RainStorm
"It's a good choice," she said. "We make a great caipirinha."
I raised my eyebrows. "'We'?"
Her smile widened. "I'm one of the owners."
"I'm impressed," I said, looking around and then back to her.
"How did that happen?"
She smiled and said, "First, the caipirinha."
We sat near the windows, open to the air outside, in the semi-dark
of the third floor. A waiter brought us a pitcher of caipirinha and two glasses, and, as Naomi had promised, the drink was expertly
made: astringent but sweet, cold and strong, redolent of the
tropics. Unlike whiskey, with its decades of associations, the taste of caipirinha holds no memories for me.
I asked her how she wound up coming to own a place like Scenarium,
and she explained that it was part serendipity, part her father's
connections. The government was investing in restoring the
Lapa district--which explained some of the renovations I had
noticed--and was offering tax breaks to new businesses in the area.
She had some money saved, and some entertainment business expertise,
from her time in Tokyo, so her father had put her in touch
with a group that was hoping to open a bar/restaurant.
"What about you?" she asked me. "What have you been doing?"
I took a sip of caipirinha. "Figuring some things out. Trying to
get a new business going."
"Something safer than the last one?"
She didn't know the specifics. Just that whatever I did had a tendency
to put me in touch with some shady characters and that it
had nearly gotten both of us killed in Tokyo. "If I'm lucky," I told her.
"It looks like you're staying in shape," she observed.
I smiled. "Pilates."
"And you're tan. You get that dark in Tokyo?"
She was zeroing in. I should have expected that.
Maybe you did. Maybe you wanted that.
But I wasn't ready to tell her. "You know how it is, with all that
fluorescent lighting," I said.
She didn't laugh. "I'm getting the feeling that you've been in
Rio for a while."
I didn't say anything.
"Why did you wait so long?" she went on after a moment. "To
look me up. I'm not mad. And only a little hurt. I just want to
know why."
I drank some more and considered. "I can be a danger to the
people I get close to," I said after a moment. "Maybe you noticed
that, in Tokyo."
"That was a long time ago. In another place."
I nodded, thinking of Holtzer, the late CIA Chief of Tokyo
Station, and how he'd reappeared in my life in Tokyo like a resurgent
disease, very nearly managing to have me killed in the process.
Of how the Agency had patiently watched Midori, hoping she
would lead them to me. "It's never that long ago," I said.
We were quiet for a while. Finally she asked, "How long will
you be in Rio?"
I looked around. "I don't want to complicate your life," I said.
"You came all the way out here to tell me that? You should have
just sent me a damn postcard."
I had tried to resist her charms in Tokyo because I knew it
would all end badly. None of that had changed.
Yet here I was.
"I'd like to stick around for a while," I told her. "If that's okay
with you."
She offered me a small smile. "We'll see," she said.
We made love that night, and again and again on the nights that
came after. She had a small high-rise apartment near the Lagoa Rodrigo
de Freitas, just slightly removed from the crowded beaches
and trendy boutiques of Ipanema. From one of her windows there
was a view of nearby Corcovado, or Hunchback Mountain, topped
by the massive, illuminated statue of Christo Redentor, Christ the
Redeemer, his head bowed, his arms outstretched in benediction
to the city below him, and on some nights I would gaze out upon
this edifice while Naomi slept. I would stare at the statue's distant
shape, perhaps daring it to do something--strike me down if it
wanted, or show some other sign of sentience--and, after an uneventful
interregnum, I would turn away, never with satisfaction.
The statue seemed to mock me with its muteness and its immobility,
as though offering the promise, if of anything, not of redemption,
but rather of a reckoning, and at a time of its choosing, not
of mine.
One rainy morning, about a month after I'd gone to see Naomi
at Scenarium and started spending time with her, I left her apartment
for a workout at Gracie Barra. It was a Friday, and training
would be in shorts and tee-shirts, without the heavy cotton judogi. I took the stairs to the third floor, kicked off my sandals, and
stepped onto the mat.
On the far side of the
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