by Sarah Faber
‘Hugo, Evelyn! What a pretty pair you make. Do come in.’
Hugo knows Alice means to dazzle him with the blond sun flare of her porcelain bobbling head, her too-white teeth, her veined, jiggling tits. No. Crouch by Evie and draw her out; she doesn’t like to injure people, but she wants to please him most of all.
‘Evie, tell Mrs. Carmichael what you told me.’
It is a curious gift of the child, thinks Hugo, that she, like a savant, is able to recall the minutiae of all she sees, even things that happened months before: the exact pattern of Luiza’s dress, that it was white with blue flowers and the sun shone through it while they argued; the precise wording of his cruel attack (‘And you’re just as heartless as she is’); that the cassia blooms fell upon his black leather shoes, and it was Luiza’s right leg that buckled under her when Carmichael—what? Pulled her toward him, or grabbed her somehow? One last attempt at counterfeiting intimacy with his daughter, who, it appears, was being used as a proxy for his wife. Hugo himself hasn’t absorbed it, even after listening to this second telling. Something inside him is forcing it out. It’s as if his insides are tight, impervious, like water-filled balloons, pushing his revulsion back to the surface, to skin level, so that he can function, enact his plan, not be incapacitated by sorrow and hatred and grief; until later, when he will just shrivel up and blow away.
For now, he watches Evie, lost in the memory and the tiny details. She doesn’t acknowledge Alice’s shock, is insensible to the rigid set of the woman’s mouth. Hugo begins to see everything Evie sees, and he questions whether she is such a skilled mimeograph or if she has accessed his very thoughts—a vision he had, or a dream—had he really been there, after all? And now the lines of Alice’s mouth are turning down like those of the marionettes that sit in the back seat of his car, but the child keeps tapping out a facsimile of the scene, the curve of the petals, their brightness against the green grass. There were so many shades of green that day it began to hurt her eyes, and she had to crawl back under the tree to cover them. Hugo, too, has known every shade of green, and he recognizes now that after so many years of being enamoured of Luiza as his spirit child, it is Evie who is just like him. She can perceive such various hues of a single colour yet doesn’t notice the tears spilling from Alice’s small, red eyes. Eyes that he himself barely notices because he is perfused with love for this perfect child, who now says, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs. Carmichael. He’d get so… worked up if I didn’t tell you.’
At the sound of that name, Hugo is restored to his purpose. ‘Carmichael, you son of a bitch, get out here. Get him out here, Alice.’
But as she turns toward the house, the bastard comes to the door, feigning surprise, wiping his hands on dirty pants. He then raises them in a self-protective gesture disguised as greeting.
‘Maurer, good of you to stop by.’ He is all limp obsequiousness. ‘I was just puttering in the garden.’ Lie.
‘Do you have a crowbar back there?’
‘Sorry, a crowbar?’
‘A crowbar, please.’
‘I think I might have a hammer … ’ And he is so determined to preserve his sham performance of ignorance that he skulks back into the house to fetch a hammer.
Alice follows, shrill and agitated behind him. ‘What have you done? For god’s sake, don’t bring him that thing!’
Hugo can feel them, even after he can no longer hear them, the thin vibrations of their muttering, their determination to rid themselves of him and his genius daughter. Recalling that he’s not yet taken out his golf clubs from the trunk, he returns to the car. Magda’s still sitting in the back seat watching him intently. He gives her a look: stay. He opens the trunk and the polished wood of his clubs gleams in the sun. Inside him, a red tsunami swells and yet his movements are precise, deliberate. Sane. He’s not an animal. He lifts up the bag with ease, then selects his nine-iron. He must maintain control and yet move quickly before any more plotting can take place within the house, before a gardener or a driver or benevolent neighbours can be mobilized. Something inside him is pulsing, threatening to break through. Don’t frighten the girls; say it’s a game. But the strident emphasis he places on game makes Evie flinch, so he sings it out instead. ‘A game! A game!’
He strides over to Carmichael’s Buick (peasant) and raises the club above and behind him like a baseball player (Robinson).
‘Ready?’ he says to Evie, who nods.
Play ball!
The windshield of Carmichael’s car cracks but holds, the filaments of a spider’s web spreading across the surface. A second crack shatters the glass with a loud pop, and there is a pleasant tinkling as it collapses in on itself and covers the seats in glinting, ice-like segments.
A game!
The back window implodes. He doesn’t feel like the beast he must appear to be, more like a mechanized entity, compelled by an exterior force to continue. But that self-awareness is eroding with each slap of frothing blood against his ribs. With each smashed side window, even when the glass doesn’t spray but only curls over the car doors in crackled scrolls. A game! He doesn’t have to think to raise his arms; they raise themselves again and again, robotically, and he is free to watch Evie, who only starts a little with each crack and doesn’t cry because she knows this is what must be done. Each side mirror. Alice is in the doorway, weeping and wringing her hands in an exaggerated, stagey way, while Carmichael hovers by a window, ducking as the blows land.
It feels insufficient to address the windows alone, so Hugo swivels the club and uses the handle to puncture the taillights. He is momentarily pleased by the sight of the machine’s remains, so often has he seen Carmichael preening about in it as though it’s an extension of himself. But too quickly the assault starts to feel like a tiresome pantomime. He’s become a caricature of rage, Alice’s mouth a grim line, Evie’s arms still stiff at her sides, and Carmichael, in the background, deprived of nothing more than his beloved car. Hugo drops the club—it would wound Evie too much to see someone beaten with a weapon, and now he’s peripherally aware that Magda has arrived to shield her sister. There is a commotion in the backyard; Alice has run out like a madwoman. Soon, her screams will draw people from their homes.
Evie and Magda are sobbing now. Why are women around him always weeping? He has terrified them again. He wraps his arms around the girls and inhales deeply, breathing for all of them, uncoiling their awful tension. Then he leads them away from the carcass and back across the street, toward his own perfectly intact car.
Driving home, he is acutely alive. His hair is not hair, but vibrissae, alerting his nervous system to the slightest tremor in the air. His ears stretch out into thin appendages like antennae, sensing the flight paths of insects. His eyes are those of flies, faceted and jewel-toned, seeing hundreds of feet down the road, seeing what hasn’t even happened yet. The wind enters him, envelops his heart, crushes his lungs. He leans back, sees the trees reach over him like arms just as Evie said they would. He sees eight shades of green rippling through the grasses. Now nine, now twelve, now too many to count. He has the eyes of a child. He weaves back and forth across the centre of the road and Luiza’s laughter—for yes, he can still hear it, she is here with them now—her laughter is the peal of bells.
DORA
When Dora gets home from the café, Hugo and the girls aren’t there. Odete tells her Hugo took them out early in the morning, and Dora’s stomach contracts. Where are they? But she doesn’t have time to ask. She has to get ready for one final night at the Copacabana Palace Hotel, one last night of goodbyes.
‘Please be sure he gets ready quickly,’ she tells the maid. ‘And make sure he dresses appropriately. He should be home any minute.’ She can almost feel the knots of anxiety tighten around Odete’s eyes. As if she, a plump, little, coloured woman, could control him. Dora could wait for him, but she can’t bear the idea of being trapped in a car with him, spreading his hands along his pant legs again and again, thrumming as he leans forward to ask their po
or driver, Bechelli, a thousand questions. So she leaves without him, and now they are driving slowly into the city, the chauffeur humming quietly to himself. She closes her eyes, focuses on the soft, tuneless vibrations around her: the car, Bechelli, something inside herself. Soon they’ll pull up to the Copacabana, and she’ll have to face that grand, grand place, where it feels as though she has lived half her life, free to laugh hoarsely from the back of her throat, touch sweat-dampened skin, drift prettily across the dance floor, buzz with liquor and soda and nicotine. But after running away from Carmichael, she isn’t sure how she’ll manage the goodbye party—what to say, how she’ll pretend.
Once they arrive, Dora thanks Bechelli as she emerges from the car just in front of the revolving doors, but then she takes the wide side steps on the left to one of the two large, tiled terraces that flank the main entrance. As she walks past the café tables and leans against one of the glass-globed art nouveau lanterns that rest atop the marble balustrade, she gazes out upon the very beach she walked with Carmichael earlier today, the same beach she and Hugo dashed across the street to reach all those years ago. This is the last time she’ll stand here and have a cigarette while looking across to the sea, the last time she’ll appear regal and favoured, swishing through the doors of the Golden Room. While it seems absurd to try to celebrate on a night like this, to have to hide what she now knows, if they don’t make an appearance their friends will wonder, want to come by, and she can’t play hostess right now. For tonight, paste on a smile.
‘Dora!’
It’s Carmichael, about thirty feet away, thrusting his keys at the valet, unfamiliar car door ajar, wearing dirty chinos and a T-shirt.
‘Dora, wait!’ He comes running toward her, sweating, his hair falling into wide, desperate eyes, taking the steps two at a time. She’s so startled to see him, she doesn’t move.
‘I tried to call you but your girl said you’d already left. Is Hugo here?’
‘No.’ She starts to back away, embarrassed. She’s never seen him like this before, so agitated, and there are people entering the hotel door beside them, everyone staring. ‘I mean, I came by myself.’
‘You should leave. You have to leave.’ Carmichael tries to guide her down the stairs as he speaks.
‘No! Don’t touch me. How dare you come here after—’
‘It’s not about that, it’s Hugo. He’s wild. He destroyed my car today. Alice was there. And the girls! He made the girls tell Alice about Luiza. They saw everything and were terribly upset and—’
Dora is beginning to tremble, thinking of Evie and Magda out of reach, near Carmichael. ‘Where were you?’
He drives his uncombed hair back from his eyes with his fingers, rigid and white. ‘I—I was in the house.’
‘So how do you know what happened?’
‘I watched—Alice and I watched from the window. What could I have done? He had a golf club. I thought he was going to kill us.’
‘Where is he now? Where are the girls?’
‘He drove off with them, I don’t know where. But it’s not safe for you here if he comes, you need to go.’
Dora feels herself being guided down the stairs from behind, his slicks arms pressing against hers, dampening the silk sleeves of her dress. His chest is against her back. She can feel his heart pound against her spine.
‘Get off me, get off!’ She’s feral, almost unable to speak, as she realizes they are already halfway down the stairs and no one has stopped to help as she struggles against him. The heat of his body, the weight of him wrapped around her—she’s almost ready to scream when suddenly he is gone and she is free and cool and light again. But where—? When she whirls around he is tumbling backwards, arms twin propellers, a fall in a comedy routine except for his terrified face. And behind him, a giant, pulsing and triumphant. Hugo. Hugo, who can destroy cars, whole buildings if he puts his mind to it. Even her.
Carmichael is in a heap at the bottom of the stairs and now Hugo is upon him. One, two, three. Three swift punches, one in the face, two in the gut. Strong but not devastating. Sickening but not damaging. Hugo in his best suit.
‘You get away from her, incubus,’ Hugo growls, pinning Carmichael into the corner of the stairs, up against the railing. ‘You go back down to hell or I’ll have you arrested. She was a child.’ This last word Hugo spits, leaning his face into Carmichael’s, and for a moment Dora fears he might kill him and no one would do anything. But then Hugo stands up, smooths his jacket, straightens his tie, and takes Dora by the arm.
‘Dora, he’ll hurt you,’ coughs Carmichael, his lips lined with blood.
She turns her back to him, a crumpled doll with legs apart, still sitting in the corner, and allows herself to be led through the spinning glass doors.
As they make their way toward the Golden Room, they pass great white columns in pairs and floor-to-ceiling mirrors the length of the hallway. Above them, glinting crystal chandeliers—she may never walk beneath them, or through these magnificent archways, again. Already she catches the scent of wilting orchids and heavy cigar smoke, the bleating of brass instruments, drifting down the hallway.
Hugo speaks low into her ear. ‘Tonight we dance and drink and pretend to laugh and soon we’ll be gone.’
But passing through the doors into the ballroom, she glances quickly back down toward the corridor and wonders, who saw? And those people just there by the bar are whispering—about what? When Hugo is like this, she’s always afraid.
She is still shaking from the fight outside. At first she was grateful to be rescued, for Hugo’s animal strength. But Carmichael’s fear for her was genuine, and she feels infected by it, as though she can’t quite catch her breath. They find their friends—the Williamsons, the Langleys, the Bairds—people she’s known for decades, and yet in the past year they have all but faded from her consciousness. Abraços! Kisses on both her cheeks. She feels so cold.
‘Dory, you’re trembling!’ exclaims Lucy Baird. ‘Dick, would you pass that champagne? This poor thing needs a drink.’
‘I’d like a bourbon,’ Hugo announces, rising from the table.
‘No!’ says Dora before she breaks into a wide, painful smile. ‘Champagne. We’re celebrating, remember?’ The statement, she knows, is ridiculous, but she can’t risk letting him wander. So they sit with the other couples in the Golden Room, where an elevated balcony lines the walls, lights on delicate metal stems sprout in clusters, and a chandelier descends from a golden dome set into the ceiling. Tables covered in white linen fill the raised perimeter of the room while couples dance across its centre.
Dora gulps at her champagne, watching as Hugo knocks back drink after drink, though he’s likely eaten nothing for days. He won’t meet her eyes. She doesn’t have much time. Even amid the crush of bodies, she can feel it. Hugo is humming now, magnetic, flush with energy. The women—even the men—turn to him, heliotropic. This is that incandescent sliver of time: Hugo ascending. Just before he frightens or offends. Or, worst of all, extinguishes altogether. A sallow, cowering body in an unwashed dressing gown. These people here tonight, they’ve been upset by him, but they’ve never been afraid. So, good: let them remember him like this.
The band starts to play ‘Chica Chica Boom Chic’ and everyone begins, with Pavlovian swiftness, to shake their hips.
‘A classic!’ Hugo calls out. ‘Dora, remember when we went to see this?’ He grabs Lucy by her birdlike wrist and spins her around. They stand side by side and rotate their forearms in and out at the elbows, their hands at the wrist, just like Carmen Miranda in That Night in Rio. ‘Boom chica boom boom boom boom!’
As Hugo dips Lucy down, Dora feels her own spine curving treacherously, her head hung back and growing dizzy, her own uncertainty: is he strong enough? Gentle enough? Will he pull her back up? Will he injure her when he does? They had danced like that in this very room, more than twenty years ago, on that first night. The night of the sunrise, and the piano player, and her awkward beach baptism, when
he lifted her so easily as she slept that she woke in chest-deep water, already in his arms. That night that became the next morning, and he never slept, never ate, never needed anything. He was both supernatural and more human than anyone she’d ever met. Could she have known then? Maybe she would have walked away, had a different life. But her girls …
Dick appears with tumblers in each hand. ‘I just saw a fellow I know at the bar who told me Carmichael was here, outside. Apparently got his bell rung.’
Lucy, now disentangled from Hugo, is almost breathless with twin thrills: flirting with Dora’s husband and now violence. ‘Who was it?’
‘Some angry madman, he reckons. He didn’t see it himself.’
‘An angry husband, more likely,’ says Lucy.
Knowing smiles all around, and Dora is, again, sickened. She and Luiza—just two of many. He had lied about that too. She was never the only one.
She’s pulled out of her thoughts by the cold, sharp sounds of metal and glass. Dora scans their corner of the room to see if it’s Hugo, knocking things over, breaking something, dancing on tables. It wouldn’t be the first time. But all around her, their friends are clinking spoons and forks against champagne glasses.
‘Speech!’ someone calls out.
‘Yes, speech, speech.’
Hugo runs his fingers through his hair, loosens his tie. He’s moving in that particular way he does when he’s cresting, about to soar out of reach—as though he’s straining against his own skin, too tight to contain him. He leaps onto a chair and pulls off his suit jacket, throwing it to the ground. His eyes are bright and still focused as he scans the group, meeting each person’s eye, making them feel singular. Chosen.
‘My friends, I extend felicitations to our South American relations!’ Now he sings, again swaying his arms like Carmen in the movie. ‘May we never leave behind us all the common ties that bind us!’