by David Wood
One by one now he opened the warped wooden cabinets over the sink. Inside were opened boxes of cereals and baking mixes, dented cans of peas, carrots and tomato soup. All of it was covered with a thick oily muck. The sight of them made Craig’s stomach turn. He would have to fill some garbage bags and haul all of it away tomorrow.
“It’s disgusting,” he heard Amy call from the bedroom.
Craig twisted the rusted steel knob on the sink. Thick beige water flowed from the faucet, washing the cockroach down the drain. He shuddered.
Craig abhorred insects. Ever since that time in the basement.
He reached into his left pocket and retrieved the miniature bottle of Purell. He uncapped the bottle and squirted a dab into his hands. He heard Amy’s footfalls across the living room and tried to pocket the bottle before she appeared. But it was too late.
She watched him rub the sanitizer into his hands.
Her arms were folded across her chest. “Let’s call him,” she said.
“Him who?”
“The landlord.”
Craig averted his eyes; last thing in the world he wanted to get into now was this. “We don’t have his number.”
“What do you mean, we don’t have his number?”
He stepped past her into the living room, an uncomfortable feeling swelling in his chest. “Just what I said,” he called over his shoulder.
Ironically enough, he had found the ad on Craigslist. He’d emailed his interest to the landlord and received the details the following day. He had shared the photos with Amy, and when it was agreed that this was the place, he’d downloaded and printed the lease, and sent a signed copy along with a certified check to this address. This was how business was conducted these days. He had never asked the landlord for a phone number. Had never provided one himself. In retrospect, maybe he should have, but he didn’t, and that was the way it was.
He knelt on one knee and unzipped his suitcase. “What are you doing?” she asked.
He pulled out his laptop. Set it atop a small table near the window. The table wobbled; it had a crack down the middle and a gimpy leg. He reached back into the suitcase, pulled out an old Rutgers sweatshirt and wiped the chair down before sitting. The pulse in his ear intensified.
“What’s wrong?” Amy said, as the computer glowed to life. “Nothing.”
Craig knew she was bored with his complaining. With his depression and anxiety. His sleeplessness, his panic attacks in the middle of the night. His Prozac, his Xanax, his Purell. And so he didn’t share any of his idiosyncrasies with her anymore. Not since she had left him in Hawaii.
The wireless icon lit. This time Craig let fly his sigh of relief.
Somehow they had Internet service. With Amy peering over his shoulder, he typed in his password and logged onto his AOL email. He always laughed about the “You’ve got mail” now when he heard it—so long past its heyday, like a ghost, really, of its former self. AOL was still there, but barely. And yet, the email still worked and he’d had it so long he never felt like changing it.
He pulled up his mails. There were twenty-six new messages, at least a dozen of them spam.
“No, I don’t need any Viagra,” he mumbled, as he deleted the first three. “And I don’t need a penis pump or any natural enhancements.” He scanned the rest. There was one message from his agent, another from his mother. He skipped them, then deleted a few more. “Ah, here we go.”
He pulled up a recent email from Amaro Dias Silva. “What should I say?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re the writer, aren’t you? Why don’t you start by telling him this place sucks?”
He ignored her, hit reply and began typing.
Dear Sr. Dias Silva: Sorry to say the flat is not as we expected; looks nothing like the pictures we received. We’d greatly appreciate a full refund of our first month’s rent and security deposit, so that we can immediately secure another flat. Kindly drop off funds no later than tomorrow afternoon, four o’clock, at which time we will vacate the premises and return your keys. Sincerely, Craig Devlin
He hit send. He turned to Amy and said, “We should have no problem finding another place now that we’re here.”
She didn’t respond.
He clenched his fingers on both hands until his knuckles cracked. He worried her mind was already back in Manhattan. That she would take what little money she had and book a return flight to New York.
His right ear continued pulsing. “What do you say we go out and have a few drinks?” he suggested. “We’ll forget about this flat for a while and then find ourselves a hotel to spend the night.”
She sighed and looked up at the water-stained ceiling.
“Tomorrow morning,” he continued, “we’ll come back here, meet with the movers, look for a new place and rent a truck. Amaro will come by with our money, and we’ll be out of here for good before nightfall.”
Amy shook her head, but she wasn’t saying no. “I guess I could use a drink.”
A bit of dried blood had caked on her upper lip. Craig licked his thumb and rubbed it away. Then he slapped his laptop shut and stood. He helped Amy back into her sweater.
Chapter 4
The evening was crisp, the air clean. There were no New York winters in Lisbon. No New York pollution. As they walked, Amy felt along the bridge of her nose to see if it was swelling. It didn’t seem to be. She took deep breaths and smelled the sea. It couldn’t be seen, not from this deep in the Alfama. But she felt better just knowing it was there, outside the confining structures of the quarter.
After ten or so minutes they came across a small cellar-like tavern with no name. They stopped and stared down the dark stairwell that led to its door. Finally Craig shrugged his shoulders, bowed his head, and together they ducked inside.
Amy was famished but the tavern clearly didn’t serve food. Not that she would have ordered any if they had. The tavern was a dank dark place, the kind you saw in crime movies. Only about a half dozen patrons sat drinking, but it still felt cramped. Each was swilling Sagres cerveza, eyeballing her and Craig suspiciously.
She almost told him she was hungry. That they should head back out and find someplace that served food. Then she remembered him cautioning her to eat on the plane. She felt foolish and decided to keep silent.
They moved slowly up to the bar, which was a makeshift thing, something you would expect to find deep in the belly of a frat house. Behind the bar stood a long-faced old man with little hair and few teeth. He took a long pull off his cigarette and ashed on the floor, regarding them through the smoke as though they had intruded.
“Fala inglês?” Craig leaned in on the plywood, which was cracked and stained badly with what Amy hoped was red wine.
The bartender sluggishly shook his head from side to side. Then he tossed a worn dishrag over his shoulder and shuffled away.
Craig seemed unfazed. “What would you like to drink, baby?” he asked her.
Amy gazed behind the bar at the dust-covered bottles and shrugged. “I guess a Grey Goose cosmo is out of the question?”
Craig placed an arm around her waist. “We’re in Portugal. How about two glasses of port?” He raised two fingers and called to the bartender, “Vinho du porto.”
Amy felt a sudden chill burrow into her skin and settle deep into her bones. She pulled away from Craig and hugged herself tightly, rubbing away the gooseflesh. Then she felt a hand settle on her arm.
She started.
“Ola,” said the small dark man who had sidled next to her. “I speak the English.”
He lifted his hand away and smiled. Glanced past her and slightly bowed his head in the direction of Craig. Then he turned and uttered something to the bartender in perfect Portuguese.
“This wine is on me,” he said to them. His accent was as thick as the smoke wafting over the bar.
Craig shook his head and pulled a thin wad of euros from his front pants pocket. “No, obrigado. Thank you, really, but we can’t...Por
favor.” The small man held up a single hand in protest. Amy noticed that most of his right ring finger was missing. “Just these first ones,” he said, as the bartender set two cloudy wine glasses in front of them and poured.
Craig relented. He pocketed the euros and lifted his glass of Cockburn’s fine tawny. “Then thank you, Senhor...”
“Gilberto.”
“My name is Craig, and this is my fiancée, Amy.”
Amy forced a smile as she lifted her glass. She glanced down at Craig’s legs, his best pair of khakis pressed up against the bar. There were dark smudges on the left knee and on the upper thigh just below the pocket. Fine for tonight, but if they went straight to a hotel after this, they would have to wear these clothes again in the morning. They should have brought a change of clothes in one of their carry-on bags.
Unless, of course, Craig had no intention of going to a hotel.
The small man studied Amy as she sipped her port. “You are americanos, yes?”
She hesitated. Craig had been adamant about telling anyone who asked that they were both from Montreal. Particularly in the Alfama, which was historically Islamic.
But she was tired of lying. Tired of misleading her parents about Craig, of lying to friends about her future plans. Of making excuses to her superiors at the hospital whenever he had a whim to take a road trip to Philly or Atlantic City or New England. The lies over the past three years were spread out like little land mines, each capable of going off when she least expected.
“Yes,” she said brightly. “We just arrived from Manhattan.”
Craig shot her a look. She ignored the look and took one of the two bar stools that had just opened up. Craig took the other.
“Ah, the Beeeg Apple,” said the small man. “You are here in Lisboa on holiday, no?”
“Actually,” Craig said, “we just moved here. We’ll be here one year; I’m working on a novel.”
Amy took another small sip of her port and looked away. Craig had to realize she was considering leaving now, didn’t he? Especially after seeing the flat. Little did he know, she had been this close to not boarding the plane this morning at all. In fact, the entire airport experience had felt like a dream. It wasn’t until they lifted off that she fully realized she had decided to leave.
“Very good,” said the small man, leaning in closer. His breath smelled of beer and smoke and fish. “And you are staying here in the Alfama?”
“Yeah.” Craig struggled with the name of the street.
The small man, head tilted to one side, regarded them with a curious look. He glanced around the candle-lit tavern, and then spoke in a near-whisper. “The orange building?”
Neither of them answered.
Amy twisted her head when she heard the sniggering. It came from a gruff bald man hovering over Craig’s left shoulder. “Casa de...” something, she heard him mumble.
The small man looked away, peeling at the label on his beer. “Never you mind him,” he said, with a dismissive wave of his four-fingered hand. He fondled his bottle and then gulped the last of his beer.
Amy wished they had shopped around before agreeing to rent the flat. She had wanted to, considered suggesting it, of course. But then Craig had been so sure. So damned certain. And he’d at least been to Lisbon before, even stayed in the Alfama. What did she know about living in Portugal? She had never even been to Europe.
Craig broke the uncomfortable silence. “He used the word morto,” he said of the bald man standing behind him. “Isn’t that the Portuguese word for ‘dead’?”
The small man chuckled, uncomfortably. “Sim,” he said. “Yes. Diago, he likes to frighten young americanos. It is his...” He paused, glowering at Diago, searching for the words. “It is his hobby, you might say.”
Diago took a swig and muttered something to the small man in Portuguese. Then Diago dropped his empty bottle onto the bar and lumbered off into the shadows.
So this was the culture Craig so badly desired—the Old World flavor needed to season his book. A city, he’d said, without Chili’s and Fridays. Where people left one another alone. So this was his idea of paradise.
“What did he say?” Craig asked Gilberto.
Amy finished her port and set the empty glass down on the bar.
Craig did the same and ordered another round.
“He told me to tell you...something,” Gilberto said, hesitantly. “Tell us what?”
The small man took a deep breath. “To tell you about the assassinato- suicidio. The recent murder-suicide.”
He said it so matter-of-factly that Craig laughed. “At our building?”
It was Amy’s turn to shoot the look. Craig had just told this complete stranger where they lived. This strange little man with fish-breath and nine fingers, who did indeed seem a little too pleased to learn they were from the Beeeg Apple.
Then again, they weren’t going to be living in that flat anyway. They wouldn’t even be spending the night. Once they finished their drinking, she would insist they hail a cab and find some decent hotel. Then in the morning, after a long hot shower and some breakfast, she would make her decision. Whether to stay in Lisbon or return home to New York.
The small man nodded. “Otavio and his wife Isadora,” he said softly. “They lived there one week before he went maluco.”
Craig seemed to know the word. “Mad?”
The diminutive man leaned in toward them. His next words were so hushed Amy could barely hear them. “When they found Isadora,” he said, “she was in sixty-seven pieces. And still that wasn’t all of her.” His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. “The rest of her, they found in Otavio’s stomach.”
Craig drained his entire glass of port, then ordered another. It was the first time in more than two years that she had seen Craig drink more than a single glass of anything. Of course, when she met him he had been the life of the party. As hard-drinking as he was hard- working. But months into their relationship, both of those Craigs were gone. Snuffed out completely on a cold rainy night in November.
Amy had to admit she missed the socializing. Missed going out to drink with friends. After that night, Craig wanted no part of it. Had no real interest in anything other than writing his books and getting the hell away from New York. He became reclusive, almost fearful of people. He wanted to be with Amy and Amy alone.
She had felt smothered, isolated. Especially in Honolulu, far away from her family and friends. There, the burden of being the center of Craig’s universe became too great. And she came to resent him for it.
Craig said to Gilberto: “That didn’t happen on the third floor, I hope?”
The small man shrugged his shoulders and grinned. “I don’t know.
Could have been, I think.”
He theeenks, Amy thought. And realized that with her empty stomach she was already a bit tipsy. It felt good. Warm. She genuinely missed that feeling. Missed that Craig. The Craig she had met and fallen in love with. She wished that Craig had stuck around. He would have had to cut out the hard drugs, sure; she never would have put up with that. But going out every now and then and getting sloshed? That might have been just what the doctor ordered.
But no. Craig had gone from extrovert to introvert in no time at all. From a fearless trial attorney to an obsessive-compulsive writer. The day following that goddamn November night, he’d started winding down his law practice and insisting they move from Manhattan. He took what money he had, bought her a two-carat diamond engagement ring, and together—against her mother’s wishes—flitted off for Hawaii for what was meant to be a permanent vacation.
Of course, the island of Oahu was gorgeous, the condo in Waikiki everything she’d dreamed it would be. But without the income from Craig’s once-thriving practice, Amy quickly became the sole supporter. She had agreed to take on the role because she could never seem to say no. But it lasted much longer than either of them expected.
Craig was a talented writer. A brilliant wordsmith, to be sure. But even so, publ
ication didn’t come easy. Three months after first putting pen to paper, he had finished his first novel. And less than two months after that, he’d signed with a respectable literary agent. But then the rejections from the publishers started rolling in. And as the saying goes, when it rains, it pours.
The bills started piling up. Their used Jeep began falling apart. Even with a second job, Amy, a dietitian, could no longer sustain them. Craig looked for work but was always overqualified, and he simply refused to tend bar for eight-fifty an hour while simultaneously reducing his time to write. So they fell deeper and deeper into debt, Craig spurning the idea of returning to New York to practice law, where he held a license, and Amy flatly rejecting his suggestion she file for bankruptcy. The couple had reached an impasse.
The solution arrived by way of her mother. She would help pay off Amy’s debts if her daughter packed her bags and returned to New York. Right now. Without Craig.
And that’s just what Amy did. Her mother arrived in Honolulu and collected her. Together they flew back to the mainland. She left Craig with a month’s rent, some food, and a single-page note on Winnie the Pooh stationary.
But like a lost little puppy left for dead in the woods, somehow he found his way home.
Now he was on his fifth glass of port, she on her fourth. It was almost like old times. Craig swayed as he spoke to the small man. Slurred a good many of his words.
They were talking about his memoir. “It’s called Libations & Infatuations,” Craig said, lifting his glass.
It wasn’t even released yet and already Amy hated it. Of course, she was ashamed of herself for that. But all that life he’d lived without her, all out in the open for anyone to read. His drinking, his drugging, his fucking, lining the bookstore shelves as though he were some washed up rock star on reality tv. And what if his memoir became a huge success? What if they made the book into a movie?
