“Ooooooohh!”
Seen relaxed in the shade under the table, Laura’s legs were great to look at. Marilia’s, although pale, were not so bad either. The sight made him feel better.
“Fletcher! What is the matter with you? Why are you so suddenly under the table?”
“That woman. That woman in green passing by. Don’t look now.”
The heads of the pixies looked back and forth from Fletch to Laura intelligently, as if they understood.
“So? What about her?”
“She probably thinks I murdered her husband.”
Two
“Janio!” With a frightening rush of long white dress through heavy green leaves, the old hag emerged from the bushes in front of them in the small forecourt of The Hotel Yellow Parrot. She was pointing her arm, her arthritically bent index finger at Fletch’s face. “Janio Barreto!”
Fletch took a step back. His hand gripped Laura’s arm.
The hag took a step forward, her finger in Fletch’s face. “Janio Barreto!”
He thought they had done quite well. They had left Marilia at the café, walked half a block to their right, through the samba band on that corner, ignoring the gestures to stay and dance for a while, turned right, right again on Avenida Copacabana, along that a few blocks, turning right again at the street just beyond The Hotel Yellow Parrot, carefully, looking first, hurried around the corner and the short way along the sidewalk and into the forecourt of the hotel. They were to use the beach entrance to the hotel, as Fletch was not wearing a shirt.
He had forgotten about the hag.
Now she was blocking their way into the hotel entrance.
“Janio Barreto!” she accused, wagging her bent finger in his face. “Janio Barreto!”
Laura stepped forward. She put her hand on the old woman’s sleeve and spoke in a soothing voice. Fletch recognized the Portuguese word for mother in what Laura said.
“Janio Barreto!” the hag insisted, pointing at him.
Laura spoke quietly to the woman some more.
The uniformed doorman appeared through the main door of the hotel and came through the forecourt to Fletch. “Is there a problem, sir?”
“No. I don’t think so. I don’t know.”
The two women were talking quietly.
“Give her some money,” the doorman said. “For charity.”
The hag was speaking rapidly now, to Laura.
The old woman kept glancing at Fletch. She was fairly tall and fairly slim, and clearly she could move fast to have gotten to the hotel before them, to have caught them. The leanness of her hands made her fingers seem all the more misshapen. Her brown eyes were huge, clear and intense; her face more wrinkled than drying, caked earth. Thin, iron-gray hair fell from her head like photographed lightning. Her high, cracked voice came through a few blackened teeth.
Now Fletch was hearing the Portuguese words for wife, husband, father, sons, daughter, boat.
Listening to the old woman, Laura began taking long, surmising looks at Fletch. Her looks seemed unsure—not of what the old woman was saying, but somehow of Fletch. She was looking at him as if she had never seen him before, or seen him in quite this way.
His face politely averted, the doorman was listening too.
“What is she saying?” Fletch asked.
Laura waited until the old woman finished her sentence.
“She says you are Janio Barreto.”
“Who? What?”
“Janio Barreto.”
“Well, I’m not … whatever. Whoever. Let’s go.”
Laura’s chin came forward a few centimeters. “She says you are.”
The hag spoke some more, clearly repeating what she had said before, something about a boat.
Looking into Fletch’s eyes, not smiling, Laura said, “She says you are her husband.”
“Her husband. Ayuh.”
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.