The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2014 Read online

  The confetti caught on Quispe’s lipstick when she laughed and gathered in great drifts on her sequined shoulders.

  High above the park, the Andes turned pink.

  MEMO FROM MEX. CITY:

  Nice color here but still going to pass.

  Strictly local news. But Quispe’s a looker, eh?

  Tell Luis great photos.

  LA PAZ, Bolivia—A reporter shared a taxi home from the club early Sunday morning with a freelance radio correspondent.

  The reporter carefully slid a hand across the backseat, but the freelance radio correspondent dozed on against the far window.

  Orange streetlights rolled over her face. The reporter imagined the two of them were alone together in the empty maze of a ruined city.

  At her building the freelance radio correspondent leaned over and kissed the reporter once on the cheek, as local custom required.

  “Fun night,” she said. “Dream of your cholita.”

  Not an air kiss, though. Full lips. On her skin he could smell where the club sweat had flash-dried in the mountain air.

  LA PAZ, Bolivia—An ambitious campaign to modernize Bolivia’s primitive highways takes a big step this week as construction begins on a new route across the country’s remote eastern jungles.

  Government officials say the Trans-Amazon Highway will promote development and expand trade with wealthy neighbor Brazil.

  But Amazonian Indian groups oppose the project, fearing the road will open up their traditional homelands to outside settlement.

  MEMO FROM MEX. CITY:

  Road-through-virgin-rainforest thing a bit played out these days.

  Does Brazil care? Check in with São Paolo.

  Maybe a feature when it opens.

  LA PAZ, Bolivia—Miss Cholita La Paz has been stripped of her title for wearing fake braids during the pageant, city officials announced Monday.

  Witnesses said they noticed the braids coming loose as Patricia Quispe, 23, embraced friends and family after winning the title Saturday evening.

  Mothers of the other contestants immediately cornered the judges in the park where the pageant was held.

  A harried man from the city’s cultural bureau finally agreed to call a new pageant for the following weekend, with strict rules regarding hair.

  MEMO FROM MEX. CITY:

  Loving Braidgate.

  A feature there? Trials of being an Indian in the 21st century?

  Interview Quispe re: lifestyle, Internet, globalization, etc.

  LA PAZ, Bolivia—A reporter’s phone buzzed just as the Miss Cholita La Paz story broke over the office radio.

  Do fake Indians still count? :-) a freelance radio correspondent wanted to know.

  The reporter sent back a quick, noncommittal Crazy, right? and then a professional inquiry: You filing this?

  No shit I’m filing this, came the reply. See you in the funny papers.

  LA PAZ, Bolivia—The disgraced Miss Cholita La Paz was approached by a reporter Tuesday at her aunt’s chicken stand in a cliffside neighborhood overlooking downtown.

  The angry aunt berated the reporter with a greasy chicken knife, but Patricia Quispe, 23, waved her off.

  “It’s okay. I’ll talk.”

  Freed from its pins, Quispe’s short, black hair hung level with her hard-set chin. She said she’d worn long braids since childhood but cut them off last year when she went to Buenos Aires in search of work.

  “If you show up with braids, they call you an Indian,” she said. “And they pay you a lot less.”

  Would Quispe call herself an Indian?

  “Look,” she said. “I’m a woman who works at a chicken stand. I go to night school for business administration. I grew up in the mountains and I wore petticoats—we all did. Then my mother died and we moved to the city.”

  So no, not anymore?

  “Let me finish. I wear jeans to school and maybe I forget a lot of my Aymara. But I spent four months’ pay on that outfit you saw Saturday, and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever put on.”

  The disgraced Miss Cholita La Paz fought back tears.

  “Call me whatever you want,” she said to the blood-smeared countertop.

  MEMO FROM MEX. CITY:

  Braidgate draft good. Tell Luis we need a photo.

  Amp up “Modern Indian” angle a bit.

  Maybe Quispe has a blog? Cell phone?

  LA PAZ, Bolivia—More than a dozen people were injured Wednesday in violent protests against the construction of a new highway through Bolivia’s remote eastern jungles.

  The Trans-Amazon Highway aims to boost trade in South America’s poorest country. But Amazonian Indians say the road will carve up their rainforest homeland.

  Meanwhile, Aymara Indians in the dry western mountains see the route as opening Bolivia’s fertile lowlands to settlement.

  MEMO FROM MEX. CITY:

  Confused. So we’ve got Indians vs. Indians here?

  Or Indians vs. Civilization? If the latter pls. add to Braidgate final.

  Price for car & driver to Trans-Amazon?

  LA PAZ, Bolivia—A freelance radio correspondent called Wednesday looking for a ride out to the Trans-Amazon protests.

  “Tell me you’re going,” she said when a reporter picked up. “Tell me you’ve got a seat for your favorite starving freelancer.”

  The reporter’s budget was too tight for a dozen injured.

  “You should go, though,” he said. “You could take the bus.”

  “Jesus, that’d be like an hour for each victim.”

  “You could meditate on the way.”

  “You salary boys have no idea.”

  LA PAZ, Bolivia—The disgraced Miss Cholita La Paz was surprised Thursday to see a reporter return with a photographer just as she and her aunt were closing the chicken stand.

  Patricia Quispe, 23, had to rush home and shower before night school, and was hesitant to be photographed in her work clothes.

  “Ay, you should have called!” Quispe said, brushing at her stained sweater and worn velvet skirt. “I would have brought a nicer outfit.” Did Quispe have a cell phone?

  “Of course I have a cell phone,” Quispe said. She scribbled the number and her email address on a scrap of butcher paper. “Promise you’ll send me a copy of your story.”

  The photographer asked Quispe if she’d put on her hat and step into the street to pose, gazing out at the city below.

  Did she need to call anyone, maybe?

  Quispe laughed. “Now? For the picture?” She pulled a cell phone from a hidden pocket in her skirt and pressed it to her ear. “Like this?”

  She should really be talking to someone, the reporter said.

  “Then I’ll talk to you,” Quispe said. “Where are you from? Where in the States, I mean.”

  The reporter always said Texas. Bolivians know what a Texan is.

  “A cowboy, then!” Quispe said. “Where’s your horse?” She made a pistol of her non-phone hand and fired at the camera. “Bang bang!”

  LA PAZ, Bolivia—With a new Miss Cholita La Paz set to be crowned Friday night, reporters on the Patricia Quispe beat wondered if she might need a drink.

  A freelance radio correspondent texted a reporter with the suggestion Friday afternoon. The reporter replied that he had already extended an invitation to the 23-year-old Quispe.

  Well don’t let me get in your way, answered the freelance radio correspondent.

  No, you should come! the reporter wrote back. What if we have nothing to talk about?

  LA PAZ, Bolivia—Judges crowned a new Miss Cholita La Paz Friday after disqualifying last week’s winner for wearing fake braids.

  The city’s cultural bureau adopted much stricter rules regarding hair, which tradition dictates should run in braids all the way to a cholita’s waist.

  Only half the original contestants returned.

  Esmeralda Condori, 19, took the title with a dress of purple sequins and a mouthful of gold teeth.

 
Judges gamely tugged at her braids for the cameras.

  MEMO FROM MEX. CITY:

  Nice color but standalone story unnecessary.

  Tell New York to just update Braidgate final with new winner.

  LA PAZ, Bolivia—The disgraced Miss Cholita La Paz descended the stairs to the basement club Friday in skinny jeans, gold hoop earrings, and a jacket covered in zippers.

  A reporter leapt up from his crowded table to introduce Patricia Quispe, 23. A freelance radio correspondent had dragged along two Spanish photographers and a guy who sometimes wrote for Time. Quispe gamely circled the table, kissing cheeks.

  The freelance radio correspondent nudged the reporter’s ribs. “No petticoats,” she whispered.

  Quispe called for a toast.

  “To fake braids and real friends,” she said.

  As the correspondents drank, she dipped a finger in her glass and flicked a few drops of beer onto the concrete floor. “For the Pachamama,” she explained.

  The correspondents quickly followed suit.

  LA PAZ, Bolivia—The club’s floor show was a troupe of stern young men dressed in Indian ponchos and banging on big drums.

  A guy who sometimes wrote for Time asked the disgraced Miss Cholita La Paz if she’d heard who’d won the pageant to replace her.

  “I just came from there, actually,” said Patricia Quispe, 23. “My aunt told me I shouldn’t go, but I wanted to see. Esmeralda’s a really good person. Speaks better Aymara than me, too. I’m happy for her.”

  “Wait, you were there?” said a freelance radio correspondent. “We didn’t see you. You should have come found us.”

  Quispe shrugged. “I was kind of hiding in the back. It was just easier that way.”

  The floor show ended and pan flutes roared from the speakers.

  A reporter asked Quispe to dance. She stood and smiled. Without the bowler hat, she barely reached the reporter’s shoulder.

  “Is this a partner dance?” he asked as they stepped onto the floor. “Do we hold hands?”

  “Just the one hand, and then you spin me,” Quispe said. “Watch.”

  LA PAZ, Bolivia—A spirited band of foreign correspondents say they lost two members of their party not long after reaching the End of the World.

  The End of the World opens when everything else closes. Sweat runs down the blacked-out windows. Peruvians in the bathroom sell twisted baggies of cheap coke.

  After a high-volume debate, the correspondents decided the disgraced Miss Cholita La Paz was last seen standing in a back corner. A reporter was leaning close. They were sharing a beer.

  Later the police arrived and the bartender went outside to pay the bribe. In the empty street cholitas dug for bottles in the trash.

  LA PAZ, Bolivia—Every night in the last hour before dawn someone scrubs down the sidewalk below a reporter’s apartment.

  In bed, through a loose metal window ten floors up, he hears the brush scratch back and forth over the soapy concrete.

  The reporter and the disgraced Miss Cholita La Paz, Patricia Quispe, 23, make love without speaking.

  Quispe moans ay three times, according to the reporter’s count. The foreign syllable sends a quiver up his spine.

  He wonders whether his gringo oh has the same effect.

  The scrubbing stops. A bucket empties on the sidewalk. In the dark bedroom a cell phone beeps its low-battery warning.

  LA PAZ, Bolivia—Patricia Quispe, 23, said Saturday that a reporter was not her first foreign boy.

  The reporter leaned on an elbow in the first breath of gray morning light.

  He was a backpacker, Quispe said. A couple years ago, before she went to Buenos Aires. From Australia, or maybe New Zealand.

  “You see them downtown all the time, and if you’re young and dressed cholita they just stare at you,” she said. “I’m not stupid. I know what they’re thinking.”

  The reporter gazed at her clothes on the floor. Jeans. Wadded-up socks. Knock-off Pumas, the logo a bird instead of a cat.

  “He wanted me to take my braids down,” Quispe said. “I said, ‘No way—you know how much work these are?’”

  LA PAZ, Bolivia—Studies have confirmed there is no less cowboy a gesture than fumbling for a pair of glasses on the nightstand.

  A reporter offered breakfast. Patricia Quispe, 23, had chickens to sell.

  Quispe pulled on jeans, shoved her socks into the pockets, and slipped her bare feet into fake Pumas.

  She kissed the reporter at the door, walked to the elevator, and punched the button.

  “Chau chau, Texas.”

  MEMO FROM MEX. CITY:

  Braidgate getting great play online all morning.

  New York loved it, wants to know what else we got.

  What else we got?

  LA PAZ, Bolivia—A reporter sat in his pajamas Saturday afternoon eating aspirin and imported U.S. cereal.

  His cell phone buzzed, and he stared at it a long time before picking up.

  “So, you a proper Bolivian now, or what?” the freelance radio correspondent asked.

  “Um,” the reporter said.

  “Turn on your TV and call me back.”

  LA PAZ, Bolivia—One protester is dead and dozens more injured as violent clashes continued Saturday between police and Amazonian Indians blocking construction of a new highway through Bolivia’s remote eastern jungles.

  Television news footage showed opponents of the Trans-Amazon Highway setting fire to a bulldozer before being beaten back by police.

  Police say the unidentified protester died from a heart attack suffered during the riot. Protesters claim the man was killed by a gunshot.

  Aymara Indians in the dry western mountains, eager to settle the fertile lands along the proposed route, plan to march in the capital tomorrow to demand the controversial project continue.

  MEMO FROM MEX. CITY:

  Stay in La Paz for marching Indians.

  Tell Luis to buy highway pix from a local shooter.

  Keep car & driver on standby. Deaths continue, you hit the road.

  LA PAZ, Bolivia—A freelance radio correspondent called Saturday night looking for a car and a driver.

  “C’mon, one dead,” she told a reporter. “You gotta go.”

  “Salary boy’s stuck on the desk.”

  “Well, fuck it, then. I got savings. My producer wants this bad.”

  The reporter read off his list of drivers, all except Ramon. Ramon was the best, and Ramon was on standby.

  “Thanks, I owe ya,” said the freelance radio correspondent.

  “Let me call you for some color.”

  “Buy you a drink when I get back,” she said. “You want color, you get your ass down there yourself.”

  LA PAZ, Bolivia—An American journalist was killed Sunday when her car plunged from a recently built mountain highway.

  Kate Ballantine, 28, was rushing to cover violent clashes between police and Amazonian Indians over the construction of a new route through Bolivia’s remote eastern jungles.

  The Bolivian driver was also killed.

  MEMO FROM MEX. CITY:

  Awful. Did you know her? Can you expand a bit?

  Something short. Remember: desk closes early Sundays.

  LA PAZ, Bolivia—An American journalist was killed early Sunday when her car plunged from a lonely mountain highway.

  Kate Ballantine, 28, of San Francisco, was traveling overnight to reach the site of violent Indian protests. The car’s driver was also killed.

  Ballantine had been working as a freelance radio correspondent in Bolivia for six months. Her producer in New York called her death “a tragic loss for our listeners and for Bolivia, a place whose story she told with remarkable insight and compassion.”

  Ballantine had brown eyes and a quick smile. She swore like a proper journo. A reporter was working up the courage to kiss her before the rains came.

  Fog hangs low in the Andes at night. The few lights are scattered and dim. Police do not know how
long she lay down there in the dark.

  The wheels stop spinning. The insect songs resume. The very farthest point from home.

  MORE KATE HERE I CAN’T.

  I think the driver’s name was Javier.

  MEMO FROM MEX. CITY:

  Thanks. We’ll cut from here.

  Take a few days, man. Whatever you need.

  Last thing: SF desk still closed. Any family contact info for comment?

  LA PAZ, Bolivia—A reporter shared a taxi home from the wake with a guy who sometimes wrote for Time.

  “My parents want me to come home,” the guy said. “Like this is the only story they’ve read the whole time.”

  The taxi crept along under orange streetlights. It was dark but still early. The radio recited its evening news.

  The guy checked his phone. “I mean, Kate would want us to stay, right?”

  LA PAZ, Bolivia—Police say a man narrowly escaped death when his neighbors tried to bury him alive in the concrete pylon of a new bridge.

  Residents of the small city of Caracollo, 110 miles south of the capital, La Paz, believed the bridge would collapse without an offering to Pachamama, the Andean Earth goddess.

  Witnesses told a Bolivian television station that the man, described as a homeless drunk, was passed out in the street when town elders selected him for the sacrifice.