Eighteen

Alone in his room at The Hotel Yellow Parrot, Fletch first dialed The Hotel Jangada and asked for Room 912.

There was no answer in Room 912.

Not even taking off his movie cowboy suit, he fell on his bed. He thought he would sleep immediately. It was nearly seven o’clock in the morning. He was not used to going to sleep at seven o’clock in the morning.

Getting up, he dropped his clothes on the floor. Then he crawled beneath the sheet.

Even at that hour of the bright morning, the sound of a samba combo could be heard from somewhere in the street. He rolled onto his side and pulled the pillow over his ear. Eyes closed, flesh wavered everywhere in his mind: big, soft, pliant breasts with huge nipples swinging to the beat; long, smooth backs danced away from him; brown buttocks dimpled as they moved; gorgeous long legs bent and straightened as feet pressed gently against the earth, the dance floor in the rhythm of the melodic samba drums.

Fletch got out of bed and called Room Service for breakfast.

While he waited, he took a long, hot shower.

Alone, a towel around his waist, he ate breakfast sitting in a corner of his room. Sunday morning. For once, the man across the utility area was not painting the room.

He called The Hotel Jangada again, again asked for Mrs Joan Stanwyk in Room 912.

Again there was no answer.

He closed the drapes against the bright morning and got into bed.

He tried lying like a statue on a crypt, like Norival dead on the bed at the old plantation house, flat on his back, his hands crossed on his stomach. He tried counting the members of a woman’s pole-vaulting team leaping over the barrier. At the nineteenth redhead taking her turn with the brunettes and blondes going over the barrier, he knew sleep was unattainable.

He called The Hotel Jangada again.

Heavily slogging around the room, he opened the window drapes.

He pulled on clean shorts, a clean tennis shirt, socks, and sneakers.

Outside the hotel, in the brilliant sunlight, the small boy, Idalina’s great-grandson Janio Barreto, was waiting for him.

The boy grabbed Fletch’s arm. He hobbled along with Fletch, speaking rapidly, softly, insistently.

Fletch shook the boy off and got into his MP.

On his wooden leg, the ten-year-old Janio Barreto ran after Fletch’s car, calling to him.