Splitting the Difference

by Tre Miller Rodriquez

  Teenagers volley soccer balls on the sand.

  Local girls teeter in heels, holding their boyfriends’ arms for balance.

  Flashes of heat lightning burnish the sky.

  Over fresh fish and rice, I share my adventures of the past week and we plot our itinerary for New Year’s. We race each other down to the sea and splash into the dark water, holding our shoes above our heads. Soaking wet and giddy, we walk up the beach singing bits of the Jobim song inspired by this same stretch of sand.

  * * *

  I spend the day with my cousins on Ipanema Beach, where the local color lives up to its reputation as the most beautiful in the world. Despite the afternoon thunder, we remain sprawled on our towels until the first drops begin falling. We’re drenched by the time we find cover in a hotel bar across the street, where we encounter two Americans from L.A.

  The guy has stopped in Río for twenty-four hours on his way to Florianópolis, and he’s friendly with the same American sushi-bar owner I met. The girl spends the majority of our only round of drinks name-dropping and explaining how important it is to mingle with the right people down here, the people who own everything in Brazil.

  She lives in West Hollywood, down the street from my old bungalow, and she makes me glad I live in New York now, away from people who talk about how amazing it is to meet celebrities in elevators on their way to record-label parties.

  * * *

  Brent and Quiana never flinch when I mention Alberto so over dinner at the Fasano Hotel, we reminisce about the Halloween party when I convinced Alberto to dress as a bow-tied professor to match my naughty schoolgirl costume. We have a laugh about Alberto’s fortieth birthday weekend at Greg’s in Connecticut and the framed picture of him as a drum-playing infant that everyone signed.

  For dessert, I order a ten-year tawny for me and a Chivas neat for the empty seat.

  When it comes, Quiana picks up the scotch and takes a noseful.

  This must have been what he tasted like?

  Only on vacation, I say. Or weekends.

  I do not pick up the glass and sniff it.

  I know what will happen if I do.

  Instead, I signal for the bill and we move into Baretto Londra, where the three of us dance to mash-ups of AC/DC and Lady Gaga until 4am.

  * * *

  As the last sliver of Ipanema sun disappears, the beach explodes in applause. The entire city seems to be on its feet, applauding God for a sunset well done. The sight and sound of the standing ovation makes my body tingle and my eyes water.

  I turn to the hotel owner who brought us here today, and ask if this is a usual occurrence—the clapping?

  Sim, sim, he nods, Brazilians on the beach do this every night. It’s a recognizement of the beautiful day and a way to make praise for it.

  * * *

  Today is the last day of 2009 and I need to make decisions about the upcoming year.

  I’ve done what the CFO requested: I’ve thought about benchmarks. I’ve also run a few financial scenarios and consulted a friend who left corporate years ago to start his own production company.

  The facts are these: I can’t promise my PR firm that I can turn over a new leaf and they can’t promise that I’ll make it through the annual review process or be permitted to go to Cuba for the one-year anniversary of Alberto’s death. So we’ll do this like civilized human beings. I will thank them for the opportunity to come back to work and explain that I can’t place a timeframe on this kind of grief. I will tell them that it doesn’t seem fair to make promises I’m not sure I can keep. They will thank me for trying and for being honest about my capabilities—and

  limitations.

  After Cuba, my life will become a freelance hustle. Gone will be the disposable income and 401k. The luxury of sending out laundry, ordering in for dinner, taking car service to Jersey. No more weekly housekeeper, massages, or bottle service. All of these are first-world blessings—and I’ve lived without them before.

  Today I’m choosing the riskier version of my life, but I’ll be living—and mourning—on my own terms.

  I begin drafting the resignation letter.

  * * *

  In the Brazilian custom for New Year’s Eve, I am wearing white and racing into the sea with thousands of strangers at midnight. I jump over five waves and get knocked down by the sixth. I stand up, laughing, and turn back toward the ocean, ready for my seventh wave: the good luck wave, according to local lore.

  It does not knock me over.

  I climb out of the sea and hug our hostess, a young Brazilian who owns the hotel where my cousins are staying and who brought us to her friend’s VIP party tonight.

  You have good luck for 2010, she says, I can feel it. Your seven waves are like being—how you say it—baptized into a new year.

  * * *

  Like kids in a sandbox, an entire country is dancing, jumping, shouting together on Copacabana beach. All shoes are off, cuffs rolled, dresses soaked. Above us, fireworks explode like stars tumbling out of the sky, a million at a time.

  After the finale, we race back to our open-air cabana for capirinha refills, and to the disco downstairs, where a live samba band is performing. Tonight I discover that samba dancing is harder than it looks: the guttural drums are as foreign to me as they are innate to Brazilians.

  I can learn you samba, says our hostess, when she sees me trying to imitate the moves. Watch, see. It’s one-two, one-two-three.

  All I can see is her bouncing skirt. I have no idea what her feet are doing underneath.

  I nod and try to make my skirt flounce at the same tempo as hers, but we are wearing different skirts from different continents that move to different drums. Then again, we’re both wearing white and sweating and drinking and dancing in a basement discotheque. Which pretty much cuts out the cultural clutter.

  * * *

  I’m watching the first sunrise of 2010 on the beach with my cousins, eight new friends, and fifty thousand strangers.

  Amid the champagne-soaked jubilation, I skip down to the shore and swim past the shore break. My body floats in the watery space between neon sunrise and beach party, and my mind between states of gratitude and disbelief. This trip was designed to distract me through my first New Year’s Eve as a widow, and yet it served up the most breathlessly beautiful Feliz Año Nuevo of my life.

  If Alberto were still alive, I wouldn’t be here.

  Yet my happiness is still happening without him.

  I can’t stop the grief or the joy, so I’m splitting the difference between them. And soaking up the moment, like he would do with a bit of bread and the sauce left over from a really good meal.

  * * *

  We are one of a thousand cars inching up a narrow hill on our way to see the famed Christ the Redeemer statue. After forty minutes and as many feet, the hotel owners who were kind enough to drive me and my cousins suggest that we walk the rest of the way.

  This will be faster, they explain.

  We thank them, hop out, and head uphill. Ten minutes into our walk, the scene devolves into chaos: pedestrians weave between moving cars, the two-lane road shrinks inexplicably to one, cars are haphazardly parked everywhere. Then we see a line of people that winds uphill for at least a mile.

  Whoa, Brent says. It wasn’t half this crowded when I was here for Carnival. And the ticket line was at the top of the hill. Maybe this line is for the shuttle?

  This is not America, where signage and park officials actually exist at national landmarks.

  I ask the people in front of us what this line is for?

  Cristo, they answer.

  Tickets? Or autobus?

  No sé, they shrug.

  Brent is as even keel as they come, but even he’s shifting his weight and checking his watch. He and Qui are flying to Buenos Aires tonight, so the last thing he wants to
do on his final day in Brazil is spend four hours in line for a statue he’s already seen.

  We continue queuing until a side-view mirror on a descending autobus catches the purse strap of a nearby girl and drags her downhill.

  Eff this, I say, resolving to find someone who can tell us how this place works. I notice a Chinese guy in his twenties wearing a Hollister T-shirt and a pair of Persols. He’s walking downhill when I approach him.

  Vôce ingles?

  Yes, he answers with an American accent.

  Awesome! Do you know if this is the ticket line or the shuttle line?

  There’s another line up there to buy tickets, he says. It’s shorter than this one. This is the one to get on the shuttle.

  So do all these people have tickets already?

  Probably not, he says, but they’ll have to stand in it again when they figure it out.

  Bless you, I say, and signal to my cousins to follow me.

  We hike up to the shorter line, which is essentially a series of bodies winding around cars in a parking lot with no marked spaces. I find a guy selling beers out of a cooler in his trunk, buy a few for us and join Brent and Qui in line.

  This line is bearable, especially with a cold Skol in hand, but the lack of posted information nags me. Is there a VIP ticket option that allows you to bypass the second line? Should Qui and I get back in the ridiculous line while Brent buys the tickets?

  I hear an American accent and leave my cousins to follow it. When I lose the voice in the crowd, I find myself next to a man with turquoise eyes, a black mullet, and a green futbol jersey.

  Que locura, I say. What madness!

  He laughs and asks in Spanish where I’m from?

  Nova York. And you?

  Sao Paulo.

  He asks if I have a ticket yet.

  My cousins are in line, I say.

  When you have your tickets, you can get in this line with my girlfriend and me. She’s right there, he says and points.

  The girlfriend waves. She is maybe tenth from the front of the shuttle line.

  Seriously?

  Yes, yes, he smiles.

  Do you need us to buy you tickets, I ask.

  No, no, we have, he says, holding up his ticket.

  I ask his name, thank him, shake his hand, and dash back to the ticket line. When I approach my cousins, I can hear them talking about Alberto: if he were here, Brent says, he would be asking where is the fucking VIP line already?

  I interrupt and tell them I have apparently found the VIP line. I point out my new friend Renal, who’s holding our place at the front of the line.

  You’re amazing, Brent laughs.

  We’re getting some extra help today, I say.

  Tickets in hand, we find Renal, who ushers us into an air-conditioned shuttle that ascends through clouds and around hairpin turns, lurching to a stop at the Roman staircase leading to the Cristo statue.

  Jesus, as it turns out, does not know how to take a bad picture. I shoot a dozen of him with a sun halo and squeeze my way through the sweaty tourists toward the balcony jutting thousands of feet above Río. When I land my real estate, I take out the bag of flowers from my hotel garden and Alberto’s ashes. I cross myself, take a handful of each, and release.

  It spreads out like a fan through which I can see the entire city, the ocean, and the huge rock formations that look like pebbles from this elevation. The view makes me sob in happy-sadness: if Alberto were here, he’d be so effing awestruck that he’d forget his fear of heights. He’d still be mad that I dragged him to the top, but I’d remind him that he got me over my fear of going topless, so I’m just returning the tough love.

  The conversation in my mind leaves me smiling throughout this ritual—first time ever—until I’m shoved from behind by loud German women. Turning around, I meet the eyes of Renal over the heads of the Germans.

  I mouth the words muchas gracias, and touch my fist to my heart in gratitude. He nods and smiles before disappearing into the crowd.

  I continue spreading Alberto’s ashes and flowers until he’s gone.

  There’s one flower left, which I kiss and release two thousand feet above the City of God.

  Thanks for the Memories

  He was the right pair of shoes for me. Still is.

  (January 8, 2010, 11:26pm via Twitter)

  * * *

  I walk into my office with a south-of-the-equator tan and am greeted by an inbox with two thousand unread emails.

  Pulling the resignation letter from my bag, I walk toward the CFO’s office.

  He accepts it a little too eagerly, which makes me wish I’d written it in Portuguese. And sent it from Río.

  * * *

  After a six-week hiatus, Wednesday night dinners at Nikki and Fico’s are back. Their daughters cover me with kisses and show me art projects and perfect spelling tests. Nikki and I open a bottle of wine and order sushi for delivery.

  When Fico arrives, he has a seven-day beard—like Alberto always sported in winter—and wants to hear all about Brazil.

  I recount my solo hikes, the trip to Iguazu, the New Year’s sunrise on Copacabana. He asks questions, nods, calls me brave. He reacts strongly when I drop the news that I resigned yesterday—you did what? not a good idea, not good—but when I tell him that I’m going to Cuba with Hilda in March to spread Alberto’s ashes, his eyes well up.

  I’m going to the same places his mother took him ten years ago, I explain. We’ll release ashes on those same beaches, mountains, gardens. A part of him will always remain in Cuba.

  Fico doesn’t speak for a few moments.

  When he does, his eyes are wet.

  Cuba is brilliant, he says. And exactly what Alberto would want.

  * * *

  Two springs ago, Alberto was working late and asked me to be his proxy at the birthday party of an advertising pal.

  I’d gone to the bar on Bowery, found a few people I knew, and made new friends. One of the new people was a Venezuelan doctor, with whom I hit it off even before knowing how many mutual friends we shared. The doctor was jovial and on a visa, teaching at Yale, and headed to another position in California. I remember thinking that in another life, on another continent, I would have liked to know him better. I also remember how uncomfortable I felt when he messaged me on Facebook that night: You left your credit card at the bar and I gave it to Roberto.

  Roberto is the friend who got engaged last summer at Elephant but at the time, he was Alberto’s employee. I’d felt guilty texting my husband, asking him to please remember to ask Roberto for my credit card. Which he did. No questions asked, no issues raised.

  After the funeral, this doctor reached out to me via Facebook. Always appropriate, always kind. And when one of my status updates asked if anyone had a hook-up at the Fasano in Brazil, he actually called a hotel manager on my behalf. So when he recently informed me that he’d be in New York and can we meet for a drink, I said yes.

  We had the drink tonight.

  He’s as intense as I remember, but also a little older and more protective. I half-consider his request to join him for a nightcap at Speakeasy until, in a span of five minutes, he corrects my Spanish twice, says he doesn’t believe in heaven or hell, and tells me that he’s kept an arsenal of guns at home ever since his brother was kidnapped in Venezuela last year.

  Yeah.

  So much for another life, another continent.

  * * *

  Tonight I meet Hat for dinner in the West Village and we gravitate toward the same bottle of wine and order the same fish dish. Our easy banter and his career as a non-profit director for a sports organization make for a lively, un-awkward dinner. He tells me about faux pas he’s committed in foreign countries—insulting a favela kingpin in Brazil, for example—and does an SNL-worthy imitation of a drunk Chinese dignitary passing
out mid-meeting, only to wake up, steal a woman’s coat, and exit stage left.

  As we’re leaving the restaurant, he asks if I’m game to join him for guy’s night out at Merc Bar?

  I’m about to throw you to the wolves here, he says.

  The wolves are his prep-school friends, who hardly eat me alive, and a few hours later, Hat and I are once again making out in the back of a cab. This time I don’t have a plane to catch. This time we do not make two stops.

  At his apartment, we have mildly kinky sex but he finishes before I do.

  I lie awake, wanting to slip into his bathroom and rub one out.

  Think I’m gonna go, I say.

  If that’s what you need to do, he says, I understand. But you’ll be missing out on the morning sex.

  I stay for the morning sex.

  I do not come.

  I go.

  * * *

  Blame it on last night’s lemon drops or the disappointing sex with Hat, but either way, I’m thoroughly repulsed with myself today.

  All morning, I tell myself the cure is up on 79th and Broadway at evening service.

  All afternoon I tell myself, it’s too cold to go to church and I don’t feel like showering and if I do anything today I should unpack my suitcase from Brazil already.

  All day I want to bow out of the late dinner I agreed to tonight with Gayson and his boys.

  At six-something, I’ve accomplished nothing and decide the only way to salvage this lost Sunday is with a shower and church. I walk into the sanctuary fifteen minutes late and halt as I hear the final verse of “O for a Thousand Tongues.”

  Never been so glad to be late for church.

  And an hour later, never been so glad I went to church.

  Meditated.

  Confessed.

  Checked some baggage.

  And found my footing in time to meet the boys for fondue at Trestle on Tenth.

  We close the restaurant; lose one guy to an 8am meeting; and head to the Eagle, a leather bar in Chelsea.

  Soon as we climb the stairs to the steamy second floor, Gayson’s T-shirt is off: his suspenders like a pair of leather parentheses around his pale paunch.