Page 1 of The Secret Dinner

I know you won’t believe the story I’m about to tell you. Fuck it.

—RUBEM FONSECA, AMÁLGAMA

In the early hours of June 22, 2024, a man walks into Rio de Janeiro’s Fifteenth Police Precinct, near the botanical garden, and asks to speak to a detective. His hands are shaking, but his gaze is steady. He’s wearing a blood-soaked tuxedo.

“Is everything all right?” ask the officers. “Are you hurt? Sir, what’s wrong? I’m calling an ambulance!”

The man smiles. Then he starts to cry and says:

“I’m here to confess what we did.”

THE SEAGULL MEAT RIDDLE

Dante is my name. You’ll need to remember that. Even after you’re halfway through this story, after you find out what happened and decide I’m nothing more than a worthless piece of shit, I’ll need you to remember: My name is Dante and I was once a nice guy. You’re probably curious how this all began. If you’re not the type who scares easily, I’ll give you the details.

Looking back now, it is hard to pinpoint the exact moment all hell broke loose. After a while, you really do start to lose sight of what you’re doing, why, and even how this whole mess got started. In 2018, I was just a kid from a podunk town in the state of Paraná, in the south of Brazil, mostly known for its religious tourism. I was flat broke, my head full of big dreams, and I’d just been accepted to a university in Rio de Janeiro. After two years cramming for entrance exams, the chance to start fresh and get an apartment in the big city with my three best friends sounded like heaven. Miguel, Hugo, Piglet, and I celebrated and got wasted almost every day before the big move. We were having the time of our lives.

But that’s beside the point. Maybe this whole thing didn’t start back in 2018, when we first got to Rio with a dollar and a dream, but many years later, after we’d graduated and were already settled in. One night in particular keeps coming back to me. It was March 2023 and we were still living together; the summer heat in Rio had relented and there was a pleasant sea breeze blowing in from Copacabana. I had the day off from the bookstore I was working in at the time, and I suggested we go out for some pizza and beer. Everyone agreed; even Miguel came along without complaining. We snagged a table at a bar a couple of blocks away from the apartment that had cheap beer and pretty decent pizza. Hugo had gone to culinary school and snobbishly despised how some pizzerias in Rio loaded their pizzas with crap like hot dogs, french fries, or brownies. This place was different: All they served was classic Margherita.

We must have already been on our fourth pitcher of beer, my mind wandering off, when something reminded me of the seagull meat riddle. I enjoy math problems, logic puzzles, sudoku, word games, stuff like that. I’d first heard this riddle from one of my professors my junior year, and it had stuck with me. That night I decided to tell it to my friends: “A guy was walking down the street when he came across a restaurant with seagull on the menu. He ordered the dish, ate it, went home, and killed himself. Why?”

They had to try to figure out what happened by asking questions, and I could only answer with “yes,” “no,” or “irrelevant.” I’m sure we’ve all played a game like this before. So, for example: Was the guy already planning to kill himself before eating the seagull? No. Did he order the dish because he thought it was tasty? Yes. Had he been to that restaurant before? Irrelevant. Did he know the seagull used in the dish? No. Did the seagull remind the guy of something from his past? Yes. And is that why he killed himself? Yes.

We went on like that for hours, eating pizza, drinking, and playing the game. Yes, no, irrelevant. Eventually, you find out the man’s a widower; that his wife died in a plane crash; that he was on the plane with her at the time of the crash; that the survivors had been stranded on a desert island with no food; that his wife’s body had disappeared in the crash; that the survivors offered the man seagull meat; that he ate it and liked it; that he survived on seagull meat until their rescue; that he decided to try the dish at the restaurant for old times’ sake; and that when he tasted it, he realized that what he’d actually been eating on that island all those years ago wasn’t seagull meat at all, but his own wife’s flesh.

To this day, I’m fascinated by this riddle. What I can’t get out of my head isn’t the death of the guy’s wife, or the fact that he thought he was eating a seagull when really it was his poor wife, or even the fact that he killed himself over it. What fascinates me is that the husband ate human flesh and didn’t know it. And what’s more: He liked it.

APARTMENT HUNTING

I arrived in Rio in February 2018, just days before Carnival, accompanied by Miguel and my mother, Hilda. She’d insisted on coming with me to help me find a place to live with my friends. She was always trying to hold some degree of control over me, by any means necessary—she couldn’t quite accept that I was all grown up now and would be living in another city, thousands of miles away from her clutches. I had to suck it up, at least at the beginning, because I needed her financial support.

We booked a triple room in a cheap hotel in Copacabana and got to work scrolling listings on rental apps, saving the ones that looked promising, and requesting viewings. Agents always used more or less the same code: If the ad said spacious, it meant the opposite; updated or fully renovated meant that the property was on the verge of collapse; mountain views really meant facing the favela.

It was incredible how many old, decrepit, and smelly, practically toxic, properties people were putting up for rent. In four days, we visited some unimaginable dumps. And a few decent places with unimaginable prices. While noisy revelers filled the streets for Carnival, we languished in our hotel. We were coming to the conclusion that finding a place in Rio near the beach was completely outside of our realm of possibility.

Shortly before we left the city, we visited the next to last apartment on our list. The real estate agent arrived at the building fifteen minutes late—I hadn’t yet discovered that fifteen minutes isn’t late for people from Rio but entirely reasonable. His name was Heitor and he was a chubby, bald man who looked like a ventriloquist’s dummy: stiff shoulders and a straight spine, his head turning robotically from left to right. He flashed a fake smile, apologizing for the delay, and took a dirty handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his forehead. After the usual small talk, we took the elevator up to the seventh floor.

It was one of those old buildings with a single apartment per floor, each with four bedrooms. When we stepped inside, I had to contain my surprise. The apartment was huge—it had plenty of space and then some, with an imposing smoked-glass-topped dining table and ten chairs. Beautiful contemporary paintings hung on the walls, and a nice, comfortable couch and flat-screen TV sat in the living room. Heitor mechanically opened doors, praising the built-in cabinetry and prime location. He went on: wood floors, updated electrical system, east-facing living room, and west-facing bedrooms.

“There’s a favela near lifeguard station 1 and another near station 6, controlled by enemy gangs,” he said. “We’re at lifeguard station 3, a gray area. It’s good because neither gang operates in this area, so they don’t step on each other’s toes.”

Basically, what he was saying was that the apartment was in a neutral zone between warring parties, and that this was a bonus. Ignoring this absurd logic, I went to check out one of the bedrooms. It was big, with columns holding up its high ceilings. Even with the bed and nightstands, there was plenty of room to dance around.

“What do you think?” I whispered to Miguel, while my mother chatted with the agent in another room.

“I’m sure it costs a fortune,” he said, stunned.

When you’re nineteen, it’s normal to want to try to save the world, feel a little adrift, and have to count your spare coins to buy a beer—all at the same time. This place, with its huge living room and magnificent bedrooms, wasn’t for us. As painful as it was knowing that the real estate agent would soon trample my little sandcastle, I kept on dreaming for a bit longer. I opened one of the living room windows looking out on the treetops, and took a deep breath. Down below, little human ants roamed the streets, minibuses spewed carbon dioxide, and street vendors filled the sidewalks. Soon the ventriloquist’s dummy came in acting like he didn’t want a thing, but in fact he wanted a lot.

“Where are you all from?”

“Pingo d’Água,” I replied. “It’s a small town in Paraná.”

“So it would be the three of you living here?”

“Oh, no, I’m just here to lend a hand,” my mother interjected. “There are four of them, childhood friends, they’re all going to college here.”

“Four students?” Heitor asked, craning his neck. His beady little eyes glanced at me briefly before he went back to wiping his sweat-soaked forehead with his handkerchief.