Ellen Datlow - Off Limits

“That’s what I feel that fucking Argentine is doing to me,” she said, nodding toward the dead animal.

Thessinger followed her gaze as the old man caught their eyes and leered. He lurched over to the car and raised his other hand. It held a clear plastic bag containing the monkey’s head. He swung it against Thessinger’s window and laughed.

“He’s gonna cheat her,” Estela said. “But you already know that.”

Thessinger said nothing as the car pulled slowly away.

In her room at the Luxor Copacabana they found Deborah lying on her back on the bed with two bullet holes showing neatly in her white, cotton vest; her head was turned sideways and her eyes stared sightlessly toward the open window.

“Oh shit, man,” Estela moaned. Deborah’s close-cropped hair and pale skin gave her the appearance of a delicate child. An empathy she didn’t understand made her wonder what was the last thing Deborah saw.

Thessinger moved to the bed, checked for a pulse, then began to go through the room, turning out drawers and suitcases. “Quickly,” he said, “we can’t wait around.”

Estela said, “That cocksucking bastard.”

Thessinger said, “He left the parade about half an hour after her. Said he had to get things organized at the café.”

Estela sat on the edge of the bed and stroked the dead woman’s face. “Poor bitch deserved better than this.”

“It’s too bad.”

“I told you he was gonna cheat her.”

“There’s nothing here to connect him with this,” Thessinger said, as he moved around the room. “We better go.”

“No,” Estela said, bitterly. “He can’t get away with it.”

“Yes, he can,” Thessinger said. “Just forget it. I have to get you to Berlin.”

“I don’t go before I see him,” Estela said. “She was a friend.”

Thessinger threw up his hands. “There’s no time. You don’t know where he’ll be.”

“With Cledilce. Listen, Rudy, there’s a place I know up in Rochina. I wanna take him there.”

“Okay,” Thessinger said, wearily. “I’ll bring Cledilce and meet you there.” He took a small handgun from inside his shirt and held it toward her. “Take it.”

She stared at it for a moment, confused. Was this really what she wanted? Then she picked it up and stuck it in her bag.

She found Griffiths at the apartment, in bed with Cledilce. Both were unconscious from drink. “Hey Juan,” she said, shaking him.

“Huh,” he said, pawing at his eyes. “Estela? Where you been?”

“With Rudy. He straightened me out, said I owed you.”

“What about the deal?”

“Later, at his hotel. First, I wanna do you a favor.”

“What favor?” Griffiths slurred.

Estela got up and searched in a drawer. She came back to the bed and told him to sit up. She popped an Aktive ’poule against his fleshy neck. “Jeez,” he said. He reached up and grabbed her breasts.

“Not here,” Estela said, nodding toward Cledilce. “We’ll go out, pick her up later.”

She took him to the Sayonara, a club on the second floor of one of the high-rise blocks in Rochina. She led him up a dark flight of stairs to a dance hall. Paint peeled from the walls and the curtains at the side of the stage were dank and shabby. A band drowsed onstage and a few decrepit Babes sat perched on barstools, painting their nails. They climbed a second flight to where an old woman sat dozing at a dirt-stained desk. Griffiths gave her money and she pointed to a door. In the room a bed with a single sheet stood in the corner.

Griffiths sat on the bed and began to remove his clothes. She kept her back to him and removed the gun from her bag. “You owe it all to me,” she heard him say. “I want you to suck me dry.”

“You didn’t have to do it, Juan,” she said, turning with the gun in her hand.

“What’s that?” Griffiths said. “You gone crazy or what?”

She saw the fear in his eyes. “You wanted it all for yourself.”

“What are you fucking talking about?”

“Deborah, you cocksucker.”

“Who gives a shit about that whore?”

“I did.”

“She’s nothing,” Griffiths said. “She’s the disease.”

Her body shook with ferocious anger as she squeezed the trigger. The bullet hit him in the stomach and smashed him flat on the bed. He groaned and, with an effort, pushed himself up on one elbow. “You fucking bitch whore-cunt, you can’t kill me,” he said, his face a mask of incomprehensible rage as he pawed at the bloody hole. “I fucking own you. It’s impossible for you to kill me. Fucking impossible.”

“Yeah?” Estela said, then emptied the gun into his head. She ran downstairs and out into the street, where Thessinger was waiting in a taxi. He told the driver to take them out to Galeâo airport and it was only when they were aboard the shuttle waiting for takeoff to Paris that she remembered Cledilce.

“Where is she?” she asked him.

“The cops were there before I had a chance to get her out,” Thessinger explained.

“What are you talking about? How the fuck did the cops find out?”

Thessinger sighed. “The Luxor is a big hotel, Estela, full of Americans and Europeans. If someone’s shot dead in one of their rooms, then they have to be seen to be taking action if they don’t want to lose business. So the cops make more of an effort than usual.”

“But how did they get to Cledilce?

“They must have found an address or something.”

“Jesus,” Estela said, seeing that that made sense. “They’ll pin it all on her. We can’t leave her to answer for this.”

“Someone has to.”

“They’ll kill her,” which was probably true. But what could she do without Thessinger’s help? “I owe her everything,” she said, weakly.

“We’ll protect her. Now think of yourself—you shot someone. I’m saving your ass. Remember that, remember in the future how much you owe to me.” He talked continuously, trying to soothe her, holding her as the shuttle took off, telling her about all the wonderful things the future held. But Estela de Brito was no longer listening. Her thoughts had turned inward, searching for whatever it was that had motivated her to do what she had done. She needed that hatred now, that strength. For a long time she searched, but there was nothing there, only the sweet temptation of flight, and of Paradise.

Thessinger plays Satie’s Gymnopédies on the piano as Heinrich enters the room to inform me that Cledilce Macedo will meet me for lunch at the Kopenhagen. Patterns of fear distort my perceptions, undermining the solidity of my bones. It’s difficult to distinguish between the past and dreams. This morning I dreamed I awoke to find the sheets scarlet with blood and instructed Heinrich to burn them.

“You must go,” Rudy tells me, but I ignore him because he does not know how the dream will turn out. “She can’t harm you.”

“Harm me?” The idea both attracts and repulses me. “I never dreamed that.”

Rudy smiled. “I never took you for a dreamer, Estela, a sad romantic clinging bitterly to the wreckage of what never really was.”

Is that what I am now? A broken fairy doll? “My dreams are all of the disease,” I tell him.

“We’ve talked about that before. You have nothing to worry about.”

“Why has she come?”

“I don’t know,” he lies, shrugging his shoulders; it’s what gives him away. He’s been lying to me for a long time.

“You knew she was alive all this time?”

“We were unable to maintain her contract at the time. It lapsed and someone else bought her option.”

Over the years I’ve grown to despise Rudy. It’s more than the fact that he and Spengler never sent for Cledilce, more even than hollowness of this life to which he brought me. I ask, “You think she knows what happened in Rio?”