Page 75 of The Secret Dinner

SOMETIMES IT’S BETTER TO FUCK THAN TO GIVE A FUCK

“You don’t like my poems, do you?” she asked.

“Of course I do … Why would you think that?”

“You’ve never said anything nice.”

“Hey, you shouldn’t fish for compliments,” I replied with a wink. “But I hope people take notice of your talent and you get published one day.”

She smiled, hope welling in her eyes, and blew me a kiss. Watching Cora there in my lap, with her soft hair grazing my thighs to Kate Bush, the idea came to me. I remembered Umberto, the 500,000 reals he owed us, how we needed to launder the money. It was perfect! I was so excited that I excused myself and got up from the couch so I could think better.

“We’ll publish you, Cora,” I said.

She got up too and turned off the music.

“What?”

“How many books have you written?”

“Maybe five.”

“Great! We’ll launch an ebook publisher and publish your poems!”

Cora threw her arms around me and gave me a peck on the cheek. Then she went to wake up the whole house to tell them the news. She gathered everyone in the living room and asked me to explain my idea. I’d never seen her so happy, not even at the boat party. Everybody agreed it was the perfect way to launder the money from the secret dinners.

That same week, I submitted the paperwork to create Seagull Press, a publisher specializing in ebooks. Aside from some works in the public domain, we would only publish Cora’s poems. The idea wasn’t to actually sell ebooks, just to pretend to sell ebooks. But Cora didn’t really care. She was so proud of herself that from then on not a single day went by when she didn’t shout from the rooftops that she was finally a published author.

6

Piglet was in charge of creating the website for Seagull Press and coding a program that would automatically sell ebooks to ghost accounts. According to him, there was a super-complex purchasing pattern, so it was impossible to trace any fraud. The dinners continued to be a success, and it felt like things were calming down again: Cecília had disappeared, and guests respected the rules and left satisfied, invariably requesting to be added to a new waiting list.

Sometimes it gnawed at me, knowing that Vladimir was behind it all without ever having to show his face. But in the end, I decided that Umberto was right. The best thing was to forget about it and not say anything to my friends. We were happier than ever, weren’t we? I was making more money than anyone my age, Hugo felt like the world’s greatest chef, Cora and Piglet were in love, and even Miguel had bounced back after his breakup with Rachel and was celebrating his mom’s unexpected recovery. What difference did it make if Vladimir loomed over Umberto, if he was pulling all the strings? Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.

On May 23, my birthday, I decided to have a low-key celebration at Inhangá, a nearby bar. It was a warm Thursday evening, and the bar was packed, with a bunch of tables spread out across the small square near the Cardeal Arcoverde subway station. Miguel, Hugo, Piglet, Cora, and I ordered beers and pizza, toasting to nothing in particular and singing karaoke tunes while we drummed our silverware on the plates. Just before midnight, Cora climbed onto her chair and began to recite her poems, doing jazz hands and flashing the crowd. We all burst out laughing.

I remember exactly what I was doing when I first saw Arthur. I’d laughed until I cried and was wiping my eyes with a napkin while Cora continued to clown around. He was handsome, clean-shaven, and lean, but now that I think about it, I think what caught my eye was how downtrodden he looked. He shuffled desolately between the tables, handing out flyers with trembling hands and puffy eyes. Our joy was almost offensive in the face of all that pain. As he approached us, I noticed the heaviness he carried in his hunched shoulders.

“Sorry to disturb your evening,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “My name is Arthur. My fiancée, Ruth, has been missing since last Tuesday. She went out for a walk on the beach and never came back. If you’ve seen—”

He broke off, about to cry. He handed me the flyer with the photo of the missing woman and moved on to the next table, looking hopeless.

When I looked down at the photo, I dropped my beer glass, which shattered on the table. I tried to come up with an excuse, but I knew I could never forget that face.

It was the woman we’d served at our dinner last night.

DANTE’S INFERNO

1

I couldn’t sleep, and I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. I locked myself in my room, and dove under the covers. Cora even knocked on the door, but I didn’t answer. Staring at that photo of the smiling woman on the flyer, I’d felt like a dried-out husk. When her body had been delivered to the villa in Jardim Botânico two days earlier, I’d only got a brief look at her before Cora showed up brandishing her bright yellow chainsaw and rocking her white jumpsuit, which was already starting to take on a faint pinkish hue.

Ruth’s chest had been split wide open, all the way up to her collarbone, and before I left the little room I remember thinking how the color of the blood on her abdomen matched her red hair. Now that thought just felt vulgar in light of her grieving fiancé’s pain. I considered calling in an anonymous tip to apologize and let him know Ruth was dead. I knew that holding out hope would be far more painful than facing the truth, but given everything else going on, I dropped the idea of seeking redemption. It was too risky.

I got out of bed as the sun came up and took a quick shower. Not letting the warm water dampen my adrenaline, I threw on jeans and a loose dark shirt, hid a kitchen knife in the back of my waistband, and walked the three blocks to the main entrance of the Chopin Building. The doorman rang Umberto’s apartment, and he let me up. I took the elevator and the maid led me into the living room.

The old man was in a silk robe and slippers, sitting in his chaise longue overlooking Copacabana beach. Beside him on a small table was a glass of yellow juice with a green straw. He stood quickly, tying his robe to greet me.

“Dante, my boy, to what do I owe the honor?”