Chapter 4
Late that afternoon, Miguel came into the living room wearing jeans, a polo shirt, and too much cologne.
“Where are you going?”
“To see Rachel. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
I didn’t say anything, I just let him go. Earlier, when he saw the body that Cora was butchering, he’d also confronted Hugo, who repeatedly told him the same story about tailing the ambulance. Miguel was absolutely right to jump ship. I was the idiot who didn’t have the balls to leave.
In the kitchen, Hugo marinated the meat as Cora handed him the cuts.
He wore a spotless black chef’s coat and his hair was tied back, tucked under his chef’s hat, with a pathetic CHEF HUGO emblazoned across its front.
Whistling “Poker Face” and shimmying to the beat, Piglet acted as sous-chef, taking care of the mise en place by the stove.
Half an hour before the scheduled time, I turned the air-conditioning in the living room down to seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit—the perfect temperature—and set out the tablecloth, the water and wineglasses, the sous-plats, napkins, and the correct sequence of forks and knives for each dish, according to an etiquette website I’d found.
I spritzed perfume on the furniture and lit incense to mask the faint odor that was still emanating from the back of the apartment.
Freshly showered, donning a tux I’d only ever worn to my graduation, I tried to relax.
In a few minutes, I would be welcoming strangers into our home, encouraging them to interact and enjoy their dinner as if this were all routine.
Still, the sight and smell of that filthy, bloody body Hugo had brought home clung to me—its foul stench had crawled inside my nostrils and refused to leave.
The first guest to arrive was a finely dressed, thin woman with bulging eyes. She had curly hair and strong features, with a nose like a pelican’s. Hesitantly, she introduced herself: “Cecília Couto.”
“Welcome! Make yourself at home,” I said, mostly to myself. “The others should be arriving any moment.”
The sweet sounds of bossa nova were playing. So close your eyes, for that’s a lovely way to be … A lounge atmosphere to ease the tension. Cecília sat on the sofa and crossed her legs, looking around at the table.
“The place is lovely,” she said.
“Thank you.” I forced a smile and poured her a welcome glass of sparkling wine.
“Is this the first time … you’ve done this?” she asked between sips from the crystal flute. Her question came out at such speed it was like it had been stored inside that little body for a lifetime.
“Yes … It was a bit of a fluke.”
“I can imagine.” She let out a high-pitched, anxious laugh.
“I couldn’t believe it when I saw it on the website …
I just had to pay to see.” At that moment, it occurred to me that she might be an undercover cop, but I quickly dismissed the idea.
Using their email addresses, Piglet had done a deep dive on the lives of each confirmed attendee.
He’d found out their profession, religion, family relationships, personal tastes, and home addresses.
Online shopping, Facebook check-ins, Instagram photos, opinions on Twitter.
It’s pretty insane how much personal information we make available online.
I knew more about Cecília than she could ever imagine: She was a lawyer at a boutique firm, with a master’s in criminal law and a doctorate in corporate law from the United States, she was passionate about designer handbags and shoes.
She traveled to Paris every six months and was having an extramarital affair with Umberto Marcondes de Machado, who had also secured a spot at the dinner table.
Umberto M. M. arrived shortly after. He was a short, stocky guy with a comb-over.
He must have been in his late sixties, but he behaved like a child.
His crooked teeth, round face, and mustard-yellow bow tie gave him a ridiculous air, like a villain in a comic book.
Though a notorious Rio playboy in the 1980s, famous for his hard partying, he led a more discreet life online.
All Piglet had found were photos of him with his wife in old society columns (she’d been dead for years), various scandals resulting from drug abuse and the time he ran over a young worker decades earlier, as well as news about his family’s business, which had been slowly going from bad to worse for the last several years.
Apparently, the only valuable asset the man still had was his old money last name, Marcondes de Machado.
Umberto greeted Cecília sweetly in his nasally voice.
I stepped away so as not to appear indiscreet.
The bell rang again. Albertina Terranova, an aging socialite known for her extravagant spending and highly sought-after New Year’s Eve bashes; Soninha Klein, an activist and cultural agitator, widow of Luiz Klein; and Kiki Dourado, a bony blond with shellacked hair and beady eyes, were all chatting animatedly when I opened the door.
Wearing fine perfume and impeccable makeup, the three of them looked like Charlie’s Angels meets the Golden Girls.
I led them to the sofa and offered them Veuve Clicquot.
“Thank you.” Kiki subtly raised her head to take a sip. “Don’t you want any, dear?”
“I don’t drink those sparkling wines,” Soninha said, turning up her nose.
I pretended not to hear and walked away.
Soninha was a very pleasant woman, when she wanted to be; she often appeared in the papers advocating for causes like the battle against infant mortality and for women’s empowerment, but she could also be a nightmare.
A quick google of her name surfaced reports of all kinds of horrors she inflicted on her domestic workers.
By nine o’clock, everyone had arrived. Sitting in the armchairs also sipping from their flutes were Nilo Carlos Arruda, an engineer involved in various fraudulent schemes with his construction company; Gabriel Franco Herméz Neto, his business partner; and Ataíde Augustín, a portly congressman whose level of corruption was surpassed only by his weight.
They were talking about a concert they’d attended together months before in Lisbon: Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony.
Kássio Gheler and Gustavo Relvas, a pair of low-profile, unattractive young lawyers, had been the last to arrive.
They apologized meekly for running late and politely asked for water.
In his research, Piglet had found a reservation for a double room at a San Francisco hotel, but no photos of the trip were posted on social media.
He’d deduced that Kássio and Gustavo were having a secret affair.
They seemed out of place at the dinner and exchanged conspiratorial glances.
I immediately felt there was something suspicious about them.
I invited the ten guests to take their seats at the table.
Umberto Marcondes de Machado and Soninha Klein took the lead, and the others positioned themselves accordingly.
I poured them white wine, reciting the little spiel that Hugo had forced me to memorize about the grape varietal, region, and flavor profile.
Then I asked if they preferred still or sparkling water.
In his booming voice, Umberto proposed a toast.
“May our wives never become widows!” he said, drawing laughter from the others.
At first the conversation at the table was timid and disjointed.
But soon they sorted themselves into small pods, discussing travel, parties, and culture.
As the night progressed, the threads of conversation began to connect, one latching on to another, and the larger table formed a bond.
Someone brought up politics, but Ataíde butted in:
“Anything but that!” he said, trying to tuck his napkin into the collar of his dress shirt.
I took the opportunity to make my escape to the smoky, bacon-scented kitchen. The fresh steaks rested in a marinade covered in plastic wrap, ready to go into the pan. I helped Hugo fill the verrines with Manchego cheese, his own creation for the amuse-bouche, while he finished frying the pancetta.
“So, what are they like?” Hugo asked.
“Normal. Stuck-up, but normal.”
In the laundry room, Cora had finished with the body. She stuffed the bones and parts we couldn’t use into black bags, all while exchanging kisses and cuddles with Piglet. She smeared her bloody hand on his nose, and they both burst out laughing.
I returned to the table with the amuse-bouche.
I’d bought a large tray, big enough for five plates, so I’d only have to make two trips to serve everyone.
I walked around the table while Ataíde Augustín talked about wine.
He was president of an elite wine club with bimonthly meetings, and proudly spoke of his collection of over five hundred bottles, organized by winery, region, and quality.
Kiki Dourado interrupted Ataíde to praise the verrine and mention her stamp collection: She had some very rare English stamps from the mid-nineteenth century.
As she explained the origins of her passion, Cecília and Umberto exchanged subtle, affectionate glances, like they wanted to collect each other.
When I came to clear the plates and served the heart of palm and shrimp mille-feuilles in citrus sauce, the conversation had turned into a cold war of egos: Everyone was recounting their own elite experiences, talking over each other, eager to show how much better their story was than the previous one.
As I traveled back and forth from the kitchen, I caught bits and pieces of their various adventures, embellished with lashings of self-praise.
Nilo was expanding his engineering firm and had recently traveled to Dubrovnik; Ataíde was a foodie and would get emotional when I removed the cloche to reveal the next dish.
“I’ve eaten things I could never tell you!” he said mysteriously.
Soninha Klein dramatized a life-changing experience she’d had somewhere in Africa, where she traveled around for two weeks feeding children so thin and disfigured they “looked like aliens,” and told her audience that the experience had made her feel like she’d made the world a better place.
At that moment it struck me: You didn’t have to be smart or talented to be rich.
Most of the time, success has more to do with luck or birth than with knowledge.
I could throw out my degree and spend the rest of my days serving eccentric rich men.
Even though I was still pissed off at Hugo, I preferred to stay in the kitchen for as much of the dinner as I could. I sat on the barstool, exhausted. “Where are Piglet and Cora?”
“They went to his room. Better there than getting in the way here.”
Hugo spun his chef’s hat around (one of his quirks), put on his apron and oven mitts, and took the steaming pan with the pre-seared meat out of the oven.
Using a ladle, he poured a white reduction over the steaks, which were studded with green flecks of lime and orange peel.
He garnished the plates with cubes of baked green apple and lemon zest. Then he speared a small piece with a fork and held it out to me.
“Wanna try it?”
I looked at that piece of human flesh just inches in front of me, the incredible smell of rendered fat, with notes of vodka and citrus that made me want to devour it.
I opened my mouth to say yes, but then I remembered the sick people waiting at the public hospital, that man’s dirty and bloodied body, his head on the table, his entrails, the blood gushing into the bucket, his tongue.
“No, thanks,” I replied, thinking about how lucky I was not to know where all the beef, pork, hamburgers, sausages, and roast chicken I ate every day came from.