“Ah, Muller,” Edson said as they passed through the gates. “The colonel didn’t think I would give the country back, and I never really wanted it.”
Muller didn’t laugh.
Nando, the Army colonel, and finally Muller. Given time, they all despised him. When had Edson lost self—respect? As a São Paulo detective, he’d given up hope of redemption. Then O.S. hired him, and saved him from the streets. But power followed, and with it, compromise. Had he lost his soul by obeying Ana’s orders? Or had he damned himself in his own house, on his way to see Freitas, when Muller begged him not to go?
Muller parked by the side of Hangar Eight. Edson got out, took the tire iron from the Mercedes’s trunk.
“Shall I come with you?” Muller’s blond hair was hot platinum under the halogen lights. Muller, the bright angel.
“Only if you want.”
Muller got out of the car. Yes. Best that they do this together.
Inside the building, an empty, echoing hall. The single guard at the entrance let them pass without comment. At the end of the corridor waited the dark maw of the hangar. It wasn’t too late. Edson could go back.
The double click of their steps on the tile. “Why destroy the Door?” Muller asked. when they had walked beyond earshot of the guard.
Because history demanded that he do something, and he wasn’t brave enough to kill Freitas. Edson didn’t even have the courage to tell Muller that.
The hangar was so immense, so hushed that Edson felt the urge to genuflect. He passed the steel chamber, the altar of the open Door, without a glance.
He halted before the control panel and hesitated, tire iron ready. Ask for the Disappeareds’ forgiveness? How could he? Besides, better that the voices beyond the Door die. Safer that they be silenced. If Edson was to be expelled from paradise, let Muller do it. If he was to be accused, let him stand before God, not some American tribunal.
“Where do we start?” Muller had found a hammer, and he held it before the banks of controls like a sword.
Edson couldn’t apologize to the voices. Father, forgive me. He took off his coat. For I have sinned.
He shoved the claw under the edge of the panel. One short, fast tug. The sheet of metal fell with a clang.
It has been twelve years since my last confession.
Nests of wires. A Medusa of cables from the power source. Edson knelt on the tile. Muller knelt beside him.
Countless times, I have used the Lord’s name in vain.
A box of square plastic plugs, colorful as toys.
As I have used His children.
Edson pulled out a salmon—colored plug, tugged the cable free. Forgive me the sin of lust. An emerald green. And murder. A lemon yellow. And pride.
The motors, the computer banks, fell silent. Edson looked up. Beyond the Door; the chamber was still dark, the light still supernaturally bent.
Muller was confused, too. “The power is off. How can it still be working?”
More plugs. “Help me,” Edson ordered.
Both their hands busy. The answer was there someplace. A lavender. An orange.
Suddenly Muller fell forward onto his palms. They were face—to—face. He was staring at Edson, dumbfounded. Had he hurt himself? No. God. Had someone shot him?
And then Edson saw the finger. One square—nailed finger. It teased Muller’s Adam’s apple, then moved down, down, Muller’s heated blush rising to meet it.
“I could take him now.” Freitas squatted over Muller’s back.
“He’s not like me,” Edson said. “Don’t.”
“They’re all like you.” Freitas explored beneath the waistband. Muller closed his eyes. “I can do anything I want,” Freitas said. “No one tells me don’t. Or can’t. Or later.” He pressed his body against Muller’s. “Get up,” he whispered.
When Muller did, Freitas spun him around, pushed him against the open panel. Freitas pulled his shirt free.
Then Freitas smiled at Edson. “Put your hand in him.” Those blunt fingertips against Muller’s stomach. “It’s warm and tight and slick inside, like a woman. Come here. I’ll show you.”
To save Muller, Edson knew what he had to say. So dangerous. One wrong move, one wrong word. Freitas could do anything.
“Touch me,” Edson said.
Instantly Freitas stood back. Muller swayed and blinked. When he started to leave, Freitas stopped him.
“Not until I tell you.” Then Freitas turned his dark gaze to Edson. “Go in the Door.”
Edson’s knees went weak. It felt like he was falling.
Freitas came to Edson, stood belly to belly. He pulled his shirt up, and Edson, panic—stricken, tried to push him away. When Freitas touched his bare chest, he thought he could feel the fingers slip inside. He blundered back against the panel, wanting to scream. Muller. Muller.
“Do it,” Freitas whispered. “Go inside me. Do it. The Door is just a mouth. I eat what I choose, anyway.”
Edson wanted to fight, but his arms felt heavy, his muscles frail. His hands slipped, nerveless, off Freitas’s shirt.
A quiet laugh. “A woman fought me once. She taught me everything, what I could explore—my tongue inside, how her bones tasted. And when she tried to leave, I kept her.”
Freitas pulled him toward the Door. No. Dear God. Where was Muller? Edson’s feet moved him to the dark.
Whispers there. Sighs of welcome. Before the emptiness could swallow him, he grabbed the doorjamb.
Freitas whirled him around, slammed him face—first into the steel wall of the chamber. Pressed his body against his back. Edson could feel the knuckle—hard prod of the man’s erection against his buttocks, the heat of Freitas’s breath against his ear. “No one hides from me. From living bodies I’ve taken blood clots like lumps of tar. Cancers like black sponges. Cysts like pink pearls.” Freitas reached around him, stroked his lower belly. “And I ate them.”
Whispers just beyond the range of hearing. And louder, the snap of a fastener, Edson flinched as his waistband loosened. Firm slide of elastic. Chill of the chamber’s air against naked skin. That thumblike insistence just below the small of his back.
Cold whispers, and a single feverish voice. “Tell me you want it.”
Edson thought of São Paulo. A dark alley, Three of his own troops laughing. On the ground a beaten, naked boy, blood pouring out his asshole. The smell of shit and sweat and sex. Two officers with their flies unzipped. One officer holding a nightstick, its tip smeared with offal and gore.
The lazy spread of his zipper. Exploratory fingers. Edson shivered, thought no, please, not that way, don’t hurt me, don’t let Muller see, and heard himself saying; “Yes.”
Freitas wrestled him about until they were face—to—face. Wet lips met. A hot tongue pistoned into his mouth. Against his jaw, the scrape of an emerging beard. Fear froze him. It was fear that made Edson’s thigh muscles loosen. Fear that made him tremble. Lips slid down jaw, down neck. A tongue left a snail path down his belly.
Then a tug, and his pants were to his hips. Cold air against hot swollen flesh—please—and it didn’t matter, nothing mattered—oh God please—not that the mouth belonged to Freitas, not that he stood inside the Door. Nothing was important but having.
Then the mouth closed over him, and the hot eruption came up from his thighs, sent his soul with it; and he was gone, falling, tumbling into the dark. The dark was bottomless. It was warm and humid and tight, and as he plummeted, he felt blacker things brush past him.
And then it was over. He felt Freitas push away. Heard a laugh. Edson had come so hard that his balls ached. His penis burned, as if he had pissed acid.
Had anyone seen? Where was Muller? God. Dear God. He had to get out. Get out now, before Freitas called him back. He stumbled toward the exit, fumbling awkwardly at his zipper. Tucking in his shirt. Shaking so h
ard that his teeth chattered.
He blundered through the hangar, barking his shin on a chair. He kicked the fallen panel and nearly went sprawling. By the time he reached the hall, he was running. The guard stared at him as he passed. Had Edson, in that short few minutes, changed? Could the guard see on his face the shame of what he had done?
Edson lurched into the parking lot, straightening his shirt. He needed a shower. He needed a drink.
At first he thought the Mercedes was empty, then he saw Muller slumped behind the wheel. Edson couldn’t get into the front seat and have another man’s body so close. He opened the back.
Muller shot him a conspiratorial look of shame.
“Take me home,” Edson said.
CNN, Live
... sun just now rising over Ipanema. Behind me you can see Corcovado and the Lagoon, still surrounded by protesters—mostly women—as it has been all night.
Very pretty sight, Ed.
Yes, Those lights on the water are candles in paper boats, offerings to the goddess of the sea, Iemanjá. Otherwise Rio remains in a blackout.
Quite a crowd.
Yes. The earlier rain certainly didn’t drive them away. From the mood here, an invasion force won’t either. People have come down from the favelas. From the high—rises at Copacabana. And, ah, do you have a close enough shot there in Atlanta to see the colored ribbons the women are wearing around their wrists? As I, understand it, those are for the Bahian Nosso Senhor do Bonfim, Our Lord of Good Endings. Knots are tied for wishes. But today their ends have been left loose. Only one knot this morning, Steve: for the safety of the president.
Interesting coincidence, the name.
Yes. Brazilians also link President Bonfim to both the Virgin Mary and Iemanjá, sometimes respectfully, sometimes not. The patron saint of Brazil is Our Lady of the Appearance, and for a while there, Bonfim became known as Our Lady of the Disappearance. Well, Brazilians love a joke, but they’re not telling that one anymore.
COLD BROUGHT Dolores awake. sometime during the night, Jaje had pilfered the blanket. Now she lay curled in a corner of the sofa, as self—indulgent as a cat. On the television, a picture of the Lagoon, Corcovado in the background—CNN reporting from Rio. And in an easy chair nearby, Jack slept under the shelter of his coat, one foot exposed.
It was a perfect foot, really. Exquisitely formed. Dolores rose, crippled by morning arthritis. She limped to the television, switched it off. Then she bent over Jack, and tucked him in.
He stirred, blinked, smiled her a stuporous good morning. And grabbed her breast.
“Shit.” She straightened so abruptly that a nerve in her back pinched. “Shit.” She stormed off toward the bathroom.
Mrs. Nelson Albright had brought with her three new Reach toothbrushes—a testament to her faith in foreign oral hygiene. A sensible woman. Someone who always planned ahead. Dolores doubted Mr. Nelson Albright played much slap—and—tickle.
“I, uh ...”
Jack was standing in the bathroom doorway. Against that new presumption, she pulled her robe tighter. She yanked a comb briskly through her hair, threw it in the sink, and pushed past him.
She wanted to be angry about the kitchen, but Jack had washed the dishes, scrubbed the counters, put everything away. She banged through the cabinets, searching for coffee.
Behind her a tentative, “Well. I guess it’ll be a while before we’re used to each other.”
She unearthed the coffeepot. A filter.
“I don’t understand why you’re so mad.”
Then the cups—one: a happy self—enclosed number. Two for enforced company. Three for the madding crowd. “I can’t believe you did that, Jack. Treat me like a whore.”
“God, Dee. I was playing.”
“And in front of Jaje, too.”
“She was asleep.”
Canister of coffee. A neat tin, an old—fashioned one, with decals. Something Dolores’s mother would have spent an afternoon decorating. The creative urge was a maternal heritage, a longing for expression that Dolores’s mother had chosen to spend, nonconfrontationally, on the house.
“Did you ever think she might wake up when we started rutting, Jack? I mean, right there in front of her?”
“I wasn’t going to—”
Dolores whirled. The can erupted, spilling coffee across the tiles, a fall of dark ash, “Then what was the point? I don’t get the damned point.”
“It was a sign of affection.”
“Grabbing tit. A sign of affection.”
Jack was a cautious man. He didn’t nod or shrug. He didn’t blink.
“Excuse me. I forgot all that romantic art: Botticelli’s Tit Grab; Titian’s Zeus Copping a Feel at the Sink. Jesus, Jack. Either let’s fuck, or let’s not fuck, all right?”
“I ... well, I think this may be good, Dee. To get everything out on the table. I mean, we’re not kids. We need to be blunt with each other.”
She turned her back, began furiously spooning, coffee. “What is it with you? Jaje right there on the couch. The whole goddamned world in flames. At least everything that’s important. Everything that means something. What is it with men and their pricks? All you can think about ...” She banged the cabinet door shut, again. Again.
She remembered Jaje, and froze. “I don’t want this anymore.”
Nothing. She couldn’t even hear Jack breathe.
“It’s too hard,” she said.
A sharp intake of air. A sad, breathy laugh. “I’ll be damned. All those years waiting for Harry to die. Thinking ... Then it’s like I win it all: win you, win everything. They give us money, a new life. God, Dee. This hurts.”
“What are you talking about?” She looked around.
“I was kidding myself, wasn’t I. A black man—”
“Goddamn it. Color’s not the problem.”
“Those folks up north see us together, all they can picture is some pathetic blue—haired scene from Mandingo. You’re why I got in the spy game. You’re why I stayed in Brazil all these years, even when I missed home so bad. But your choice, Dee. When we get to Cana—”
The words exploded from her. “It’s not about you! Nothing’s about you! Shit, Jack. I just got free from Harry!” The room blurred. The wall sucked her toward it. She slapped one hand against the cabinet, the other against the tile drain—board, to stay her fall.
Utter silence. The kitchen walls tugged her this way and that. If she didn’t hang on, she’d be caught in the eddy, be dragged under.
Then a sleepy voice. Jack’s reply through the thick, drowning air. “No, she’s fine, honey. Your Aunt Dee spilled the coffee, that’s all. I was just about to clean it up.”
Faucet sounds. A grunt as Jack knelt.
“I turned on the TV. CNN said they stopped bombing.”
The gravity of the walls was so strong that it began to pull Dolores’s flesh from the bone.
From a distance, Jack. “That’s good, sweetie. Tell you what. Let’s all get dressed and go out to breakfast. Want to do that? When I was a kid back in L.A., my mama and daddy used to take me to breakfast of a Sunday. We didn’t have much money, but we had enough for an eat—out breakfast every single week. My daddy always said, bad as life was, a big old restaurant breakfast helped take your mind off things.”
* * *
Kinch answered the knock dressed in polo shirt and shorts. He seemed surprised to see him. “What’re you doing here?” He leaned out into the hall. Looked both ways. Adjusted his glasses. “Come on in. You have a problem getting through?”
The peroba wood door of the penthouse closed with a solid click, encasing them in silence. From somewhere in the huge apartment came the soothing trickle of a fountain. Kinch’s foyer was floored in green marble; its walls were brass. The air was heavy with the scent of ginger flowers.
“Sorry abou
t the mess. Maid quit. Is that a kick in the ass or what?” They walked past an atrium: mossy waterfall, spills of bright pink impatiens, and orchids: a flashy purple, a green one as spotted as a snake, a thick—stemmed vanilla vine. “Hey. You want something? Mineral water? Coke?”
“Cachaça.”
Kinch looked at him. “Hm. Heard you were on sick leave. Thought they were going to send you back to Japan.”
Another atrium, birds flitting like spirits through a blue shaft of refracted sun.
“Naturally they would tell you that. I was put on a special project.”
The suspicion in Kinch’s face became petulant envy. “Cool,” he said.
Only the kitchen mourned the maid. It was in upheaval. Dirty dishes. Empty bottles of Antarctica. Of Jim Beam. “Cachaça,” Kinch rummaged the cabinets. “Cachaça. Know I got a bottle somewhere. Ah—ha!” He turned, bottle in hand. And paled when he met Hiroshi’s eyes. “Uh. Something wrong?”
“No.”
“’Cause sometimes a game’ll weird you out a little. Make you a little wonky. Happened to me once.” He twisted off the cap. Inspected a line of glasses dubiously. Picked one. “You want something in this? Maracujá? Cashew juice? Lime?”
“No.”
“So. This game finished, or what?”
He took the offered glass from Kinch. Drank the raw cachaça down. “Almost.” He held the glass out again.
“Hey, just take the bottle.” Kinch flicked another look. His glasses caught the light, and for a dizzy instant the frames looked empty. Then he bent and took a beer from the refrigerator. “What say we go to the living room?”
In a second atrium, finches dashed, branch to branch. A sun conure, all the colors of fire, chattered madly.
“Pisses me off, the way the maid quit. Bitch just walked. No note. No nothing. Stole all kinds of shit. Really cleaned me out. Well, my own damned fault. I’m just too trusting. You want a toke?” He took a joint from an enameled box, offered the box.
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