Tony Bellotto: Rio Noir

I take a raisin from the plate, put it in my mouth, and chew. Sweet. The wedding ring on my left hand bothers me.

“It’s very rare for me to come to Largo do Machado,” I continue. “My life these days is all in Recreio and Barra, but that afternoon, two weeks ago, I happened to be here on business and started thinking about Simone, my ex-girlfriend. When a boy handed me your leaflet I thought I should come, as a kind of homage to her. I don’t know. It’s as if something made the decision for me.”

Renata gets up and goes to the window overlooking the square. “We never know the reason for certain decisions,” she says. “It’s as if they were made not by us but by some entity, something external.”

I rise and go over to her. “There’s something I have to tell you, Renata. Forgive me if it seems rather sudden. But I haven’t been able to get you off my mind since the first time I was here.”

She doesn’t turn to look at me. I see her in profile and the tension is obvious in her face. The situation isn’t easy, she knows I’m married, but I don’t want to come across as rash, just one more guy trying to get her into bed. (I imagine there must be many, and I don’t even know if she’s in a committed relationship. She probably is.) I’m genuinely interested in Renata, although beyond that nothing is clear to me.

I find myself thinking again about the Hanged Man, card number 12, thinking about fate, indecision, self-denial, sacrifice, the possibility of changing one’s life.

How pretty she is. I run my hand lightly over her hair, and she doesn’t move away. I’m about to kiss her, but then she goes back to the table and begins putting away the deck of cards.

“I’ve thought a lot about you too,” she says, her eyes averted. “But we have to give things time, everything’s happening too quickly. I think it’s best for you to leave now, and we’ll agree to meet again soon. There are so many things in my personal life that I have to resolve, so many things.”

“Will you call me? I’d love for you to call me,” I say.

I give her my cell phone number and, on my way down, float in the elevator like a young boy. I’m coming back for a reading as soon as possible. I’d come back tomorrow if I could. I’d come back in half an hour.

Self-denial, sacrifice, indecision. That night I make love to my wife thinking furiously about Renata. Rather, I don’t make love at all, I try to identify love in the act but after twelve years our love has become a digression. Marriage Inc., for the sake of the children. Exactly when is it that we sign on the dotted line? Or is it that we don’t necessarily sign, that the agreement is by default, one more decision something else makes for us?

My situation is the most common in the world, and I know it. I’m a man in his fifties who’s fed up with life and his family, dying to experience something different. But I ask myself, is it possible my wife is fed up too? She must be. Impossible for her not to be.

I think about the tarot cards again when I awaken — imminent moment when it will be necessary to knock down old structures , said the Tower card. It all makes sense. I need to see Renata right away.

Three days later she calls me in the afternoon and asks if I have a minute. I close the door to my office.

“Of course, we can talk.”

“I’ve been thinking about the two of us. I think we need to see each other again,” she says.

I imagine Renata in my arms. I want to get to know her, find out everything about her, but we can begin like that, with her in my arms. I remember the T-shirt clinging to her body. I think about my hands touching her breasts, lingering there. Over the shirt, under the shirt, and the rest, calmly. I imagine the cloth grazing her nipples. Afterward we can decide what comes next.

“Can you come next week?” she asks.

“Of course,” I answer. “Of course I can.”

“On Tuesday I have clients until seven. Come right after that, we’ll have time. Is that possible?”

I make up an excuse at home and arrive at Largo do Machado almost an hour early on the appointed day. It’s hard to calculate the time it takes to travel around Rio de Janeiro, even more so when you have to cross the entire city. And I can’t afford to be late.

Unlike my last two visits, today’s weather is good. Largo do Machado is back to normal. The game tables are all occupied, a dozen people take turns on the exercise equipment, others sit on the edge of the dry fountain. Hordes of pigeons on the Portuguese mosaic stones. I don’t remember who once told me that the name Largo do Machado came from a butcher shop with a large ax, or machado , on its façade that used to be there, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. I remember that a street kid once assaulted Simone with a piece of broken glass as she was leaving the ATM beside the supermarket.

I kill time by walking around the square, think once again about visiting my old building only to once again decide against doing so: my past holds no appeal. Especially today. I prefer to stop for a few moments and watch a young man play the saxophone. You didn’t see that when I lived here. Largo do Machado is much more together than in my time, even with the beggar sleeping by the fountain. In certain parts of Rio you’re used to beggars sleeping in the street, and what can you do? I buy flowers for Renata at one of the kiosks.

I wait until a bit past seven and go up.

“How good that you came,” she says when she opens the door.

“It was great that you called,” I answer.

I hand her the flowers and embrace her, smell her perfume, but I know I have to proceed slowly. I sense that it must be that way with Renata.

Today there’s no tarot deck between us. By now, however, I have begun to think of the cards as accomplices. I’m ready to change my life. I could be an adolescent with a backpack, clutching a one-way ticket to somewhere.

Renata offers me the usual tea, bringing the teapot with hot water and the small box with tea bags for me to select. We sit at the table, the tarot silent in its packaging — the deck is wrapped in a silk cloth inside a wooden box, just like before.

I put my hand on Renata’s. She doesn’t draw away. She begins talking about her life, her gentle voice in harmony with her gentle eyes. She speaks of her work, then finally of her heart. She has someone, as I imagined, a boyfriend, of some years, but things aren’t going well between them. From the moment I came in for the initial reading, she says, she felt a special connection between us.

“But I was involved with a married man before and suffered greatly,” she warns.

Let’s go to bed first and then think about the rest, I feel like suggesting. We’re in Rio de Janeiro in the twenty-first century, we need to test-drive relationships before thinking about anything else, don’t we? Instead, I say I’ve been married for twelve years and it’s not a happy marriage. There’s almost no sex between me and my wife anymore. So often, people stay together only because of the children, I add. I feel like an idiot saying this, but she nods in agreement.

“It was like that with the other man I was involved with. I liked him a lot. Except that in the end he wanted to stay married. Most of them do.”

Another classic story, I think. I decide I’m going to rid myself of the classics once and for all, and it’s going to be now.

“I have to be very careful with men,” Renata says in a slightly more confrontational tone.

I smile. What an adorable girl. “No need to be careful with me,” I say.

“You’re married. It’s the same story.”

“Marriage isn’t forever. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?”

“Tell me about your wife.”