But none of them lasted long around João. Some left because he lost his temper and beat them. Others were caught stealing. Most women simply bored him after the initial sexual conquest.
“I have a very special girl,” the senhora said, after the social amenities had been satisfied.
“If she is anything like you, she would be very special.”
She smiled, obviously pleased, even though at her age she knew it was an empty compliment.
“She came to me from a reformatory up north. I have a person there who knows I am interested in assisting troubled girls.”
João had to take a drink of wine to smother a grin. The person was no doubt a jailer who called the senhora when someone was arrested who fitted the procurer’s requirements.
“What makes her special? There are many beautiful women in Lisbon, more than I have time for.”
“She is attractive, though I would not call her beautiful. And her body, though still in the bloom of youth, is more than ample. But you are right, a man with your looks and position certainly has his choice of women. What makes her special, you ask? Have you ever watched a beauty contest? When I see all those beautiful women lined up, I am reminded of the time I went to a horse show and the breeders lined up the thoroughbreds. As your eye moves down the line, sometimes there is something special about a horse that causes you to pause. A look about the horse, the way it holds its head, the way it paws the ground, that tells you it is a champion. That is how I think of this young woman—put her in a beauty contest and she may not win the prize, but your eye would pause once you saw her.”
“What is this special quality?” he asked.
“I can’t tell you exactly, I am just a poor woman who tries to bring lonely people together. But if I had to name it, I would say she has spirit. Perhaps even fire. But that is something for you to decide.”
She passed him a hotel key concealed in a napkin.
“I put her into the room at the Alfama hotel we’ve used before. A small, discreet place I have done business with many times. She is waiting.”
20
João stepped out of a taxi in front of the hotel. He usually drove his own car, but used his Mercedes limo whenever he went to the club. His excuse in his own mind was that parking at the club was difficult. But the real reason was that he enjoyed reliving those days when he imagined that someday he would be the one stepping out of a chauffeured car at the entrance to the club.
He deliberately sent his driver home and went to the Alfama quarter by cab—it wasn’t the sort of neighborhood in which one wanted to display wealth. The Alfama, with its old Moorish quarter, was the oldest surviving section of the city, a muddle of narrow streets and alleys and small squares on the hillside below Castelo de Sao Jorge, the castle crowning the hill. He had grown up in the district, his mother working the taverns as a fado singer, living as melancholy a life as the songs she sang. It was in one of these alleys that he committed his first crime when he was eleven, breaking a bottle and stabbing a man after the man pulled his mother off the street and dragged her into the alley to get back money he claimed she stole from him.
He walked past the hotel desk and went directly for the elevator. The lone clerk nodded at him. He got off on the third floor and paused at the door to the room. He was a cautious man. He turned the key in the lock and opened the door, pushing it all the way open, making sure that no one was behind it.
She was on the bed, reading a magazine. She tossed it aside and stood up as he came in. He checked out the bathroom before looking her over.
Senhora Tavora was right—she was a pretty girl, with the potential to be an attractive woman, but too skinny and too young to compete with older, fuller women in terms of sex appeal. It was that other “something” which the senhora recognized that was special about her. Defiance, was João’s first impression. A young woman who had been kicked and beaten by life, according to the senhora, and who had been raped more than once while homeless and on the streets. But like the champion boxer or athlete, she got back on her feet and fought back.
As he looked her up and down, her eyes took on a hardness. She lifted her dress and turned around, pulled down her panties, and shoved her buttocks at him.
“Did you want to examine that?”
“I’ve seen better asses,” he said.
She spun around, pulling down the stretchy neckline on her blouse, exposing a breast. “You want a suck? You can take out your teeth, old man, and nibble on it.”
He hit her.
The blow caught her completely by surprise. He swung wide, hitting her across the side of the head, above the hairline so a bruise wouldn’t show. She flew sideways into the wall.
She came back at him ready to strike but he grabbed her and slammed her back against the wall, pinning his forearm in her throat. His free hand came up with a knife.
He showed her the blade, twisting it, letting it catch the light and reflect in her eyes.
“My name is João. I am the meanest bastardo you have ever met. You are going to be my woman. When I want you, I will snap my fingers and you will come. If I want to fuck you, you will bend over. If I want my dog to fuck you, you will bend over. Do you understand?”
She spit in his face.
He shoved his elbow harder against her throat, feeling the fragile cartilage giving under the pressure. Her face went red and she gasped for breath.
“I like a woman with spirit. But you must understand that there are limits to my patience.” He let up a little on the pressure against her throat and touched the nipple of her exposed breast with the sharp tip of the knife and saw her flinch.
He kissed her mouth. She accepted his lips without responding.
The knife moved carelessly against her breast. João applied pressure and sliced an inch of her breast. Blood streamed down her white skin.
“That’s my mark. From now on, you’re my woman. Unless I want to give you to someone else.”
He stepped back and put away the knife and sat down on the edge of the bed to take off his shoes. “Now I’m going to fuck you.”
He saw it coming but she was young and too fast for him. The sharp edge of an ashtray caught him on the side of the neck, leaving a gash.
“That’s my mark,” Simone said.
21
Lisbon, 1991
Simone arranged the dinner date with Marni for the following night. The restaurant where I was to meet Marni was near the Rossio, the main square in the middle of Lisbon. I turned down a chauffeur-driven ride and my hosts loaned me a Mercedes. I parked the car in an underground garage around the corner from the west end of the square and walked to the restaurant on the east end. I probably could have found parking closer but I wanted to walk the Rossio—there was a bit of my family heritage on the square. It was where my father had met my mother and fallen in love on first sight.
I smiled as I thought of their meeting, as he looked over and saw her at a sidewalk cafe, she looking up to meet his eyes. Did what Hollywood call a “cute meet” occur? As their eyes met, did time stand still, all motion on the street stop, music and voices fade?
As I walked past the big lighted fountain in the middle of the square, I decided that’s exactly what had happened to my mother and father. There had been magic that first time their eyes met.
Marni was waiting in the restaurant reception area when I came in. She had her back to me, looking at a painting of a king from some long-forgotten era. I slipped up quietly.
“Olá, fala Inglés?” Hello, do you speak English, I asked in Portuguese.
She stared at me, her lips parted in surprise. Then she shut her mouth and pursed her lips as a red color came to her cheeks. She realized she’d been tricked and was struggling between going along with the game or turning on her heel and walking out.
“Non. Parlez-vous francais?” she asked.
“Qui, I speak French. As a matter of fact, I have French relatives, but let’s stick to English, it’s much easier.”
>
“I’m supposed to be meeting a very important Lisbon executive who can help with the aid program. I’m very angry at—”
“No, you’re not, I forced Simone to set you up. I told her I’d fallen hopelessly in love with you on the plane and that I’d cut my wrists if I didn’t get to see you. She saved my life.”
“It’s there’s a choice, I’d prefer you cut your wrists rather than have dinner with you.”
I grasped both her arms and brought her in close to me. “Now we can be civilized and adult about this thing, or I can embarrass you in this restaurant with loud and vulgar accusations about how you came off the street and made a lewd proposition to me. What’ll it be?”
“You’re incorrigible. What do you consider being ‘civilized and adult’?”
“We have dinner, make love, have breakfast, make love. And so on.”
“You have a one-track mind.”
“That’s not true. I sometimes think of other exciting things besides making love to a beautiful woman.”
She laughed. “Okay, flattery will at least get you dinner. No one’s called me beautiful since I was two years old. But I’m buying. That way you won’t think you’re entitled to dessert because you’ve bought a girl an expensive meal.”
“Deal.”
After we sat down, she asked, “You have to explain something to me. Why have you bothered pursuing me? I’m not beautiful, I’m not sexy, I’m a boring teacher-administrator and soon-to-be field worker for a humanitarian cause. You have your choice of attractive women who turn heads when you escort them into a restaurant. So what is it, Win, was my turndown on the plane the first you got in your entire life? Has it traumatized you that a woman could actually not jump into bed with you the moment she saw you? Or are you a masochist?”
I gave serious thought to the question.
“Do you know what I believe in?” I asked.
“Tell me.”
“Nothing. I really don’t believe in anything. I’ve been raised in two religions and the most significant thing I got from them is the vague threat that I have to be good or God will punish me. I can’t get up any enthusiasm for social causes.” I shook my head. “I don’t give a damn about politics, religion, humanitarianism, sex education, economic indicators, abortion, earthquakes, plane crashes, or anything else that doesn’t affect me personally. Maybe that’s what intrigues me about you—other than my masochistic desire to have you crush me under your heel. I’m curious about people like you who believe enough in a cause to devote their lives to it.”
“Do you believe in love?”
“I loved my parents and they’re both gone. But I’ve never loved anyone else. If your next question is, am I afraid to love, can it. I don’t know, I’ll deal with love when I find it.”
“How about all your toys?”
“Easy come, easy go. Now, you’ve heard my confession, tell me about you. Why did you end up an intellectual instead of a doctor or lawyer or Indian chief?
“Are you patronizing me? First I’m beautiful, then I’m intelligent.”
“Of course, it’s step one in the book I read on seducing eggheads.”
“Is that what I am? An egghead? I don’t think the label quite fits me, it sounds more math and chemical than the social sciences.”
“Anyone with more than four years of college is an intellectual to me. Hell, anyone who reads more than the sports page is an intellectual to me. No, I really want to know. How did you get excited about racing off to Africa to save the Dark Continent? How did you end up specializing in Angola?”
“I don’t specialize in Angola, my specialties are in Third World economics and African sociology. My interest in Africa was probably from seeing Tarzan movies when I was a little girl.”
“Tarzan movies are for boys.”
“An old-fashioned, sexist attitude. Anyway, when I was at Berkeley, I received a Fullbright to study a year at Coimbra University here in Portugal. My connection to Angola got started because my roommate was from there. She wanted help with her English and taught me her Bantu dialect in exchange. I continued learning the language because I figured it would help get me to Africa someday.”
“You said on the plane that this is your first trip to Angola.”
“Yes. My Third World education has all been theoretical, all in the classroom and working at the UN in New York. My specialty is in the theory of economics, in developing programs that support aid missions. I’m going out into the field to get some practical experience, to see the food-and-medicine chain firsthand. They say that sometimes I’ll be knee-deep in crocs, snakes, and swamp water.”
I shuddered. “Charming thought. Have you had suicidal tendencies for long?”
“The indigenous people put up with those conditions on a daily basis.”
“The indigenous people laugh off insect bites that turn the brains of foreign visitors to mush. Why are you doing this?”
“For the money, of course. I’ll get rich handing out bags of rice to starving people. And I can’t wait to see firsthand how many atrocities have been committed to keep your diamond mine in business.”
“How is it you know absolutely nothing about me, yet already have tried and convicted me for being a rich, worthless, thoughtless bastard who lives off the spoils from the rape of Third World economies?”
Jesus H. Christ, she had me nailed tight—and correctly. If the woman knew what I was planning with João, she’d go through with that temptation she had on the plane to stick a fork in my heart.
“I must have read it somewhere. But getting back to your original question about what makes me tick, this may come as a shock to you, but I wanted a career that gave me a sense of accomplishment. Knowing that I will spend my days making life easier for people who have not only been left behind by the modern world, but have been thrown to the dogs of war, gives me as much thrill as you get when you put another million in your bank account.”
“Marni, you have me wrong. I’ve never gotten a thrill putting money in a bank. I am a spendthrift—I waste, squander, and throw away vast amounts of money. I deserve some credit for the fact that I have never made a dollar in my entire life. You see me as a capitalist who screws over little people.” I held up my hand in Boy Scout fashion. “I swear, I’ve never worked at anything long enough or hard enough to screw anyone.”
She shook her head. “Why do I get the impression you’re telling the truth—and proud of it? Has it occurred to you that you’re wasting your life? How can you be proud of having done nothing?”
“I expect my reward to come in heaven.”
She choked on her wine.
“Tell me where you come from,” I said. “Give me your life history.”
“I was born in San Jose on the San Francisco peninsula. My father worked for a computer company. Still does. He’s a vice president in charge of research.”
I held up my hand to stop her. “You don’t have to tell me any more about your family. I have a crystal ball. Your father’s a computer nerd, your mother a Berkeley feminist radical who packed you on her back to antiwar, antipolluters, antiwhatever demonstrations. The marriage between the computer nerd and the radical didn’t work. There was a divorce. You were raised in a commune where people sat around all day smoking pot and making love.”
She shook her head. “You are amazing. Either you have the blood of Sherlock Holmes in your veins or you had a detective check my background. But you left out the part about how my mother joined the Weathermen and packed me on her back into banks they robbed to finance their revolutionary ideas. And the time she—”
“In other words, I’m completely wrong about everything.”
“Mr. Liberte, I couldn’t have said it better.”
“I think we’re absolutely compatible.” I shrugged. “Opposites attract. You’re an idealistic woman with a string of degrees after your name and a mission to save the world in front of you. I’m an irresponsible never-do-well who needs to be reformed and have nothing
to do except squander another fortune.” I leaned closer until my lips almost brushed hers. Her warm sensuality radiated. The moment I saw Katarina, I wanted to fuck her. Marni was a woman I wanted to make love to.
“Win . . .”
“Let’s—”
“No. And not because I don’t want to.” She pushed me back a little and straightened my collar. “I want to very much.”
“Do you have someone you have to account to?”
“Yes—myself. I’m not a strong person. I have work to do, mountains to climb, rivers to swim. I can’t let myself get involved with a man. I won’t be able to function if I did.”
I was talking about making love, not involvement.
She read my mind. “I’m not like you. I can’t explain why, but I just can’t get involved with you. Dinner was good, the company was terrific.”
She gave me a peck on the cheek and got up.
I stood up and took her in my arms. “Don’t go. I want to be with you.”
Shaking her head, she pulled away from me. “It just can’t be.”
I watched her disappear out the front door, then threw enough on the table to cover three meals. She forgot to pay. “Obrigado,” I told the smiling waiter on my way out.
Marni was a puzzle wrapped in an enigma to me. I could usually classify people, especially women my own age. But every time I put her in a box, she jumped out and hopped into another one. Yeah, she was a socially conscious intellectual, but she was also a lush, warm, sensuous woman who sent my testosterone level racing.
I was just as puzzled about my feelings for her as she apparently was about me.
Heat of Passion Page 11