“Do you have what you need in the small bag?” Milton asked hopefully.
Marina shook her head. “Books,” she said, “a coat.” The manual for the phone that was lost. A neck pillow for sleeping on the plane. A copy of
“Then we must get you some things tonight,” he said. His brother-in-law ran a store in town. Milton took out his cell phone, assuring her the brother-in-law would be amenable to meeting them with the keys despite the late hour, not a problem, and Marina, who very much wanted a toothbrush, accepted.
Milton was careful to maneuver around those potholes which could be maneuvered around. He drove cautiously through the ones that could not. People clumped together on corners of busy streets waiting for a light to cross, but when the lights changed they continued to stand there. Girls dressed for dancing pushed strollers past walls pasted over in handbills. An old woman with a broom swept debris through the middle of an intersection. Marina watched all of it thinking of Anders, wondering if he had seen these same people on the night he arrived. She couldn’t imagine things in Manaus changed very much from one night to the next. “Did you drive Dr. Eckman?” Marina asked.
“Eckman,” Milton said, as if it were an object whose English name was unfamiliar to him.
“Anders Eckman. He came here just after Christmas. We work for the same company.”
Milton shook his head. “Do many of your doctors come to Brazil?”
Exactly three, Marina thought, and then she said, “Not many.” Of course no one would have thought to get Anders a car and driver. Anders would have found his luggage and taken it to the taxi line, opened his Portuguese phrase book and rehearsed the sentence, “What is the fare to the hotel?” It occurred to Marina now how close she was to him here. She thought of him standing in that same airport, his feet planted on the same asphalt outside. They had been divided by only a scant handful of months, one of them slipping out the back door while the other was coming in the front. It was then that an entirely different idea came to Marina. “Did you ever drive a woman named Dr. Swenson?”
“Dr. Swenson, of course. She is a very good customer. Do you work with Dr. Swenson as well?”
Marina sat up straighter then and as soon as she did she felt her seat belt lock into place. If Vogel hadn’t bothered to hire a driver for Anders they certainly would have found one for Dr. Swenson, or Dr. Swenson would have found one for herself. It would be a car as clean as this one, a driver as strikingly competent. “Do you know where she lives?”
“In Manaus, yes. It isn’t far from your hotel. But Dr. Swenson is rarely in Manaus. Her work is in the jungle.” Milton stopped then, and Marina saw him glance at her in the rearview mirror. “You know her, yes?” He should not be talking about the people he drives. He should not be talking about Dr. Swenson.
“She was my teacher in medical school,” Marina said, offering up this bit of her past so easily it felt like a lie. “Many years ago. We work for the same company now. I’ve come here to find her. Our company has sent me to talk to her about the project she’s working on.”
“And so you know,” Milton said, his voice relieved.
“I have her address in town but no one is able to reach her where she’s working. Dr. Swenson won’t use cell phones.”
“She calls me from the pay phone at the dock when she comes to the city.”
“And it doesn’t matter if you’re driving someone else. .” She was speaking from her own, distant experience.
Milton nodded then, keeping his eyes straight ahead. “There’s never any warning when she’s coming, when she leaves. Sometimes months go by and she doesn’t come in from the jungle. I grew up in Manaus. I wouldn’t spend so much time out there.”
“Nothing bothers Dr. Swenson,” Marina said.
“No,” Milton said, but after more consideration he added, “except not being picked up at the dock.”
In a few more turns Milton brought her to another part of the city where people walked through the streets arguing or holding hands, oblivious to the fact it was night and there was nothing going on around them in any direction. Up ahead a man sat on a low cement step and Milton pulled the car over. Immediately the man stood up and opened Marina’s door. He was tall and thin, wearing a pink cotton shirt that would have covered two of him. He greeted them in clipped Portuguese. He clearly was not as pleased to be coming out late as Milton had suggested.
“Negocio e negocio,” Milton said, turning off the ignition. He introduced his brother-in-law, Rodrigo, to Marina, as Rodrigo took her hand to help her out of the car.
Rodrigo said something to Milton when he unlocked the door to the building. Milton then flipped on the lights. Inside it smelled of sawdust. He checked to make sure the door was locked behind them. Rodrigo turned off the lights and Milton turned them on again. Rodrigo covered his eyes with his hands as if trying to ensure darkness, all the while making quick use of a language Marina did not speak. She blinked, her eyes dilated and blind and then flooded with electric light. The store was nothing but a large square with wood plank floors and every conceivable item crammed inside: canned food and clothes and pills, sunglasses, postcards, bags of seed, laundry soap. The colors of the boxes and bottles climbing up and up to the high ceiling made her dizzy. The general tenor of the argument between the two men was clear to her even if she didn’t understand the words. They were taking turns flipping the switch from off to on to off and she was to make fast work in the light while she had it. She picked up a red toothbrush, deodorant, toothpaste, shampoo, insect repellent, sunblock, two cotton shirts, T-shirts, a straw hat. She held a pair of pants up to her waist and then dropped them on the counter. The suitcase might arrive in the morning or she might never see it again. She picked up a package of underwear and then a cluster of elastic hair bands. “So when was the last time you saw Dr. Swenson?” Marina asked.
“Dr. Singh conhece o Dr. Swenson,” Milton said to his brother-in-law. Marina heard both of their names. In a gesture that struck her as being particularly Indian, Rodrigo pressed his palms together in front of his lips and made a slight bow of his head.
“She is an excellent customer,” Milton said. “She buys all the provisions for the camp here. It is something to see the way she comes into the store. She stands right in the middle, right where you are, and points to what she wants and Rodrigo brings it down for her. She does it all without a list. It’s impressive.”
“Muito decisivo,” Rodrigo said. “Muito rapido.”
“It used to be one of the other doctors might come in for supplies. Dr. Swenson would be working very hard on her medicine and so she would send someone else into town, then two days later there she would be at the dock. She’d say they hadn’t bought enough things, or the right things. In the end she told me sending someone else was only time wasted. Sometimes she sends in Easter with a note if there is something special she needs, but that isn’t often. He couldn’t do all the shopping himself.”
Rodrigo disagreed. Milton ignored him. “Rodrigo knows her very well now. There are certain items he orders just for her.”
“Other doctors?” Marina said. Outside she could hear voices and then the rattling of the door handle, and then the slapping of hands against glass. The crowd wanted in.
“It hasn’t been a month since she was here.” Milton looked at Rodrigo and asked in Portuguese, “Um mes?” Rodrigo nodded. “That could be inconvenient for you,” Milton said. “I’ve known her to be gone for three.”
Marina pictured three months in this city she had yet to see in daylight, wearing these clothes, memorizing the manual for the missing cell phone. She would buy a boat and head down the river herself if it came to that. She asked if there was anyone who would know how to find her.
Milton tilted his head from side to side as if weighing out his thoughts. “If anyone did it would be the Bovenders, but I don’t really think that they know.”
“Dr. Swenson nao lhes diria nada,” Rodrigo said. He could follow the conversation well enough in English but did not speak it. He brought out a hooded rain poncho folded into a clear plastic sack and a small umbrella. He handed them to Marina and nodded at her with a gravity that insisted she add them to her purchases.
“You have another idea?” Milton asked his brother-in-law in English.
“The Bovenders,” Marina said.
“They are the young couple who stay in her apartment. No doubt you’ll meet them. They are very hard to miss. They are travelers.” Milton closed his eyes. “What is the word?”
