Inside the platform, I made out the outline of a cable car against the night sky, even though all lights were turned off. The light came either from the buildings around or from street poles next to the platform.
Lightning flashed in the sky. Its light lingered in my eyes, and I caught the silhouette of a man on a narrow slope that streamed upward from the station. The figure leaned forward between the gaps of two buildings where artificial lights didn't reach.
“There’s someone there,” I said, pointing out the place to Renato.
He squeezed the pistol in his hand, bent his body double as though willing to protect himself from projectiles coming toward him.
A new strike of lightning and a thunderclap crackled in the sky, heavy drops of water hammered the aluminum ceiling above our heads. Through the deafening noise that pounded our ears, I kept my gaze at the gap between the buildings. But the silhouette of the man was gone.
Maybe I had seen a ghost.
I had already started sketching a new route to take us out of the slum. Going down was an option, but going up, across the soccer field, down into the forest, could work. Before I could tell Renato my idea a hand gripped my hair. When I turned around, I clashed against Renato’s lips.
His tongue dove into my mouth like smoldering coal into cold water. Startled, I jerked back, but then relented as his feverish tongue swept my troubles aside, even momentarily, putting us into a bubble of tranquility amid the chaos.
When we parted, I looked at his face barely lit, his eyes riveted to mine, and everything went silent. Even the raindrops stopped their plunge to the ground.
“It’s been too long since we kissed,” said Renato, “I had to taste you one more time.”
“When we leave this mess . . . we’ll have plenty of time,” I said.
Renato raised the corner of his mouth.
“My path is coming to an end, Emily.”
When he finished speaking, I froze. Not because the ill-fated inflection he brought to his words in spite of his smile, but due to the decisiveness of his statement, as though he was aware of facts I didn’t know.
“We’re leaving Gloria Santa alive,” I said. I wanted to say we’d leave unharmed, as though his shoulder injuries were only a small scratch on his body, but that would have sounded over the top.
We stood facing each other in a last minute bid of goodbye, the sound of the rain falling against the ceiling slowly rolled back in. A drip fell over Renato’s forehead coming from a hole in the aluminum, a shiny stream of water reflected the flashes of the storm and the bright of my own fired up stare.
It was at that moment, when again the world seemed to stop, that a light turned on inside the platform.
Chapter 25
A door opened inside the cable car service area. A door to what looked to be its control room. From a small window studded on the adjoining wall, a yellow incandescent light flicked on. Through the door of that same room a scoop-shouldered man came out. He ambled toward us, both hands cupping the nape of his neck, and stopped. He stretched his body out as though he had just got startled awake.
He and Renato exchanged words in Portuguese.
The man motioned his arms, as though in negation. Maybe a response to Renato’s querying if the cable car would be opened that night. Given the amount of wind punishing the slum, and the denseness of the rain, I could hardly believe his response might be any other than: “Can’t you see the storm, you fucking idiot?”
The man didn’t come closer to the gate. He remained a few steps away from us trying to gauge what kind of danger we might present to him, or, how long we would keep disturbing his sleep. A cool freshness blasted through Gloria Santa. The evening air was a great invitation for a quick nap, or a long sleep. Like cold water poured over sore skin.
The man was smaller than Renato, slimmer, older and rougher. There was barely enough contrast to picture his shape on the platform, the man was a mass of blackness highlighted by thin lines where light, coming from behind, ricocheted on his skin. In this gloomy environment, Renato was able to hide the gun, the cold metal barrel camouflaged among shadows.
The man raised his hand and pointed at me. His coarse cigarette voice all over the place.
I didn’t budge. He clearly wanted to know something. Probably after guessing the storm might be softening his voice, he raised the volume, repeating the sound patterns I’d heard before.
Renato followed the direction of that man’s raised finger and glimpse back at me. “He thinks he’s seen your face somewhere.”
“On TV?” I said.
“It doesn’t matter. We can’t play the odds.”
I stared at Renato as the old man walked away from us toward the wall of the control room. The rumble in the sky offered a quick truce, but darkness loomed around us, as though coming in closer, dimming even the bright artificial light. The glistening metal barrel of the gun in Renato’s hand wedged between two iron bars at the gate, aimed at the man walking away from us.
“No!” I shouted.
When the man looked back at us, a flash erupted from the pistol, a whip-like snap of the bullet firing. The thud of a body hitting the floor, not so much the muffle of a bag of sand dropping on wood slats as the popping of a coconut bouncing on concrete.
The man inside the cable car bent over, his hands protecting his head, ran back into the control room. Renato’s body lay dead stretched on the ground beneath me, as a glimmering puddle
