“I liked that thought. Suddenly I liked the idea of being without all that baggage.”
From behind the serving apparatus, a tall, slim man was peering out at them. He was looking from Joan to Fletch to Joan again with apparent concern.
Fletch said, “You’re still Joan Collins Stanwyk.”
“Oh, I know. But, for the first time in my life, it didn’t seem to mean much. I saw that it didn’t have to mean much.”
Again Fletch permitted his question to remain tacit.
“When I got to The Hotel Jangada, a tour bus was waiting. I didn’t know where it was going. I joined the people, the women in their short silk dresses, the men in their plaid shorts, and got on it. No one asked me for a ticket, or money. Obviously I belonged to a group from The Hotel Jangada. I belonged with these people. I stole a bus ride here.”
Fletch smiled. “Thievery is infectious.”
“The bus stopped here for lunch. I didn’t have lunch. I couldn’t pay for it. What a new fact! What a new feeling! I wandered around the beach. I let the bus leave without me.
“I wondered who I was. Really was. Really am. I wondered if I could survive a full day without cash, without credit cards, without my identity. I wondered what life would be like, for just a few moments, if I couldn’t pull something out of my purse and say, ‘Here I am, now do as I ask, please; give me …’” She smiled at herself. “It was getting dark. So I came here and had dinner. I sat over there.” She indicated a bench near the door. “I felt as guilty as hell.” She put her elbows on the table in a most unrefined way, her chin on her hands. “Then I went and washed dishes for them.”
“Is it fun for you?”
“It’s harder than tennis. I daydream about having a proper massage. God, last night I wanted a martini so badly.” She shrugged. “I can’t understand a word of the language. It’s so soft, so sibilant.”
The tall man, wiping his hands on an apron, finally was approaching them.
Joan’s face was happy. She said, “This noon, a well-dressed couple arrived for lunch. German, I think. In a Mercedes, behind a uniformed driver. I found myself looking at her over my pile of dirty dishes. Somehow it made me angry that she only picked at her lunch. Of course I understood. She has to keep her figure….”
The man stood behind Joan, looking at Fletch. He put his hand on her shoulder.
She put her hand on his.
“Fletch, this is Claudio.”
“Bom dia, Claudio.”
Fletch half rose, and they shook hands.
“Claudio owns this place, I think,” Joan said. “At least he acts as if he owns the place. He acts as if he owns the world. It may just be Brazilian masculinity.”
Assured she was all right, and apparently without conversation in English, Claudio left the back of his hand against Joan’s cheek for a moment, then went back to the kitchen.
“Are you here forever?” Fletch asked. “Have you decided upon dish-washing as a career?”
“Oh, no. Of course not. I love Julie. I love my father. I must get back. I have responsibilities. To Collins Aviation. I’m the best fund-raiser Symphony has.”
Fletch put the brown paper sack on the table.
“Just leave me here for a while,” Joan said quietly. “Let me play truant from life for a short while, from being mother, daughter, from being Joan Collins Stanwyk. Leave me be.”
“Sure.” He pushed the paper bag across the table at her.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“The money I was bringing you Saturday—enhanced by poker earnings. For when you decide to get back.” She looked into the bag. “Surely enough to get you back to Rio, pay a hotel bill for a few nights, pay for Telexes.”
“How very nice.”
“Poverty is easier to slip into,” Fletch said, “than to climb out of.”
She reached across the table and took his hand. “How do you know so much?”
“Just the wisdom of the masses. Also,” he said, “you must still have the key to your suite at The Hotel Jangada.”
“I must have. It must be in a pocket of that pants suit I was wearing.”
“Get it for me. I’ll check you out of the hotel. I’ll leave your luggage with the concierge, for when you want it.”
“I will want it,” she said. “I’m sure I will.”
While Fletch paid the waiter, Joan told him about bathing in the warm ocean, how hot the sun was at midday, how much she liked the smell of fish, it was so real, the sounds of something she thought might be tree-frogs at night.
“You sound like you’re at summer camp,” he said.
“No. At summer camp someone else washed the dishes. And,” she smiled, “there were only girls.”
Fletch waited by his car while she got the key to her suite at The Hotel Jangada. It was still daylight. Customers were beginning to arrive for dinner.
As Joan crossed the small parking lot to him, some of the customers stared after her, perplexed.
“Do me one other favor, will you?” she asked.
“Sure.” Fletch had known there would be a second part to the bargain. There are always two parts to a bargain.
“When you go back to the States, to California, back to your own reality, don’t ever tell anyone that this crazy thing happened to me, that I did this crazy thing. That you found me washing dishes in a fish joint in some nameless little town in Southern Brazil.”
“The town has a name.”
She laughed. “You know, I don’t know what it is?”
“Botelho.”
“Will you promise me that?”
“Sure.”
“I mean, everyone needs a vacation from life. Don’t you agree?”
“A vacation from reality.”
She handed him the key. “I’m paying for a suite at The Hotel Jangada, and sleeping more or less on the beach in Botelho.”
Fletch said: “Topsy-turvy.”
Thirty-seven
“Did you enjoy your dinner in Botelho?” Teodomiro da Costa asked.
“It was excellent,” Fletch answered.
“Yes, that’s a good restaurant. I’m not sure it’s worth the ride….”
It was late when Fletch got back to Rio, by the time he arrived at Teo da Costa’s home on Avenida Epitacio Passoa.
When the houseman had shown Fletch into the downstairs family sitting room, Teo was looking sleepy in a dressing gown in a comfortable chair. He was reading the book 1887—The Year Slavery in Brazil Ended. From under the reading light, Teo’s eyes traveled over Fletch’s various visible wounds, but he did not comment on them.
“Want a nightcap?”
“No, thanks. I won’t be here that long.”
Stiff from Carnival, from his wounds, from the long ride, Fletch sank comfortably into the two-seater divan.
In the little sitting room was a handsome big new painting by Misabel Pedrosa.
“And did Laura enjoy Botelho?”
“Laura has gone back to Bahia. Yesterday, I finally fell asleep. She couldn’t wake me up. She had to go back to begin preparing for her concert tour.”
“Yes,” Teo said slowly, “I gathered you might have cleaned up that mystery of who murdered Janio Barreto forty-seven years ago. There was a most peculiar report in O Globo this morning. A small item, saying Gabriel Campos, past capoeira master of Escola Santos Lima, was found on the beach, his throat slit. A woman from the favela, Idalina Barreto, is helping the police in its inquiries.”
“I pity the police.”
“Apparently she was found on the beach lighting matches, trying to set fire to the corpse of Gabriel Campos.”
“Did she succeed?”
“That’s what’s peculiar about O Globo’s report. It says that legend has it that no one has ever succeeded in lighting a fire in that exact spot on the beach in almost fifty years.”