“It means ‘little cry.’ ”
“What is this stuff, Wesley? You got any English music?”
Wesley watched Gerald mash his egg mayonnaise into a creamy pulp. He dribbled thin streams of olive oil and vinegar onto the mixture, which he stirred, and then freely sprinkled on pepper and salt.
“That’s disgusting,” Wesley said. “How am I meant to eat this?” He pointed his knife at his steak.
“I haven’t had a steak for two years. You should have my teeth problems, Wesley. You should feel sorry for me, mate.”
“I do feel sorry for you. I’d feel more sorry for you if you’d been to a dentist. You can be helped, you know. You don’t have to suffer. A man of your age. Jesus.”
Gerald ate some of his mixture. Wesley looked around for a waitress and saw Elizabetta, the plump one. She came over, beaming.
“Pint of lager, please. Ger?”
“Large gin and tonic.”
Wesley lowered his voice. “Is, um, Margarita in today?” he asked Elizabetta.
“This afternoon she come.”
He shifted his shoulders around. Gerald was not listening. “Tell her I’ll phone. Say Wesley will phone. Wesley.”
“Wesley. OK.”
Gerald pulped his apple crumble with the back of his spoon.
“Nice little place this, Wes. Worth the drive. What is it, Italian?”
“Sort of. Bit of everything.”
“ ‘International cuisine,’ then.”
Wesley looked around the Caravelle. There was no nautical theme visible in its pragmatic decor, unless you counted the one seascape among its five reproductions on the wall. He and Gerald sat in a row of booths reminiscent more of — what was the word? Seating arrangements in libraries … — carrels, yes. Maybe the name was a malapropism, he thought. An asparagus on the banks of the Nile. Someone had blundered: it should have been called the Carrel Café & Restaurant. Names, again … He stopped thinking about it and thought instead about Margarita.
Mar-ga-ri-ta. Not Margaret.
He rolled the “r”s. Marrrrgarrrita.
She was dark, of course, very Latin, with a severe thin face that possessed, he thought, what you might call a strong beauty. Not pretty, exactly, but there was a look about her that attracted him, although, he realized, she was one of these southern European women who would not age well. But now she was young and slim and her hair was long and, most important of all, she was Portuguese. Uma moça bonita.
Gerald offered him one of his small cigars.
Dr. Liceu Lobo put down his coffee cup and relit his real excelente. He drew, with pedantic and practiced care, a steady thin stream of smoke from the neatly docked and already nicely moist end and held it in his mouth, savoring the tobacco’s dry tang before pluming it at the small sunbird that pecked at the crumbs of his pastry on the patio table. The bird flew off with a shrill shgrreakakak and Dr. Liceu Lobo chuckled. It was time to return to the clinic, Senhora Fontenova was due for her vitamin D injections.
He felt Adalgisa’s hand on his shoulder and he leaned his head back against her firm midriff, her finger trickled down over his collarbone and tangled and twirled the dense gray hairs on his chest.
“Your mother wants to see you.”
Wesley swung open the gate to his small and scruffy garden and reminded himself yet again to do something about the clematis that overburdened the trellis on either side of his front door. Pauline was bloody meant to be i.c. garden, he told himself, irritated at her, but then he also remembered he had contrived to keep her away from the house the last month or so, prepared to spend weekends and the odd night at her small flat rather than have her in his home. As he hooked his door keys out of his tight pocket with one hand he tugged with the other at a frond of clematis that dangled annoyingly close to his face, and a fine confetti of dust and dead leaves fell quickly onto his hair and shoulders.
After he had showered he lay naked on his bed, his hand on his cock, and thought about masturbating but decided against. He felt clean and, for the first time that day, almost relaxed. He thought about Margarita and wondered what she looked like with her clothes off. She was thin, perhaps a little on the thin side for his taste, if he were honest, but she did have a distinct bust and her long straight hair was always clean, though he wished she wouldn’t tuck it behind her ears and drag it taut into a lank swishing ponytail. Restaurant regulations, he supposed. He realized then that he had never seen her with her hair down and felt, for a moment, a sharp intense sorrow for himself and his lot in life. He sat up and swung his legs off the bed, amazed that there was a shimmer of tears in his eyes.
“God. Jesus!” he said mockingly to himself, out loud. “Poor little chap.”
He dressed himself brusquely.
Downstairs, he poured himself a large rum and coke and put Milton Nascimento on the CD player and hummed along to the great man’s ethereal falsetto. Never failed to cheer him up. Never failed. He took a great gulp of the chilled drink and felt the alcohol surge. He swayed over to the drinks cabinet and added another slug. It was only four-thirty in the afternoon. Fuck it, he thought. Fuck it.
He should have parked somewhere else, he realized crossly, as unexpected sun warmed the Rover while he waited outside Pauline’s bank. He didn’t have a headache but his palate was dry and stretched and his sinuses were responding unhappily to the rum. He flared his nostrils and exhaled into his cupped hand. His breath felt unnaturally hot on his palm. He sneezed, three times, violently. Come on, Pauline. Jesus.
She emerged from the stout teak doors of the bank, waved and skittered over toward the car. High heels, he saw. She has got nice legs. Definitely, he thought. Thin ankles. They must be three-inch heels, he reckoned, she’ll be taller than me. Was it his imagination or was that the sun flashing off the small diamond cluster of her engagement ring?
He leaned across the seat and flung the door open for her.
“Wesley! You going to a funeral or something? Gaw!”
“It’s just a suit. Jesus.”
“It’s a black suit. Black. Really.”
“Charcoal gray.”
“Where’s your Prince of Wales check? I love that one.”
“Cleaners.”
“You don’t wear a black suit to a christening, Wesley. Honestly.”
Professor Liceu Lobo kissed the top of his mother’s head and sat down at her feet.
“Hey, little Mama, how are you today?”
“Oh, I’m fine. A little closer to God.”
“Nah, little Mama, He needs you here, to look after me.”
She laughed softly and smoothed the hair back from his forehead in gentle combing motions.
“Are you going to the university today?”
“Tomorrow. Today is for you, little Mama.”
He felt her small rough hands on his skin at the hairline and closed his eyes. His mother had been doing this to him ever since he could remember. Soothing, like waves on the shore. “Like waves on the shore your hands on my hair”… The line came to him and with it, elusively, a hint of something more. Don’t force it, he told himself, it will come. The rhythm was fixed already. Like waves on the shore. The mother figure, mother earth … Maybe there was an idea to investigate. He would work on it in the study, after dinner. Perhaps a poem? Or maybe the title of a novel? As ondas em la praia. It had a serene yet epic ring to it.
He heard a sound and looked up, opening his eyes to see Marialva carrying a tray. The muffled belling of ice in a glass jug filled with a clear fruit punch. Seven glasses. The children must be back from school.