Drink the Sky Read online

  While Todd was far too blond to live in the tropics.

  “What are we going to do with you, my love? I hope you’ve been to a doctor.”

  A hectic rash was working its way across Todd’s chest. He tugged his shirt back into place and levered himself clumsily to his feet. The boys didn’t want to let him go. Their younger son, Evan, held on with legs as well as arms, the way the monkeys outside embraced the trunks of trees.

  “Shower,” Todd said, flipping Evan upside down. Both boys squealed as he walked Evan across the room on his hands. When he let the boy down, Todd bussed Holly, rubbing her cheek with his unshaven one before remembering their guest. “Larkin? You were talking about a shower?”

  Nodding and agreeing, glancing back at Holly, Larkin followed Todd and the chattering boys upstairs.

  “Rash?” she called. There was no answer. But yes, he was.

  Holly smiled and shook her head at the hall mirror. She always felt electric when Todd came home, excited and relieved that he’d made it through another trip. But this time she felt uneasy as well, unsure what Larkin wanted and unhappy to find her husband looking so tired. Todd was in danger of burning himself out; she’d been sensing it for some time. Recently, when he’d fallen asleep on the sofa after dinner, she’d caught herself stretching in the doorway as if willing him to stretch, wake up, bounce up energetically the way he once did.

  And notice her, of course. Notice her new haircut; what running every day had done to her legs. Holly laughed at herself in the crackled mirror. Oh, wasn’t she singing the housewife’s lament? My husband doesn’t pay attention to me any more. A cliché, self-indulgent, so self-pitying — although it also contained a nasty prickle of truth. Every second fax from Todd’s environmental coalition sent him off on another trip, guiding sympathizers through the Amazon, evaluating research projects, overseeing the work of local cooperatives that exported oils and nuts. He loved it. He loved his job. And wasn’t he lucky Holly could laugh at her complaints? Too many women in her position seemed to cultivate grievances. Holly didn’t mix much with the expatriate community, but she’d already seen several different versions of what could happen when the men had too much to do and their wives not enough.

  Yet when Todd came back downstairs, he hooked Holly’s head in his arm for a long kiss. The humid little boys danced around them. He’d taken them into his shower, a conscientious father, able to switch gears when he got home with a speed and grace that Holly admired. She’d kept the boys back from school to see him: it was also true he was home less and less often. As Todd pulled away from her, Evan was already talking. Hardy, red-headed Evan, six years old and chatty, insisted on recounting every twist of a cartoon’s antic plot.

  “Because the fire trucks got there late. And the branch just fell on top of them.”

  “That is so boring,” said Conor, who at seven was a slight, elfin version of Todd, very blonde with huge, heart-stopping blue eyes. He didn’t miss much, which was probably what made him such a high-strung child; fond of pets, tender with babies, both protective and scornful of his younger brother.

  “Well, I guess you probably had to be there,” Todd said. “Though preferably not underneath the branch. Who wants breakfast?”

  He walked to the laden table, looking contented as the boys sat down on either side of him, and Holly poured the thick Brazilian coffee.

  “You’re here for a while, though,” she said.

  “As long as I can,” he answered, taking some bread. “I wish things wouldn’t keep piling up.”

  “But what could possibly have happened up there?”

  Todd glanced at the boys, busy now with their chocolate, and then at the ceiling. They could just make out the sound of running water upstairs. Larkin was still in the shower.

  “I don’t know,” Todd said. “Don’t laugh at me; it could be serious. I heard a story about some garimpeiros, some freelance prospectors. They’d supposedly been attacked by a tribe of aboriginal people way up some godforsaken river. The story was, this was an uncontacted tribe.”

  “Uncontacted?”

  “That’s what I was told.”

  “Enough to get you up there, I guess. Todd, I wish you wouldn’t.”

  He gave her a quick glance. “Actually I thought it was a crazy story. But it turns out there really had been a tribe in the area. No sign of them now. They’re nomadic, probably. Uncontacted, I’m not so sure. It’s their own business if they want to limit their interaction with the outside world. The simplest explanation is that they warned some prospectors off their land, then melted back into the forest. But when I got back to town, the local coronel made a point of checking me out. Doutor Eduardo. I don’t know why he bothered doing that. He wouldn’t be mixed up with a bunch of cheap little prospectors. Which makes me start to worry what really happened to the tribe.”

  “So it is dangerous,” Holly said. “I wish you wouldn’t keep expanding your job definition. I can’t help worrying, love.”

  “You say you want me to tell you these things.”

  “When you do them. I just wish you wouldn’t do them. You don’t really have to go back there, do you? I thought you’d quit anthropology years ago.”

  Todd poured himself more coffee as Holly waited.

  “How dangerous?” Conor asked. Holly sighed.

  “Daddy is just being Daddy,” she said. “He’s like Curious George, always getting into trouble. But he seems to keep getting out of it again.”

  “Curious Daddy,” Evan laughed.

  “Very curious,” said Holly, smiling at her husband. “I’m in a good mood,” she told him. “I intend to stay in a good mood as long as you’re home.”

  “So do I,” Todd answered, holding out his hand. Pipes shuddered in the wall behind them as Larkin finally turned off the shower. “My Christ, that man is clean,” Todd said, and they shared a complicit smile.

  By the time Larkin rambled in, the boys had gone outside to play. Holly was ready to resent the musician’s intrusion into her time alone with Todd, yet Larkin seemed more composed as he took his seat, and his wet, slicked-back hair made him look reassuringly older. He still ducked his head when he spoke and affected a humility Holly doubted he truly felt, but as he ate his breakfast, he contrived to make thoroughly inconsequential small-talk about his travels, about his work and hers, until Holly began to think they might get on after all. Yes, she told him, she was an artist. At least, she’d always worked in crafts. The constructions on the walls were hers, the subtly woven strips of handmade paper she’d coloured with herbs and bark from the medicine women in the market.

  “I made my living in crafts,” she said. “At least, that’s what I started out doing, although these past few years I’ve been so preoccupied with running the gallery — yes, I had a gallery. We did quite well, but I sold it before leaving. I even ended up selling the building. Divesting myself to come down here. Getting rid of the excuses, I suppose.”

  “Excuses?”

  Holly paused. “It sounds so presumptuous, but I’ve always meant to be a visual artist. To make paintings, acrylics. That’s what I’m doing here, mainly. These constructions are just — extra.”

  “I don’t know why you say it’s presumptuous. That’s something I tend to be accused of. But you don’t really look the part.”

  Holly leaned forward and confided, “I’m terribly ambitious.”

  “What else is there?” Larkin asked.

  “Well, the children,” Holly said. “They didn’t exactly beg to come here, did they? And watch their mother turn all vague and distracted while she paints. But this seems to be working out for them, too. They like their school, and afterwards they get to ride their tricycles up and down the driveway. That’s all I ever wanted to do when I was their age, ride my tricycle up and down the driveway. I take it you don’t have children?”

  “I was one,” Lar
kin offered.

  By this time they’d finished breakfast. The plates were pushed aside, and Holly was starting to get interested in Larkin. Could she question him the way he’d questioned her? What’s it like to be famous, even a little? What do people want from you? What do you want from us?

  “You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” Larkin said. Holly smiled, then saw he’d turned to Todd. “I know you’re over-worked. I don’t mean to take up too much of your time.”

  “That’s kind,” Todd answered. Larkin held out a hand, deflecting the compliment, but Holly knew it was insincere anyway. Her smile faded as she settled back in her chair. Todd was going to perform now, putting on the mask he wore with celebrities, the compassionate and foggy West Coast persona he used to cover his irritation at their well-meaning incursions into issues he considered to be his. Not that he ever maintained it for long. At some point during a celebrity tour of the ice fields, or first-growth forest — lately, the Amazon — he always phoned Holly in an agony of scab-picking, telling her that a respectable media would cover an issue on its merits, not because some overwrought self-involved actress had helicoptered in and aimed her affectations at the camera. Poor Todd. He tortured himself with the way things should be, leaving himself too little time to enjoy the way they were. Yet having fielded long-distance requests for shipments of birth control pills, facial mud, worse, Holly felt entirely sympathetic, and couldn’t help looking at Larkin more skeptically herself.

  But Larkin was shaking his head. “The fact is, my reasons for being here are a little under-defined. I wasn’t planning to ask you for anything, at least not right now. It was more a case of wanting to make contact with someone when I got here. Knowing I could count on them later, if I needed to.”

  “You’ve heard about the Rio crime rate,” Todd said. “It’s actually not as dangerous as advertised, although it pays to be careful.”

  “Well, that’s disappointing,” Larkin replied. Seeing Todd’s face, he added, “What I mean is, as far as I’ve got a focus, it’s on urban decay. I might not have been the first to notice, but you live in any big city these days, at least in my country, and you’re watching it fall apart. Chicago’s my town, and it’s almost a cliché to say it, but it’s true — the place was at its best years ago. Even decades. It was the Fifties ideal of civic progress, the modern city. Except I think people are right in saying that the modern age is over, it’s in retreat, and I’m fascinated by this idea of retreating into the future. Progressing backwards. I’ve been working on the idea anyway, but what brought me here was getting to know a couple of Brazilians — musicians — around the clubs. And they tell me, look, if you think the future lies in deterioration, then in Rio they’re already living in the 24th century.”

  Holly was surprised. She’d been playing with ideas like that herself, although hearing Larkin articulate her thoughts made her suspect their joint concept of being a little shallow.

  “I work once a week in a day care centre,” she told him. “A crêche, they call it, out in the Zona Norte. And I should take you into the favela, the shanty town nearby. Because it’s true — whenever I go there, I don’t know if I’ve warped back to the Middle Ages or forward to some post-nuclear nightmare. It’s a continuum, isn’t it? Past to future, future to past.”

  “The future, Holly?” Todd asked. “It’s only the future — only even a possible vision of the future — if you look at it from a North American perspective. Rio as a demonstration of what could happen to Chicago. Since you’re asking,” he said, turning back to Larkin. “I don’t think it’s a demonstration of anything, and certainly not of the future. Unfortunately, it’s the way most people in the world live right now. And if you want to toss ideas around, I’ll tell you what I often think, looking at myself in this particular context. I wonder if I’ve come down here to use people for my own purposes. To play out my particular obsessions about the environment despite what they might want from their lives.”

  Larkin leaned back and crossed his legs. “Do you?” he asked.

  “I quite honestly do, yes.”

  “Well, it’s interesting to hear you say that, because it isn’t anything I’ve ever heard from my environmental friends.” Larkin paused. “Whom I admire greatly, by the way. Their dedication is beyond mine. But I think you’re right, at least about artists. We’re scavengers.” He smiled at Holly. “Magpies, picking up the shiny bits. My friends know they have to watch what they say in front of me in case I steal it. Which is my defence. I do it in the most privileged contexts. I’m an equal-opportunity exploiter, getting my material here, there.” He shrugged. “You think I’m wrong?” he asked Todd.

  “I’m not sure anymore. Am I? Maybe it depends on the situation.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you my situation,” Larkin said. “I obviously want to look at the music scene first. Therefore I can be accused of coming here to use Brazilian culture, exploiting it for my own purposes. Except that I brought down a dozen names my Brazilian friends gave me. Contacts, musicians my friends say will want to show me the scene, might even want to work with me. So isn’t this a good thing? At least there’s the possibility for a genuine cultural interchange?”

  “Of course,” Todd replied. “Along with the foreign exchange. Preferably in American dollars.”

  “They’ll get that,” Larkin told him.

  “I’m sorry,” Todd said. “I didn’t mean it that way. I’m tired. Exhausted, actually. But you saw part of the Zona Norte coming in from the airport. You were looking at the potholes. A lot of musicians live there, or come from there, and the simple fact of the matter is that they need a buck. People here do. That’s why so many of them head up to the Amazon. They’re just trying to make a living. Burn down a few acres of useless forest — to them it looks useless — and start a little farm. They can sometimes even earn a living for a year or two, although no one’s ever told them how poor the soil is under all that forest, and that it’s going to erode away in — what? — three, four years, so they have to move on and burn down a few more acres, start another little farm, add to the enormous devastation that the big guys, the ranchers, are only too happy to exploit. But who can blame the little guys? Can I blame them?”

  Todd closed his eyes and rubbed them slowly. “But I can’t talk with any real intelligence about the future,” he said. “People ask me what I expect is going to happen to the forest. But tell me — even five years before it happened, was anyone predicting the reunification of Germany? I think I have a pretty good idea what’s coming down the tubes for the next two, three years. Four, five years — more or less. But I’m less clear after that, and beyond ten years, nothing. Not a clue. What’s that quote? That prophecy is the most gratuitous form of mistake? I would say, myself, that so-called prophecies are simply more or less accurate descriptions of what’s going on at the moment they’re made. Rio isn’t the future. It’s what we live with every day.”

  “Funny,” Larkin said. “I always thought the environmental movement bought heavily into future shock. Predictions of doom and gloom.”

  Todd snorted, and Larkin gave him a long, speculative look. They all did eventually. “My God, that can’t be his wife?” How often had Holly seen people work past their first questionable impressions of Todd and begin to wonder what lay hidden underneath. He’d start to speak, and what had been a conversation would turn into a dialogue, then a monologue, Todd’s lecture. Her poor husband. He spent too much time alone, on the road in cheap motels, arguing his positions to himself as the shouts of drunks in the inevitable bar kept him awake. When he finally found an audience, he couldn’t help delivering himself of his rehearsed speculations, and it was useless to interrupt. Holly had almost given up trying. No matter how carefully she framed her interjections, she always sounded — to herself, at least — like spoiled child demanding attention.

  And it made her despair. Todd’s brilliance could be overwhelming. It cou
ld certainly overwhelm Holly: he’d been known to talk right over her. Worse still, correct her in public. Two children later, Todd sometimes forgot she was no longer his student. In the middle of a party, a conversation, a Persian rug, he was capable of turning professorial. His tone would be instructive, his eyes kindly, his eyebrows ever so faintly amused.

  Not just despair. It enraged Holly. She’d had more than enough of playing the younger, decorative, subservient wife. What she’d told Larkin was true. She was terribly ambitious.

  Also high-strung, timid and apologetic to a fault. Holly sighed. It wasn’t really Todd’s fault. Her mother’s maybe, but not Todd’s. Yet at Holly’s age, even a mother like Mavis was no real excuse. Poor, fierce, dissatisfied Mavis. Holly should have been over Mavis by now. It was also true that what Todd said over top of her was often astute, and if taken the right way, nutritious. Holly knew she had no real grounds for complaint. She never really had much to add to her husband’s monologues, either. Maybe that was what really galled her: Todd was right. She had a tendency to be naive, small town, undergraduate. And maybe that was what she really wanted to change by moving to Rio. Herself.

  “More coffee?” she asked pleasantly, and reached for Larkin’s empty cup.

  That night, with Larkin long gone to his hotel and the boys finally in bed, Todd told Holly, “He was about what I expected.”

  “More awkward than I expected, but also less pretentious,” Holly answered, clicking the ice cubes in her glass.

  “He certainly liked you too, didn’t he?”

  “Green,” Holly said. “The colour of the environmental movement.”

  “He liked you,” Todd repeated, although for once he didn’t take it further. Just as well. It was useless to argue. Too hot to argue. The storm hadn’t broken and the night was hotter than the day.

  “You haven’t told me about your latest tour,” Holly said, raising the icy glass to her forehead. “Weren’t these the concerned academics?”