JOHNNY GONE DOWN (18 page)

I picked her up promptly the next day in my yellow Volkswagen Beetle, ignoring Marco’s advice of renting a limousine. (‘She should peer into my soul instead of the make of my car, shouldn’t she?’ I teased him.) However, I did prepare for the date by getting invites to the film premiere of a director she had recently done an advertising film with. He had been compared to Federico Fellini (probably by himself) but I happily sat through the pregnant pauses, stilted dialogues and dark shadows, enjoying her presence next to me. She had taken care to dress for the date, I noted with some optimism, but she didn’t turn to look at me even once during
the screening. She felt nothing for me except a little curiosity, perhaps, and that was fine since I was no Orpheus or Romeo myself. I was probably attracted to her for reasons much more rational than emotional.

I was surrounded by boundless generosity and a primal intellect in the favela, but I missed the superficial trappings of the privileged background I had grown up in. She represented these for me - someone who travelled the world for leisure, not survival; whose interest in the arts wasn’t tinged by the pornography of violence and who had not seen enough hardness to completely blunt her appreciation for all that was good and beautiful in life. No, it wasn’t love, but it was good enough to work for someone like me - a dishonest man in a dishonest world; a morally ambiguous observer of a morally ambiguous universe.

‘What a charming place!’ she said as we entered a small, nondescript café off Copacabana after the film ended.

‘It gets better as the evening progresses,’ I said. ‘Soon it will turn into quite a vibrant Samba haunt.’

‘I’m surprised I’ve never been here,’ she said, looking around at the solid wooden tables and soft lighting in the sparse, comfortable room.

‘Rio’s best kept secret.’ I smiled. Known only to well-heeled drug lords who like their anonymity, I almost added.

‘Did you like the film?’ she asked.

I wished I could tell her that I appreciated the low camera angles and the flickering shadows, but I was too old for pretences.

‘Why make a film when you have nothing to say?’ I said.

It sounded harsher than I intended. She looked at me evenly with hard, unsmiling eyes and then broke into sudden, kind laughter. She touched my hand.

‘I remember thinking you were cute and earnest,’ she said. ‘That’s all I really recall from the flight.’

‘I remember a lot more,’ I said, holding her hand.

She pulled away. ‘So… you didn’t like the film?’ she asked.

‘I liked watching it with you.’

My pulse was racing. Had I moved too fast? I didn’t know how to court a woman. I had never courted a woman. In the favela, men and women sized each other up, they didn’t romance.

She locked glances with me for a long moment, then looked down.

‘I’m not ready for a relationship,’ she said.

‘I didn’t ask for one.’

‘I figured,’ she said. ‘What with Maria, Lucia, Regina, Carolina, how would you have the time?’

It was my turn to be surprised.

‘Calm down.’ She smiled. ‘I haven’t been stalking you. My team does a background check on anyone I meet.’

‘Impressive,’ I said. ‘But didn’t they tell you that none of them mean anything?’

She nodded, then exhaled. ‘Our worlds are too different.’

‘We are collaborating on a project,’ I said.

‘I’m surprised about that. Donos don’t like women to work.’

I grimaced. ‘I am not a Donos.’

‘And they don’t like women with a history. I am not pure like you guys want your women to be. My affairs with other men are known to everyone.’

‘I’m not a street thug.’

‘And they leave their women once they have kids.’

‘Stop!’ I said. ‘I’m not an illiterate goon. All the businesses I run are legitimate. It’s a long story, and not one that a background check would easily uncover.’

‘Still, we are from different worlds,’ she repeated. ‘You didn’t even grow up here. You come from nowhere, it seems.’

‘Aren’t you moving too fast?’ I said.

‘I’m too old to play games.’

‘I’m a year older. Don’t you remember?’

‘No.’

‘Well, then, to answer your question, I didn’t grow up in Brazil, not even close,’ I said. ‘But I’ve lived in a world without boundaries. Everywhere I go, I’m surrounded by kindness. A friend from
Estonia saved my life, an American monk nursed me to health, and now in Brazil, I’m learning how to live. I believe in a world that knows no boundaries. People feel, people care, people love, people hurt; everywhere I’ve gone, it’s been the same.’

She leaned closer and brushed her fingers lightly against my cheek. ‘You’re different,’ she said softly.

I pulled away. ‘I don’t know about that. I think I’m attracted to you because I’m compensating.’ I told her my theory about men who chased models and actresses to make up for their defects.

She threw back her head and laughed.

‘By that logic, every pretty woman would be single because all the guys chasing her would be jerks.’

‘Isn’t that why you are alone?’

‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘Or maybe I’m the one with issues.’

‘You don’t have issues.’

‘How well do you know me?’

‘Perhaps the bigger question is, how well do
you
want to know me?’ I asked.

‘I’m sorry for being such a bitch.’

I laughed. ‘You were very warm when I first met you.’

‘I’m different outside Brazil,’ she said. ‘Here, I’m jaded - too many rich, empty men.’

‘I may be empty but I’m not rich,’ I said. ‘One out of two isn’t bad.’

She smiled. ‘No, it isn’t. You are different,’ she said. ‘You’ve known suffering, you have seen pain.’

‘I’ve also known love,’ I said.

The music kicked up a notch just then and couples began to descend on the small dance floor.

‘Are you going to ask me to dance?’ she said.

‘Remember how you negotiated the contract terms? You are better at getting your way, you should ask me.’

‘May I?’ She stood up, barely a couple of inches shorter than my six-foot-three.

She danced expertly and I managed to keep step, though my moves were rough and unsophisticated, an outcome of dancing to the adrenalin fuelled, gunshot pumped favela funk, where the intent of dance was to couple. But she guided me, initially at arm’s length, and soon closer, my torso touching hers, her fingers running through my hair, our hips moving in rhythm.

‘This is technically our third date. Do you know about the third date rule in Brazil?’ she whispered, her lips touching my ear lobes, as the music slowed down.

‘I’ve only been on first dates in Brazil,’ I said.

‘But they ended like third dates, didn’t they?’

‘I need to tell you something,’ she said as we lay naked on the soft couch in her Ipanema apartment.

We had made intense, unhurried love; fumbling in the beginning as we both tried too hard to please each other, then relaxing enough to enjoy ourselves, until finally there was no pressure to give or get, satisfy or be satisfied, control or be controlled.

‘So do I,’ I said.

‘I don’t care about your past.’

‘Nor do I.’

‘Then what did you want to tell me?’ she asked.

‘You go first.’

‘No, it’s your turn this time,’ she said. ‘I asked you to dance. I made the first move on you.’

Reluctantly, I withdrew from her embrace and got out of bed. Her bedroom overlooked the sea, and I opened the window, feeling the moist breeze against my naked body.

Reflexively, I picked up my shirt from the futon and tried to cover myself. Perhaps she guessed why I did it, because she came up to me and kissed me on my ugly stump, pushing the shirt aside.

‘Don’t compensate,’ she said.

I laughed. And for the first time, I spoke about Cambodia and my despair, Ishmael’s death, losing an arm, the years in the monastery and the crushing feeling of loss and failure. I had never told anyone the complete truth - not Marco, not David, nor anyone else at the monastery or the favela. They had probably guessed parts of the story from my sudden silences or my complaints about the unbearable
pain in my absent left arm. But I’d never wanted to admit - either to them or to myself - that those two years in Cambodia defined me more than I cared to accept.

Lara listened in shocked silence. ‘I’m sorry I had to tell you this,’ I said finally. ‘But you need to know. I’ve tried to forget everything but it’s complicated, because what happened there is the reason I am here. I’d change everything, and yet I’d change nothing.’

She held me close, her eyes wet with tears.

‘Your turn now,’ I said.

‘I have nothing to say.’

‘Say something,’ I said. ‘Even the contract terms will do.’

‘What should I say? You’ve known such pain, such loss, yet you believe, you laugh, you build.’

‘I’m not one of those idiots who thinks that suffering isn’t suffering until you lose an arm,’ I said. ‘Who am I to judge anyone else’s struggles? All life is dukha, the Buddha said, everyone feels anguish and no one’s pain is any less than another’s.’

‘My pain is a modelling world cliché,’ she said. ‘I had an abusive father, who eventually found Jesus, but after taking his beatings for years, my mother couldn’t find anything except the bottle. After they died, I vowed my life would be different but I soon realized that consciously or unconsciously, I was seeking the same kind of violence in my relationships. After I was beaten one too many times, I swore off
men completely. And then you come along, a monk of all people, a man of god and peace, the sort of man I distrust the most because of my father.’

‘I
was
a man of god and peace.’ I smiled. ‘Now I’m a man of drugs and arms, if that makes you feel any better.’

‘Everything about you makes me feel better.’ She laughed. Then she became serious again. ‘I need to get over my past. I need to get over myself. Look at what you’ve been through.’

‘I didn’t exactly set out to win an award for suffering,’ I said, suddenly aroused by the soft, vulnerable expression on her usually closed face as she talked to me, her forehead creased in deep concentration. ‘But you’re right. You need to get over yourself. How about climbing on to me instead?’

We laughed and made love again, surrendering to each other more readily this time.

‘I don’t think it’s a good idea,’ said Marco a few months later, when I told him I was moving in with Lara.

‘Why?’ I said, surprised. ‘You’re the one who pushed me to meet her.’

‘I didn’t realize it would lead to this,’ he said. ‘I thought it would run its natural course after you had had her a few times. Plenty of fish where she comes from.’

‘How can you say something as crass as that when you know how I feel about her?’ I said, seething.

‘Calm down, will you?’ he said. ‘It’s just not right. No good will come of this.’

‘I’m not doing it for any good. I love her,’ I said. ‘What’s your problem really, Donos? Be straight with me. Are you feeling lonely because I’m leaving?’

‘Don’t talk to me like I’m a fucking faggot,’ he said, raising his voice. ‘After all these years, you think I am going to stop you because of how I feel? I think it’s a bad idea because you are drawing attention to yourself. First, you go and start your own business; then, you make us richer than everyone; now, you want to marry a model. Soon your picture will be all over the gossip magazines. Do you think no one is watching? It doesn’t pay to be so flashy in this business. Do what you have to, but don’t come begging to me for help later.’

‘What am I supposed to do then?’ I said, calming down a little. ‘Should I live in fear all my life just because we own a couple of stores? I have the right to live, don’t I? I love her. We want to be together. How is that anyone else’s concern?’

‘It is my concern,’ he said stubbornly.

‘Then work with me on this,’ I said. ‘I’ll be careful to keep a low profile. You know I don’t want any publicity for myself. No one will even know about us.’

‘Just like no one knows you are behind the retail
chains?’ he asked. ‘You aren’t in a monastery any more, men. Nothing is hidden here.’ He paused. ‘Besides, I don’t even think you’re in love. You are just trying to make up for lost time.’