Carioca Fletch

Three

“Of course,” Fletch said, coming out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist, “I really don’t know how reasonable I want you to be.”

“I am very reasonable.”

Naked, long, lean, she lay across the rumpled white sheets of the bed reading Newsweek. Her wavy black hair fell over her face. The late afternoon sun through the shaded balcony window made consistent the gold in her skin.

“Laura Soares,” he said. “From Sao Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos. Studied piano at the university in Bahia, then two years at the London Conservatory.”

“I did not like London Conservatory. There is little understanding of Brazilian music there. In a conservatory they conserve music, you know? They don’t like to let it expand.”

“Sometimes gives concerts. Daughter of Otavio Cavalcanti, scholar and poet. And your mother cultivates orchids and takes photographs.”

“My mother grows flowers and takes pictures of them. She is trying to beat time.”

Fletch opened the shade more. Their room was at the back of the hotel, overlooking utility areas. Through tall windows in the building across the area, Fletch watched a man painting a room. The man, in undershirt and shorts, had been painting the room during the day and well into the evening since they had arrived at The Yellow Parrot. It looked an ordinary, albeit big, room. The man was either a meticulous painter or had no other work waiting for him.

Fletch said nothing for a moment.

He had gone directly into the shower. The odor of the old woman had clung to him. His face was sticky from her tears, the back of his neck pasty from her caresses.

He had gotten himself thoroughly soaped when the shower curtain drew back and Laura stepped in. She helped him wash, even putting him on his knees in the bathtub, doubling him over, to scrub the back of his neck. She was kneeling before him in the bathtub, the shower water cascading off her head, shoulders, breasts. He began to clean her thighs with his tongue.

After they messed up the bed and each other to the sound of the samba drums coming through the windows, and lying quietly awhile until the sweat dried and made him feel cool, he went back into the shower.

Standing at the window he said, “Questions…”

Reading from the magazine, the lean, naked Laura said, “Half your diet should be carbohydrates.”

“You’re reading about diets? You don’t need to improve yourself.”

“My mother will be glad to hear about the carbohydrates. Am I saying ‘carbohydrates’ right?”

“No. But I understand.”

“I don’t think they talk about carbohydrates in London. I never heard the word. Pasta!”

“Don’t you have any questions?” he asked.

“About pasta?” Still she did not look up from the magazine.

“About the woman in the green silk dress. I told you she probably thinks I killed her husband. She’s come here to find me.”

“So?”

“You haven’t asked me about that.”

“That has to do with your past. Anyone can make up a story and say it is the past.”

“You’re not curious?”

“About the future. What time is it?”

He looked at his watch on the bureau. “Nearly seven.”

“We cannot be too much on time at da Costa’s for dinner. It is not polite to the servants. It gives them too much to do at once. Makes them nervous.”

“I have questions.”

“Probably. You are a North American.”

“Your father is Otavio Cavalcanti. You are Laura Soares.”

“That is the past, Fletcher old top.”

“I don’t get it.”

“It has to do with who had the name in the past. Then you forget it. This article says you should eat much more chicken and fish than red meat. It says nothing of rice and beans. Feijoada.”

“Are you going to talk to me about that old woman?”

“Forget it, for now. She is not Yemanjá.”

“I am not Janio Barreto. Whoever.”

“She says you are. She recognized you. She says she studied you carefully while we were at the café. Did you notice her?”

“Yes.”

“She said you have the identical legs of her husband, the same stomach muscles from pulling the fish nets, the same proportion between your shoulders and your hips. She said the slight slash of your navel is identical.”

“Laura…”

“Well, she should know.”

“I have never pulled fish nets.”

“You have the muscles from Janio Barreto.”

“Laura, not many Brazilians have my basic light coloring.”

“Some do. Janio Barreto did. Your heads are identical, she says, your eyes.”

“I had a similarity to the husband of the woman in the green dress, too.”

“Similarity has nothing to do with it. She says you are Janio Barreto, her husband.”

“Who was murdered forty-seven years ago.”

“Yes.”

“I’m a ghost? Is that what she’s saying?”

“Partly that. No, you are yourself. You are Janio Barreto. You see, you came to Brazil. You see why, don’t you?”

Fletch exhaled deeply. “What is the old woman’s name?”

“Idalina. Idalina Barreto.”

“What bothers me is that you listened to her. The doorman—”

“Why not?” Laura turned the page of the magazine. “She was talking.”

“Laura, you seem to have no regard for the real past. Yet you listen to these impossibilities.”

She was studying some health chart in the magazine. “What’s real?”

“Which is more real to you?”

“Bananas are good for potassium,” she said. “I think I knew that.”

“You won’t let me explain. You won’t explain to me.”

“Forget Idalina Barreto, as much as you can, for now.”

She flung the magazine aside and looked at him standing between the window and the bureau.

“How are we to know each other?” he asked.

She rolled more onto her back and held one leg, one arm in the air. “By sharing your banana with me.”

He laughed.

“I need more potassium.”

“Potassium gluconate, I hope.”

“Come, come, Janio. I want some more of your potassium.”

“I’m not Janio.”

“Janio’s potassium. Your potassium. Harvest your banana and feed me your potassium.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Come, come, my Janio. It is ripe. I see that it is ripe. I will peel it with my teeth. Let me taste your banana.”

“Where’s my shoe?” He regretted kneeling on the floor in his long white trousers to look under the bed for his shoe.

She came into the room and stopped. In the bathroom she had bathed and done her hair and also dressed in white slacks and an open white shirt.

“Why is this stone under our bed?”

Sitting back on his haunches, he showed her the small carved stone he found under the bed. “It’s a toad. It looks like a toad.”

“That,” she said.

“Why is there a stone toad under our bed?”

“The maid must have left it there.”

“The maid left a stone toad under our bed?”

“Put it back,” Laura said. “It may be important to her.”