Carioca Fletch

Thirty

He was conscious when the phone began ringing, but it rang five or six times before he could get rolled over, stretch his arm out to it, and pick up the receiver from the bedside table.

“Bom dia,” Fletch said into the phone, not believing a word of it.

“Fletch! Are you better?”

By now, Fletch knew Toninho’s voice over the telephone.

“Better than what?”

“Better than you were when we found you.”

Fletch’s memory was far from perfect. His brain had begun to clear only shortly before noon. He still tasted blood.

Lying on the ground under the stands at Carnival Parade, he remembered seeing from close-up the creases of Toninho’s or Tito’s belly.

He remembered being carried, it seemed for kilometers, under the stands. The sky was full of human feet and legs pounding in rhythm. The noise was no longer of singing, pounding samba drums. It was all just roar.

Then they were out from under the stands, and still he was carried a long, long way. The sounds abated. The air became clearer. The sky was high and dark.

“We’re getting good at lifting bodies around.” Tito said. Why was he speaking English?

“Bury me at sea,” Fletch instructed them. “The fish will appreciate dessert.”

As they carefully fitted him into the back seat of the four-door black Galaxie, Fletch saw the ten-year-old boy standing next to the car. His eyes were round.

“Hey, Janio,” Fletch said. “Obrigado.”

During the ride in the car, he lost consciousness again. He remembered none of it.

He remembered being walked into the lobby of The Hotel Yellow Parrot. Orlando was holding him up.

The doorman and the desk clerk hurried around, each questioning Toninho and Tito in Portuguese. Toninho and Tito were placating.

The ride in the elevator took forever.

Finally, Fletch was on his own bed. Being on his bed was so unexpected, so wonderful, he sucked in great gobs of breath. And passed out again.

He remembered Toninho working up and down his naked body, squeezing, testing, looking for breaks in Fletch’s bones.

“My neck,” Fletch said. “Is my head on straight?”

Orlando came in from the bathroom with wet towels. He and Toninho washed Fletch down, even turning him over, gently, to do so.

As the towels passed in and out of Fletch’s sight, they became pink, and then red.

The formally dressed desk clerk arrived with bandages and bottles of antiseptic.

He took away the wet, bloody towels and Fletch’s blood-soaked clothes.

“Not my sash,” Fletch complained. “Not my beautiful red sash.”

“Your bloody red sash,” Toninho said.

“Laura gave me that bloody red sash,” Fletch said. “She brought it from Bahia.”

“He says he’ll burn your clothes,” Tito said. “A sacrifice to the gods. They get only a little of your blood. You live.”

“Ow.”

Toninho was applying antiseptic to a hundred places over Fletch’s body. He stuck the antiseptic-soaked face cloth into the small slit in Fletch’s throat.

Consciousness was lost again.

They rolled Fletch this way and that, to put a fresh, dry sheet under him. The desk clerk was back in the room. He was trying to fold a wet, bloody sheet while not letting it touch his clothes.

With his fingers, Fletch discovered plaster stuck to various parts of his body: his shins, ribs, face, neck. He did not remember their being put on.

“Should I stay with him?” Tito asked.

“He’ll be all right,” Toninho said. “He needs a few hours of meditation. There’s nothing really wrong with him.”

“Except that someone tried to kill him,” Orlando said.

“Yes,” Toninho said. “It looks that way.”

“He did not succeed,” Fletch announced from the bed.

“No,” Toninho said. “He did not succeed.”

Softly, Tito said, “He almost succeeded.”

The room was black. Fletch did not remember their leaving.

Through the dark night he listened to the samba drums. The sound was not coming from the street. It was coming from various televisions throughout the hotel, around the neighborhood. An announcer’s voice came and went over the sound of the drumming and singing. Rio de Janeiro’s Samba School Parade was continuing.

He did not sleep. Some unconsciousness other than sleep came and went like a presence in the dark room. It came closer and went away.

He did not move. No part of his body wanted to move. Every muscle in his body had been kicked at least once. The skin and tissue against his bones throbbed. For a while, the thighs of his legs would hurt; he would think about them, then his shoulders; and he would think about them, his back, the area high in his stomach just below his ribs. Even his fingers and toes hurt. Anything was better than thinking how his head hurt. His head felt as if the inside had been kicked loose from the outside and rattled.

Laura would return. Sometime during the morning. Or perhaps within an hour after the parade was over, by two or three in the afternoon. How could she know, at the parade, he had been kicked almost to death? All she knew was that he had left the box to take a walk with the Tap Dancers. She would return.

Daylight came through the balcony drapes. Then direct sunlight entered the room. The television coverage of Carnival Parade continued. The room grew hot.

In his bed he experimented moving an arm. Then the other. One leg. He dug his fingers into his left leg to cause it to move. Slowly, he rolled his head back and forth on the pillow.

His head was clearing. He had not been unconscious for a long time now.

It was nearly noon when he could resist no longer.

Slowly he rolled himself to the edge of the bed. Heavily he lifted himself up. The semi-dark room went out of focus for a minute. He took a step forward. There was no part of his body which did not hurt.

After using the toilet, he turned on the bathroom light and looked at himself in the mirror. To his regret, his head was on frontwards and stared back at him. Swollen eyes, bruised cheekbones, jaws. One ear was inflamed. There was still blood in his hair. A shower would cause his bandages to fall off. Backing up, he saw the blue bruises on his upper arms, his chest. The top of his stomach was purple.

Brushing his teeth gingerly, he spat blood into the basin.

Then he returned to bed and waited.

Laura would come and they would have food. He would tell her what had happened to him. Would she listen? What had happened to him? Would she be interested, or would this be a level of reality which didn’t interest her much? While he talked, would she be hearing something else? As he was leaving the box to join the Tap Dancers, her face had been inscrutable. What did the fact of the wooden-legged boy following them through the subway mean to her it did not mean to him?

Laura had not returned by the time Toninho called.

“You must be better,” Toninho said. “You’ve had almost twelve hours to meditate.”

“I need twelve years.”

“Who tried to kill you?”

“I’m thinking about that.”

“Ah, Carnival,” Toninho said.

“He was wearing a goat mask,” Fletch said. “A man in his sixties, I’d say. He tried to kick me to death.”

“He must have slipped into the personality of the goat. Carnival does that.”

“No goat has such training in capoeira.” Fletch wanted to switch the phone to his other ear. Then he remembered his other ear had slipped into the personality of a tomato.

“The news is that Norival has showed up.”

“Great! In one piece?”

“Yes. He came ashore way down the coast, a hundred kilometers south of where we thought.”

“I always thought that boy would go a long way.”

“Apparently he got caught in a current, which took him south, then ashore. He was on the beach this morning. A jogger found him. They are bringing his body up now.”

“Good. Great. All your worries are over.”

“The report so far is that he drowned. His boat broke up and he drowned.”

“That’s good. So Norival did die at sea. His mother will be so glad. Admiral Passarinho will be ecstatic.”

“So we’ll see you at the funeral home in about a half an hour.”

“What? No way. Toninho, I can’t move.”

“Of course you can move.”

“Why should I go to the funeral home?”

“To help us distract the officials.” Toninho’s voice fell to the conspiratorial. “To distract them from any idea of an autopsy. We need to stand around in a circle and say, yes, he drowned. We saw him go sailing and indeed he certainly did drown. They’re more apt to believe you, you see. They don’t know you as well as they know us.”

“I don’t think I can move.”

“You must move. If you don’t make yourself move now, you’ll stiffen up, like Norival, and not be able to move for days.”

Fletch hesitated. He remembered past injuries. “You’re probably right.”

Still, he had had no real sleep.

“Of course I’m right. The funeral home of Job Pereira. On rua Jardim Botanico. The business part of the road.”

“I’ll find it.”

“I’ll bring all your gambling winnings to you.”

“You needn’t bribe me.” Fletch tried sitting up in bed. “On the other hand, maybe you do.”