“We know he cannot hurt Eva,” Tito said. “He is only a stick in her fire.”
Then there was another, horrible, long drawn-out scream. It pierced the sound of the rain.
“They are playing,” Orlando said.
“Norival!” Toninho called in Portuguese. “Mind your manners!”
Naked, Eva fell through the back door. “Norival!”
Her hair was messed up. Her eyes were wild.
She sucked in breath and spoke in a rush.
Toninho said, “She says Norival has stopped moving. That he has stopped breathing.”
Eva was shouting Portuguese over the sound of the rain.
“He has passed out,” Tito said.
“No.” Alarmed, Toninho stood up. “She says he has stopped breathing!”
They all rushed inside.
More slowly, Fletch went with them, suspecting some new trick.
In the little room on the first floor, Norival lay on the rumpled, dirty sheets of an extra long bed. He was partly on his side, as if rolled into that position. He was naked and his stomach was slack. There was still a streak of mud on his leg.
Norival was grinning.
There was a happy, wicked gleam in his eye.
From the door, Fletch watched Norival’s grin remain idiotic.
Norival’s eyes did not blink.
Fletch joined the Tap Dancers at the side of the bed. With his fingertips he felt for a pulse in Norival’s neck. There was none. Norival’s pleaded eyes did not blink.
As Fletch watched, slowly the grin disappeared from Norival’s face. The lips became straight.
The happy gleam remained in his eyes.
A few inches in front of Norival’s penis, the bed sheet was wet and stained.
“He is dead!” Orlando said in Portuguese.
Under his breath, Tito whistled.
Standing, his back straight, Toninho said, “Norival. You died arigó.”
“What do we do?” Orlando asked. “Norival is dead!”
“How did he die?” Tito asked. “Surely he has done this before. It hasn’t been fatal.”
Orlando said, “He can’t be dead. Wake up, Norival! You’ll miss Carnival!”
“He is dead,” Toninho said. “Norival is dead!”
Eva filled the door of the small, dark room. Talking rapidly but more quietly now, she kept gasping, imitating a belch, grabbing her huge left breast with both hands.
“Died of a heart attack while copulating, I guess,” Fletch said.
Orlando said, “Way to go, Norival!”
“No wonder he was smiling!” Tito said.
“You saw him smiling?” Toninho asked.
“Definitely he was smiling,” Tito said.
Orlando nodded. “When we came into the room, he was smiling!”
“He is not smiling now,” Tito said.
“But look at his eyes,” Toninho said.
“His eyes are still happy,” Tito said.
“And why not?” Orlando asked. “Why not happy?”
At the door, Eva was beginning to look pleased with herself.
“But he’s dead!” Tito said.
“But how he died!” Orlando said. He looked ready to shake Norival’s hand. “Well done, Norival!”
“A death in ten million,” Toninho said. “Arigó!”
Fourteen
The tall, slim, naked young man stood in the dead garden, the rain pouring down his body, his feet wide apart in the mud, his face up to the rain, his arms held high as if to catch the sky.
From the back porch, Fletch heard what Toninho said to the sky:
With God he lays down; with God he rises,
With the grace of God and the Holy Spirit.
May Thine eyes watch over him as he sleeps.
Dead, will You light his way
Into the mansions of eternity
With the tapers of Thy Trinity?
Fletch went down to Toninho in the garden.
“A prayer.” Toninho’s face and arms lowered. His shoulders sagged.
Then Toninho looked over the hedges, out into mountain space in the rain. “Not a worry.” Fletch could not make sure if there were tears mixed in with the rain on Toninho’s cheeks. “When you die copulating, you are certain to come back to life, soon.”
Fifteen
“Toninho! What do we do?” Tito asked in a hushed voice.
Toninho shook his head as if to clear it.
“Still, Norival is dead,” he muttered thickly.
While Fletch and the Tap Dancers were out of the room, Dona Jurema, the young teenaged girl, and one other woman from the house had washed Norival, put a fresher sheet under him, and laid him out straight.
Now in the small, dark room, Norival lay on his back, clean, naked. His eyes were closed. In his hands folded over his stomach were a few flowers which had seen better hours. A candle flickered at the head of the bed; another candle at the foot of the bed.
Leaving a full bottle of whiskey in the room, Dona Jurema left the young men sitting around the bed in straight wooden chairs.
So they had sat for two or three hours. The thick candles had burned down only a few centimeters.
There was no measurement tape on that whiskey bottle. Their next drink from it would probably be their last. Fletch had had three or four good swallows from the bottle.
Even on the straight wooden chair across the bed, Orlando sat with his legs out straight before him, his chin on his chest, his thumbs hitched into the tops of his shorts.
“We must do something,” Tito said.
Toninho blinked.
“We cannot leave Norival here,” Tito said.
To Fletch, Toninho said, “Norival comes from a rich, important family. His uncle is an admiral!”
“To die in a whorehouse,” Tito said. “Full of booze…”
“And pills, I think,” Fletch said.
“His mother would be disappointed,” Tito concluded.
“But what a way to go!” Orlando muttered without opening his eyes or raising his chin from his chest.
“We must do something,” Tito said.
“We must move him.” Toninho drank from the bottle, saw that it was nearly the last of the whiskey, and handed the bottle to Tito.
“We must arrange some other death for Norival,” Tito said.
“Burn the record,” Fletch agreed. “I see the point.”
“For the sake of his mother,” Tito said.
“He must not have died here,” Toninho said carefully. “Not in the arms of Eva.”
“No,” said Tito. “It would make her too famous.”
“Still.” Toninho winked. “People will know.”
“Yes,” Tito said. He passed the bottle over Norival to Fletch. “People will know how Norival died.”
“What a way to go!” Orlando muttered.
“But not his mother,” said Toninho.
“Not his mother,” agreed Tito. “Not his sisters.”
For a moment, while Fletch held the bottle, they were silent.
The candles flickered and Norival did not breathe.
Through the open window came the sound of the rain on the tin roof.
“We must do something,” Tito said.
“The important thing is,” Toninho said, trying very hard to keep his tongue straight and to see things clearly, “is to prevent an autopsy.”
“Yes!” Tito said forcefully at this great wisdom.
“Because Norival was full of booze and pills.”
“Despite our having emptied him out once,” Tito put in.
“And that would disappoint his mother,” said Toninho, losing his tongue in his mouth.
“Worth it,” Orlando muttered from his chest. “A death in ten million. Good old Norival.”
“Wake up, Orlando,” Tito said. “We must think.”
“No.”
Toninho kicked Orlando’s legs and Orlando nearly fell off his chair.