The Pleasure Quartet (15 page)

Astrid would be in bed now, or maybe if she had railroaded her nanny into letting her stay up late she might still be awake playing computer games. I wished that I was there with her, eating popcorn on the sofa and racing fast cars. I enjoyed her company more than her father’s, and yet, I knew that it would never be the same between us again, now that I was sleeping with him. I was her teacher, and her father’s girlfriend, not her friend, and I never would be again. I had ruined everything.

There was a soft rap at the door.

‘Yes?’ I said, quickly squishing my feet back into my shoes and smoothing down my dress, assuming that it would be Joao.

It was the dark-haired, bearded waiter.

‘Pardon me, madam,’ he said. ‘I noticed you rush in here, and thought you might not be feeling well. I brought some iced peppermint tea.’

He was balancing a tray on one hand that supported a tall glass filled with pale green liquid and mint leaves. In the other hand, he held a pair of tongs and was using them to collect ice cubes from a silver bowl and drop them into the drink.

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘that’s very kind of you.’ I stood up and took the iced tea from the tray and gulped it down. It was wonderfully refreshing. ‘Thank you,’ I told him.

He smiled at me and I was briefly tempted to give him my phone number, or even to kick the door closed behind him and lock it, and take him right there in the bath tub. Imagining the waiter naked and in bed was the perfect antidote to my visions of Matheus, and I let my mind run wild, thinking of how his long, elegant fingers would feel inside me, three or four at a time. His lips were deep red and his mouth was wide, and I pictured myself leaning over the tray and kissing him as I fondled his cock through the fabric of his formal, neatly pressed black work trousers.

‘Can I get you anything else?’ he asked me, interrupting my train of thought and bringing me back into the real world.

‘Ah, no, I’m fine. I had better get back to the party.’

I checked myself in the mirror quickly, thankful that my inner secrets did not show on my face, and walked back towards the terrace. Nobody had moved an inch during my departure. The women were still gossiping on the sofa, their voices a degree shriller, as the champagne bottles in buckets scattered around them emptied. Joao, Matheus and the other black-suited men were now smoking cigars, leaning over the white-pillared barrier that separated the suite’s outdoor area from the drop down to the hotel gardens below.

Joao looked up as I approached, and swept me against his broad chest with the arc of his arm.

‘Are you okay, darling?’ he asked me.

‘Yes of course,’ I told him. ‘Just getting some water.’

‘You should have just called out to the waiter,’ he said. ‘That’s what he’s there for.’

I shrugged. His hand slipped down inside the back of my dress, along the seam of my underwear, and cupped my arse. I was grateful that he didn’t venture further, as he would have discovered that beneath the thin covering of my plain black thong I was wet and undeniably horny. But I didn’t want Joao tonight. I didn’t want to make love, or even to have sex, like any other two ordinary people would. I wanted to have someone who knew me and understood what I was thinking and who even liked to grab me by the hair and throw me down onto the bed and fuck me hard and relentlessly until every thought in my head disappeared and I was left with nothing but a few precious moments of being totally alive.

Later that night, after we finally made our excuses and left the Palace, I asked Joao to drop me off at my apartment.

‘Shall I come up with you?’ he asked.

‘Another time perhaps,’ I told him, and explained that I was just tired, and wanted to get up early tomorrow and visit the beach.

He acquiesced without much argument, and kissed me goodnight, a quick peck on the lips.

Inside, I threw off my dress, crawled into bed and touched myself until I came, visions of past and imagined lovers flooding my brain in a stream of pornography.

I did not think of Joao once.

The heat was rising.

I woke layered in a film of sweat. And realised immediately that I had overslept. My apartment was deathly quiet, and the thick silence made me feel even hotter. Not so much as a single breath of fresh air ruffled the white sheet wrapped around my naked body. I had begun switching off my air-conditioning unit to save costs, and to avoid the low hum that kept me awake at night-time.

Outside, the only breeze that interrupted the stifling humidity against my sticky skin came from the rush of passing cars and motorcycles speeding by on the Avenida Vieira Souto. If only Ipanema Beach were a nudist colony, I would have discarded my clothing right there in the street and continued walking naked. Why had I chosen today to wear the all-over black-patterned floral dress, instead of the thin, white barely-there kaftan that I had borrowed from Aurelia and which was still stuffed into one of my overflowing wardrobe drawers? The halter-neck style I was wearing enabled me to get away with going braless, but instead of leaving my breasts bare and cool as I had imagined, the cotton fabric pulled tight against my chest and around my throat and made me just as uncomfortable as an underwire would have done.

An interactive billboard set up in the middle of the road flashing the current temperature in large orange lettering against a black background advised me that it was 43 degrees. At only ten in the morning. Joggers raced by one after another, ripped bodies glowing with exertion, smiles painted on their faces as though they were impervious to the heat. One, clad only in a pair of short, navy-blue shorts secured low on his hips with a loose white drawstring, reached his arm out poker-straight in front of him with his mobile phone gripped tight in his hand, grinned and snapped a picture. His apparent dedication to health and fitness made me crave a cold milkshake and a burger. I hadn’t yet had breakfast.

I continued to wander aimlessly, thinking of what I could do that day. It was now too hot to hike Pedra Bonita as I had planned, a task that would have necessitated rising around 5 a.m. and catching a taxi to the Tijuca National Park before the sun rose. I would be at the top now, if I hadn’t rolled over lazily and pressed the snooze button when my alarm went off. There was the National Museum of Brazil, housed in the Imperial Palace, that had been on my to-do list for ages, but my guidebook informed me that it was closed today. I had no money for clothes shopping, and my closet was already jam-packed with more evening dresses and high-heeled shoes than I had ever owned in all of my years living in London or New York combined. The cinema would at least be air-conditioned, but my brain was in too much of a heat-dazed fug to be bothered concentrating on following a film in Portuguese.

My stomach rumbled. What I really wanted was a Salty Pimp from Big Gay Ice Cream in the West Village – vanilla ice cream on a crunchy waffle cone with caramel and sea salt – or a peanut butter banana soft serve from Momofuku in Brooklyn. Even a tub of Ben and Jerry’s would have sufficed. America really knew how to do dessert. Not refined and elegant like the French did, but big and cold and sweet and satisfying. Zaza wasn’t open yet and I really needed to stop spending money in fancy restaurants and start economising, and besides, their lemon sorbet wasn’t nearly fattening enough for what I fancied right now. Beachside Rio, with all its vanity and focus on appearance, was overrun by health foods; low-fat yoghurts, fruit smoothies and juices abounded.

I would have to settle for a plastic tub of frozen açai, a deep purple-red berry mixed with ice and sometimes sugar, the latest superfood trend and consequently available nearly everywhere.

Raoul’s juice bar was the nearest. I had broken my habit of visiting there most mornings since I met Astrid and then fell into dating Joao and waking up in my own bed on fewer and fewer occasions. I never had asked Raoul out on a date as I had once planned to.

The tall, broad-shouldered Brazilian was wearing a baggy T-shirt with a V neck which revealed a small thatch of his thick black chest curls and the gleam of a gold chain around his neck. His shining black hair was loose around his shoulders. He was making a drink for another customer and turned away from me as I approached the counter, leaving me free to remind myself of the pert, round shape of his hard buttocks, his tight glutes prominent beneath a pair of white-and-black board shorts. Raoul was one of the few men I had seen here who preferred to wear loose clothing instead of muscle tees or vests and swimming trunks even smaller than my briefest knickers. There was something deeply masculine about him that appealed to me. The brutish way that he moved, his big hands slamming the plastic body of the blender into place and gripping the lid with little care for finesse or the longevity of the equipment. I bet that his cock was long and thick and his balls heavy. He would have a musky smell and a bush of unkempt pubic hair that I would delight in burrowing my face into.

‘Hey, bonita,’ he said when he noticed me standing there. ‘Haven’t seen you for a long time. Thought you’d left town.’

I was flattered that he’d noticed.

I ordered a cup of frozen açai, and settled onto the tall bar stool that sat closest to the buzzing fan on the counter.

The other customers, a young white couple, obviously tourists with their matching lightweight khaki trousers, pockets bulging with real, sun hats straight out of a camping catalogue and expensive cameras fixed tightly around their necks, wandered off, leaving the two of us alone.

Raoul flicked the cloth that he had been wiping down the drink machine with over his shoulder and leaned down to meet my eyes, resting his elbows on the counter in front of me.

‘Not taking away today? Heading for a swim maybe? Or just tanning that lovely body of yours?’

Brazilian men flattered women openly here. I did not fool myself for a moment into thinking that Raoul’s words meant that he saw something special about me in particular.

‘Too hot for the beach today, I think. Can’t face the crowds.’ I knew that the shore would be littered with deckchairs, umbrellas and volleyball players as far as the eye could see in both directions.

He nodded. ‘You should get out of the city. So many people come here and just see the Copacabana boardwalk, and Ipanema. Sing the famous song, take a few photos and drink a few bad caipirinhas, and leave again.’

‘Where would you suggest?’

‘
I can do better than suggest,’ he told me. ‘I’ll show you. There’s Ilha Grande, Lopes Mendes, the other places that are in all the guidebooks, but we can skip those. I’ll take you to places where you won’t need a bathing suit, because we’ll be the only two on the beach.’

He must have noticed my wry expression; just another pick-up line, I was thinking.

‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘I’m also a tour guide. When I’m not working here, behind the bar.’

‘Oh.’ That explained why he spoke English like a native.

‘I could come on one of your actual tours.’

‘If you want to drive around slowly with tourists in matching pale beige outfits snapping photos of every cocada stand they pass in the road, sure. Half of them can’t walk fifty yards without wanting to sit down and rest.’

I laughed.

His eyes twinkled when he smiled, animating his whole face. It had been a long time since I’d met a man who made me laugh. Not since Dominik. Joao was serious by nature, and even Antony, my ex-lover and theatre director, had been too much of an arty sort to spend a lot of time joking around.

‘Besides,’ he said, ‘if it’s just the two of us, we can take the bike.’ He nodded towards the road and I followed his gaze in the direction of a sleek yellow Ducati motorcycle.

‘Is that yours?’

‘My pride and joy, although she’s getting old now. Bought her off a British guy a few years ago, who rode her all over Brazil. Reconditioned the engine, bit of body work and a friend did the paint job, and she’s good as new. You ever ridden a bike?’

‘Only traveling pillion. Not for a long time though.’ In my late teens in New Zealand, I had dated a half-Japanese man who rode a red Suzuki and we had spent a week touring the Queen Charlotte Sounds on his bike. I still remembered keenly how badly my buttocks ached after spending long hours in the saddle, and how much I enjoyed wrapping my arms around my boyfriend sitting in front of me, and pressing my breasts against his back.

‘Good. It’s settled then. I have a spare helmet. We can go tomorrow if you’re free, it’s my day off.’

‘I’m free,’ I said. Actually, I was supposed to be teaching Astrid violin in the afternoon, but I decided then and there to give her a call and pretext a headache.

A lanky teenage boy clad in just a pair of trainers and neon-orange speedos appeared alongside me and asked Raoul for an abacaxi and mint juice, one of my favourite combinations.

Raoul seemed openly annoyed by the interruption.

‘Tell you what,’ he said, keeping the tall youngster on my right waiting for his drink, ‘meet me tonight at Academia da Cachaca in Leblon, and we can plan where to go. Do you know it?’

‘Yeah, I know it. Best caipirinha I’ve tasted here so far.’

‘You’ve been spoiled, they make the best in Rio. Eight o’clock?’

I agreed, and left him to serve his customers. A queue had mounted.

We didn’t make it to any of the deserted beaches that he had promised to show me. We didn’t leave my apartment until dinner time the following day. I couldn’t blame it on the cachaca. I’d only had two, one the original limao, and the other a sweeter, creamier version flavoured with coconut, along with a large meal of feijoada served with perfectly cooked farofa and succulent orange slices. The waiter sat us outside in the still-humid night air, on two rickety chairs either side of a round table top that was so tiny Raoul was able to reach under it easily and place his hand on my thigh, a fact that he took advantage of almost as soon as we arrived.

His grip was strong and persuasive, not that I needed to be persuaded. Unwelcome thoughts of Joao and Astrid caused pinpricks of guilt to pop into my brain, which I quickly disregarded.

‘Oh,’ I said, as he put his other arm under the table after the waiter delivered our second round of drinks, and brazenly pushed my knees apart, oblivious to our public surroundings or just impervious to the reactions of other diners nearby.