Barry Eisler - Rain Storm aka Choke Point

Nascimento was well buffered by secretaries, and there was a fair amount of back and forth before I was able to actually get ahold of him. When I did, he told me that Naomi had left word with him about a friend from Japan, someone named John, but that this had been some time ago. I acknowledged the delay and waited, and after a moment he told me that his daughter was living in Rio, working at a bar called Scenarium, on the Rua do Lavradio. He gave me a phone number. I thanked him and went straight to the airport, smiling at the irony. All these months of avoiding Salvador, only to learn that Naomi and I were living practically as neighbors.

That evening, after taking steps to ensure that I wasn’t being followed, I caught a cab to Lapa, the neighborhood around Scenarium, among the oldest in the city. I got out a few blocks away, per my usual practice, and waited until the cab had departed before moving in the direction of the bar.

I made my way along antique streets composed of rows of cobblestones convulsed over the centuries into valleys and hillocks by the ceaseless stirrings of the earth below. A few widely spaced streetlights offered weak respite against the surrounding gloom, and passing figures appeared indistinct, insubstantial, like phantoms from the area’s colonial past, shifting in confusion among the faded façades and broken balconies, lost souls trying to locate once-thriving addresses that existed now only as monuments to dilapidation and disuse. Here and there were signs of new life-a repaired balustrade, a reglazed set of windows-and somehow these small portents made the shattered relics on which they blossomed a strangely vibrant foreground to the modern high-rises towering beyond: tenacious, more resolute, the ravaged sockets of their empty doors and windows seeming almost to smile at the prospect of the eventual passing of their newer, taller peers, who would age without inspiring any of the devotion that promised to restore these ancients to the vigor of their youth.

I turned onto the Rua do Lavradio and saw Scenarium. The bar occupied all three floors of two adjacent buildings, the façades of each suffering, like so many of their brethren in the area, from considerable age and neglect. The light and music emanating from the interior were startlingly vibrant and alive by contrast. A long queue of cars waited in the street in front, as though in awe or homage. I stood before the large, open entranceway for a moment, surprised to note that my heart was beating rapidly, remembering the concentrated time I had spent with Naomi in Tokyo, and how long it had been since I had promised I would be in touch.

I walked in and glanced around. Hot spots first, by instinct and long habit: seats facing the entrance, partially concealed corners, ambush positions. I detected no problems.

I moved inside. The interior was vast, and decorated like a Hollywood prop warehouse. Everywhere there were antiques and curios: iron cash registers, a red British telephone booth, a cluster of parasols, busts and statues, shelves of colored bottles and jugs. Even the tables and chairs looked vintage. Had it been less capacious, it would have felt cluttered.

The ceilings were high and of bare wood, the walls stone and alabaster. In the center of the room, about ten meters in, the ceiling disappeared and the room was open to the second and third floors above. Below this space, a three-man band was performing “ De Mais Ninguém ,” “No One’s But Mine,” Marisa Monte’s modern classic of choro , a style that might loosely be thought of as Brazilian jazz, given that both choro and jazz are based on improvisation and the mixture of African and European musical elements. But choro , though less widely known, is in fact older than jazz, and has a distinct and sometimes melancholy sound of its own. The crowd, clustered around warrens of wooden tables and five across at couches along the walls, was singing along passionately.

I made my way to a staircase in back, which I took to the second floor. This, too, was crowded with diners, and no less replete with ancient odds and ends, but was somewhat less boisterous than the area below.

The third floor was quieter still. For a few moments, I leaned against the railing surrounding the open center of the floor, gazing down at the band, at the patrons at the tables before the stage, and at the waiters crossing between, and felt an odd sadness descend, both remote and heavy, as though I was watching this lively scene not so much from on high but rather from an impossibly detached and alienated distance.

A waiter came by and asked in Portuguese if he could bring me anything.

“I’m looking for Naomi,” I told him.

“She’s downstairs, in the office,” he said. “Who shall I tell her is looking for her?”

I paused, then said, “Her friend from Japan.”

He nodded and moved off.

I walked over to the end of the room and out onto one of the balconies overlooking the Rua do Lavradio. I leaned against the railing, pitted and worn as driftwood, and felt the old surreal calm steal over me, the kind I always feel just before the final moments of a job, like a sniper relaxing into his shot. There was nothing I could do now. It would turn out the way it would turn out.

A few minutes passed. I heard the floorboards behind me creaking with someone’s rapid approach. I turned and saw Naomi, her hair longer than it had been in Tokyo, her caramel skin darker, and when she saw that it was me her face lit up in an enormous smile and she made a sound of almost childlike delight, and then she was in my arms, pulling me close and squeezing hard.

She smelled the way I remembered, sweet, and somehow also wild, her own scent, which I will always associate with heat and wet and tropical ardor. Her body felt good, too, petite but ripe in all the right places, and her shape, suddenly in my arms, along with her scent, flooded my mind with a jumble of conflicted memories.

She pulled back after a long moment and glanced down at what she had already felt was there, then punched me in the shoulder, hard. Her face was mock-angry, but I saw some real distress in her eyes, as well.

“Do you know how many times I promised myself I wouldn’t do that?” she asked in her Portuguese-accented English.

“How many?”

“A lot. Most recently as I was coming up the stairs over there.”

“I’m glad you didn’t listen.”

“Why didn’t you call me? Why did you wait so long? I thought that maybe you weren’t interested. Or that, after everything that had happened, something bad had happened to you.”

“You were wrong about the first one, but were almost on the mark with the second.”

“What happened?”

Her green eyes were so earnest. It made me smile. “I had to settle some things in Tokyo,” I said. “It took a while.”

“You came all the way from Tokyo?”

“I’ve been moving around a lot.”

“Are we going to keep secrets after everything that happened between us?”

“Especially after that,” I said, telling her the truth. But she looked hurt, so I added, “Let’s just spend a little time together first, okay? It’s been a while.”

There was a pause. She nodded and said, “You want a drink?”

I nodded back. “Love one.”

“A single malt?” she asked, remembering.

I smiled. “How about a caipirinha , instead?” The caipirinha is Brazil’s national cocktail. It’s made with cachaça -a Brazilian liquor made from distilled sugar-cane juice-along with lime, sugar, and ice, and I’d grown fond of the drink during my time in the country.

“You know a lot about Brazil,” she said, looking at me.

I realized it might have been safer to go with the single malt, which she had been expecting. “ Go ni itte wa, go ni shitagae ,” I said with a shrug, switching to Japanese. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.