FERDINANDO, according to the brass plate on the counter–didn't reach for the keys. She winced as if jets of gritty wind were blowing against her eyelids. The keys are right there! she insisted, pointing to a rack behind his desk. Earlier that afternoon, after green-uniformed soldiers had told the manager to lock the hotel's front door, I'd heard her plead with him to open the bar. As groggy as I was, I knew she was on the verge of tears not just because she was worried about my fever and the possibility of gunfire outside, but because she badly needed a drink. She pressed her knuckles to her lips, staring at the closed curtains. He dialed the number over and over, but each time the line crackled for a while and went dead. When he left, my father said, Does that little man think drapes can keep out stay bullets? Not that any're going to come buzzing our way! My mother begged him to phone the American Embassy to find me medical help. He added that the curtains over our balcony must please remain closed its glass door looked out on a street close to the National Palace which had been targeted by rebel planes. From my hotel bed I heard my father shouting at the manager, Please-get my son a doctor! The manager, a chubby man in a tight suit, said he regretted my illness very much but the hotel physician, whose office was many blocks away, could not come because the army had ordered a curfew in the city. After I developed a raw throat and broiling fever in the north, where the Mayan ruins were, they took me back to the capital city. Shaken, I remember the trip my parents and I made to Guatemala when I was eleven. Tonight, I'm staying in a hotel in southeast Asia, in the room where a maid or porter must have stolen my ring while I rushed downstairs late for an appointment. Now that it's gone, though, I long to feel the tiny beak and stroke the curl of its feathery tail. The ring was embossed with a gleaming silver quetzal, the national bird of Guatemala, and over the years I turned it round and round so many times that the bird was worn down to a ghost of itself. I rub the back of my finger where the loss of my ring aches like a phantom limb. Five Points - A Journal of Art & Literature, Vol.15, No.1-2, 2013
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