Tony Bellotto: Rio Noir

“I would rather talk about you.”

“No, no, tell me about her. What she does in life, for example.”

“She’s a beautician. She has a small salon in Recreio.”

“She must be pretty. Beauticians know how to take care of themselves.”

“She’s not ugly, but in any case that’s not important.”

“I think I’m very naïve around men,” she says. “I get involved too quickly and end up disappointed just as quickly.”

“But you can trust me. It’s different. I’m truly interested in you, I’m not like that other guy.”

She smiles and covers our hands with her other hand. I pat it. I caress her wrist. I feel her bones, the texture of her delicate skin.

“My mother,” she says. “My mother was also naïve with men. With you, for example, she was an idiot.”

I jolt back at that odd statement.

“She died because of you,” Renata says. “But you didn’t know, of course. She was pregnant when you disappeared.”

“Your mother was pregnant?”

“Yes, my mother, Simone, who liked to do tarot readings — isn’t that what you told me? Who died in a car accident many years ago.”

I take my hand away quickly. Suddenly, everything is wrong. A well-conceived plan that remains a theory. “I don’t know if I understand.”

“No? I’ll explain,” she says. “My mother was pregnant when you went away without even leaving a phone number.”

“Our relationship was on the rocks, I wasn’t—”

“But that’s not something you do. You knew she might be pregnant.”

Renata opens the tarot box, unwraps the deck, then carefully folds the purple silk cloth. She shuffles the cards, takes one out, and places it on the table.

“The Fool,” she says. “The card with no number.”

“If she was pregnant like you say, was she pregnant... with you?”

“She died in a car accident, that’s what they say. The truth is she crashed on purpose. Because of you. And she died, but I didn’t. She was pregnant when she had the accident. The accident she caused to kill us both. Exactly twenty-eight years ago.”

There’s nowhere for me to look, so I stare at the card of the Fool on the table.

“I was raised by my aunt, who tried every way possible to get in contact with you, unsuccessfully. You had disappeared.”

“Simone was a very complicated person. I had tried to break up with her before, and it was always a drama, she would show up at my building, stalk me, and—”

“You knew she might be pregnant.”

I remain silent. Words have fled in disarray. What Renata says is true: Simone’s sister did call me once, as soon as she and I separated. She said Simone might be pregnant. The test still had to be done, but it was possible. At that moment, in desperation, I considered sticking with Simone for good. A child with her! That was when I accepted the job in Belo Horizonte. Years later, I was told that Simone had died in an accident, but I never found out the details, nor did I want to know. First came the shock, then I confess to feeling a certain relief. There must not have been a child at all, or I’d have known about it. Wouldn’t I? We always end up finding out about those things sooner or late, right? Sooner or later.

“The Fool has no number,” Renata says after my long silence. “Sometimes they attribute the number zero to him. Zero is the number that alters no addition. In multiplication it transforms everything into itself. It absorbs the other numbers. Look, in the deck I use, the Fool is unwittingly walking toward a cliff. But it’s a good card. I like the Fool a lot. See how he’s carrying a flower in his left hand? That means he appreciates beauty. And his carefree walk is as happy as a child comfortable in the world. Notice that he also carries a staff, which can represent self-denial and wisdom. The Fool always operates outside of social norms and will usually say and do whatever comes into his head.”

She slides her finger along the edges of the card. Her nails are nicely manicured.

I think about the number 12 card, the Hanged Man, in an uncomfortable position, dangling upside down by one foot. A burst of noise comes from outside, and through the window I see pigeons taking flight. Suddenly a wave of intense nausea hits me, and only then, looking at my empty cup and Renata’s, still full to the brim, do I understand the severity of my mistake. I dash to the door, which is unlocked, and from there to the elevator, which takes a long time to arrive. When the doors open, it’s empty.

I press the button for the ground floor. Stabbing pains shoot through my stomach. I need someone to take me to the nearest emergency room. I stagger through the gallery, and when I make it to the sidewalk I see a boy distributing handbills: I buy gold, immediate payment . People look at me. Then Largo do Machado goes dark, and I see nothing more, not the pigeons, not the old men, not the flower kiosks, not the gypsies — but they left a long time ago.

Leme

It was Ronald Biggs who popularized the legend of Rio as the preferred destination for gringo fugitives. It’s like the photo printed on the calendar hanging on the wall of the Black Cat: the smiling thief at the beach, a caipirinha in his hand, surrounded by mulatto women, signing autographs for tourists. Right. But when you screw up in Rio, where do you run to?

Toned cougars are my favorite target. Married ones, of course. Married toned cougars, MTCs for short, are the goal. Separated toned cougars, or STCs, latch onto you and won’t let go. STCs are a problem. All you have to do is look at them and they come on to you. MTCs are foxes, STCs are ticks. The hard part is that when you approach them you have no way of knowing at first if the toned cougar is married or separated. Fox or tick, that is the question. Later you end up getting the hang of it. Today I can separate the wheat from the chaff. Toned widows (TWs), I’ve never approached. They exist but they’re hard to find. They’ve probably let themselves go in relief once they’ve lost their husbands. So I’ve never stung a TW. As a matter of fact, you could say I got stung by one, but that’s an unpleasant subject I’d rather not go into at present. Toned widows are spiders. Maybe when they become widows they stop going to the beach and the gym and start frequenting church, all-you-can-eat restaurants, and the van that chauffeurs old ladies to the theater. They can finally do what they always wanted, without having to worry about staying in shape for the deceased. Not all of them, unfortunately. Maybe I should have gone to church more and less to the beach. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Too late now.

The beach is the natural habitat of toned cougars. And of all the beaches, Copacabana is the mother lode. Of all the mother lodes, Leme is the filet mignon. I don’t know exactly what a mother lode has to do with filets, but if you want to meet a top-of-the-line toned cougar, go to Leme Beach. I didn’t discover these things overnight. I developed a model, the fruit of observation and reflection. I’m a PhD, philanderer highly distinguished.

Or rather, I was.

The story begins with me making a complete survey of the situation: I would kick off the day by jogging from the far end of Leblon to the hill at Leme. I would wear a tight Speedo to emphasize the size of my middle leg and trot along the sand like a wild horse. I would run from Leblon to Arpoador, turn around at Diabo Beach, make a pit stop to tone biceps and triceps, cross Garota de Ipanema Square, and continue trotting along the bike lane of Francisco Otaviano. Back on the beach, I would go from the Copacabana Fort to the end of Leme, alternating between soft and hard sand to stimulate different muscles in the thighs and calves. Arriving at the foot of the hill at Leme I would do two hundred push-ups. That gave me an incredible form: thick footballer legs, a swimmer’s pecs, a gym rat’s washboard abs, lung capacity like Anderson Silva, and a tan that would be the envy of Kelly Slater.