“Oh, sure,” Sebastien said, cheerily. “Take your time. I’m in no hurry.”
Tim went down a short hallway and into the back room, closing its door behind him. He yanked open a drawer of a filing cabinet, a drawer labeled A-D, and pulled out all of the folders filed under the tab labeled Brazil. But this was only to justify his brief absence from the front office. His boss had warned him, in no uncertain terms, to contact her only in the event of an emergency. Well, as far as he was concerned, this could very well be an emergency in the making!
He pulled his cell phone out of his pants pocket and punched in Laura’s personal number. He knew she never went anywhere without keeping her own cell phone within easy reach.
His employer greeted him with all the affection he had anticipated.
“God damn you, Timmy, this had better be life or death. I’m sitting beside the pool, surrounded by buffed, bronzed gods in tiny bikinis—and at least one of them has got to be straight!”
“Laura, I’ve got a guy out front with five asterisks next to his name on the computer.”
“Give me a name.”
“Sebastien Leon.”
“Oh, yeah. Now I remember. Young guy, right? Very soft-spoken and laid-back, almost looks like he could still be a college student, dresses real casual?”
“That’s him.”
“It’s not a mistake. He’s a repeat customer, and in fact he’s referred a couple of his friends to us. Give him anything he wants. Anything. Short of handing over the keys to the front door, that is. Anything, to keep him happy.”
“All right. But what’s the deal with him, anyway?”
“You know those cookies you’re always stuffing your face with?”
“Huh? Sure. There’s a box of them sitting on top of my desk right now, as a matter of fact.”
“There usually is. How you manage to burn off all those calories and stay so slim is beyond me. Anyway, take a look at the small print on the box when you have a chance. Those cookies are made by something called The Lion of Lisbon Food Corporation. Well, that’s this kid Sebastien’s family’s business. It was started by his great-great-great-grandmother, or whatever, baking cookies in her wood-fired stove and selling them from a pushcart. Eventually, she owned a string of factories, and was a millionaire. This was back in the good old days, of course, before there was such a thing as income tax. Every time you pop one of those babies in your mouth—ka-ching!—more money gets deposited into one of Sebastien Leon’s bank accounts.”
“Wow. Is he gay?”
“Presumably. But if he is, he’s the only gay man I’ve ever met who never seems to go out of his way to travel to places where other gay men hang out. Where’s he headed off to this time?”
“Brazil.”
“That figures. That’s where the family came from, originally, I think. It’s a very dysfunctional family, by all reports. I’m surprised they don’t have their own reality show on TV. For God’s sake, Timmy, don’t keep him waiting any longer. Get back out there and schmooze him. We don’t want to lose him as a customer. Like I said—give the guy whatever he wants. Even if you have to drop your pants and bend over and let him shove it up your ass—which, come to think of it, you’d probably enjoy. Do whatever you have to do. Just don’t fuck this up!”
Tim winced as Laura hung up. She hadn’t actually concluded the conversation with Or else, but Tim could almost swear he’d heard the threat spoken.
He took the folders with him into the front office, where he made a great show of depositing them on his desk beside his PC.
“Now, Mr. Leon, let’s see exactly what we can do for you,” he said. “Ordinarily, most passengers who travel on these freighters book their passage at least three months ahead of time. And many of the companies don’t accept bookings for less than a month prior to the departure. They may make an exception, if they happen to have a cancellation.” Tim’s nimble fingers were already busy on the keyboard. “That’s what I’m looking for right now, as a matter of fact. If I can find you a berth for less than a month from now—”
“If you can, go ahead and arrange it. Book me on the first ship you can—giving me time to fly down from here to Mobile, or wherever, to catch it, of course.” As Tim nodded and continued to search, Sebastien noticed the box of cookies on his desk. “Do you like these cookies?” he asked.
“Oh, yes. They’re delicious. Would you like one? Help yourself.”
“No, thanks. I never touch them.” Which, after what Laura had just told him, struck Tim as peculiar, to say the least. “I overdosed on them when I was a child, you see,” Sebastien added, by way of explanation. “We weren’t allowed to have any other brand in the house. But we have a new flavor that’s just come out,” Sebastien went on. “Raspberry cream.” He pulled a little paper pad out of his pocket. Tim saw that it was in fact a stack of coupons, stuck together by gum along one edge. Sebastien peeled off several of the top layers of coupons and pushed them across the desk. “Here, take a few of these. You can use it to get a dollar off a box of the new raspberry creams.”
Chapter Two:
Home Delivery
When he was not traveling, Sebastien Leon kept to a rigorous schedule, one that made virtually no distinction between weekdays and weekends. Even the major holidays were, to him, just another date on the calendar.
In the morning, he made his breakfast and ate it while watching the news on cable TV. Then, invariably, summer or winter, rain or shine, he left his apartment building and hit the streets. In the course of this daily walk, he would buy his newspaper—he didn’t bother to have it delivered—and stop at one of several coffee shops he patronized in rotation, to drink his coffee, nibble on a pastry, and read the paper, from first page to last. Any shopping that needed to be done would be taken care of when he resumed his walk.
In the afternoons, he might go to the gym, or to the public library, or to whatever art exhibition was currently in town. At some point in the late afternoon or early evening, before he had his dinner, Sebastien would sit down at his home computer and keep track of his many investments. If he needed to discuss something with his banker, his stock broker, or his financial advisor, he would make a note to that effect and would contact them the following morning. In the evenings, he might attend the theater, or a concert. He would read or watch television before he went to bed—early, and usually alone.
It was a tranquil existence. Many people would consider it a boring and a lonely one. Because time lay heavily on his hands, Sebastien had developed the habit of going about all of his activities with great deliberation. Impatience was foreign to his nature.
He now had more things than usual to occupy himself with during the day, because he was making the preparations for his trip. The possibility of someday making the journey to Brazil had been in the back of his mind ever since he was a small boy, because his Uncle Gilberto had settled there, and had even gone so far as to acquire Brazilian citizenship.
For Tio Gil—which was how Sebastien had always thought of him—this was a return to the Leon family’s roots. Some of Sebastien’s relatives, who moved in exalted social circles, tried to make a big deal out of the fact that one of their ancestors had emigrated from Portugal to Brazil in the nineteenth century, and had, as the standard phrase went, “served under the Brazilian emperor, Dom Pedro II.” What they neglected to mention was that this Leon had served the imperial household not in a military or diplomatic capacity, as that phrase “served under” implied, but in the stables, grooming horses and shoveling manure. “An emperor’s shit stinks—and his horses’ shit stinks—just the same as yours or mine,” was Tio Gil’s typically earthy way of putting it. “Back home in Portugal, the Leons were just fishermen and dirt-scrabbling peasants, which is nothing to be ashamed of.”
In due course, one of the stable boy’s sons went to seek his fortune in North America, where he married the hard-working, no-nonsense woman to whom the family owed its wealth. It was this Mrs. Leon—neé Abigail St
outmeier, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—who founded the baking empire which had proved to be considerably more lasting than the dynasty of Dom Pedro II.
The Portuguese are a seafaring race, which might explain why Gilberto Leon, as an independently wealthy young man, developed an interest in boating. He became a skilled yachtsman, who competed in races without becoming obsessive about winning. He preferred traveling by sail at his own leisurely pace, essentially wandering from port to port, feeling no need to stick to a preset itinerary.
It was on one of these long voyages, down the Atlantic coast of South America, that curiosity about his ancestor led him to drop anchor and explore Brazil. He fell in love with the country, and for all practical purposes, he never left it.
To Sebastien, his uncle was a romantic figure, an adventurer who had broken away from the rest of the family to follow his own star. Beginning as a teenager, Sebastien compensated for the fact that Tio Gil’s visits to the United States had become infrequent indeed, by writing to his uncle regularly—at least once a month, often every two weeks or so. Sebastien wrote his letters on his PC, keeping his uncle informed first about private school and college life, and then, after he graduated, about the not particularly compelling day-to-day routine of his solitary adult life.
Tio Gil’s replies were more sporadic, arriving in the mail about every other month. His letters were always handwritten. He had purchased what he described as a “decent-sized but very rundown and neglected” fazenda, or cattle ranch, on the large island of Marajó, at the mouth of the Amazon River, near the sea. At first this was—again, in his own words—“strictly a business investment, and probably an unwise and a risky one.” But he soon made his home on the property, and eventually made it a commercial success. He, too, wrote about his day-to-day routine, which, like his nephew’s, did not seem to vary much. A typical paragraph from Tio Gil’s correspondence might read—
Today was cooler than yesterday, a mere 92 degrees, as opposed to the 101 the thermometer hit yesterday afternoon. This morning we inseminated three cows with the frozen sperm of Tirandentes, my neighbor’s prize bull, which I bought from him. I mean I bought the sperm, not the bull, since Tirandentes himself is not for sale. Two of the ladies submitted to the operation with bovine complacency, but the third looked and acted disgusted, as though she realized that the inseminator was a feeble substitute for the real thing. She got a little frisky, and had to be restrained, but once she had it in her she calmed down a bit—typically female behavior. Speaking of the real thing and insemination, one of my office employees has complained to me that his young daughter is pregnant and that one of the young cowhands is responsible. As the boss, it is taken for granted that I must intervene in any and all such matters, and that I have extraordinary powers to resolve any difficulties. So I called the horny young rascal into my study this evening and gave him a stern lecture on morality and responsibility, which, coming from me, must’ve sounded kind of hypocritical. Then I called in the grandfather-to-be as well and informed him that I was increasing the boy’s salary, so he will now be in a position to marry the girl—who of course loves him and wants him—and set up housekeeping with her. As a result, all parties involved are now delighted, the employees have a wedding to look forward to, and we three men clinched the agreement with a round of stiff drinks. Which I desperately needed, by that point!
Gilberto Leon had never married, although in his younger days he had a bit of a reputation as a playboy and a ladies’ man, which no doubt explained why he thought “a lecture on morality and responsibility” was “kind of hypocritical,” coming from him.
And then, only three months ago, Sebastien had received a letter which, despite its casual tone, upset him.
I have not been feeling quite myself for some time. I finally let myself be talked into going to see some doctors in Belém. They checked me into the hospital there and did what the medical profession only too accurately describes as “a battery of tests”—as in “assault and battery.” They say I have pancreatic cancer, and they want me to see some specialists in Saõ Paolo to discuss the treatment options. It is all very annoying and a big nuisance, because there is always so much work to be done here, including, right now, a couple of little building projects which I had planned to supervise myself. But my people have persuaded me to make the trip to Saõ Paolo, so let’s hope for the best.
Sebastien had responded at once.
I’m so sorry to hear you have been ill. Here’s a suggestion, Tio Gil. Why don’t you come up here to New York for a nice long visit? You could stay right here in my condominium with me. I have plenty of room. We could find some specialists who might be able to give you a second opinion. You could begin your treatment right here in one of our local hospitals or clinics, surely. It would be a good vacation for you, a change of pace, and might do you good. I know I’d enjoy having you here with me, and I’m sure Mom and the other members of the clan would love to see you, too.
This latter conjecture was a bit of optimism on Sebastien’s part, because he knew that relations between his uncle and the rest of the family had been either somewhat strained or downright nonexistent, for well over a decade.
Please give it some thought. As an alternative, I could come down to visit you. I’ve always wanted to see the ranch and find out what your life in Brazil is like, and this would be the perfect opportunity. I don’t like the idea of you being alone at a time like this. I know I’m not good for much, but I could surely do something to help out.
A reply came in the mail about two weeks later.
These doctors can’t seem to make up their minds about what they can or can’t do for me. It’s all very tedious. I would love to see you, Sebastien, but I can’t quite see myself making the long trip to the States just now. As for you traveling down here, you know that you are always welcome to come here for a visit and to stay as long as you like. But it will soon be the start of the rainy season, which isn’t the most pleasant time of the year for someone who isn’t familiar with our climate down here. You might not enjoy it. And I’m hardly alone. I’m surrounded by my people, who like nothing better than to boss me around. I’m joking, of course, because they are all really good and very supportive. They’re perfectly capable of keeping things here going without my input or direct supervision. I’m being forced to admit to myself that I am hardly indispensable, after all. Why don’t we wait a couple of months to see how all this medical nonsense works itself out, and then decide?
Sebastien had written back, saying that he would do as his uncle wished—a chatty letter filled with inconsequential detail, which he hoped would distract his uncle and cheer him up.
And then, shockingly, had come the news of his uncle’s death. It arrived indirectly. Lawyers in Brazil contacted lawyers in the United States, who notified the family. Sebastien subsequently learned that the doctors had been unable to do anything for Tio Gil. He had spent his last few weeks on the fazenda, declining quickly, but had not contacted Sebastien or any of the other relatives to disclose the fact.
Subsequently, Sebastien had received a letter from Brazil. Like the letters his uncle had sent him, it had colorful, exotic-looking stamps on the envelope. A photograph was enclosed. It showed a rectangular white stone slab set flat on the ground, with the earth freshly tamped down all around its edges. The slab was heaped high with bunches of flowers, some small, some massive, in a riot of diverse bold colors washed in bright sunlight.
The letter was written on the fazenda’s letterhead, a heavy white paper with the ranch’s name—the fazenda Saõ Martinho—and mailing address, phone, e-mail, and fax numbers, all printed at the top. The text was handwritten in ink, in English, and in a large, round, careful-looking script.
Dear senhor Sebastien—
Please accept my condolences on the loss of your uncle, and excuse my English, which I know is not perfect. I take the liberty of writing to you because I know that you and your uncle corresponded regularly. He spoke of you often, and
always with great affectation. Sebastien assumed the writer meant “affection.” Many people attended the funeral Mass and burial service. No business was conducted here on the fazenda on that sad day. You may be confident that everything was done in accordance with senhor Gilberto’s wishes as convoyed—i.e., “conveyed”—to us in words as well as in writing. I enclose a photograph of the grave in the yard of the little church, in the town of Guarás, which is not far away from here. Please do not hesitate to contact me should there be anything I can do to assist you or your family.
This letter, with its occasional stiff turns of phrase and its two malapropisms—which somehow made it seem all the more sincere—was signed Joaquin Medeiros. Sebastien recognized that name. He was the fazenda’s business manager.
From the moment he read this communication, an idea formed itself in Sebastien’s mind—he must go to see for himself the place where his uncle had lived, and died.
Sebastien’s mother, Adrienne, could not understand why he wanted to travel to Brazil at this point, when the complicated process of settling his uncle’s estate had just begun.
“Why don’t you at least wait until the lawyers down there send all the information to our lawyers up here, and we find out what it says in Gilberto’s will? What’s the use of going all the way down there, when we don’t even know if he left anything to any of us?”
Sebastien tried to think of a diplomatic way of telling his mother that he could care less whether Tio Gil had left any of them, himself included, anything or not—and of suggesting that, in his opinion, the prospect of any major inheritance was pretty remote. His uncle, after all, had had more than two decades in which to forge Brazilian friendships, to say nothing of business and other relationships.
Brazilian Cattle Baron (Siren Publishing Ménage and More ManLove) Page 2