The condominium door opened mere seconds after Jian Carlo sounded the chime, as if someone had been expecting his arrival.
As well they should, he thought. He had made much of himself since his lowly beginnings in the jungle with Serafina.
João Rosario smiled and held out his arms in welcome. “Jian Carlo. Glad you could make it. Please. They are just now cutting the cake. Would you care for a drink?” He spoke with bursts of energy and what sounded like genuine affection.
Although João was only a few years older than Jian Carlo, his portly belly and receding hairline made him appear older—so unlike Jian Carlo’s trim physique and full head of hair. That said, João carried his age with the comfort of a man well established in life. A quality Jian Carlo intended to emulate.
“Sim, obrigado.” Jian Carlo’s voice was as deep and fluid as aged whiskey, cultivated from a lifetime of careful observation and mimicry. No one in Rio would ever guess he had started life as an orphan in the slums of São Salvador.
Not like the men and women in this condominium.
The families attending this celebration formed the cream of Escola de Edução Sustentável on whose board of directors João and his wife, Ana, served. The young women lined up at the far end of the living room were daughters of judges, politicians, land developers, art collectors, capitalists, and philanthropists. Marry any of them and he’d be set for life.
“Would you care for a cocktail?” João gestured to an adjoining bar room where a dozen-or-so men in their forties to early seventies conversed and drank. “Or would you rather join the ladies?” he added, with a wink.
Jian Carlo glanced at the women seated on couches and standing on the edges of the parlor. Some were homely, a few beautiful, all wore tasteful dresses and expensive jewelry. Each chattered with excitement as Ana Rosario cut a gloriously pink three-tiered cake.
João nodded toward a couple of boys and a girl who sat in the hallway playing cinco marias, a game similar to the American game of jacks. “I know you don’t want to sit with the children.”
Jian Carlo grinned. “The men will be fine.”
João patted Jian Carlo’s back and laughed as if he had made a grand joke. “I will fix you one of my famous caipirinhas. I learned the recipe from the original bartender at Melt. He liked to use vodka, but I prefer the authentic sweetness of cachaça. I guarantee you won’t have tasted better.”
“I’m sure not,” Jian Carlo said, although he would have preferred a shot of the Glendronach he saw displayed on the glass shelf behind the bar.
“Listen up, my friends. This is Jian Carlo Resende. We’re doing a bit of business together.” He smiled broadly, signaling to the other men that Jian Carlo was a man of wealth and influence who was clearly important to him. They leaned in to learn more, but were interrupted by a burst of applause.
“Ah, look.” João opened his hands toward the young women entering the parlor, receiving plates of cake. “Are they not beautiful? Like presents in their pretty dresses. The one in the lavender gown is my daughter, Isabel.”
Jian Carlo saw the resemblance instantly. Isabel had João’s cheery smile and her mother’s cherubic face and full-bodied curves. With her tawny hair swept up in the same elaborate twist, Isabel and her mother could have been the same person in different stages of life.
“Enchanting,” said Jian Carlo, but it was the beauty standing next to Isabel, sneaking a fingerful of icing, who caught his eye. “Who is the young woman hanging on your daughter’s arm? They seem as close as sisters.”
“Indeed they are. Foster sisters, in fact. We took in Adriana after her father died a few years back. Tragic, really. He drove off the Rodovia Washington Luís on his way back to Bahia.”
“A dangerous road.”
“Yes, well…”
Jian Carlo raised a brow. “Is there something more?”
João shrugged and walked behind the bar. “We had him to dinner before he left. He was a very sad man. He asked if he could count on us to look after his daughter. Of course, we said yes, never imagining that he might…” João picked up a knife and began slicing limes. “Adriana took it hard, as you can imagine.”
João dropped two lime quarters in each of the two crystal old fashioned glasses, added a tablespoon of sugar, and muddled the combination. Jian Carlo grimaced. Although he enjoyed sweet foods and drinks as much as the rest of his countrymen, adding sugar to cachaça was as redundant as sprinkling chili on chili peppers. João pulverized the limes so the sugar could bind to the pulp and oil, filled the glasses with ice, poured in two shots of cane liquor, and continued his story.
“The father was the only family Adriana had besides that awful grandmother of hers, a witch of the highest degree.”
Jian Carlo tensed. Had Serafina’s reputation as a Quimbandeira traveled all the way to Rio de Janeiro? “By witch you mean—”
“A despicable woman. She called me soon after her son’s death, demanding to know what Adriana had done to make him take his own life. Can you imagine? A girl as sweet as Adriana? I still kick myself for letting that witch speak to her. Poor girl was so overwhelmed. She never defended herself or denied any of her grandmother’s accusations. She just kept apologizing, saying it was all her fault that her father had killed himself. When Ana and I heard about the funeral, we thought it best that Adriana not attend. We didn’t want her to have anything more to do with that witch of a grandmother.”
Jian Carlo relaxed. Clearly, João did not realize the accuracy of his description, which also meant he didn’t know that Serafina was the reason Jian Carlo was in João’s condominium on the night of Adriana’s graduation party.
A week had passed before Jian Carlo had heard the news about Carlinhos’ death. Knowing that Serafina would be devastated, he had gone to visit her. Instead of finding a grieving mother, he had found an enraged Quimbandeira. Broken statues and a shredded blanket lay outside her cabin beneath an open window where shards of the broken glass he had installed still clung to the frame. At first, Jian Carlo had feared that Serafina had been attacked. Then he heard her shout and knew that anyone foolish enough to trespass would be long gone from this world.
Jian Carlo had risked his life that day when he entered her cabin, but that risk had brought him great rewards. After she had exhausted her fury at neglectful gods, deteriorating highways, bigoted rich people, ungrateful children, and even Carlinhos for the countless ways he had disappointed her, Serafina had focused her anger onto only one person—Adriana.
Not only did Serafina blame Adriana for Carlinhos’ suicide, she was convinced that Adriana’s birth had cursed her son and derailed all of Serafina’s careful plans. She even accused Adriana of being a vengeful spirit sent by an enemy to ruin Serafina’s life. How else could the girl have had such a mystical hold over Carlinhos?
Since a smart man did not make himself a target for witchcraft, Jian Carlo had wisely agreed. When Serafina’s tirade had run its course through all of Adriana’s imagined offenses, Jian Carlo had comforted Serafina in the only way he knew how. Sex that night had been a brutal, demeaning, and erotic experience.
The next morning, Serafina had told him of her plan.
João Rosario swirled the caipirinhas and handed a glass to Jian Carlo. “To friendship.”
Jian Carlo smiled. “The best tonic to a bad family.”
They clinked their glasses and drank with the other men in the bar while, in the parlor, the ladies laughed and ate cake.
João glanced at Adriana and Isabel, feeding each other pink frosting. “We offered to send Adriana to university with Isabel, but she felt strongly about supporting herself. She’s taken a job as an assistant teacher at A Esocla de Edução Sustentável.”
“Where she and Isabel went to school?”
“Sim. Isabel was not a boarding student, you understand, she lived here with us. Adriana came from Bahia on a full scholarship. Her mother had died. So much tragedy. And to have no one visit her in four years?” João shook his head as a dog shook water from his coat. “Forgive me, my friend, I get too worked up about such things. Ana tells me it will give me a heart attack one day. Says I should learn to meditate or some nonsense. Can you imagine? Me sitting on some cushion, humming to myself? There’s too much work to be done. Am I right? Like this development you and I will work on together.”
The development would involve the construction of a dozen more condominiums, each as luxurious as the one where the Rosarios lived. Península Barra would become the finest example of eco-urbanization in the country. João Rosario—renowned for his ability to integrate art, natural resources, and urban living—was the project’s landscape designer and had just contracted Jian Carlo’s company to provide the rare Brazilian wood required for art, gazebos, and outdoor furniture.
João held out his glass to offer another toast. “To Resende Fine Woods and Export and João Rosario Eco-Urban Landscaping. May we enjoy decades of profitable business.”
“Saude,” they said in unison, then downed the rest of their drinks.