“Okay, you win. I’m with a girl. She spent the night here.”
“A girl?”
His mother had expected anything but that.
“Her name’s Clarice. We’re kind of seeing each other. Sorry I didn’t say anything.”
“I want to see her.”
“She’s sleeping.”
“That’s okay, I’ll can see her asleep.”
“She hasn’t got any clothes on, Mother.”
“You go in and cover her so she’s decent. I think you’re lying to me. You haven’t got a girl in there.”
Teo sighed. “Wait a minute.”
He lifted Clarice off the gym mat, trying not to make any noise. She had a hospital smell about her. He laid her on the bed, positioned her head to one side on the pillow, hiding the wound on her neck, and covered her with the quilt. Then he put the cuffs and gags away in the wardrobe and opened the door.
“Be quick. I don’t want her to wake up and see you in my room.”
His mother nodded, eyes bulging. She rolled closer to the bed.
“Your girlfriend’s pretty,” she said with a smile.
He was pleased. Clarice deserved all the praise in the world. Samson came into the room and was kicked out.
Patricia left. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. I’m glad you’re seeing someone. She looks like a nice girl.”
The doorbell rang, and he ran to open it. It was Marli in an overly sparkly dress. She called to Patricia and said they were late. Teo kissed his mother good-bye, wished Marli good sales at the fair in Paquetá, and was finally alone. Samson started barking again. He couldn’t keep on sedating the dog forever. Nor did he want to do the same to Clarice. Now that Patricia knew she existed, he couldn’t say she was still asleep when she got back. He felt a tightness in his throat. Time was running out.
• • •
He put two Hypnolid pills in the dog’s food, which was devoured as soon as he set down the bowl. A few minutes later the flat was silent and peaceful. He took the opportunity to relax.
Close to midday, a noise surprised him. Clarice’s cell was vibrating in the wardrobe. Her ring tone was an instrumental version of AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell.” On the screen it said HELENA. Teo turned it off, feeling bad. In such a short space of time, he had made some serious mistakes: he’d forgotten to put away the Hypnolid, he’d left Clarice’s cell on, and worst of all, now his mother was going to inquire about his girlfriend, schedule dinners, and ask to meet her family.
Trying to calm down, he organized Clarice’s clothes. They were crumpled, thrown into the smaller pink Samsonite in the haste of the previous day. He found the book he’d bought her and, beside it, the screenplay for Perfect Days. He put the book in the drawer of his bedside table. The blood on the cover was a wound: the stain had crept over the author’s name, and now all that could be seen was “ice Lispector” under the title. He wanted Clarice to read it, as he knew she’d like it, but he had the feeling she’d despised the present.
He saw Clarice as a diamond in the rough. Every relationship presupposes some give-and-take, an exchange of favors, so that the two poles are mutually seduced, subject to their own surprises. Teo had been surprised by Clarice: drawn in by her beauty, snared by her spontaneity, and condemned by her lemon-gummy-flavored kiss. He also knew that he could surprise her. He was a man of many qualities: well educated, with a future. He’d be a good father (truth be told, he’d never thought about having children, but now the idea didn’t seem so bad) and a good husband (he knew how women deserved to be treated). He wasn’t handsome, nor was he ugly.
At any rate, aesthetics excited, but they didn’t sustain a relationship. The connecting force was in the give-and-take, in the surrender and discovery. The term symbiosis seemed appropriate. He looked up the exact definition in the dictionary. “A relationship between two beings that live in community, in which both are benefited although in varying proportion, such that they are unable to live without each other.”
• • •
Leaning back in his swiveling chair, Teo leafed through the screenplay. Perfect Days was the doorway to many insights. How many of Clarice’s nuances would be revealed? Like a child saving the best piece of pie for last, he put off reading the text. He preferred to come to it like good wine: first the label, then the aroma, and finally the flavor. He read random lines, without paying attention to their content. The characters in the story were pretty crass. Clarice wrote like she spoke: in short, bold sentences, with few syntactical inversions.
He set the screenplay aside. He was afraid to read it and conclude that there was nothing special there, just a falsely promising variation on all the other girls he’d met, uninteresting and talentless.
He went back to piling up clothes. In a compartment of the larger suitcase, he found the camera he’d seen Clarice use at Lage Park. He transferred the photos to his computer and examined them on the screen one by one. He smiled at the ones in which Clarice was smiling, remembering where he was at the exact instant she had struck this or that pose. He deleted the ones with her friend in them, with her greasy hair and promiscuous smile. He was doing Clarice a favor: he was sure she didn’t want to remember the girl who’d forced herself on her with those lesbian kisses.
Just out of curiosity, he opened Photoshop. He selected photos of his own and, cutting and pasting, created new moments: the two of them hugging a tree, strolling through the garden, sitting on a wooden bench. In a more daring—and almost perfect—montage, he placed Clarice with her head on his lap, with the lake and the fountain in the background. She was smiling and seemed to be enjoying him playing with her hair. Teo was smiling too. The photo was as realistic as the ones that had given origin to it. He made it his new computer wallpaper.
He selected others (only the most beautiful ones, but it was so hard to choose!) and saved them to a CD: thirty-one photos: twenty-seven just of her, and the others of them together. He went out, leaving Clarice sedated under the bed without cuffs—a display of trust—and walked three blocks to get the photos printed.
The afternoon rolled past lazily. Four hours later Teo returned to the photo shop. He chose an album with a gold cover, which seemed suited to Clarice’s classic style. The photos had turned out beautifully. They were a real couple, smiling out of the album’s plastic sleeves. The images had gained a predictive quality, registering moments that they were going to experience together. He was moved. He wanted to show the shop assistant or the old lady who was asking if they sold USB sticks there.
As he was pulling his wallet out of his pocket, he felt his cell vibrate. It was his home phone. Was it his mother? Was she back from Paquetá already? Had she noticed something wrong?
He answered nervously. All he could think of was Clarice.
Patricia was screaming and crying, saying things he couldn’t understand. He asked her to speak slowly. It was no use. It took him more than two minutes to understand. Samson was dead.
7
When he got home, Teo found the dog rolled up in the throw blanket. He patted him and held two fingers in front of his cold nose. Nothing. In the living room, Patricia was shaking in her wheelchair, consoled by Marli, who was spouting a bunch of nonsensical condolences. The dog had played a fundamental role in his mother’s life: she needed to feel truly loved by someone.
Teo said he was terribly sorry. At the back of the pantry, he found the cardboard box they had used to transport the TV when they had moved there. He placed the golden retriever inside it.
“Let’s give Samson the burial he deserves,” said Patricia.
Teo sat in the armchair watching his mother cry, as sincerely as if she’d lost her son. He’d never be able cry like that for anyone. Maybe for Clarice. But he’d have to put some effort into it.
“Let’s get him to a vet,” she said. “I want to know what my baby died of.”
&nbs
p; Her grief was too much. All she had to do was buy another dog. Sometimes she seemed to forget that they didn’t lead the life they used to. Discovering the cause of death was an expense they could do without and would only bring trouble. Teo didn’t believe he was responsible for the dog’s death, but he was worried that the pills might show up in an examination of Samson’s stomach contents.
When he had gone back to the photo shop to pick up the album, he’d left Clarice on the gym mat under his bed. He’d covered the mat with a sheet, because the floor was cold. Now an acrid smell of urine filled the room. Clarice’s nightgown was wet. He was disgusted. Then he chided himself for his reaction. He couldn’t be disgusted by the woman he loved. She was resting and had no way of going to the bathroom.
It was too risky to clean up Clarice with Patricia and Marli nearby. They could walk in at any moment—and in that state of nerves, his mother wouldn’t tolerate a locked door. He squirted some cologne around and went back to the living room.
“I understand you want to get an autopsy done,” he said. “If that’s what you want, I’m right behind you.”
Patricia dried her eyes and gave her son a wan smile.
“But it’s expensive,” he continued, “and we don’t have a lot of money to throw around.”
“I have some savings, Teo. I need to know what Samson died of. He was fine until just a little while ago.”
“He was already ten years old, Mother! We looked after him well. We made him happy while he was here. There’s no point dwelling on it now.”
“I think he ate my Hypnolid,” sobbed Patricia. “And I won’t be able to . . . I won’t be able to live with myself until I’m sure he didn’t die because I made a stupid mistake. I feel so terrible.”
“Don’t. What’s done is done. All we can do now is give him a proper burial.”
“I want a necropsy. What if I was the cause of his death? It’s like killing your own child.”
“I don’t think it was the Hypnolid. How could Samson have got into the bathroom and wolfed down a box of pills without a trace? We’re going to find the damn box behind a piece of furniture any day now, and the mystery will be solved.”
“Yeah, love, stay calm. He’s right,” said Marli, sitting on the side of the armchair. “I doubt he could’ve eaten the pills, plastic and everything. Do you remember how many were in it?”
“Yes, I keep tabs on them so I don’t double up.”
Teo knew his mother wrote down every pill taken in a little notepad, which was why he couldn’t just pretend to stumble across the missing box.
“I’m going to fix myself up,” said Patricia. “I want to find a vet open today.”
In ten minutes, she was ready. She told Teo he didn’t need to go if he had other plans. She and Marli would take a taxi.
Teo tried one last argument. “If they do a necropsy on Samson—they’ll open him up, you know? He’ll have to be cremated.”
He knew his mother considered burials important and couldn’t bear the thought of a body in flames in the crematorium. But Patricia said it was no problem: if she couldn’t bury him, she’d accept a cremation.
• • •
When he finally took Clarice to have a shower, Teo was depressed to see the state she was in, stooped and soaked in urine, like a mental patient. The colors of the bathroom lost their vibrancy, and he found the steam from the hot water suffocating.
He was careful to close the bathroom window, then wet her face. He removed the gauze covering the wound on her neck and put the tweezers and nail scissors in his pocket: he didn’t want sharp objects lying around where she could see them. He sat her on the plastic stool that Patricia used for bathing, facing the water.
“Come on, you won’t fall. Hold on here,” he said, placing her hands on the grab bar. “Take off your dirty clothes and have a good wash. There’s a clean dress on the hook there. Here’s a towel. Don’t take too long, okay?”
He thought about handcuffing her but didn’t think it was necessary. She could barely stand. The water streamed down her face, wetting her clothes and outlining her slender body underneath. Teo slid the shower door closed so the bathmat wouldn’t get wet. He left the bathroom inebriated.
• • •
From the living room, he listened to the sound of the water against the tiles, the shower being turned off, and the door sliding open. He waited another five minutes before going in. Clarice was sitting on the floor, already wearing the dress he had picked, one with yellow flowers for wearing around the house. Her warm skin smelled of a long shower. Teo dried her hair. He also noticed the tattoo on her left shoulder: three little stars—green, blue, and purple. The first time they had met, he had glimpsed part of it under her top. Now the thin straps of her dress completely revealed crooked stars that looked as if they’d been drawn by a child. He smiled and offered her his hand. She grabbed his wrist and squeezed it hard, as if trying to say something. She stared at him hard. Had she been crying?
Teo laid her down on the bed. He stroked her face and asked if she was okay.
Clarice muttered random words in the strange language that sprouted from her dry mouth.
He went to get an apple and a small knife from the kitchen. He peeled it and told her to chew slowly and be careful not to choke. She hadn’t eaten since the previous day, and he didn’t want to see her wither away because of him. Looking after each other’s health was essential in a good relationship. He gave her half of the apple: she chewed it with her lips, as a trickle of saliva slid down her chin and neck. Teo wiped her chin and told her to eat properly. If necessary, he could serve her forever. He liked watching her eat little by little, so in need of care. He was hungry too, so he ate the other half of the apple.
His thoughts wandered back to Lage Park—the colorful vegetation, the picnics ruffled by a light breeze. He wanted that happiness to last forever. He let Clarice eat at her own pace and liked it when she opened her mouth to ask for more.
“I want to go,” she said finally. Her voice was firmer.
“We need to talk.”
“I want to go.”
“I’m not going to keep you prisoner here. Stay calm.”
Clarice wasn’t calm. She thrashed about in a fury and talked in a loud voice, rudely, which repulsed him. He had to use force to control her. He cuffed her wrist to her bicep so she couldn’t move her arm and then, exasperated, injected her with a new dose of Thyolax—this time in her left arm, because her right one was sporting a purple blotch from the last injection.
• • •
He rested in the swiveling chair, and his annoyance slowly dissipated. He got Clarice’s cell from the wardrobe and turned it on. Four messages popped onto the screen. The first was from Laura, whom he deduced was the friend who had taken advantage of Clarice. It had been sent on the Tuesday afternoon. Laura thanked her for the previous night—she used the adjectives great and unforgettable to describe it—and suggested they talk if Clarice was confused about what had happened. She signed off with infinite kisses, saying she was waiting anxiously—the insolent adverb was there—for her reply. Teo deleted the message.
The next was from the operator, with the number of missed calls. Four from Helena, three from Breno, and another three from Laura. Teo wanted to know who Breno was. Beside his name was a photo of Woody Allen as a young man. Teo went into Clarice’s conversation history and saw that the third message was from Breno, sent that morning, apologizing for his jealous behavior and saying he needed to talk to her and that he still loved her. At no point did he call Clarice by her name, but “my love” at the beginning and “my sonata” at the end, before repeating “I love you.”
Teo reread it: my sonata. The way Breno had chosen to address her—and the number of times the verb to love appeared—made Teo feel betrayed. The guy couldn’t write and referred to Clarice with a possessive pronoun as if she belon
ged to him.
Teo deleted the contact, but before erasing their entire conversation history (over a year’s worth of messages), he decided to reply. He was succinct, almost rude:
I DON’T WANT TO TALK. I DON’T LOVE YOU ANYMORE. WE’RE DONE. I’VE MOVED ON. FORGET ME.
It was after midnight. Teo heard the key in the door and went to greet his mother. Patricia’s eyes were swollen, and a box of tissues was sitting on her lap. The guilt was weighing on her.
“The results won’t be ready for twenty days,” she said. “I need to sleep.”
He read the last message on Clarice’s cell. It was from Helena:
HONEY, I TRIED YOUR CELL BUT IT’S OUT OF RANGE. HAVE YOU GONE TO TERESÓPOLIS? CALL ME WHEN YOU CAN TO LET ME KNOW YOU GOT THERE OK. YOUR DAD SAYS HI. TAKE CARE. MOM. P.S.—DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LIVING ROOM RUG?
Lying on the sofa, Teo stared at Clarice’s cell. His mind raced, trying to think of a way to explain the disappearance of the rug. After rereading their previous messages several times, he noticed that Clarice called her mother by her first name, which struck him as overly formal. He drafted a few replies, all unsatisfactory, then scanned the screenplay for words she used a lot. A few minutes later he looked at the result. It wasn’t perfect, but he might be able to get away with it for a while. He hit send:
HELENA, I’M IN TERESÓPOLIS WITH MY NEW BOYFRIEND. I’VE BEEN WRITING A LOT. THERE’S NO PHONE RECEPTION AT THE HOTEL, AS YOU KNOW. I’M IN THE TOWN CENTER NOW. HE BROUGHT ME TO THE MOST BEAUTIFUL SPOT FOR DINNER. IT’S A BIT LATE TO CALL. TELL DAD I SAID HI. I’VE GOT THE RUG. LONG STORY, TELL YOU LATER. DON’T WORRY. I’M FINE AND HAPPY. LOVE, CLARICE.
• • •
Clarice smiled at him from the passenger seat. Without Teo having to do a thing, she leaned over to steal a kiss. Then another and another. He couldn’t return the affection, because he was driving. The highway disappeared under the dashboard, trees flashed past on both sides. Clarice nibbled at his cheek, and it felt nice. Her slightly protuberant teeth grazed his skin. He called her “little rat,” an affectionate nickname that she didn’t seem to mind; in fact, she thought it was funny.
Perfect Days Page 5