Idra Novey - Ways to Disappear

Not the offspring of a shadow.

Not terrified to ask their mother about that shadow and equally terrified that he might never have a chance to ask her.

And Marcus, tall, slinky, jewel-eyed Marcus, was not waking every morning alone.

He was not obliged to stare across this table at their mother’s translator, so sated and aglow she might as well have hung a sign around her neck that said I JUST HAD SEX WITH YOUR BROTHER. IT WAS SUBLIME.

While her author’s children argued, Emma kept her head lowered and tried her best to be present yet invisible. The table that the waitress had given them was wobbly, the legs tipping back and forth every time Marcus or Raquel put their hands on it. Even a week ago, Emma would have quietly tried to steady it for them to stop the banging, but she didn’t now. Marcus was adamant that they call their relatives in São Paulo, but Raquel said they wouldn’t give that kind of money. She said their mother hadn’t been in touch with them for so long. Marcus tilted the table and said the alternative was to give Flamenguinho’s messages to the media and see if the coverage scared him into backing down, but Raquel told Marcus he was naive. She said the media made a soap opera of kidnappings all the time and it changed nothing. The news in Brazil, she said, was run by a bunch of union-loving idiots. Marcus asked her not to launch into one of her tirades and she told him to go to hell.

In the tense silence that followed, Emma kept her eyes down and her hands on her lap. She couldn’t think of anything to offer and knew they were not going to ask anything of her either, which left her free to panic about Miles landing in Bahia in nine hours. From there, he’d make his way to her hotel and then to her room. These were facts she had yet to relay in Portuguese to her author’s son.

She heard Marcus push back his chair. Anyone else want a caipirinha? Emma wasn’t sure she could stomach alcohol this early in the day but she nodded yes. In Marcus’s absence, she became more acutely aware of Raquel’s foot or knee, something of hers, tapping frantically against the table leg.

When the breeze sent Emma’s napkin sliding toward the edge, Raquel pinned it to the table like a bug. You should’ve called me the second he arrived, she said. He’s my brother.

But it was two in the morning. It was so late.

Did you show him my mother’s pages?

I told him about them, but I—

Give me the manuscript.

Raquel snatched it from Emma’s hand before she could place it on the table. Let’s make something clear, okay? If my mother never surfaces, you can find someone else to cheat on your husband with and some other book to translate. This is my family.

Emma opened her mouth to say that she wasn’t married, that she would be devoted to Beatriz’s work for the rest of her life, when something happened inside the café. Several large men had entered, their movements so dark and swift it was as if a colony of bats had taken over the entrance.

Something screeched.

Somebody shouted.

By the time Emma and Raquel rushed inside, all that was left of Marcus was a tall glass shipwrecked on the bar in a spill of caipirinha. On the floor, a scatter of ice and lemons.

Rocha summoned a waiter to remove his caipirinha from the table. The lemon rinds were caked with dirt. Outrageous. Didn’t the Aram Yamí wash its fruit properly before serving it? Did they have no standards of basic hygiene?

I’m so sorry, sir, the waiter said.

Rocha turned his face away, disgusted, until the offending glass had disappeared. In these few hours left in Salvador before his flight back to Rio, he’d felt increasingly furious with himself. Only a floundering, desperate man would travel all this way to find a writer he hadn’t published in twenty years. He’d never been able to cajole Beatriz into doing anything she didn’t want to do. No one could. She’d only written to him now for his money. He had no reason to believe she’d give him a manuscript just because he’d paid for her hotels, or that she even had a finished manuscript to give to anyone.

He’d been correct to schedule a flight for this very afternoon. Until then, perhaps he’d take a walk down the street for a box of mints. He needed to do something that bordered on exercise so he wouldn’t have to lie to Alessandro when he returned.

In the lobby of the Aram Yamí, he stopped at the reception desk to ask, just one more time, if anyone had stopped by.

Sim, Senhor Roberto, the receptionist said. Two women came by about half an hour ago and asked for you to call them at this number as soon as possible.

The receptionist handed over an envelope with the Aram Yamí’s ornate logo on it and a folded-up Post-it inside, with nothing on it but numbers. At last. They’d found Beatriz.

A rubbery feeling filled Emma’s head as she reentered the Aram Yamí. At the reception desk, she had trouble recalling Rocha’s first name and then stuttered as she said her own. Beside her, Raquel was weeping and making frantic calls on her cell. In the elevator, Raquel’s phone stopped getting reception, and she clutched Emma’s arm like a blind person.

They could be hacking off my brother’s ear right now, Raquel said. He could be bleeding to death as we’re standing here in this elevator. Maybe they’ll leave him in the trunk of a car until he suffocates from the heat.

That’s not going to happen, Emma assured her, as if they were speaking about a book she’d been teaching for years. As if there weren’t anyone as reliable in a kidnapping as a devoted translator.

The elevator dinged.

Its single wooden panel slid open.

In the blue, carpeted quiet leading to Rocha’s room, Emma thought of her own hotel room, of Marcus’s clothes waiting for her, draped over the chair and on the desk, of his toothbrush beside the sink, his mother’s novel still face down on the page where they had stopped reading it this morning. Of Miles arriving, impossibly, in five and a half hours.

Emma, keep going. It’s not that door.

I just need a second.

But Rocha had heard them and stepped out into the hall. It’s fine, take a second, he said. Nothing wrong with a little hesitation before hitting up a man for his fortune.

Hesitation:From the Latin haerere, to adhere or cling. A delay due to uncertainty of mind, as in: The translator didn’t hesitate before taking on her author’s next novel, or before declaring her life’s work was to further the recognition of said author, an identity she adhered to until, in a certain hallway, she hesitated.

Rocha’s room was immaculate. He hadn’t left a single garment in view, no voluminous pajamas on the bed, not a single sock, not even a pair of shoes on the floor. Besides the bed, the only places to sit down were two stiff, paisley-printed armchairs. Rocha sank into one and Raquel the other. Raquel had been the one to insist that they meet here, in Rocha’s room, to be sure no one could eavesdrop. With both chairs occupied, Emma was left hovering slightly to the side of the conversation. It was not an unfamiliar position or one without benefits. Present but unacknowledged, she was under no pressure to speak. This didn’t mean she couldn’t, however. Or that, timed right, her influence couldn’t prove significant, even pivotal.