It wasn’t hard to find a bar for sale in Medellín, in fact there were about seven at the time. Only three of them, however, were located in the lush, cosmopolitan Poblado neighborhood of his liking. He reviewed the listings and determined to find one by Parque Lleras. He recalled that Isabella was thinking of getting into real estate, and shot her a quick email.
A bar in Colombia! It would be the perfect retreat from which to figure out his next move. He called Austin to tell him his plan.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“I had a feeling you would say something like that,” responded Rohan.
“Because that is the correct response to a first time author, deciding to move out of the country after the first reading on his first book tour!”
He had a point. Austin went from exasperated to incredulous to sympathetic before eventually settling on defeated. He knew there was no point arguing, once Rohan was fixated on an idea, no matter how outlandish, there was no convincing him.
“Look man, I really need this right now. Fuck the 3% and whatever else is in the fine print. We’ll deal with it.”
“You mean, I’ll deal with it. You’ll be off in Colombia banging Latin chicks.”
They shared a laugh, but Rohan knew Austin was truly disappointed. He didn’t have the heart to continue the conversation, fearing it would further estrange them, so he feigned an excuse to hang up.
Searching for flights to Medellín served an adequate distraction from his disappointed friend.
An unbelievably quick two months later, Rohan was the happy owner of the newly renamed and reopened Casa Libertad. The bar had previously been popular with locals, but the much improved selection of Scotch and Bourbons began to attract well-heeled expats. By this point, even Austin was coming around, with sales of the book having slightly outperformed the consensus. Austin remarked that Rohan’s rebellious stunt created just the right sort of publicity, the kind that wasn’t easily manufactured. Overall, Rohan was feeling quite pleased with himself. It was some life, spending the afternoons drinking, evenings bartending and mornings gliding high above the metropolis, suspended merely by fabric and metal.
Then one lazy afternoon in March, a young brunette named Natalia walked in through the faux saloon doors. He noticed her plain yet urbane face and tried to place her. Definitely European, he thought, maybe French. Rohan put down the glass he was drying off and asked what he could get her in Spanish.
Instead of a drink she asked for Juancho, the barback.
“Why are you looking for Juancho?” Rohan asked.
“I teach his little brother English. I came here because earlier today I caught him with crack cocaine that he’s been running for Los Urabeños. Juancho needs to do something about it,” she replied.
Los Urabeños were a ruthless gang made up of former militants involved in the Colombian armed conflict. Just the year before, the turf battle with Los Rastrojos, a rival gang, had turned into an all-out war over control of the drug trade in Colombia. Los Urabeños, with their paramilitary background, were winning decisively. This was one battle Rohan intended strictly to stay out of, despite the unconventional beauty of the volunteering backpacker.
“His shift starts in an hour, why don’t you sit down and have a drink,” Rohan switched over to English.
Surprised, Natalia asked, “You’re not Colombian?”
She had a plain, Midwestern accent.
“And you’re not French.”
“What?”
“Nevermind, no, I’m Indian but I was born in the States. I moved out here a few months ago to run this bar. What about you?”
Natalia obliged his curiosity and they shared some details about each of their lives. Natalia was from Bloomington, Indiana where her parents were college professors. She had just graduated from Wellesley and decided to forgo a career in business to travel through South America. She eventually found her way to Angeles de Medellín, a charity that worked with the poor and displaced kids of the barrio. They were making small talk over their third beer when Juancho walked in the door. He was surprised for a second by Natalia’s presence in the bar.
As Juancho shuffled to his location behind the bar, Natalia confronted him with the story of his little brother and demanded he put an end to it. She asked him how he could let such a thing happen.
Juancho looked at the ground for a while before he answered with a shrug, “What can I do? That’s life in the barrio.”
He didn’t look at her again before he walked into the store room.
It wasn’t the answer Natalia was expecting, not realizing her Western sensibilities didn’t carry much weight here. Rohan tried to explain this to her, but she only got more emotional.
“Is he using the drugs himself?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Then it’s best not to get involved, Los Urabeños are not a group you want to be messing with.”
“How can you be so callous? Chokito is only eleven years old!”
“He’s named after a candy bar?” Rohan asked.
“It’s his nickname, they’re his favorite.”
“Then you’re better off giving him one of these,” he walked over to the counter to grab a chocolate, “and telling him never to smoke the drugs he runs.”
“I can’t let him continue to run drugs for those animals!” she said, brushing her hair out of her face.
Rohan knew there was no point in arguing. People like her were raised on certain notions that were too difficult to drop after a certain age unless you had an extremely flexible disposition. Natalia didn’t seem to have one of those, yet still he gave it a shot.
“What does he gain by stopping what he’s doing?”
“Is that a serious question? He should be focusing on school not running drugs!”
“He is going to school though, and you just said you’re teaching him English. Seems like he’s doing just fine. What’s wrong with him making some cash on the side running errands?”
She paused, then replied, “If he wants a job he should do something legal!”
“Like what? Do you honestly believe that kid can get a real job?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, what I do know is that drugs only lead to getting involved in worse things. Like gang violence and all that. He’s a good kid, he deserves better than this.”
Conceding the futility of that argument, he tried to draw her a bigger picture. He explained that drugs weren’t dangerous, it was prohibition that was dangerous. That the drug trade had only become violent with the passing of drug laws, not just here in Colombia but around the world, as the US strong armed countries into enforcing the same draconian measures. He told her stories of corrupt Narcotics officers back home. Some who were basically enforcers for drug cartels with badges and other, more enterprising ones, who started their own drug business, like the officers of the 39th District of Philadelphia all through the ‘90s. Rohan went on about how the CIA financed the Colombian military to fight drugs while at the same time helping run drugs into America to fund black ops. He hoped it would change her mind about the importance of legality, but she remained unconvinced.
He moved on to moral arguments, making the point that any sort of prohibition law is paternalistic in nature, and that only social and economic freedom would let the illnesses of the world run their course.
His effort to reach her liberal side was rebuffed. At last, he tried appealing to her practical side, telling her if she stopped little Chokito from running those drugs, not only would she be taking away a source of income from a family that desperately needed it, but she would also likely be the cause of his death.
Upon hearing that, Natalia gathered her breath and asked for a shot of whiskey. Rohan poured two and pushed one across to her.
“Salud,” she said and put it down in one gulp. She hurriedly left the bar, moved nearly to tears.
Three months later, Rohan received an email from Natalia. She had discovered his book on seeing an article mention him for walking out on his publisher. She said she enjoyed it and it helped her see things somewhat differently, but she still didn’t agree with the conclusion. Rohan wasn’t entirely sure there was a conclusion, but he read on. She wrote that she was deploying with the Red Cross in a month to help with Tsunami relief in Japan, dealing with the aftermath of the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that caused once-in-a-generation level of destruction across coastal areas of Asia. Rohan put out of his mind the wretched history of the Red Cross, knowing she meant well. He supposed they couldn’t do much worse in Japan than they did in Haiti, recklessly spending nearly $5 billion in pledged money, without much to show for it. An amount could likely have rebuilt Port-au-Prince twice over.
He set aside his cynicism and sent her a congratulatory reply before getting dressed to take over bartending duties for the evening shift. But when he got to the bottom of the stairwell, he was surprised to see his old friend Gavin Folsom, seated casually at the bar. He was smoking a Marlboro Red, and at his elbow was the hat he never went anywhere without.