Carioca Fletch

The skinny young teenage girl brought them a tray with five glasses of cachaca and a sugar bowl.

Norival downed his cachaca in a gulp, asked for another, and collapsed on a long chair on the long side of the pool.

Tito was doing disciplined laps in the pool, stroking through the lily pads.

Orlando went into the house.

“What is that new North American verb?” Toninho asked. “Interact. It is tiresome having always to interact, especially with women. The women here do not expect anything so profound as interaction.”

Dona Jurema came through the back door and let herself down the steps like a big bag of glass.

“So good of you to come, Toninho,” she said. “Not many of the girls are up. Ah, it’s a hot day. We had a busy night. We will have lunch for you in a while.”

“This man.” Toninho put his hands on Fletch’s forearm. “This man has special needs.”

Jurema beamed at Fletch. “It would be a sin if he is having difficulties.”

“He is not having difficulties, I think,” Toninho said. “Are you, Fletch?”

“Only with the cachaca.” He put his glass down on the burned-out grass.

“A special need I’m sure you can satisfy, Jurema.”

Arms akimbo, the woman shrugged her shoulders. It was a seismic upheaval. “We can satisfy any need. Why, an Air Force General we had here—”

“Toninho,” Fletch said. “I have no special needs.”

“But you do,” Toninho said. “A very special need. I am your friend. It is important to me that your special need be fulfilled.”

“I need sleep,” Fletch said, leaning back in his chair, closing his eyes.

“I know what you need.” Solemnly, Toninho said, “My friend needs a corpse.”

Fletch’s eyes popped open. His head snapped up. “What?”

“I said you need a corpse. For the purpose of copulation.” To Jurema, he said, “My friend has the great need to make love to a corpse.”

Jurema was not laughing. She was answering Toninho in rapid Portuguese. Her eyes, her face, her voice bespoke someone doing business.

“Because,” Toninho said, “my friend is a corpse. Partly a corpse. Part of him has not had a woman in forty- seven years. Clearly, if we are to get the truth from him, his peri-spirit must be awakened.”

“Toninho!” Fletch said.

“It is true,” Toninho said to Jurema.

Behind Fletch’s long chair. Jurema bent over. She put her hands on his breasts and put at least part of her weight on them. Pressing hard, she ran her hands all the way down his stomach, under his towel to his pelvis, then raised her hands.

She erupted in laughter. “He seems alive. If the other part of him is as healthy …”

A cool breeze blew over Fletch. He resettled his towel.

“You see the problem,” Toninho said with dignity. “Now. How can you help my friend?”

“Toninho. Stop it. You’re gross.”

“A corpse for my friend? Someone young, dead, and pretty.”

“Toninho, this isn’t funny.”

“Probably by Tuesday,” Jurema said. “There are always such corpses available during Carnival.”

“Find a good one,” Toninho said.

Jurema waddled a short distance. Speaking to Toninho in Portuguese, incredibly enough she stooped over and picked a weed out of the burned grass. Her face flushed. She then lifted herself up the back stairs and into the house.

“Tuesday,” Toninho said. “She’ll have one for you Tuesday.”

“Toninho, I hope this is another of your jokes.”

Abruptly, in the same tone of voice, Toninho said, “Your friend, Teodomiro da Costa, is to be respected.”

“I met with him this morning.” Fletch watched the sunlight flashing on Tito’s shoulders as he swam. “He had advice for me, which I respect. Especially at the moment.”

“In this country, seventy percent of the business is run by the government, you see. To do well on your own, as Teo has, is to do very well indeed. Now tell me. In North America, there is a car which has what is called a slant-six engine. Can you describe it to me, please?”

Fletch told Toninho what he understood of the slant-six engine, and that it had an especially long life. Sitting on Saturday morning in the mountains above Rio de Janeiro looking out into the sunlight, he felt his eyes crossing. He had not had that much of the cachaca. One moment Toninho was talking seriously of necrophilia and the next just as seriously about a slant-six car engine.

The young girl brought Norival his third cachaca.

“Ah,” Toninho said. “Norival is an arigo. A simpleton, a boor, but a good fellow. If he were not from a rich, important family, he would be an arigo. His brother, Adroaldo Passarinho, is the same, exactly like him in every way. Look the same, act the same. His father has sent Adroaldo to school in Switzerland, in hopes there will be someone in the family this generation less than simple. Arigo.”

Tito climbed out of the pool and, not drying himself, dropped naked belly down on the grass.

In high seriousness and in great detail, Toninho then wanted to know about this new robot he had read about in Time magazine supposedly capable of understanding and obeying one hundred thousand different orders. Designed in Milan, manufactured in Phoenix with Japanese parts. What was the nature of the computer which ran it? How were the joints designed, and how many were there? What would the robot say when given conflicting orders? Would the robot know, better than a person, when it is breaking down?

In his towel, holding a fresh glass of cachaca, Orlando stood on the back steps of the plantation house. He sang. Of the four Tap Dancers, Orlando’s muscles were the heaviest. His voice was deep, and he sang well.

O canto de minha gente

Assediando meu coracao

Semente que a arte germinou

E o tempo temperou

Amor, o amor

Como e gostoso amar.

Norival raised his head from his long chair and hissed. Even from a distance, it could be seen Norival was not focusing. His head dropped back.

“Ah, the arigo never sobered from last night,” Toninho said.

“What’s the song?” Fletch asked.

“An old Carnival song. Let’s see.” Toninho closed his eyes to translate. Fletch had been slow to see how long Toninho’s lashes were. They rested on his cheeks. “‘My people’s song makes my heart leap. The seed is sown by art and tempered by time. Love, love, how good it is to love.’”

“That’s a good song.”

“Oh, yes.”

With his glass of cachaca, Orlando wandered down to where they were sitting.

“Orlando,” Toninho said. “Give Fletch a demonstration of capoeira, of kick-dancing. You and Tito. Make it good. Kill each other.”

Raising his head beside the pool, Tito said, “You, Toninho.”