Carioca Fletch

Laura repeated with firmness: “She says you are Janio Barreto, her husband.”

Now Laura had the old woman’s hands cupped in her own, gently, protectively.

“Of course,” said Fletch. “Naturally. Certainly. She’s not the first to say that, you know. Or the second. Tell me, does she have a settlement lawyer in California?” The doorman, having heard all, having understood all, turned his head and looked at Fletch. “Tell her she’ll have to get in line with her settlement lawyer.”

He smiled at the doorman.

The doorman was not smiling at him.

Laura said, “You are her husband, Janio Barreto.”

“Hope she sues for settlement under that name. What is this? What’s going on? Laura!”

Laura said, “You died forty-seven years ago, when you were a young man, about as you are now. When you were this lady’s young husband.”

“Good grief.”

“You are, how do I say it? Janio Barreto’s aura. His other person. His same person.” Laura smiled. “She is glad to see you.”

“I can tell.” Standing in the little forecourt of the hotel, surrounded by thick, deep green bushes, hearing the cars going by in the avenida, the voices of the children playing, hearing, of course, the beatings of the samba drums, Fletch felt coldness breaking over him, prickling his skin. “Laura…”

Still gently holding the woman’s hands, Laura said, “With this woman you have two sons and a daughter. Grown now, of course. They have children of their own. She wants you to meet them.”

“Laura, she wants money. I’m not taking on an extended Brazilian family.”

The doorman was still studying Fletch.

“You were a sailor,” Laura said. “You earned your living from the sea.”

The old woman had turned, was facing Fletch, presenting herself to him.

Quietly, Laura said, “She wants to embrace you.”

“Laura! My God …” Fletch could not help himself from moving somewhat backward, somewhat sideways. There were tears on the old woman’s cheeks. Laura had let go of the old woman’s hands. He felt a branch of one of the bushes against his bare back. “Laura, what is this? What are you doing?”

“The important thing is …”

The old woman came to Fletch. She raised her arms, put them around his neck. Approaching him, her eyes were soft, loving.

“Laura!”

The doorman held up his hand as if to stop traffic. “Wait, sir. There is more.”

The hag’s cheek, wet with tears, was against Fletch’s. She smelled terribly, of cooking oils, of fish, and of a million other things. Her body pressed against his.

He did not want to breathe. He wanted to gag. The branches from the bushes were stabbing into the skin of his back.

“The important thing is …” Laura’s head was lowered. She spoke respectfully. “Is that forty-seven years ago, when you were a young man, in another life, you were murdered.”

From the back of his throat, Fletch coughed over the old woman’s shoulder.

Then Laura looked up at Fletch, her brown eyes moving rapidly from his left eye to his right to his left. “Now you must tell your family who murdered you!”

Also with his eyes on Fletch’s, the doorman nodded solemnly.

Her eyes settled in Fletch’s, Laura said, “Clearly you cannot rest until you do.”

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?”