Rubem Fonseca - Winning the Game and Other Stories

Her name was Belinha, she was eighteen, she liked me because I was an outlaw, and because she knew my hard-on was for real. She despised those guys who take pills to get it up, said she couldn’t love a man who faked it like that. And she sucked my cock and I made her get on her knees on the bed and I sucked her pussy; she got off on being sucked like that. I would stick my tongue in there, and sometimes she’d ask me to put my nose in. Her pussy was fragrant and I would stick my nose in. I forgot to say that besides a large cock, I also have a large nose. Then I’d ram my cock in and she would come; that was the beginning.

She didn’t know the kind of work I did, she thought it was something to do with smuggling or drugs and asked to see my tools and said she liked being an outlaw’s girl, but I couldn’t explain my job to her; I myself didn’t really know what was behind it all. The Dispatcher would call me and say he had a job and give me the file on the customer, sometimes it was some important guy whose name was in the newspapers. I’ve even done foreigners. I was well paid, trustworthy, proof of which were the false teeth in my mouth, the scar on my face, and my busted right hand with fingers bent like thick pieces of wire.

My girlfriend came from an important family rolling in dough, was educated in the finest schools, and spoke French. She called herself Belinha or Isabel or Isabella or Belle. I preferred Belle because she was the most beautiful girl in the world. We were in my apartment waiting for the time to go to the hotel where I was going to meet the customer. Lying in bed after fucking, she said, “Explain that stuff about pistols and revolvers, the difference.” I said that in a revolver the bullets are in a cylinder we call a drum, each cartridge has its own ignition chamber, and after each shot the cylinder rotates, bringing a new cartridge into alignment with the barrel. There are six-cartridge drums, the most common, and nine-cartridge, depending on the size of the revolver. A pistol, like the Walther semiautomatic P99, has a clip with cartridges that slides into the handle, and after each shot the empty cartridge is ejected and a new cartridge is loaded from the clip and placed in position for firing.

She also wanted to know why I used a pistol and not a revolver, so I explained, while she held the Walther as if it were a dead rat, that pistols were smaller, lighter, and more reliable, and besides, a pistol allowed the use of a silencer. “This fucker screwed into the barrel of the pistol is the silencer. There’s no such thing as silencers for revolvers—I mean, there is, but they’re bulky mothers that enclose the drum and make the weapon too heavy. Nobody uses them, they’re a museum piece.”

She also asked what I felt when I snuffed a guy, and I answered I didn’t think about anything, just like a soldier in war. The difference is that I didn’t win a medal when I killed the enemy.

I put on a coat, and she dressed in some high-class women’s clothes, and we went to the customer’s hotel and waited in the lobby for the guy to arrive. Belle was an elegant girl when it came to dressing, sitting, speaking. Anyone who looked at her would say: This is a well-born girl from a good family. That’s why I told her I’d beat the hell out of her if she got a tattoo like she’d been talking about doing.

My appearance is nondescript: I’m a thin guy with a big nose, an inoffensive look, hair starting to go gray. Wearing that dark suit I looked like an insurance salesman. The Dispatcher had told me the customer was going to a meeting away from the hotel and should be back around nine that night. I had two pictures of his face in my pocket.

Then the customer showed up. I was a bit surprised to see him, not much, I’m an old whore and don’t really get surprised. But the guy was in a wheelchair, being pushed by a young woman who looked like a nurse. That fucker the Dispatcher hadn’t told me the customer was a cripple.

“Wait here for me,” I told Belle, and got into the elevator with the nurse and the crippled guy.

I got out on the same floor. The corridor was empty, I could snuff the two of them right there, but my jobs are always done intelligently. I took a paper from my pocket and pretended I was trying to read something on it, while looking nearsightedly at the numbers on the doors and following the wheelchair. I waited for the nurse to open the door of the apartment, and when she went in, pushing the wheelchair, I went in too. Her eyes widened, but before she could make a peep, I shot her in the head. I always go for the head.

“Take it easy,” said the customer, facing me with both hands palms outward. He was in the business, he looked me in the eye. “We can make a deal, I’ll pay you more,” he said.

I fired two shots into his head. Then I unscrewed the silencer, stuck the Walther in my belt, the silencer in my pocket, and left, shutting the door. I got in the elevator and went downstairs. If I was lucky, it’d be some time before they found the pair of stiffs.

When I got to the lobby, I took Belle by the arm and we left. No one looked at me, anyone looking in our direction would see only Belle.

I got in the car and said, “Let’s go to the lake.” But when we arrived at the lake, I didn’t have the heart to toss the pistol in the water. Shit, a Walther P99, the best thing to ever come out of Germany.

“Let’s go to the movies,” Belle said. We went to see a detective film; she was crazy about detective films. If someday she ever cuckolded me, it’d be with a cop.

We got out of the theater at midnight and Belle said she wanted to go dancing at the discotheque. But first we stopped at my place, and I put away the Walther, after patting it like it was a puppy.

At the discotheque Belle led me to the floor right away to dance. Watching her dance was mind-blowing, but I danced shaking like a dead tree branch in a high wind. Then we had a drink, and she asked what I thought when I saw I was about to kill a cripple. “Nothing,” I answered, “and you, what did you think?” She said she thought it better to kill a cripple than a healthy guy who could dance and do aerobics on a treadmill.

When we got back to the apartment, Belle, in bed, said she wanted to talk to me about something serious. Her father was threatening to cut off her allowance.

“Fuck your father’s allowance, I’ll give you the money,” I said.

“But that’s not all, he’s so pissed at me that he says he’s going to leave everything to charity, so that when he dies I won’t inherit a penny.”

“Fuck your father’s money, I’ll support you.”

“Man, it’s a lot of money,” she said. “I think it’s very cruel. I’m only eighteen, I’m going to last at least another sixty. Can you imagine sixty years in poverty?”

“I’ve already said I’ll take care of you,” I insisted.

She looked at me pensively and said, “Sweetheart, I love you, but who can guarantee that you—in the business you’re in, that you’re, you’re …”

She stopped, and I finished the thought for her: “Who can say if I’m going to stay alive for long, isn’t that it?”

She answered, “That’s it, I’m very sorry, but that is it.” Then she gave me lots of little kisses and told me she loved me, and added that she had a proposition for me.

“Leave it till tomorrow,” I said. “Let’s go to sleep. It’s almost dawn, and if day breaks I can’t get to sleep.” I took off my clothes, stripping down to my undershorts, and got into bed. She remained seated in the armchair.

When I woke up, Belle was still sitting in the chair.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, “can we talk now?”

“Talk about what?”

“My proposition,” she replied.