by Tim Wirkus
“If we have, I don’t remember it,” he said.
He reached back and fluffed one of his pillows.
“Hand me that book, will you?” he said.
She handed him the book that lay next to her foot, a tourist’s guide to the country’s best beaches.
“Thanks.”
As he flipped through the book, she pulled the bed’s soft, woolen blanket over her feet.
“Are you cold?” he said, looking up from the book.
She shook her head.
“There’s another blanket in the closet, I think.”
“I’m really not cold,” she said.
“Okay,” he said, and handed her the book he was holding. He picked up the atlas that lay between them and flipped to a map near the middle. He ran a finger down the page, and then stopped at a tiny dot of a city.
“Here,” he said, “Praia Negra. We stopped there a few years ago, but it was so small that we didn’t bother staying. I saw an article in a magazine that said it’s a new hotspot—they just built a bunch of luxury condos and a big, new mall.”
“Great,” she said, the travel book still clutched in her hand.
“Is everything okay?” he said.
She set down the book.
“I’d like to marry you,” she said.
“Are you sure?” he said.
She nodded. Smiling, he set aside the atlas and kissed her on the cheek.
• • •
Since it would only be the two of them, no guests, they decided on a simple wedding. Sílvia bought a lavender sundress from a shop in town, and talked Aurélio into buying a blue seersucker suit, a proposition he resisted until Sílvia convinced him he could also use it for work. On Saturday, they went to the cartório where, after a clerk determined that their papers were in order and they paid the necessary fee, they were ushered into the cramped offices of the corpulent registrar, who said he’d prefer to conduct the ceremony from the convenience of his desk, if that was okay with them. The two requisite witnesses—in this case, the clerk from the front desk and the woman who had sold Sílvia her dress—squeezed into the office, shutting the door behind them. Sílvia and Aurélio stood before the desk.
“Have you prepared any vows?” said the registrar.
“No,” said Aurélio, “we hadn’t thought to.”
“That’s not a problem,” said the registrar. “Do you both want to marry each other?”
“Yes,” said Aurélio.
“Yes,” said Sílvia.
“Okay then,” said the registrar. He signed the marriage certificate and handed it to Aurélio. “You two are married.”
The two witnesses applauded politely and Sílvia pulled Aurélio close for a kiss.
“Well,” said the registrar, “you might be expecting me to give you some advice, but I’ve been married a couple of times and it’s never gone well for me. I live alone now, and that’s the way I prefer it. So I wish you two the best of luck.”
He shook their hands without standing up and Aurélio thanked him for performing the ceremony. Then he and Sílvia exited the building to another round of polite applause from the shopkeeper and the clerk.
And so they were married.
• • •
Three years later, Junior Cabral appeared and everything fell apart. They ran into him at an ice cream shop in Vale do Ouro, a town where they frequently stayed when they weren’t working. One evening, beset by a rare case of cabin fever, they set aside their notebooks, their travel guides, their maps, and took a stroll through town. After passing by the open front of an ice cream shop, Aurélio stopped.
“Hang on,” he said.
“What is it?” she said.
They walked back to the shop and stepped inside. They found the place empty except for its proprietor, the twenty-four flavors of ice cream he had to offer, and a middle-aged man sitting at a round table in the corner with a banana split in front of him.
“Can I help you?” said the proprietor, picking up his scoop and standing at the ready behind the freezer full of tubs.
“Sure,” said Aurélio. “I’ll have two scoops of brigadeiro.”
The man at the table didn’t look up at them.
“Two scoops of floresta negra for me,” said Sílvia.
“Sure thing,” said the proprietor, and set to work with his scoop.
From the corner of her eye, Sílvia watched the man at the table, whose gaze didn’t wander from the banana split in front of him. He had the full, pointed beard of a satyr, and the thick, compact body of a dangerous man who was used to living comfortably. The spreading gray in his hair and his beard softened his appearance somewhat, rendering him, not grandfatherly—he was still too young for that—but just the slightest bit merry. On the whole, his appearance balanced on a fulcrum between jocular and threatening.
When the proprietor handed him their ice cream, Aurélio made a beeline for the table in the corner where the bearded man sat. Sílvia followed a few steps behind.
“Cabral?” said Aurélio in a hushed voice.
The man looked up at him from his ice cream, his expression noncommittal.
“Hello, Aurélio,” replied the man, just as softly. “Are you working right now?”
“No,” said Aurélio, “are you?”
“No,” said Cabral with a laugh, no longer talking softly, “we can speak freely.”
He got up from the table and extended his hand to Sílvia, who stood just to Aurélio’s side.
“Junior Cabral,” he said. “I’m an old friend of Aurélio’s.”
“Sílvia,” she said. “I’m Aurélio’s business partner.” She paused. “And his wife.”
“Very good,” said Cabral. “Please, have a seat.”
They joined him at his table. The three of them talked shop for a while, comparing notes on what kind of routines they were using, where they were using them, what kind of success they were having. Cabral admitted that he was semi-retired, running only the occasional minor scam, and spending the rest of his time living off the small fortune he had conned a bank manager out of a few years earlier. He seemed genuinely interested, though, in the routines that Aurélio and Sílvia had developed in their time together.
“That’s brilliant,” he said after Sílvia had explained one of their routines to him. “Almost makes me want to get back into the business full time.”
He directed most of his questions to Sílvia, apparently captivated by her thoughts on their profession, by her anecdotes of working with Aurélio, by her general perspective on life. He practically ignored Aurélio, who sat between them taking the whole conversation in with an unreadable expression on his face. Before Sílvia knew it, it was dark outside, and the proprietor, who had stood diligently behind the counter the whole time they were there, was now closing up his shop.
“I should be going,” said Cabral. “All the hotels here in town are booked, so I’m going to try my luck over in Porto Grande.”
“Porto Grande is two hours away,” said Sílvia. “You should just stay with us. The place we’re renting has a fold-out bed in the couch.”
“I couldn’t impose,” said Cabral.
“It would be no trouble at all,” said Sílvia.
He pulled at one of his tiny, pointed ears as he contemplating the offer.
“Please,” said Sílvia. “Don’t be silly.”
“Only if you’re sure I wouldn’t be imposing,” said Cabral.
“Of course not,” she said.
“All right, then,” he said, with an odd smile.
Within seconds of his reply, Sílvia realized she had just been conned; he had been waiting for her to invite him to stay since the conversation began. She hoped that he was just a freeloader, trying to get a few days of room and board out of an old friend, but she suspected that some murkier designs were being set into motion.
It took only a few days of hosting the legendary criminal for Sílvia’s suspicions to be confirmed. Where his behavior toward S�
�lvia in the ice cream shop had been warm and deferential, it became increasingly chilly and dismissive once he set up camp in the small apartment they were renting. Subtly at first, he began to exclude her from conversation, to pretend not to have heard her when she spoke, to position his body so that she was always out of his line of sight. And it all happened so gradually that she didn’t notice what he was doing until she found herself alone in the kitchen one evening washing an imposing mound of dirty dishes while Cabral and Aurélio sat on the living room couch drinking beers and reminiscing about the old days. The whole tableau was so trite. How had she ended up here? How had she not caught on to what he was doing before now?
Even more upsetting was Aurélio’s attitude toward Cabral. In the presence of his former mentor, Aurélio assumed a puppy-dog eagerness. He followed Cabral around the apartment, lapping up his anecdotes of recent cons, scurrying to attend to his increasingly demanding requests, nearly wetting himself with laughter at every joke or witticism that sprang forth from the man’s mouth. For Sílvia, who had grown accustomed to her husband’s hermetic self-containedness, this shift in personality came as an unpleasant jolt. Part of Aurélio’s appeal had always been his island-like individualism, and this current fawning, this apparent emotional neediness, represented a complete reversal in what she thought was her husband’s personality. Did he sincerely crave Cabral’s approval as much as it seemed? Or was he playing the older man?
Sílvia put down the plate she was washing and walked into the living room.
“I’m not going to be cooped up in the kitchen washing dishes while you two sit around shooting the breeze,” she said.
The conversation between the two men came to an abrupt stop and they both looked at her in surprise.
“You don’t have to wash the dishes,” said Aurélio. “Why don’t you sit down and join us.”
She sat down in the rocking chair across from the couch. Cabral looked at his watch.
He said, “Time for me to shower off and get to bed,” and got up from the couch.
Once Cabral was inside the bathroom and she could hear the shower running, Sílvia pulled Aurélio to the corner of the living room.
“This needs to stop,” she said. “Your friend has to go.”
Aurélio slipped his hands into his pockets and bowed his head.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I really am, but we’re in kind of a tight spot here.”
“What do you mean?” said Sílvia, hands on her hips.
“I can’t just ask him to go.”
“Why not?” she said. “Because he helped you out when you were younger? Because you learned a lot from him? I know you respect him, and maybe you do owe him something, but this has gone on long enough.”
Aurélio shook his bowed head.
“No,” he said, “that’s not it.”
He explained that Junior Cabral was a very dangerous man—brilliant, but volatile. Most people in the business didn’t like violence, but Cabral was a notable exception. He and Aurélio had parted ways all those years ago because Cabral had killed a mark when one of their scams had gone awry. And if rumors were to be believed, that wasn’t the first, or last, person he’d murdered.
“I’d love to get rid of him,” said Aurélio, “but Junior Cabral comes and goes on his own terms. We’ll just have to wait to see what he wants.”
The conversation was brought to a halt as the water shut off and Cabral emerged from the bathroom, towel around his waist, whistling the national anthem.
The following morning, Cabral made his next move. The three of them sat quietly in the living room after breakfast, conversation having died out minutes earlier.
“I have a confession to make,” said Cabral, breaking the silence.
“What’s that?” said Aurélio.
Cabral pulled at one of his tiny, pointed ears. He said that it was no coincidence that he had run into Aurélio here. Sílvia looked up from the newspaper she was reading. Cabral explained that he was getting older—not old, he emphasized, just older than he used to be—and thought he should quit the business while he was still ahead. But before he did, he wanted to pull the proverbial last big con, a con whose memory would keep him warm in the long twilight of his retirement years. In planning the job, he had decided that there was nobody he’d rather work with than Marco Aurélio. Cabral paused, allowing Aurélio to take this in.
“You can count on me,” said Aurélio after a moment.
Cabral smiled, the whiskers of his beard bristling with the movement of his face.
“Then we should get started,” he said.
Cabral looked at Sílvia.
“I’d like to borrow your husband for a few hours,” he said. “I think we have some business to discuss.”
She laid down the newspaper in her lap.
“Anything you can discuss with Aurélio, you can discuss with me,” she said.
“I don’t mean to offend you,” said Cabral, pulling at one of his tiny ears. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s just that I’ve learned over the years that too many cooks in the kitchen will ruin the dish. We may need your specific talents at some point, I’m sure, but for now, the less you know, the better.”
Before Sílvia could respond, Cabral took Aurélio by the arm and the two of them left the apartment. She considered following them, considered causing a scene at whatever quiet nook of the town they had chosen for their little powwow. Instead, she decided to stay behind and clean the apartment. If Aurélio wanted to play the neglectful husband, then she could match him in playing the sullen, neglected housewife. After mopping the tile floors, scrubbing the toilet and shower, washing the curtains and bedclothes, Cabral and Aurélio still hadn’t returned, so she picked up a book that a previous tenant had left behind—a yellowing paperback collection of crummy science fiction stories by Eduard Salgado-MacKenzie. She hated every page of it. When she finished, it was well past midnight and they still hadn’t returned. She tossed the book in the garbage, went to her room, undressed, and got into bed where she lay awake for another few hours.
Her vigil ended when Aurélio came stumbling into the room, kicking off his shoes and collapsing onto the bed in a drunken heap. He put his arm over Sílvia and tried to pull her close. She pushed him away, told him not to touch her. He told her she had to understand, they only started drinking a little while ago. Most of the day they had been talking business.
“My hands are tied,” he said, and tried to pull her close to him again.
She pushed him away, harder this time. She said that tonight it would be best if he slept on the floor, and that she wanted Cabral out of their house by the end of the week.
Sílvia slept late into the next morning and woke to find her bedroom empty. She put on a robe and walked out into the living room. Cabral was not on the couch, and all of his things were gone. She found Aurélio sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a bag of rolls from the padaria.
“Hey,” he said when he saw her walk in. “I’m really sorry about yesterday.”
She pulled out a chair and sat down. She picked up a roll, still warm from the oven of the padaria, and tore it in half. She took a bite and chewed slowly.
“I told Cabral he should leave,” said Aurélio.
Sílvia swallowed and said that that was a step in the right direction. She asked Aurélio how he was feeling. He said his head hurt like crazy. She told him it served him right. She took a drink of his coffee.
They spent a quiet morning together in the apartment. They ate leftovers for lunch, and were sprawled out on the couch when Aurélio looked at his watch and said that he’d better be going.
“Going where?” said Sílvia.
“Meeting with Cabral,” he said.
Sílvia sat up.
“I thought you said he left.”
“He left our apartment. He’s staying in a hotel across town.”
“You lied to me,” she said.
“No,” he said, “I’m
sorry you got that impression.”
He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.
“I’ll be back in time for dinner, okay?”
“No,” she said. “This isn’t okay with me.”
He asked her what about it she wasn’t okay with. She asked if he was serious. She said she didn’t trust Cabral and she didn’t like being left out of things like this. Aurélio said he was sorry. He said that he couldn’t explain now, but this was the way he needed to play things. He asked her to please trust him. He said he would explain everything later, and that when he did, she’d understand.
“So you’re conning him?” she said.
“I really can’t tell you anything,” he said.
“If this is a con,” she said, “just tell me, and I’ll stop asking questions. I don’t even need to know the details.”
He shook his head.
“You need to tell me what’s going on,” said Sílvia.
“Please,” said Aurélio, “trust me,” and then he left.
Their relationship had seemed so stable to her up to this point that Aurélio’s behavior stunned Sílvia. But when she stopped to consider it, what grounds did she have for surprise? How well did she really know Aurélio? And how stable had their relationship really been? As she thought back on it, their married life seemed muddled and vague, as fast-moving and empty as one of their best cons. After nine years, Aurélio remained as much an enigma to her as he had when they first met.
For the next week, Aurélio left the apartment every day after lunch, returned home just in time for dinner, and said little to nothing about his meetings with Cabral.
“What’s going on?” Sílvia would ask. “Who’s conning whom?”
Aurélio would only shake his head sadly and say he couldn’t explain just yet. After a few days of this, she stopped asking any questions, stopped giving Aurélio the satisfaction of withholding information from her. She began to keep silent in the evenings, matching her husband’s imposed reticence with a reticence of her own. They ate dinner with little to no conversation before retiring to the couch where they read their respective magazines. And then they went to bed, where Sílvia slept with her back immovably turned toward Aurélio.
