December Heat Read online

  Also by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

  The Silence of the Rain

  Southwesterly Wind

  December

  Heat

  Luiz Alfredo

  GARCIA-ROZA

  Translated by Benjamin Moser

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  DECEMBER HEAT. Copyright © 2002 by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza. Translation copyright © 2003 by Henry Holt and Company. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  García-Roza, L. A. (Luiz, Alfredo)

  [Achados e perdidos. English]

  December heat / Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza ; translated by Benjamin Moser.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-42343-8

  I. Moser, Benjamin. II. Title.

  PQ9698.17.A745 A6313 2003

  869.3’42—dc21

  First published in Brazil under the title Achados e perdidos by Companhia das Letras, São Paulo

  First published in the United States by Henry Holt and Company

  First Picador Edition: March 2004

  D 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

  eISBN 9781466850316

  First E-book Edition: June, 2013

  Contents

  Also by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Copyright

  PART 1

  PART 2

  PART 3

  PART 4

  PART 5

  PART 6

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PART 1

  It wasn’t the nasty words that woke the boy up late at night—he was used to sleeping with noise—but the banging on the cardboard box, a discarded refrigerator container someone had tossed onto the sidewalk a couple of days before and that had now become his bed and home. He didn’t want anyone to fall on top of him. He lay motionless, silent, ears pricked, heart pounding, until he could be sure, from the kinds of noises he could make out, that the banging wasn’t meant for him. Poking his neck out of the box, he looked around. He was careful not to make any noise: the strategy of a survivor. A drunken man was emerging from a restaurant, trying to help a bejeweled woman into a car parked little more than two meters from the box. In fact, she was the one helping him. The man, already advanced in age and in alcoholism, threatened to totter onto the box. With great effort, he lodged himself into the passenger seat, his leg dangling out the door. The woman slid behind the wheel to start the engine, at which point she realized that the key was in her companion’s pocket, and that furthermore his door was open and his leg was halfway out of the car.

  The boy was growing bored and was about to return to his sleep when he noted that the man’s wallet was dangling precariously from his back pocket, ready to be plucked. He stayed vigilant and waited. The man was vainly attempting to collect his leg; his shoe had become wedged between the car and the curb. With every movement he made to free it, the wallet trembled; the body shook, dangerously threatening to crumple onto the pavement, while its owner, huffing and puffing, tried to extricate the keys from his pocket. Unable to locate them in his left pocket, he sought them in his right; that wobbling movement caused the wallet to fall noiselessly between the sidewalk and the car. The man found the keys at last; the parking attendant arrived to offer assistance and the leg was placed inside the car, but the door could not yet be closed because the man’s body was still protruding. The attendant gently pushed against the passenger’s shoulder and, not without some physical exertion, managed to secure the door. The boy thought the man would notice his missing wallet when he tried to give some money to the attendant, but before the woman could even turn the key he had his chin on his chest and was murmuring disjointed words while drooling on his shirt.

  The car rattled off, leaving the attendant in its wake. The boy waited for him to depart, made sure no one was approaching along the sidewalk, and darted out of the box like a cobra. He could have crossed the two or three meters separating him from the curb with a normal stride, but the films he watched on the televisions in the windows of electronics stores had taught him that commandos always attack low to the ground. He retrieved the wallet and returned to the box, head still down, the wallet hidden beneath his shirt. Though it was night, there was still enough light to examine the contents. He counted the money. Three fifties, five or six tens (he couldn’t tell exactly), one five, and two or three ones. In the other parts of the wallet there were credit cards, a checkbook, and a small plastic object upon which, with difficulty, he made out the word POLICE, in red. He was paralyzed by surprise for a few seconds. His first impulse was to get rid of everything immediately. Everything except the money. He wasn’t fool enough to walk around with a policeman’s I.D. in his pocket, but neither was he crazy enough to throw money away.

  Even at that hour, there were plenty of people on the block; if he discarded the wallet someone would find it soon enough. He waited for the right moment, emerged from the box, and tossed the wallet just far enough away that he would be able to see who picked it up. People coming out of the bars and restaurants on the Avenida Atlântica, couples, groups of kids: all walked by without noticing it. The boy wondered whether it was too dark on that part of the sidewalk. He came out again and nudged the wallet out to where it was more visible. He went back to the box.

  When he saw the man approaching, he had no doubt that he would be the one; he walked and looked like someone with nothing to lose. In fact, he saw it long before a normal passerby would have; he stepped up his pace, glanced around, bent over skillfully and gracefully, grabbed the wallet, and stuck it in his pocket without examining it.

  The boy didn’t like it. After all, the wallet was a little bit his: he was the one who had thrown it back there, and he didn’t like that it had been picked up by this particular guy. He left his box and followed him, maintaining his distance. The man walked toward the Avenida Atlantica, the direction he’d come from, turned the corner, and sat on the edge of a long cement bench that was empty at that hour. He pretended to be tying his shoe while he looked around. When he was sure he wasn’t being watched, he took the wallet out of his pocket, glanced around once more, dumped the contents out on the bench, and examined them one item at a time. He looked carefully at the checkbook and the credit cards before happening upon the police I.D. He attentively scrutinized both sides of it, placing it in his own wallet. He put the checkbook and the credit cards in his pants pocket. After sticking his finger into every compartment of the wallet, he tossed it underneath the bench, got up, and walked away. His stride had changed.

  There had been a woman, but he didn’t remember what happened to her. He was lying in his own bed in his underwear, the shirt he’d been wearing the day before, socks, no shoes. How he had gotten there, and who had tak
en off his pants and shoes, he had no idea. He could have come back by himself, taken off his clothes, lain down in bed, and fallen asleep immediately. And the car? He didn’t remember driving home, just like he didn’t remember the woman. It wasn’t the first time this had happened. Alcoholic amnesia, they called it. He had nothing against it, except that it blotted out the good times. He didn’t remember the woman, or what happened—the good part, in fact—and he didn’t know how he’d ended up back home. He couldn’t have been brought back by a stranger, since his wallet didn’t list his address anywhere. His wallet. He looked around for it and saw his pants crumpled at the foot of the bed; when he bent over to pick them up, his neck could hardly support his head. Things were a little fuzzy, and only with great effort did he manage to reel in his pants. He checked the pockets, but there was no sign of his wallet. He sat at the edge of the bed, his head throbbing horribly, and looked around, examining the dresser, the bedside table, the floor, the chairs: nothing.

  He tried to stand up, managing it only by holding his head with both hands, grumbled, and noticed that his mouth was stuck shut. With great effort, he walked to the living room, only a few steps away from his bed. He didn’t know what he was hoping to find. In any case, he didn’t find anything, or at least anything different. He went back to his room, crossing in the direction of the bathroom. His effort to urinate into the bowl was a disaster. He looked at himself in the mirror above the sink, passing his index finger along his doughy face. He took off his clothes and got in the shower. The cold water didn’t help his headache; it only added a little thermal shock to his body’s general distress. He hadn’t yet recovered enough balance to be able to dry himself standing up. He returned to the bed, supporting himself by pressing one of his hands against the wall while the other dragged the towel along the ground. He sat down and remained motionless while waiting for his head, which seemed to have stayed behind in the bathroom, to rejoin his body. He sat long enough to dry off without resorting to the towel.

  He was almost certain that it was Saturday, or maybe Sunday; he was sure that it was the weekend. After a lengthy hesitation, he went to the door to get the newspaper. It was Saturday. The clock in the living room read twenty past twelve. He knew it was twelve noon and not twelve midnight because of the awful light coming through the window. The minute hand of the clock moved quite a ways before he reached a decision between lunch and breakfast; the latter seemed more prudent. When he was getting dressed, he noticed that he didn’t have a belt. It wasn’t on the pants he’d worn the night before, and he couldn’t find it anywhere in the room. Maybe he’d been in a motel; where else would he have left his belt? He got another one from the wardrobe, finished dressing, took the money he kept in case of emergency—and this was an emergency—made sure he had the key to the apartment, got to the door, and only then noticed that the key to the car was also missing.

  Drinking his coffee at the corner bar, he tried to summon some recollection of the night before, but the most he could scrape together was a hazy image of Magali and the restaurant. Though the image was unclear, he thought it could only be Magali. He had to transform the supposition into certainty, however; the wallet could be with her, though he couldn’t imagine why. Besides the money, the checkbook, and his professional identification, there were the credit cards he’d have to cancel as soon as possible, in case Magali didn’t have the wallet. This, however, he only managed to determine with some modicum of clarity after the second cup of coffee, a cheese sandwich, and two aspirin. He had to go back to make the call. He hoped desperately that the woman was Magali.

  Back in the apartment he rummaged around one more time, without success, before making the call. The phone rang fifteen or twenty times. He hung up and called the credit card companies to report his lost cards, hoping that no one had bought a refrigerator or a color television or a fresh wardrobe for the next season. He called the woman again. No one answered. It occurred to him that he could look for his wallet in the car. Maybe he’d been in too much of a hurry to cancel the cards. What if the wallet had fallen onto the floor of the car? He didn’t remember where he’d parked; he didn’t even remember taking the car. He looked out the window. The street was narrow and curved just beyond his building; the car wasn’t visible, but perhaps it was parked past the curve or on the next street; spaces were tight in the area and the building didn’t have a garage. He left the apartment, walked down the street, went around the block, checked out the next few streets. No sign. He couldn’t forget to call the bank about the lost checkbook, which couldn’t have had more than ten checks left, but the credit cards, the car … his head started to throb again. He returned home and took another aspirin; he would have to wait till Monday morning to tally up all the damage and losses. He called and ordered a pizza that he didn’t manage to eat; when the delivery boy rang up from downstairs, he was fast asleep.

  He woke up in late afternoon, dazed from sleeping so much but free of his headache. He lived on the border of Copacabana and Ipanema and Magali lived near the Túnel Novo, at the other extreme of the district, at the border of Copacabana and Botafogo, but he was determined to find her and try to figure out what had happened. Since she wasn’t answering the phone, he assumed that she was just as bad off as, or even worse off than, he was.

  The vibrations of the taxi had his stomach churning; a cheese sandwich was no substitute for a proper lunch. While he was crossing Copacabana, he reflected for the umpteenth time on the possibility of giving up drinking. Eating, drinking, and fucking: the three best things in life, although not necessarily in that order, as he liked to say. If he eliminated one, there would still be two left; narrowing it down to one would suggest that his days were numbered. He knew that giving things up went along with aging, but he wondered why he would bother living without life’s main pleasures. If you could call that a life.

  As soon as the taxi pulled up to Magali’s building, he had his first pleasant surprise of the day: his car was parked a few feet away. Intact. He got in the elevator, confident that he would find his wallet with his checkbook, credit cards, and documents. It was a seedy, rundown old building of almost two hundred efficiencies. At least the elevators seemed to work. He rang her bell so many times that the neighbors started to complain. He went down and sought out the doorman. No, he hadn’t seen the woman from 918 since the previous day, and no, he hadn’t seen her come back this morning, the night doorman was someone else, his shift started at ten, it wasn’t even eight yet. He asked for a piece of paper and wrote down his name and phone number.

  “Hold on to this and give it to the night doorman. As soon as she gets back, tell her to call me, no matter what time it is.” He reinforced his request with a ten-real bill. Even though his car was parked at the door, he still had to take a taxi home.

  He ate in a pizzeria near his house, the same one that hadn’t been able to deliver the pizza he’d ordered for lunch. He tried to pay for both of them but the manager wouldn’t hear of it; they had known each other since the place first opened. He went back to his apartment before ten, just as a film was coming on television, a police flick he’d seen a few times but wouldn’t have minded seeing again. Watching television was one of the few activities that didn’t put his physical limits to the test. The film was almost over when the phone rang. He answered immediately, assuming it was Magali.

  “Hello!”

  “Vieira?” A man’s voice.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Espinosa.”

  It took him a few seconds to get his mind off the woman and the film and focus on the phone call.

  “Espinosa?”

  “Yes.”

  “Espinosa! My God, it’s been a long time! How are you doing, old man?”

  “I’m fine. And you, buddy?”

  “Never as good as you, but I’m getting by. Where are you these days?”

  “After the police evaluations I was transferred to the Twelfth Precinct, right near my house.”

  “You d
eserved it. But what’s up, old man?”

  “Vieira, are you going out with a girl named Magali?”

  “I am, or at least I was until yesterday. I’m not sure if she got rid of me or if I got rid of her. I still haven’t managed to find out. Why? Is something wrong with her?”

  “More than that. Can you come to her apartment?

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  “Damn, Espinosa, what’s going on?”

  “I’d rather talk about it face-to-face.”

  He had made up his mind to follow the man and find out where he lived. The clock on the corner showed 2:06; the temperature was twenty-five degrees Celsius. Leaving the Avenida Atlantica, the man went back up the Rua Santa Clara, walking a little hurriedly, hand in his pants pocket, probably caressing his find. The boy followed at a careful distance. He didn’t need to walk far; at the next intersection the man turned right onto the Avenida Copacabana and entered a building whose ground floor had a little bar and a few small shops, all closed at that hour. The entrance to the building lay behind a grate, squeezed into a corner right next to the neighboring building. The man used his own key; the building didn’t seem to have a night doorman. The boy crossed the street and looked up, checking to see if a light would come on in one of the windows. Nothing happened. At least he knew where he lived, and that it wasn’t an apartment that faced the street. He went back to his box.

  It wasn’t a good idea to stick around; they could come back, ask around, and eventually turn him up. The earlier he left, the better. He didn’t need to move far; he didn’t even need to go to a different neighborhood, just a different spot. People couldn’t tell street kids apart. He made sure he had the money in the pocket of the shorts he was wearing beneath his pants; he picked up the piece of canvas he placed on top of the newspapers he slept on, took one last look at his box, and abandoned his bed and home.

  He walked on the Avenida Atlântica toward Leme until he reached Fernando Mendes, a small street near the Copacabana Palace with old buildings, ample doorways, and generous marquees, great to sleep under. The Italian café, open until the morning hours, was a good resource for food during the night. He had hung out there when he was younger, waiting by the cars in front of the restaurant for a group of four or five customers; as soon as they went in, he’d take advantage of the open door to slide in between the people, slipping past the watchful owner and waiters. Once he was inside, he’d crawl up, practically on hands and knees, to the biggest table and ask for food. Almost always, before getting kicked out, he’d manage to get his hands on bread, olives, salami, and if they took too long getting rid of him, he could even get a piece of meat or a dessert. When he’d gotten a little bigger he’d had to modify his strategy: a plate of food in exchange for not disturbing the restaurant’s peace or letting some friend do the same—which hadn’t been that hard, since he didn’t have any friends. Now he was back. He knew the place well. He tried to hide the change of clothes he had brought and once again made sure the cash was stashed in his shorts.