Alone in the Crowd

by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

  Espinosa was thinking about those questions dizzily while he and Irene embraced and exchanged their first few words, even though he realized that what he was thinking was only his own point of view. What did Irene think about that? How was she seeing him today? Had things improved or gotten worse? Maybe both. He didn’t know. He noticed how they took off their clothes slowly, without impatience.

  The contact between their bodies wasn’t hurried either.

  “Sorry I left you alone last night.”

  “I don’t think you had a choice.”

  “I did.… But it would have been hard for her.”

  “It was also hard for me.”

  “I could have let her figure it out by herself.”

  “If you didn’t it’s because you couldn’t.”

  “Now you’re being mean.”

  “No, I’m not. You’re feeling guilty. If after sex you turn to me and say you’re sorry for not sleeping with me last night, the reason is that you could have. You didn’t because you preferred to sleep with your friend.”

  “I don’t understand the ambiguity.”

  “The verb ‘sleep with’ has a double meaning.”

  “You mean you think I’m having an affair with Vânia?”

  “Baby, if I wanted to say that, I would have.… You’re the one who just said it.”

  “I didn’t say it, I asked.”

  “I’m not the one you have to ask that question.”

  “Espinosa, what’s going on with you? I hardly recognize you.”

  “But I’m afraid I do recognize you.”

  “Damn it! What’s gotten into you?”

  “Listen: you tell me you spent two weeks in São Paulo working with Vânia and staying in her apartment. Which means you were with her night and day. Once the work is done, you come to Rio with her and let her stay in your house. Vânia is a very pretty woman, sensual, seductive. Much like you, by the way. The first night in Rio, after being gone for two weeks, who do you choose to sleep with? Vânia. So I ask: Am I just being crazy?”

  “Espinosa, dear, we’re not married, we don’t live together, we never agreed to be sexually exclusive, I don’t even know if I can consider you a boyfriend. There’s no question that we’re lovers, in the classical and best sense of the word. Our relationship has been going on for years, and I think I can speak for both of us when I say that it’s always been very pleasurable. If one of us decides to break it off someday, all we have to do is say the word. We don’t have to divide our property, cart off our clothes, or gather up personal items. All it takes is for one of us to say that it’s over. If I started wanting to be with a woman, I wouldn’t have to go lurking around. So I suggest we enjoy this marvelous Japanese lunch you ordered and the marvelous French wine I brought.”

  The lunch and the wine lessened the tension. Lessened it—not eliminated it. For the first time, a weekend that should have felt like a reunion felt like they were growing apart. At least verbally. The sex they’d had a few minutes before was as good as ever. Its form, its style might have changed a bit, but not the quality. Espinosa thought about the disassociation between words and bodies, and especially about how long he could stand it. But once the first bottle of wine was finished, he wasn’t questioning as much, his thoughts came to him more slowly, and his ideas became muddled. Despite the initial turbulence, the weekend was peaceful, and Espinosa understood that Irene really had missed him.

  On Sunday night, Espinosa accompanied Irene to her building in Ipanema, and was on his way back home in a cab when his cell phone rang.

  “Espinosa, come back, please.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t like it at all.”

  “Is Vânia okay?”

  “She’s not here. The doorman said she never came back.”

  A few minutes later, Espinosa rang the bell. He found Irene with her phone book in one hand and her cell phone in the other, pacing up and down the living room.

  “The two of us left home together on Saturday morning: I went to your apartment and she went to meet her friends on the beach. She doesn’t know Rio that well, but she’s street-smart and she knows the names of the beaches in the Zona Sul, besides, obviously, knowing that this beach here is Ipanema, where she’d arranged to meet her friends. We left before noon, and according to the doorman she hadn’t come back before eight, when his shift was up. And she still hasn’t come back. Two days …”

  “Could she have gone back to São Paulo? Maybe there was an emergency …”

  “No. Her things are all still here.”

  “Do you know the names of the people she was going out with? Do you have any of their phone numbers?”

  “Since they were people from here in Rio that she’d met in São Paulo, I didn’t bother to write anything down. I know they live in Ipanema, which is why they arranged to meet on Ipanema Beach, right across from the end of my street. I also know that it was a couple and a friend of theirs. I’ve already called her cell phone, but it’s off. There’s no sign that she ever came back here.”

  “Could she have gone on a trip with them to somewhere close by?”

  “With nothing more than the clothes on her back? I mean, in a bikini and a beach towel? Without a note or a message on my answering machine? No. Definitely not.”

  4

  After several calls to Rio and São Paulo, Irene managed to track down the couple that Vânia had planned to go out with the day before.

  “We didn’t see her,” the woman said. “We said we’d meet on the sidewalk across from the end of your street, but when we got there Vânia wasn’t there. We’d planned to walk down the beach a bit, since she didn’t know Ipanema, and then go have lunch, even in our beach clothes, on the terrace of some neighborhood restaurant. Since she wasn’t there, we thought that Marcos, our friend, had gotten there earlier and that the two of them had gone off together. Even so, we kept looking for them on the sidewalk and on the beach, in both directions. We called Vânia’s cell phone, but it had been turned off. We went to your building and asked the doorman if she was there. He said that she’d left with you. We asked him to check, since she could have come back to get something. He buzzed up, but nobody answered. We went back to the beach and waited where we’d said we’d meet for another hour. She didn’t show up. And her phone was off for the rest of the day. Marcos didn’t pick up his phone either. And now you’re telling me that she didn’t come back home or leave any message …”

  “She didn’t say she was going anywhere before meeting you?”

  “No. All she said was that if she got there very early she might take a short stroll, just so she wouldn’t have to stand still. She also said she’d take a straw hat for the sun. Maybe she and Marcos decided to spend the weekend together … by themselves?”

  “Without telling us?”

  “It might have been some instant passion. Marcos didn’t come home either. They’ve got to be together. What I can tell you to reassure you is that Marcos is one of our oldest friends. He’s a very well-known lawyer in Rio; Vânia would be perfectly safe with him. Do you think something else could have happened?”

  “I have no idea, but as soon as I find out I’ll call you back.”

  Espinosa, who was listening to the conversation, asked the friend to give him a description of Marcos: age, height, appearance, and so on. From what Irene said, Espinosa understood that Vânia was not only intelligent but canny as well. She’d traveled all over the world and knew how to act in big cities; she wouldn’t have gotten lost on a two-block trip to the beach, or walking down a seaside sidewalk.

  “On Sunday nights, people tend to be home,” Espinosa said. “Try to get in touch with any friends and colleagues Vânia could have talked to about the week she was going to spend in Rio. Ask about any places or people she might have mentioned. Did she do drugs?”

  “Not as far as I know,” Irene said. “She just likes beer, wine, and spirits, but I’ve never seen her drunk.”


  “Tell me more about her. Is she a cold or a passionate person?”

  “She’s passionate about everything she does, but she can keep her cool in a negotiation, for example.”

  “Could she fall in love with someone at first sight and agree to do something like a boat trip through Guanabara Bay? Lunch in a picturesque restaurant in Sepetiba or something like that?”

  “She could be interested in someone at first sight, but that doesn’t mean she’d agree to things that might be dangerous.”

  “I’m going to the station to make some phone calls and take some measures. If you have any news or remember something, even if it seems insignificant, call me there or on my cell phone.”

  At the Twelfth Precinct, Espinosa got in touch with the precincts in the Zona Sul, Barra da Tijuca, and the Zona Oeste, giving a description of Vânia and Marcos and asking officers to provide him with any information that might relate to their situation. The police weren’t very interested in the disappearances of adults before a certain amount of time had passed, especially a young, attractive woman in the company of a man on a sunny Sunday in Ipanema. But the weekend had ended and she hadn’t come home. After alerting the stations, Espinosa called the emergency rooms of the main hospitals. No patient met the description he gave. Finally, he called the military police and gave them the same description of Vânia. It was ten-thirty. He waited another hour for any news. At five minutes to midnight, he went back to Irene’s apartment. Vânia had disappeared thirty-six hours ago. Irene was waiting for him in front of the elevator. She was wearing the same clothes she’d had on when Espinosa left her.

  “There’s nothing involving a woman fitting Vânia’s description in any police station. The same goes for emergency rooms. If she’d been involved in any serious accident on the street, she would have been treated by a fire department ambulance and transported to an emergency room in a public hospital. The military police cars are on the lookout for a woman with your friend’s characteristics. I left orders for them to call me whenever they have any news, no matter how vague. Now all we can do is wait for communication—from her or from anyone she may be with.”

  “Are you thinking she was kidnapped?”

  “I don’t think so. Vânia’s not famous, she’s not from a rich family, she wasn’t driving a car, and the way she was dressed didn’t suggest wealth. It also wasn’t a quick kidnapping. Too much time has gone by.”

  “She couldn’t have been abducted?”

  “How was someone going to abduct a woman like Vânia at high noon in the middle of Ipanema, without anyone seeing anything and without the slightest reaction from her? Only if it was consensual. But I think so much time has gone by.… Who would she be cheating on? If she wanted to break it off with someone, all she had to do was go. She didn’t need to disappear.”

  “That certainly didn’t happen.”

  “That what?”

  “That … the idea of consensual abduction.… It sounds like legalese.”

  “And it is. It’s a legal expression. But it doesn’t apply to a woman over twenty-one years of age.”

  “Espinosa, stop being ironic at such a serious moment—”

  “I’m not. I’m just answering your question. And you were the one who mentioned abduction, not me. I know that it’s a distressing situation and I know you’re worried, but what I want to do now is find Vânia, not be ironic … if only because I don’t like irony; I prefer humor.”

  “Sorry.”

  “There’s nothing we can do in the next few hours but wait. I gave my cell phone number to my contacts. Why don’t you try to sleep a bit while I wait here in the living room in this super-comfortable armchair?”

  “I’ll wait with you.”

  “Honey, I’m used to this. I manage to relax and stay alert at the same time. I’ve done it ever since I entered the police force. I promise that if they call I’ll wake you up.”

  “She could have been kidnapped to … to be used sexually.”

  “I don’t think anyone still needs to kidnap a woman to use her sexually, as you say.”

  “It’s not impossible.”

  “It’s not impossible, but it’s highly improbable, much less probable than a kidnapping for ransom.”

  “But even if that happened, couldn’t they sexually abuse her?”

  “It’s not common.”

  “But can it happen?”

  “Irene, the deeper we get into the early-morning hours and the more tired we get, the more terrible our suspicions will become. Let’s just hope she’s spending a nice weekend with her friend Marcos.”

  “Fine. I’ll try to sleep a bit. Call me …”

  “I will.”

  Irene’s living room was well appointed, her furniture tastefully chosen, with a wide window looking out at the street; thanks to the central air-conditioning, it was quiet. From where he was sitting, the only view Espinosa had was of the building on the other side of the street. If he felt like going up to the window and twisting his neck, he could, looking toward the beach, make out a diminutive strip of sea at the end of the long corridor of buildings. He preferred the view he had from his apartment in the Peixoto District, of both the square and the hills around it. He’d thought countless times about what it would be like if he and Irene moved in together. Which of their apartments would it be? He wouldn’t dream of leaving the charming informality of his apartment in the Peixoto District. But he realized that Irene’s apartment was newer and in a better location. And surely more valuable as well. Yet despite the aesthetic refinement of her decoration (or perhaps because of it), Espinosa didn’t feel comfortable there. It was too neat, giving the impression that everything was in its natural place and that any alteration in the established order would rupture the balance of a little private cosmos. But just then, sitting in the leather chair with a nice place to rest his feet and nothing more than the weak light of a small lamp breaking the darkness of the living room, he felt restful and quiet. He wasn’t even tired. He checked to see if his phone was charged and if the landline, also within arm’s reach, was working. He rested his head on the chair, stretched out his legs, and let his mind wander. The first images were of Irene and Vânia on Friday night: their meeting, the trip to the restaurant, the dinner. And two questions: Who is Vânia? Where is she?

  Vânia had been mentioned a few times during his weekend conversations with Irene. And based on fragments of those conversations, Espinosa managed to put together an image that roughly answered the question of who she was: thirty-five years old, daughter of German immigrants, born in the hills of southern Brazil, where she’d spent her childhood and adolescence. She’d studied architecture in Porto Alegre, gone to grad school in Buenos Aires and New York, and had done brief periods as an intern and an employee in France and Italy. She’d met Irene in New York: she was getting her doctorate and Irene was doing a course at MoMA. They met up again in São Paulo and became friends. She worked in a big architecture firm and was professionally respected and financially independent. She’d married a fellow student right after graduation and had gotten divorced less than a year later. Ever since then, she’d had only brief and superficial relationships. She lived by herself in São Paulo.

  It wasn’t a full picture, but it was enough to have a good idea of her potential.

  The night promised to be long and Espinosa was still up. He allowed his subjective impressions to give a bit of depth and color to the portrait Irene had offered. He really didn’t think that Vânia was having an affair with Irene (to the extent that “affair” implied a relatively stable relationship), but he also believed in the possibility of sporadic sexual contact between them. They were pretty and seductive women, and he thought that occasionally the two had exercised their charms on each other. He also thought that ingredients like beauty and seductiveness, when played out in the professional realm, made women like them extremely competitive and almost always successful. Espinosa imagined that Vânia was highly intelligent, capable of maki
ng daring decisions, as well as someone who didn’t pay much attention to normal modes of behavior, though she was probably ethical. He also added the impression that Vânia was a romantic. He wondered if she was really like that or if that was just what he wanted her to be.

  He got up and went to the kitchen to get some water. The air-conditioning dried out his throat and sparked memories of his smoking days. Neither Irene nor Vânia smoked, he thought. Nor did they do drugs. Irene said that Vânia drank moderately and that she was far from being an alcoholic who could lose her bearings and be forcibly taken away by someone. Besides, if she was involved in some police or hospital situation, he would already have been informed, even if she had lost her memory or her consciousness. So all that was left was kidnapping or voluntary departure. He didn’t believe the kidnapping scenario applied here. He went into Irene’s room and looked at her from the doorway. She stirred in her bed, asleep. Espinosa went back to his chair, rested his head, and closed his eyes, still thinking about Vânia’s disappearance. He was half asleep when he heard a noise in the hallway of the apartment. It might have been Irene getting up, or one of the many domestic noises people hardly noticed in their own homes. Then he felt a soft touch on his shoulder. He turned around to take Irene’s hand.

  “Vânia!”

  “Espinosa! What—”

  “Vânia, are you okay?” As he asked the question, he looked her up and down, in search of some wound or problem. “What happened to you?”

  “Nothing. At least nothing bad. I was on a boat.… We just got back tonight—”

  “Since yesterday afternoon you’ve been on a boat … at sea?”

  “That’s right. We almost made it all the way to Angra dos Reis.”

  “Let’s wake up Irene.… She’ll be so happy to see you …”

  “Did something happen here? You were sleeping in the living room.”

  “No. Nothing happened here.”

  Vânia was still wearing her swimsuit, sandals, and an obviously borrowed man’s shirt. They went into the bedroom. Espinosa lightly touched Irene’s arm, calling her name, before turning on the lamp on the bedside table.