Episode 08: The Stop He Missed

All characters are 18 or older. Fiction.

Episode 08 closes the season with the smallest story in it, the last Angel of Bogota episode, and the one the guide gets the most mail about. A night bus, a student asleep against the window, a stop that goes past at four in the morning. Nothing happens for the first twenty minutes except a boy realizing he is in the wrong city. Then a car pulls up outside the terminal, and the Angel of Bogota does what he always does, which is arrive with a briefcase and leave before the questions.

Nicolas is twenty and studies agricultural engineering in Tunja, which is a thing he tells people at parties because it sounds like a plan. He is going home for his mother's birthday on the eight o'clock bus from the terminal at Salitre, and he has a backpack, a plastic bag of panela his aunt gave him, and eleven thousand pesos, and he falls asleep somewhere around Zipaquira with his forehead on the glass.

Watch the uncut tape of this scene → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

He wakes up because the bus stops. The lights come on. The driver stands up and says the word Manizales, and Nicolas looks out of the window at a terminal he has never seen in his life.

"I missed it," he says. "I was going to Tunja."

The driver looks at him without sympathy. "We stopped in Tunja. You were asleep."

See what the camera actually caught → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

The terminal at half past four in the morning is a concrete hall with three lights on and a man mopping. The next bus back is at six fifteen. Nicolas sits on a plastic seat with his backpack between his feet and does the arithmetic: the ticket back is thirty-eight thousand pesos, and he has eleven.

He is still sitting there at five when the car pulls up outside, a dark sedan with a driver waiting at the wheel, and a stocky man gets out of the back with a black briefcase in one hand and a phone on a small gimbal in the other. The man comes into the terminal, looks at the departures board, and then looks at Nicolas, and something in his face settles.

"You have been sitting there for forty minutes," he says.

Open the full Angel of Bogota episode → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

Nicolas stares at him. "How do you know?"

"Because I have been outside for forty minutes." The man sits down one seat away, which is close enough that Nicolas can smell cardamom and cheap rum. "Where are you going?"

"Tunja. I missed the stop."

Stream the uncut version (18+) → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

"And you have how much?"

"Eleven thousand."

The man nods slowly, as though this were the answer he expected. "There is a motel across the road. Twenty-four hours. Clean. I will pay for a room and a ticket at six, and you will come with me for an hour first."

The video behind this story → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

Nicolas's mouth goes dry. "Come with you."

"To the room. You, and the camera. My face stays out of it. Four hundred thousand pesos." The man says it without any particular weight, the way another man might offer a cigarette. "You can say no. I will still buy the ticket. That is not a trick, it is just a ticket."

"Why would you buy the ticket if I say no?"

See the hour the camera kept → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

"Because you are twenty and asleep on a plastic chair and I am not a monster." The man's eyes are steady. "But I would rather you said yes."

Nicolas looks at the man's hands. The gold band. The briefcase. The small phone on the gimbal, dark and patient. He thinks about his mother's birthday and the look on her face if he does not come, and about the thirty-eight thousand pesos, and about the way the man said the ticket was not a trick.

"Yes," he says.

Watch the uncut tape of this scene → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

The motel is exactly as described: a room with a bed, a chair, a television that does not work, and a bathroom with a strip of paper across the toilet seat. The driver, a young man named Mateo, waits in the car with the engine off and the radio on low. The man locks the door and sets the briefcase on the chair and counts four hundred thousand pesos onto the bed, and then he puts a finger under Nicolas's chin and lifts it.

"You are shaking."

"I have never done this."

See what the camera actually caught → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

"I know. That is why the money is on the bed before anything happens." He lets go. "Take off your clothes. Slowly. You can keep the shirt if you want to."

Nicolas keeps the shirt. He takes off his jeans and his shoes and stands there in a shirt that comes down to his thighs, and the man looks at him for a long time without saying anything, and then he comes close and puts both hands on his waist and pulls him in.

The kiss is unhurried. The man's mouth is warm and tastes of rum and coffee, and one hand slides up under the shirt to the small of Nicolas's back and holds him there, and Nicolas's hands come up and grip the man's jacket because he does not know what else to do with them.

Open the full Angel of Bogota episode → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

"On the bed," the man says. "On your back. I want to see your face."

He takes off his jacket and folds it over the chair and then he takes off the rest, and Nicolas, lying on the bed with his heart going, sees how thick he is and how the curve of him stands up against his belly, and his breath catches audibly.

"You can still say stop," the man says.

Stream the uncut version (18+) → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

"I know. I am not saying stop."

The man kneels on the bed and takes him in his mouth without any more talk about it. Nicolas's heel drums on the mattress and his hand finds the man's shoulder and holds. It goes on longer than he expects and slower than he expects, and when the man's fingers come up between his legs with the lubricant, Nicolas's whole body goes rigid and then, at the man's low instruction to breathe, lets go.

"Look at me," the man says, and pushes in.

The video behind this story → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

It hurts for a second and then it does not, and the man does not move until Nicolas's breathing has changed, and then he moves, and the rhythm is slow and even and relentless. Nicolas's hands are above his head. The television is dead and the light is on and the camera on the chair is pointed at the bed, and the man's face is turned just enough away from it that it will never be in the frame.

"Talk to me," the man says.

"I do not know what to say."

See the hour the camera kept → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

"Then say my name is not important."

"Your name is not important," Nicolas says, and laughs, and the man's mouth curves, and the rhythm does not change.

Afterwards the man lies beside him for exactly one minute. Nicolas counts it on the clock radio by the bed. Then he is up and dressed and counting nothing back.

Watch the uncut tape of this scene → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

"Six fifteen," he says. "Mateo will drive you to the terminal. Buy the ticket at the window, not from the men outside."

"Wait." Nicolas sits up. "What if I do not want to get on the bus?"

The man pauses at the door with his hand on the lock. He does not turn around.

See what the camera actually caught → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+

"Then you will have four hundred thousand pesos and no plan," he says, "and I will be gone before you have finished deciding."

The door closes. A minute later the car pulls away. Nicolas sits on the edge of the bed with the money fanned out beside him and the clock radio saying five fifty-one, and at six he is still sitting there. At six fifteen he is still sitting there. The bus to Tunja goes without him.

The trailer stops here. The episode does not.

Open the full Angel of Bogota episode → uncut angel of bogota episodes, 18+