State of Wonder

separated into distinct groups that any first year medical student would have been grateful to study: pectoralis major, pectoralis minor, deltoid, trapezius, intercostal. The people on neighboring towels pointed, calling for their children to watch. They whistled and clapped.

“Not sick anymore,” Milton said.

Jackie brought his feet to the ground and sat again. The vine that encircled his ankle was hung with tiny clusters of grapes. “I’m fine.”

“That’s why I married him,” Barbara said, half of her face shielded behind enormous black glasses. “I saw him do that at the beach in Sydney. He was wearing his boardies. I said to my girlfriend, ‘That one’s mine.’ ”

“Marriages have been built on less,” Marina said, although in truth she didn’t think this was the case.

“Do you swim?” Milton asked her. He was wearing his trousers and his white short-sleeved shirt. He showed no signs of removing them.

“I know how,” she said, “if that’s what you’re asking.”

Barbara stretched along her towel, her oiled body reflecting light from every surface except for the few discreet areas covered by fabric. There was a small, circular diamond hanging in the gold chain of her anklet and it glinted along with her skin. “It’s so hot,” she cried quietly.

“Hot is what we do best,” Milton said. He had a little straw hat sitting on the top of his head and somehow it made him look cooler than the rest of them.

“Let’s go for a swim,” Jackie said, and leaned over to smack his wife’s stomach lightly with the flat of his open hand. Her whole body jumped an inch off her towel.

“The water is only going to be hotter,” she said.

“Up, up, up,” he said, and stood himself, leaning down to pull her to her feet. She paused a moment to shake the sand out of her pale hair. It was for the other beach-goers as great a spectacle as her husband standing on his hands. They were halfway to the water, their arms draped against each other’s naked waists, when they turned back to their compatriots. “You’re coming, aren’t you?” Jackie asked.

Marina shook her head. “Go, go,” Milton said. “We’ll come and watch.” He got up stiffly and helped Marina to her feet. “They want us to see how pretty they are in the river.”

“They were pretty enough just lying there,” Marina said.

“We are the parents,” Milton said. “We have to watch.”

Marina went along with a sullen sense of duty, but out from under the umbrella the world was a different place. It had not been cool beneath the candy colored stripes, but away from them the sun meted out a pummeling that was stunning. She stopped for a moment to spot the Bovenders as they walked into the brown water holding hands. On a few occasions since arriving in Brazil she had been as hot but she had always been able to step into the shade, to go into a cafe for a can of soda, return to her hotel room and stand in a cold shower. She had come to know in advance when the heat was about to overwhelm her as clearly as if there had been a thermometer built into her wrist and so she had been able to save herself accordingly, but looking out at the water and the sand she was uncertain of where she could go. She was melting into the people around her, into Milton. There was a little ice chest beneath the umbrella that Milton had brought with them — cool bottles of water and beers for Jackie. She could rub a piece of ice against her neck. Far ahead of them the Bovenders sank into the water and blurred into all of the other children around them as they swam away. With everything in her she cursed them for being unwilling, unable, to wake before nine. After all, she had been tired herself. She had taken a Lariam fresh from the new bottle Mr. Fox had sent the night before and at three in the morning she had woken herself, and no doubt everyone else in the Hotel Indira, with her interminable screaming. Someone is stabbing a woman to death, was the thought she had swimming up through sleep before she realized where the sound was coming from. After that she was finished for the night, no more sleep, just waiting.

“You do a good job of this,” Milton said, keeping his eyes towards the river. “I admire your patience.”

“Believe me, I have no patience.”

“Then you create the illusion of patience. In the end the effect is the same.”

“All I want to do is find Dr. Swenson and go home,” she said slowly. The words coming out of her mouth felt hot.

“And to get to Dr. Swenson and to get home you must first get past the Bovenders. The Bovenders are the guards of the gate. It is their job to keep you away from her, that’s what they’re paid for. I have no idea if they know where she is, but I am certain that no one else knows. They like you. Perhaps they’ll figure something out.” An arm went up in the water and waved and Milton raised his hand and waved back.

Where in the world was the rain? Those blinding cataracts that she had endured day after day? She needed one now. It didn’t necessarily cool things down but at least for a while it blocked out the sun. “They couldn’t like me.”

“They think you’re very natural. Mrs. Bovender told me that. They see you as a person who is honestly grieving her friend and trying to get information about his death.”

“Well, that’s true,” she said, although that description only covered her obligations to Karen.

“They’re starting to think that Dr. Swenson would like you,” Milton said.

Marina felt the top of her head turning soft as the sun worked into her brain, unloosening its coils. “Dr. Swenson knew me once already. I’m quite certain she had no feelings for me one way or the other.” She mopped at her face with a large red handkerchief Rodrigo had pressed on her that morning. When she declined it once he had made her a gift of it, though probably it went on Vogel’s account all the same. Under her clothes she felt the swimsuit with every inhalation. It wrapped around her body like an endless bandage, growing larger and looser as it soaked her up. She kept pushing the cloth against her face. Her vision was clouded by the sweat in her eyes. She could only make out the most basic elements of the landscape: sand, water, sky.

“What the Bovenders require is diplomacy,” Milton said. “They just need some more of your time. They want to study you and make sure you are what you seem.”

Marina squinted out towards the waving line of the horizon. “I don’t see them anymore.” What she meant to say was that she thought she might faint. At that point she might have said Milton’s name. She didn’t fall, but she was thinking of falling, and with that thought he took her arm and walked her over the remaining expanse of sandy beach to the river. He walked her into the water up to their knees and then up to their waists. It was like a bath, silky and warm. The current was so slight it barely disturbed her clothes. She wanted to lie down in it. Milton dipped his own handkerchief into the water and spread it wet over the top of her head. “It’s better, isn’t it,” he said, though it wasn’t a question.

She nodded. Jackie had been right to make Barbara go in. It was lifesaving. When Marina looked down she saw nothing, just a line where her torso vanished into the water. All around them children kicked their rafts and jumped off one another’s shoulders. “How do you know what’s under there?” she asked him.

“You don’t,” Milton said. “You don’t want to.”

When Marina got back to the hotel room and checked her cell phone she had two messages from Mr. Fox, one from her mother, and one from Karen Eckman, whose number showed up in Anders’ name. She might as well have been home. She was feeling slightly sympathetic towards Dr. Swenson’s refusal to have a phone at all. She took a cold shower, drank a bottle of water, and went to bed, where she had a dream about losing her father in a train station. When Barbara Bovender called on the hotel line at nine that night she woke her up. “We wanted to check on you,” she said. “I’m afraid we nearly killed you this afternoon with our idea of fun.”

“No, no,” Marina said, disoriented by sleep and heat and dreams. “I’m fine. I just haven’t gotten used to all of it yet. I suppose it takes some time.”

“It does!” Barbara said, sounding gleeful for no reason. “I’m so much better at it now than I used to be. The secret is not to let the heat keep you in. Jackie swears the air conditioning weakens your immune system after a while. The more you get out the more you get used to it. You should come over to the apartment and have a drink.”

“Now?” Marina said, as if she might have something else to do.

“A little walk at night would do you good.”

Maybe the Bovenders were the guards at the gate but it was also true that they were lonely. There was nothing keeping Marina at the Hotel Indira. Tomo had moved her to a bigger room two days before, a reward that acknowledged the length of her stay, but it was still as musty and dismal as the one before it. There was a better view but the same metal bar attached to the wall for clothes. Marina looked at her wool coat, even from a distance