“Maybe you should exercise more.”
“I exercise,” I said.
“I’m kidding,” she answered, her back already to me. “Don’t be so serious all the time.”
She led us to a cove with gray boulders breaking from the water’s surface. They looked like the backs of giant tortoiseshells. Other hikers had stopped too to sunbathe. We waded through the water until we found our own rock to spread across, the porous surface warming our skin. We stretched our bodies there, enjoying the passing sunrays that peeked through and dodged behind the clouds. I could feel, though, that Celia wasn’t relaxed. She’d turn to one side and then the other, sigh heavily, until she roused, sat up, and began to throw broken shells into the schools of fish hovering against the tide.
Finally she spoke.
“I want to tell you something, but I’m afraid you won’t like it,” she said.
“You don’t have to tell me anything.”
She paused. I thought maybe she wouldn’t.
“Is it about our trip?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “It’s about why I left.”
Her body had slumped. She picked at a bit of white moss and threw it into the water.
“Rafael and I…” Her words slowed; anxiety pricked at my stomach. I then realized that her sudden change in attitude had nothing to do with me.
“We’re in love.”
“For how long?”
“Several months. Maybe even a year.”
“Does Karina know?”
“No. Not really. She knows, but she doesn’t know.”
“How far has this gone?”
Her brows crimped. “What do you mean?”
“Have you had sex with him?”
“Yes,” she said. I turned my back and looked toward the horizon.
The trip had been an escape for her too. She told me that she and Rafael had known each other far longer than he and Karina had, a point she made as an excuse, a “pass.” He met Karina because they were both graffiti artists, but their love didn’t have the foundation in trust, the longevity, that she had with him. The love affair began with simple gestures. They would share meals together when Karina bartended at night. Sometimes Celia would sit with Rafael when he was fresh out of the shower, covering her eyes when it was time for him to change, until one day he told her she didn’t have to, and she blushed when he stood naked in front of her, not like a brother but like a Roman statue, laughing with delight.
“Did you make love then?” I asked her, but she denied it. They made love after many months, after many conversations and nights spent alone. He formed a habit of falling asleep in bed with Celia and setting an alarm for an hour before Karina was due to arrive home from work.
“The nights we couldn’t spend together were torture,” she said. “Sometimes I would wake in the middle of the night just to peek into his bedroom and see him sleeping.”
The problems started when one night he didn’t wake up and Karina found him curled underneath Celia’s sheets. He tried to convince Karina that he had sleepwalked—that he had gotten up to go to the bathroom and wandered into the wrong room. But she refused to believe him. She became volatile; she rifled through their drawers when they left; she asked their friends to report back to her if they ever saw them together.
“Please don’t tell anyone,” Celia said to me.
“Who would I tell?”
“I don’t know. If anyone can find us, it’s Karina.”
I told her that she should stop seeing him, that it was the most logical solution, that he was young and impulsive and that he would leave both of them in the end. Desperation consumed her.
“He’s an artist. Karina doesn’t give him space.” She stood up and began to pace across the rock. The tide was rising—I could see the waterlines on the other rocks had disappeared. The hikers had begun to pack their bags and shimmy off. Even the fish found shelter within the kelp.
“Don’t get upset,” I said. “I do like Rafael. I worry about your friendship with Karina.”
“He’s everything to me. More than my friendship with Karina,” she said, massaging her temples. “I would give up my life for him.”
I didn’t respond to that—I assumed she was being dramatic. I suggested we return to the trail; the water was too deep to walk across. She agreed, collected her things, and jumped off the side, while I found a safe foothold to lower myself down.
We swam on our backs, holding our packs up with one hand, and hiked the muddy trail back to the beach. It should have been a warning to me that perhaps I wasn’t the only stranger she had grown close to in her life, that maybe I wasn’t as singular a love as I had assumed. Even a tanned surfer on a bus to Trindade could instantly become a confidant, a dog she fostered from the favela streets could become her best friend, an American woman wearing a shower cap could become a travel companion. Yet these were the qualities that attracted me to Celia. Her fearless compassion. Her loyalty to the unknown. They were the same things that attracted Rafael to her.
“I need a beer,” Celia said and suggested we eat on the beach rather than wait until we got back to Paraty. We found a small restaurant set back from the shore. Neither of us brought up the conversation about Rafael—we spoke only about what we wanted to eat and drink. It was better that way. We ordered a basket of fried fish and beer, and Celia squeezed lime all over our fish. A short rain broke from the sky, dripping off the palm leaves above us. We waited for it to stop before we made our way back to the road.
The bus stop was much less crowded on the way up the mountain; most people had left before the storm. Celia and I sat next to each other in the back. She rested her head against the bus window and dozed. And I—I couldn’t stop thinking about her and Rafael. To me he seemed so young, so self-interested, which was likely insecurity, but he masked that insecurity with bold acts of rebellion. I pictured them together behind closed doors in her apartment, listening for Karina to return home, Rafael grabbing at Celia’s body like a clumsy dog wrestling with a toy, unsure of how to approach her first. And Celia, coaxing him with the flick of her tongue. Could she really be in love? I found it impossible.
I didn’t want to think about it anymore. I focused my attention on something else, anything else, which of course led me back to you. I wondered if it had been a mistake to follow Celia here. I thought about one Saturday morning early on in our days in Brazil, when you promised that you would stay home with me, that the university would be a distant concern, despite impending deadlines and exams and essays to grade. I slept better than I had since we first arrived, drifting into consciousness, hovering in a calm cocoon. The sound of faucet water flooded my dreams. I woke to the smell of a freshly peeled orange. You were already up and at the bathroom sink, a pile of rinds where you normally lay. I pulled a pillow over my face and let my breath warm the cotton stuffing. A deeper noise broke through, rattling deep and muffled. Thwap. Thwap. Thwap.
“Dennis. Do you hear that?”
You didn’t say anything. You had a toothbrush in your mouth.
“Dennis,” I said again, this time into open air.
“It sounds like trees breaking,” you said.
The shutters on our window were tied together with a chiffon scarf, woven through the metal handles. I shimmied over and untied it with a pull. The noise boomed into the room. I kneeled so I could see just over the window ledge.
“They’re building something inside the soccer stadium.”
The pile drivers moved primitively, consistent and slow, like a pack of long-necked dinosaurs feeding in a dusty pool. I stood to get a better view. “They’re digging a massive hole where the soccer field used to be.”
The scarf lay tangled beneath my feet. I picked it up and retied the window shut.
“How long do you think this will last?”
“I don�
�t know,” you said. “I guess it depends how big they need the hole to be.”
“Very funny. I wonder what it’s for.”
“I hope an ice-skating rink.” You put a hand to your chin. “Or no—a helicopter pad. We could spend the day skiing in the Alps and come back to Brazil before Monday.”
“I could go home to Hartford while you’re at the university.”
“I’d take you to Paris. Or Anguilla. Anywhere in the world.”
“Anywhere?” I thought for a moment. “I still think I’d like to go home.”
“Okay. We’ll go home. And then we’ll go to Pluto.”
“What if I stayed? What if I didn’t want to go to Pluto?” I said this, though I knew I could never stay without you.
“I’d miss you. I don’t think I could go without you.”
I made us breakfast: bowls of Cheerios with nonperishable milk. You sat with a newspaper across your lap and a coffee mug in your hand. We could hear the hard echo from metal banging against metal.
“Look at this.” You pointed to the newspaper. “Two thousand people lost their homes in that hurricane on the coast.”
“That’s terrible,” I said. “I don’t know how to respond to bad news anymore.”
You folded up the paper and tucked it underneath the ceramic bowl. “Hey. Let’s go to the park today. It’s beautiful outside.”
We went to the bedroom together and you undressed me gingerly, pulled my dress over my lifted arms, and pressed me onto the mattress. You were careful, as you are, to kiss my neck and my breasts and my stomach before you removed my underwear and entered me. When you were done, you collapsed and kissed me on the shoulder, grinning so hard I could feel your teeth poke through.
Celia and I spent the following day on a harborside beach. Blue and red and yellow fishing boats bobbed against the forested horizon. We had only beach wraps to lie on and the sand was hard, so Celia used my stomach as a headrest while she napped.
Behind us a weathered man cooked slabs of pork shoulder and ribs on a cast-iron grill. Charcoal and salt mist filled the air. The beach was quiet, but for an occasional gull overhead, diving to catch a silver fish in the dark water.
We’d been gone for two days. I imagined your face, blank with worry, withdrawn from teaching, reaching for the ringing telephone. The thought made me sink with guilt.
Celia roused and shook my foot.
“Do you want to go in the water?”
I told her I’d go in a bit and watched her walk into the cold ocean and plunge, her long hair pouring behind her.
Night two of my escape, you heated a bowl of lasagna that Marta left you and sat in your chair at the kitchen table as if I were there too, but then moved to the living room to get away from the absence of me. You wanted badly to pretend my leaving hadn’t bothered you. You washed your bowl and left it on the side of the sink. You stayed up late organizing papers and listening to Joni Mitchell. You woke up several times in the night; thoughts of my return pushed you into consciousness. But each time you managed to squash the possibility and fell asleep again.
Celia placed her wet hair on my stomach and closed her eyes. At the far side of the beach, two teenage boys had arrived on bicycles. One I recognized as the boy on the motorbike that Celia had met the previous morning.
“Oi!” he yelled, recognizing Celia, and waved his hand through the air.
Celia shielded her brow from the sun and asked me who it was.
“It’s the boy with the motorbike. You smoked a cigarette with him.”
They ambled over the sand with their bicycles. They were both sinewy and eager, their bodies burning faster than life could feed them. The motorbiker’s name was Victor. Victor wore a dark braid down his back and a nervous smile. The friend, Felipe, had matured more than Victor—his arms and shoulders were broader, the beginnings of a beard darkened his chin and neck—but he chuckled and squeaked at the sight of us.
Celia barely lifted an eyelid, but they began chatting with her instantly. I understood a few phrases: How did we like the hostel, had we met the owner’s son, he was a friend of theirs, they lived nearby, sometimes they camped at the hostel, they planned to go fishing at dusk, was this our first time in Paraty, would we be out at the bars tonight?
Celia interrupted them. “My friend doesn’t speak Portuguese.”
“It’s okay,” I told her. “I can understand what they’re saying.”
It turned out they did know a bit of English from grade school. Victor rotated his backpack to the front and pulled out a wooden box from the front pocket.
“Marijuana?” he asked and passed me a small glass pipe. Felipe pressed his fingers against his lips to contain his laughter.
“Did you learn that in school too?” I said with a smirk and handed the pipe to Celia. “You first.”
The last time I’d smoked was with you, when your mother gave us a joint she had bought from her friend at the Y for her menopause. She wanted us to see if it was laced with opium.
“Mary tells me they ship it in cellophane boxes filled with Pine-Sol,” she told us. “That’s how they get it through security.”
“That wouldn’t work, Ma. The drug dogs can smell through Pine-Sol,” you said and took the joint.
We didn’t want to smoke on our stoop, worried the police might patrol on foot, so we leaned outside the bathroom window. I remember you were paranoid that the neighbors who worked in Admissions would report you to the school.
“Relax,” I teased and blew a smoke cloud in your face.
We then got in bed and grazed each other’s bodies with our fingertips—the outer edge of my foot, the bottom of my spine, the undersides of my breasts—giggling for hours.
The boys’ weed wasn’t very strong, but it was harsh. Celia took a puff and coughed uncontrollably, tears streaming down her face.
“Meu Deus,” she said and passed it to me. I took a hit and held it inside until my lungs hurt.
“Rock and roll!” Felipe said, looking pleased. They rested their bikes one on top of the other and sat down next to us. Victor removed a digital camera from his backpack and clicked through pictures he’d taken around Paraty. He only took photographs of women, he told us, because they are much more beautiful than men. A bad pickup line, I thought, and yet there was something interesting about his portraits. Maybe it was the weed—the colors looked richer, the depth greater, edges sharpened. He showed us a photo of an old woman he saw on a bench with her husband, their limbs intertwined, a woven cape draped across her shoulders. He showed me another of a woman in a cobalt blue bikini, bending over to pick up a beach stone. He had a photo of his sister climbing a tree, her dangling hair framing her face as she looked down at the camera.
“Do you like them?” he asked, and Celia nodded.
He lifted the camera and pointed it at us.
“Posso?” he asked.
I hid my face behind my beach wrap. “No, no, no,” I said, but he persisted, curving the camera around the wrap.
“Hey,” I said and pushed it away.
He pointed the camera in my face, laughing.
“Really. Enough,” I said and cupped my hand over the lens.
He heard the sternness in my tone and put the camera away. Felipe tried to make a bit of small talk about the weather, how it had been cloudy for days, but my interaction with Victor had soured the mood. They left shortly after, dragging their bicycles over the sand and into town. I felt a little embarrassed, but Celia seemed unfazed. She made a pillow with her wrap and lay back down on the sand.
“It’s quiet again,” she said and bent an arm over her eyes.
That’s when the high really began to deepen. I could feel it vibrating in my eye sockets and fingernail beds and the tip of my tongue. I tilted my head back and let my cheeks droop.
“Do you feel that?” I tu
rned to Celia but she didn’t answer. She pulled her fingers through her hair and rolled onto her stomach. Maybe she couldn’t hear me, I thought. Maybe I hadn’t actually said anything.
“Celia?” I said again. “Celia?”
“Yes?”
“I couldn’t let them take a picture of me. I left my husband to come here.”
Again she didn’t respond. I grabbed her arm.
“Please tell me you can hear me.”
“Yes, I can hear you. You’re being quite loud.”
“What if he leaves me when I return?”
“Who? Your husband?”
“Yes.”
“Are you afraid that he will?”
“I don’t know. No, I don’t think so.”
“Linda,” she said and rested her hand against my sternum, as if she could control my heart rate with the touch of her hand. “Relax. Lie down.”
She pressed me to the ground, first to my elbows, and then fully against the sand. She kept her hand firm against my chest and nudged, ever so slightly, until I rested my eyes.
I must have fallen asleep, because when I woke, Celia was standing by the shoreline. I went to her.
“I’m ready for a swim,” I said, and we dove in together.
* * *
—
After swimming we went to a bookstore café with tables set up on a cobblestone road and ate chocolate bonbons. We cracked the spines of unopened books—Clarice Lispector, Paulo Coelho, Paulo Freire—and marked the pages with our chocolate-stained fingers. We watched the sun expand across the buildings until the town turned a deep blue.
We decided to have dinner in our bathing suits rather than have to go back to the hostel. We ordered pizza and pitchers of beer at a small bar that opened onto the street. After the sun had fully set on the night sky, a crowd began to circle around a guitarist who played in the corner of the bar. He wore a large brimmed hat and sat on a wooden stool. The music started off softly, but became the central attraction once more people appeared. Celia took me by the hand and we joined in dance. Couples paired off and held each other by the fingertips, their legs swirling to the music. Their samba defied physics. Legs moved outward while hips pulled inward. The best dancers were admired and desired. Men cheered and clapped, women moved closer. Celia watched my flailing attempts to keep up.
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