Secrets of the Apple (25 page)

The next morning Ryoki dutifully settled into the back of the car, thinking of all the work he was shirking and mulling over three or four gentle excuses that would get him home by noon. He couldn’t imagine there could be that much to see, aside from the occasional monument or postcard plot where tourists could take pictures without a backdrop of dull steel and mildewed concrete that gave the city its bitter aftertaste. Kate climbed in beside him and quickly tucked her loose dress around her knees as she leaned up and asked their driver to drop them at the Consolação Metrô station. “My old stop,” she said, sitting back happily. Ryoki rubbed his chin, moaning in his head. Not a city tour but a private stroll down memory lane. “I told the staff we wouldn’t be home for dinner,” she said, propping an elbow on the door and twisting her hair with her finger. Ryoki looked out the window. Maybe he could turn an ankle, or better yet, break a whole leg.

They emerged from the subway blinking in the bright sun at the Praça da República and wandered through the vendors’ stalls where Kate had once purchased, for unbelievably cheap, the large ugly fish fossil that now graced Brian Porter’s office, though it probably belonged in a natural history museum. The market had been greatly diminished since Kate was there last so they didn’t linger, but headed for the crowded retail district across a wide street. Ryoki was checking his watch when Kate stepped off the curb, her attention drawn unaccountably to her sleeve. Ryoki jerked her back, his heart in his throat, as a little gray hatchback whizzed by. “For someone who believes she has only one life, you sure are careless with it,” he said, biting back a yell.

“Don’t worry, I’m easily replaced,” she said with an embarrassed laugh, pulling out of his grip and flicking off the fascinating distraction, a medium-sized bug shaped exactly like a leafy-green seed pod with legs. She’d just made a joke and he knew he should be a sport and laugh it off, but his pulse still raced from the fright and he stood staring at her until she gave him one of those movie star smiles and turned to look both ways. He frowned behind her, irritated that she would say a thing that made him sound so heartless. How on earth would he face Brian Porter, or even his own father, if he let her come to harm? But by the time they’d reached the other side of the street, Ryoki’s heart had calmed and he remembered that her own cousin Tom had warned him of her carelessness. He shouldn’t take offense at a joke. He checked his watch again. An hour and fifteen minutes since they’d left home.

On the other side of the street he took one look at the wide array of garage-style stores and knew instantly that nothing within a mile radius held a drop of interest for him. They paused to watch a young man performing
capoeira
, a kick fighting style developed by slaves in Brazil’s colonial days and disguised as a dance to fool the overseers. Ryoki dropped a few bills in his begging box, arrogantly certain he could take him, should the need arise. Then Kate drew him to a little shoe outlet and pointed to a row of brown shoes all exactly the same but bearing different labels. “Lots of shoes are manufactured in Brazil,” she said. “I discovered this place at fifteen, and when I got back to the States and saw my friends spend their whole allowance on a pair of the ‘in’ jeans, I wondered whether there was a store somewhere in Indonesia with two hundred pairs of the same pants, all with different labels.”

The eager shopkeeper swooped down, but took a step back when Ryoki asked to see something in a forty-six. Not to be deterred, the little man went into the back and brought out a dusty box containing two tan shoes, one a full shade darker than the other—“
Bom preço, bom preço
,” he insisted in lisping Portuguese. Kate smiled and pulled Ryoki out of the store before he could get smart alecky.

Outside they wandered aimlessly through the square among carts selling cheap Mickey Mouse ties and polyester scarves, skirted past a little Arab restaurant that Kate couldn’t bear to enter because she’d once seen a clerk throw up on the floor. She explained the bored and silent men paid to weave through the crowd carrying homemade picket signs covered in small photographs and squiggly Magic Marker, a last hope for the families of the missing.

Kate was not an efficient wanderer. By now he knew that in Napa Valley she had been on her best behavior, politely sticking with him, no trouble at all. This was the real Kate, the one easily distracted by bright shiny objects or interesting passersby, looking at everything, buying nothing, wordlessly veering off, leaving Ryoki talking to thin air or frantically turning in circles trying to divine in which direction she might have vanished. It wasn’t that he needed her to cling to him, but in that distracted state she lacked the wary skills of a city dweller, and seemed surprised by anyone who approached her, as though she had no shred of peripheral vision, an all-around easy mark for pickpockets, or worse. The fourth time she disappeared he threatened her with a choke collar and a leash, but she shrugged him off with a “
Phfff
,” and was immediately distracted by a teenager with large open sores on his bare feet. “Look how he moves,” she said softly.

“Kate, big city, third-world country—” he said, giving her a meaningful look.

“Wow, déjà vu. You and Tom, same place, same exact words.” Ryoki made a whine that sounded something between a moan and a yodel. “I’m
paying attention,
you
need
to trust me,” she added.

“We’ll go faster if we go in a straight line,” he said, making an effort not to check his watch. Kate’s mouth quirked into an indulgent smile and she began walking quickly as he loped beside her, taking two steps to her three. Seeing the sidewalk fly by under his feet made Ryoki feel better, like they were getting somewhere for a change, and by the time they reached the Municipal Theatre he felt upbeat, certain they’d reached one of her landmarks, a major photo op she could check off her list.

He could see why the theatre drew her. The magnificent stone building reminded him of the Paris Opera House and stood out like an antique rose in a modern cement garden. Kate had a thing for interesting old buildings and sometimes went to the Paulista to have a banana turnover on the balcony of the old stone mansion, painted pink and converted into a McDonalds.

Once they had stood here and there, snapped a few pictures and duly pronounced it all lovely, Ryoki pulled Kate next door to an ordinary squat McDonalds devoid of glamorous pink balconies. “Did you see anyone throw up in here?” he asked.

“Last time I was at this McDonalds, the New York City Ballet was performing at the theatre and I ran into a ballerina and—I don’t know what you’d call a guy, ballerino maybe,” she said, one corner of her mouth wrinkling in disgust. Ryoki had been instructed that the term was
danseur,
according to an old girlfriend, a French dancer so besotted with her own legs that she had little attention left for him. “He was trying to order in crummy Spanish and acted like I was a bug when I tried to help him,” she added. He let “ballerino” stand.

They ordered sodas and took them outside where they walked down a long flight of stairs to a huge dry fountain set against a concrete wall and erupting with snorting fiery horses in full gallop.

“When I lived here the homeless were thick as flies in the city, completely overwhelming, especially here in the Centro.” She threw her arms wide. “This whole place smelled like a urinal. We called it the tinkle fountain.”

By the time they headed back up the stairs, Ryoki figured they had pretty well mined the area of its attractions and intended to hail a cab to take them home. Instead Kate seemed disposed to walk, speaking less and less, without wandering off at all. They walked a long way over sidewalks made of small smooth paving stones, laid by hand in black and white stripes or waves over dirt long since out of level. Eventually she stopped to buy a packet of mints wrapped in green paper from a vendor’s cart and sat on a step in front of a garage-style shop front, locked tight with a heavy metal door, identical to hundreds he’d seen in São Paulo. “I believe this is the heart of the city,” she said, popping a mint in her mouth and offering him the pack. Ryoki looked every direction for some sort of bronze plaque marking the city’s exact geographical center so he could snap a quick photo to be deleted later. Then they could move on to a good restaurant for a late lunch. Finding no such marker, he turned to Kate, taking a mint from the shiny green package and looking for some clue that she was ready to go. Instead she patted the space beside her with a sort of settled look, like she needed the breather. “Ten years ago this place rocked my world,” she said. “Let’s just rest for a minute and look around.” He nodded, his shoulders slumping. He sat quietly on the concrete step, hoping he wasn’t going to spend the rest of the day with dirt smudged across his backside.

“Would you believe I was once in a band?” she said shyly. “It was just some kids from school and we practiced in an empty shop near here, owned by somebody’s cousin, because nobody’s mother wanted us in the house.”

A car thumped by interrupting all talk, stereo blazing out all its windows, four well-dressed young guys in sunglasses turning up the bass. Two women walked past giving Ryoki the eye as he twisted in vain for a comfortable position on the cement step. Kate watched everyone as though memorizing for a test.

“Almost every day I saw these two neat old ladies who liked to spend their days down here in the shade on this step, doing their mending and watching the world go by.” The corners of her mouth turned up as she spoke, her eyes focused somewhere in the middle of the street. “I remember four little kids between five and ten playing with their kitten on an old mattress, screeching and carrying on until one of them almost fell into the street and the ladies yelled at them to find their mother and started shooting dirty looks at that sweets vendor over there for letting his kids run wild, just like my grandma would have done.” Kate rubbed her packet of mints until the top two fell on the ground and she began worrying them with her heel until they’d been crushed to powder.

“One day I stayed late at band rehearsal after everyone else had left, trying to work out a tricky part on the keyboard and lost track of time. When I got out it was almost midnight and drizzling. I had money for a cab, but I knew my mom was going to be mad anyway and I wanted a new dress, so I decided to walk a few blocks to the bus stop.” Ryoki groaned inside himself, not an ounce of self-preservation, probably only escaped so far by the grace of the angels.

“Coming around that corner there, I found the grandmothers sleeping right here under our feet, side by side on their backs, faces to the rain, no pillows, one blanket underneath, one on top.” Kate looked up at Ryoki. “I never suspected. The homeless were thick as flies, but these ladies never asked me for anything and they reminded me so much of my grandmother that I never suspected, not once.”

Ryoki looked at her face, unsure of what he had just heard. “They lived here, right here?” He wanted to jump off as if he’d stepped on a grave.

“I was so stunned I just kept going. A block and a half down there I found the children, all alone, no adult anywhere. They’d dragged their mattress down behind that newsstand there and slit the cover so they could crawl inside, one kid on each corner, with the kitten on the outer edge.” She stopped scuffing the mints into the pavement and hunched forward, chin on her hands, impassively watching the traffic. “Didn’t have a phone, didn’t know who to call. I don’t know who would have come anyway. The homeless were everywhere back then. You had to make peace with the fact that there’s nothing you can do or you’d lose your mind just walking down the street.”

Ryoki leaned back, imagined himself swooping down, overcoat flapping cape-like behind him, a wad of money in his pocket and help on speed dial. The image thrilled him, made him feel like a man for exactly four seconds, until a black car sped past blasting irritated honks at a slower driver. No time to gawk at the sidewalk.

Ryoki saw himself in the backseat of that fast car, tinted windows, instructing the driver to hurry, blind to all but the numbers on his laptop. A brutal truth.

“I bet you left them your cab fare,” he said. It would be like her to give up her new dress.

Kate nodded almost imperceptibly, blew out a long breath. “But I should have wrapped my coat around the littlest. I never saw them again and for the last ten years I’ve been wondering why I didn’t think of it.”

* * *

That night Ryoki lay in bed staring at his book, a standard espionage thriller with lots of page-turning action and requiring only minor mental engagement. He’d read four pages and couldn’t remember a single word. His mind kept drifting to Kate’s face as she sat on that stoop and told her story, her expression bland and her voice controlled and quiet. He had a sense she’d shared something complicated and important about herself, but it frustrated him, like the time he’d gone boating on a clear glassy lake and one of his buddies had accidentally dropped a platinum Rolex over the side. It didn’t look far to the bottom, so all four of them dove over again and again, pushing further and further until they thought their lungs would burst, but not one of them ever got close to the watch.

At that moment the power dipped, making the lamp flicker and Ryoki tossed aside his book in annoyance. Too tired, over-thinking a good day. Besides, the next morning his friend rented scuba gear and rescued the watch. It was left to him by his father and was outrageously valuable. Definitely worth the effort.

T
he following Wednesday a Mr. Katashi Morias entered Ryoki’s office, wearing a fastidiously pressed light grey suit and carrying a folded newspaper under one arm. He bowed a traditional Japanese greeting and held out his card before taking the chair Ryoki indicated. Ryoki took his card in both hands, laying it on the desk before him as he tried to place where he had seen his unexpected visitor before, though he was certain he’d never met a member of the
Polícia Federal.

“I believe you attended our president’s reception last night,” Morias said, speaking Japanese with a heavy Brazilian accent. There was something in his expression that reminded Ryoki of Detective Gordon in Las Vegas, although the two men looked nothing alike. He and Kate had been roped into going to last night’s fundraiser, Relief for Somebody or Other, one of those slick and shiny events that always made him wonder how much relief went to Somebody and how much to the Other. He mentally flipped through the night’s packed blur of faces, dark jackets, bare feminine shoulders, hands he’d shaken—Ah, there was Morias, attached to the president’s personal security detail. They’d stood near one another for about ten minutes, but had never spoken.