Kim is stalking Facebook.
‘These plant medicines cure people of addictions. Jesus. Not illegal either,’ I say.
She’s too distracted to listen.
‘Kim, you’re not going to get over him by looking at his shit. You’re in Peru. Is that not enough? Don’t torture yourself.’
A guy walks in and shyly says hello. He’s tall and wears beaded bracelets and a thin leather neck chain. His T-shirt is faded blue.
I detect his accent. ‘Are you Irish?’
‘Sí.’
‘Inca Trail?’
‘No. Well, I did it a long time ago. I’ve been working over here.’
‘Doing what?’ Kim asks.
‘Different NGOs. Volunteering in the mountains for a while, teaching kids and helping build things.’
‘I was a teacher once,’ I say.
He smiles at me. ‘What are you now?’
‘I dunno. Myself?’
‘Nice.’
Kim loses interest in him but he and I chat.
‘We’re researching the ayahuasca or the cactus juice. Have you tried them?’
‘Yep. Different experiences for sure.’
‘Did you enjoy them?’
‘Enjoy isn’t the right word. Ayahuasca is living in your worst nightmare but once you let it happen, and come out the other side, you know you can survive or do anything. Cactus is more grounded. You see how connected we all are.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, we’re all connected. By life or energy or whatever made us. With the cactus, you’ll be able to observe these connections. It’ll unlock a state of consciousness, or perception. You’ll see fields and things that are usually invisible.’
‘Sounds amazing.’
‘Sounds whack.’ Kim rolls her eyes. ‘Does it help you move on from your past?’
‘I guess it does different things for different people. Trust what you’re shown would be my tip.’
‘Oh shit, Kim, it’s five,’ I say and jump off the swivel chair. ‘We’ve to get our laundry. Everything will be shut tomorrow.’
‘Ronan’s cool,’ I say as we walk up the street.
‘If you like hippie-geeks, yes, he is. Hey Nat, where’s the place?’
We look for the sign but it’s not there.
‘There was definitely a place here. An alleyway? We went through it.’
We wander up and down.
Kim lingers around a spot and says, ‘I think it was here. I remember that flag?’
But there’s no alleyway.
We stand in disbelief, eventually figure out that it’s gated up and locked.
‘Fuck. What do we do, Kim, all my clothes are there?’
Kim knocks on the steel gate. Nobody comes. She rubs her raw knuckles.
‘I won’t have any clothes for the rest of the trip. I don’t want to buy more. It takes me a while to find stuff that fits my shape right.’
‘You won’t have to, Natalie, our clothes are ours.’
I knock for a while.
Nobody opens the gate. Twilight skulks.
‘Is there anything on the receipt? A number we could call?’
I scan the paper; a line on the bottom in tiny print has some numbers.
Kim says, ‘Okay, let’s get the hostel woman to ring and speak Spanish to them. We’ll get the clothes back.’
We march to the hostel and the girl at the desk dials the number. It rings out for ages. She hangs up.
‘Will I try again?’
‘Yeah.’
Ronan walks by. ‘All okay?’
‘No, our laundry went missing.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah, it vanished. Our clothes are gone.’
‘Good luck with that.’
The receptionist watches YouTube videos of people playing video games. Military men crawl around Afghani bomb-strewn streets, shooting and throwing grenades.
The number rings out again. We begin to lose hope.
‘You’ll fit into my clothes, Nat.’
I frown. ‘I’ll buy something new, Kim. I don’t need to put myself through that humiliation and you don’t need your clothes stretched.’
Finally, someone answers. The receptionist drums out her conversation, pauses, makes notes. ‘Ahh, sí,’ she says every so often.
She flicks a look at us with her large brown eyes. Her eyeliner is thick and winged at the edge of her eyelids.
‘Sí, sí,’ she says and scribbles again. Then she glances at the screen, to see what’s being bombed by the gamers. The conversation lasts for ages. ‘Okay, gracias.’ She hangs up.
‘Your clothes were returned to the warehouse when you did not collect. That is where they are washed. The warehouse is on this street.’ She circles some writing on the receipt and uses her pen to indicate directions on the street map of Cusco laminated on her desk. ‘Is here,’ she points, ‘and we are here.’
‘Okay,’ Kim says. ‘And can we get our clothes back?’
‘The warehouse is open until 21.00, but maybe is best to go right now.’
‘Okay,’ Kim says. ‘Muchas gracias.’
We take a paper street map, the receipt and set off. People are getting ready to go out; a Saturday night murmur of anticipation fills the dusk. We walk quickly on the cracked footpaths. Drunks argue in a park. At the city’s centre, we take a left, down a side street for two kilometres.
We find the dishevelled street where the warehouse is supposed to be. It’s wide, unlit and unpaved.
‘Welcome to real Cusco,’ Kim says.
‘This is pretty sketchy.’
It’s getting dark. The hair on my arms bristles. The air is shadowy.
The houses have no numbers. To call it a poor area would be an understatement.
‘There,’ Kim says and points at a big rough building. ‘That must be it?’
There are no lights on. It looks abandoned. I press a bell but nothing happens. We glance around. I press the bell again. There’s no sound going on within.
Kim pushes the door and it opens. It’s dark inside.
‘Aw, Kim, let’s go. I’ll burst myself into your clothes. This is too scary.’
But Kim has already stepped in. The corridor is murky and cool. The floors and walls are tiled.
‘Kim,’ I hiss. ‘Come back.’
She goes in further.
I sigh and grumble and follow her, shutting the door gently behind me.
I can barely see the outline of Kim ahead of me.
‘Noises,’ Kim whispers. ‘Can you hear?’
I hear my heart whipping my chest. Behind that, yeah, I can hear muffled industrial sound.
‘Kim, wait for me. Please,’ I say.
She puts her hand back and takes mine. My hand is sweating. Hers is cold.
The noise grows louder as we continue on the corridor. Our shoes clop against the tiles. There’s a door ahead.
We creep towards it. Then Kim tries it, and it opens with a creak. She pulls it wide and the light blinds us.
I shield my eyes. ‘Oh my god,’ I say slowly and put my hand to my mouth.
The washers and driers are deafening. The smell of laundry detergent is overpowering. The workers ignore us as we stand there with our mouths gaping.
‘I can’t believe it,’ I say. I’ve never seen anything like it before.
The workers are children.
I assess them in terms of my primary school classes, a handful of young teenagers, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old, the rest are younger, eleven, ten, nine, eight. One kid can’t be more than six. He folds a towel.
‘This is a sweatshop,’ I say.
‘No, a sweatshop is where clothes are made. This is a laundry. A child labour laundry.’
I feel sick. I wonder are these children being educated?
‘Natalie,’ Kim says. ‘Look at them. Look at what they’re doing.’
One’s on a phone. Another does an impression of someone to a crew who laugh their heads off. Two of them jump between machines.
‘Nat, they couldn’t give a fuck!’