concrete. They talked about the babies their friends were having, about Pete and April and their triplets. The last time Hand had seen April and Pete, they’d left the kids with the fifteen-year-old babysitter and stayed out until 3 a.m., refusing to let go of the night. They’d come home to find the babysitter asleep in their closet, their shoes piled up on the side. One of the babies had a bruise on his back the size of a wallet.
    “In the closet?” Pilar said, and Hand didn’t say anything, or maybe he hadn’t heard. The story was missing many details and it made Pilar angry. But the music was suddenly loud and they didn’t say anything for a full minute. A dog ran in circles on the beach, chased by a smaller dog.
    Hand pulled Pilar into his body and held her.
    “It’s good that you came,” he said. She murmured her agreement. He kissed the top of her head.
    In front of their hotel room there was an anteater.
    “It’s not an anteater,” Hand said, crouching down. “It’s a sloth.”
    “Sloths don’t have noses like that,” Pilar said, “long noses like that.”
    It wasn’t moving, but from its side they could see it breathing, the rise and fall of its coarse fur.
    “They sometimes do,” Hand said. “Down here they do. Look at his toes—they’re three-toed, like—”
    “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    Hand opened his mouth then closed it.
    “Maybe it is an anteater,” he said.
    It was bleeding. From its long snout there was a viscous substance that connected to the tile hallway, a stream of blood and mucus.
    Pilar brought a saucer of milk. The animal made no movement toward it.
    “It’s dying, isn’t it?” she asked.
    “I don’t know. It doesn’t look hurt anywhere. Just the blood coming out the snout.”
    They decided to leave the animal outside. There was no animal hospital in Alta, and there was nothing they could do for it inside.
    “But how the hell did it get here?” Hand asked. “It can barely move. How’d it climb all these stairs? It must have started weeks ago. And why’d it stop at our door? This is too strange. There has to be a reason. We have to bring him inside.”
    So they brought