Elders (31 page)

Love
: even the most unmistakable word got substituted out lest the uninitiated gain admittance to the club, lest they prove themselves equal to the club members and complicate their plans to continue raping, pillaging, plundering, exploiting,
bombing
the uninitiated. But Passos, now more than ever, understood the implicit challenge, understood the stakes, and he refused to be turned away by all the
thee
s and
thou
s, the moneyed diction, the unspoken rules. Turned off, certainly, but not turned away. Elder Passos had determined to finish the English New Testament—at least that much. He was halfway there. Then he could go back to the New Life Portuguese translation he had read since his early youth, a translation of the Bible in which Jesus sounded less like an overcareful Englishman, adjusting his powdered wig as he cast out the Devil—
Get thee hence, Satan
—and more like the Son of God, a carpenter, a workingman, a man of strong words.
Get out of here, Satan! Get out of here!

A few minutes later Elder McLeod finally came into the bedroom. He carried his shoes in his left hand, placed them on the floor beside his bed—an odd change of precedent, as if he feared that
Passos might steal or vandalize the shoes and wanted them closer to him to protect them. McLeod stood at the dresser, his back to Passos; he seemed to be undoing his tie. He left his shirt and dress pants on. When he half turned from the dresser Passos snapped back to his Bible. He sensed out of the corner of his eye a long, hard stare from his companion, who at length lay down on his bed, on top of the covers. McLeod didn’t move from that position for the next twenty minutes.

At ten thirty exactly Passos turned out the bedroom light. He kneeled at his bedside for personal prayer, tried to ignore his sarcophagal companion behind him. He prayed for a change of heart for the both of them, and he meant it, or at least he thought he did. When Elder Passos opened his eyes again he felt like he was underwater: blue light on the blue-green floor, a baptism by moonlight. The moon itself, silver and round, hung in the window like one of the Christmas ornaments that used to fascinate Passos. Christmas globes, his mother called them. He loved how they caught the light and held it, magnified it, and how they magnified and seemed to age a little boy’s face as he leaned in close. Elder Passos was still on his knees at the bedside, and he hardly felt a solid floor underneath him. His memory of an early Christmas was another of the pearls he didn’t share with anyone, much less the McLeods of the world. He himself hadn’t thought of it since the previous Christmas. He and his mother and brothers all there, even his father—Passos and Felipe little boys, Tiago in diapers. In the center of the memory, a conical green tree hung with bright shining balls, some red, some green, some silver. The green of the tree against the red of the throw rug underneath it, and the porcelain crèche on a nearby table. Under the tree, three matching soccer balls, white
with black pentagonal tiles. Tiago’s ball rivaled him in size, a useless toy for an infant, but now Passos felt he understood it: a sign of relative largesse, along with the modest Christmas tree, the rug, the crèche. The husband has work for a change, the wife has her sons—three of them, a respectable number. She sits on the floor in front of the tree, cross-legged, her hair swept back, smile wide. At one point she holds up her own gift, a bright white sweater, to pose for a photograph. Then she widens her arms to take in all three of her boys, her embrace encompassing them together, like a mother hen gathering in her chirping young. Who could deny such a woman her right to happiness? Who could believe that life for her would ever be anything but full and new?

Something about this and other memories, granted, seemed too perfect to Elder Passos, too composed, as if the scenes had reinvented themselves out of the photographs meant merely to mark them. Sometimes the photographs moved in his memory, his mother and brothers, even his father, moving as if in the wash of a strobe light. Sometimes they appeared to be moving backward, back toward that Eden around the Christmas tree, but they never made it. They never would, of course. The only hope lay forward.

Elder Passos felt this familiar piece of knowledge alight on him like a sudden revelation.
The only hope lay forward
. He sensed it moving down his body like a warm draft of drink. He felt it in his heart and in his mind: a chance. For him. Maybe even for him and his companion. Why pray for a change of heart in McLeod if he didn’t believe in at least the possibility of that change? Give him a little time, Passos thought. McLeod wasn’t ready tonight, but who knew about tomorrow. The future slept unformed and void, and only God knew what could be made of it.

Passos rose from his knees and got into bed. He looked over at McLeod. His companion still lay motionless atop the covers and still mostly dressed, from what Passos could tell. He wore his dark socks (or were his feet just in shadow?), his dark pants, and his white shirt, palely blue in the moonlight. Give him time, then. Give him a little more time. Maybe as early as tomorrow, Passos thought, turning over and starting the slow drift toward sleep.

He opened his eyes
and checked his clock again, checked his companion: 1:28 a.m., and Passos displaying the clear signs of deep, oblivious sleep, his chest rising and falling at slow steady intervals, a small snore even, a wheeze, like the breathing of an old man. Elder McLeod slowly brought his feet around to the side of the bed, and stood up, even more slowly, into his pre-tied shoes. He transferred his weight from his arms to his legs, an exchange of burdens, and another commitment. On the floor just past the elders’ beds lay a pane of bluish, cloud-mottled moonlight. McLeod stepped into it and turned to see his face in the dresser mirror across from him. He looked gaunt, deliberate, suffused in blue, like a man in a Picasso painting. He felt his reflection was of a kind to make a noise, almost, a low, ancient moan. Quickly, then, but very quietly, he climbed out the bedroom window and into the night.

The outer door presented the first obstacle. Elder McLeod had never noticed how loud the catch sounded, how sharply the door hinge creaked, until just now. He shut the gate behind him carefully, so carefully, but then he wondered at his care. And what if Passos
had
heard him? So what? He could have made a run for it if he’d had to, and he would have. He did. He started into a jog. Down their street under a remote perfect moon that held off the clouds and stood directly above him no matter where or how
fast he ran. Onto the main street and past the bus stop, past the darkly silhouetted husks of the bank, the supermarket, the post office, the second bus stop—until the drive-through’s blue neon sign loomed up suddenly, too suddenly, and McLeod stopped. He heard the breath inside him, like wind in a cave, as if he’d covered up his ears. Why had he run, and had he really run so fast? They lived nearly two miles from the drive-through, yet here he stood already. McLeod felt it should have taken longer to get here. He should have had more time to prepare. He felt as if God, whom he did not believe in, had cast a net over the world and hauled it in, drive-through first, dropping it squirming at his feet. To force the issue.

Elder McLeod moved to within a few hundred yards of what he took to be the drive-through’s walk-in entrance, a small metal door halfway down the stucco perimeter wall. An automatic gate beside the door opened up to let cars enter, as one did in the time McLeod stood waiting, a young Jonah under low, luminescent clouds, feeling the cool night air prick his skin, insinuate itself between the gaps of his white button-down. This was the only style of presentable shirt Elder McLeod owned. He needed to feel presentable. He didn’t know why. He had left his tie behind, though, and his missionary name tag, as well as his undergarments and any form of identification. In his pocket he carried a hundred reais, and twenty American dollars for good measure.

His breathing had calmed by now—from the running, anyway—though he still looked around as if someone or something might see him. He scoured the street for security cameras, though McLeod had never seen one during his entire time in Brazil. Still: the thought, the mere
thought
of embarrassment, of being
caught out in his sins … McLeod moved closer to the walk-in gate, if only to gain shelter from the street. “Just go, just go, just go,” he mumbled under his breath. The metal door appeared before him. He took a pair of deep breaths and arranged his face in an expression of nonchalance, and before he could stop himself he stepped in off the street.

Some fifty feet inside the door was a tollbooth-like structure, its windows yellow against the darkness, and sitting in the booth, a dark-haired woman. Beyond the booth stretched a low-lying series of curtained stalls. Elder McLeod thought of a row of outsize voting booths, or a stable. He started forward, startling as the pitch of his footfalls changed: the pavement had turned to small white gravel, bluish in the moonlight and the glow of the neon sign, the ground like the floor of a fish tank. The crunch of McLeod’s footsteps alerted the woman in the booth, who looked up to see him hesitating. She slid open a glass window and nodded at him. McLeod strode forward with sudden feigned purpose.

“Good evening,” he said, forcing a smile.

“Good evening,” she said, a smile of her own. She looked thirtyish, maybe fortyish. The skin of her face, stretched smooth across her cheekbones, bore no signs of makeup and only a few lines that gathered at the corners of her large eyes and mouth. She wore a simple red tank top. Her arms were firm. Her cleavage ample.

“You know I could charge you for this,” she said.

“What?” McLeod said, looking up.

“What’ll it be?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Are you here with someone or are you looking for someone?”

“I guess I’m looking.”

“How much time do you want?”

“How much time?”

“How much time. You pay up front.”

McLeod gripped the narrow counter protruding from the tollbooth, looked at his feet as if he’d dropped something. A moment later he bent down (“Sorry, just a second”) as if to pick that something up. It was curious: Elder McLeod, after so many years of moral training, was utterly empty of moral concerns in this moment. Only practical considerations, cordiality, proper procedure—only these things clamored in his mind. What was the language for such an occasion? What was the Portuguese for “escort”? He didn’t know. For “prostitute”? He couldn’t think of it. He was sure he knew the word, but he couldn’t make himself remember it. The only word he could call to mind came from his reading of the Portuguese Book of Mormon. He had needed more time to prepare. He didn’t have a condom. He had never actually used one. What was he doing here? Was it too late to back out? He could just turn around and walk away, couldn’t he? Run away,
flee
, like Joseph from Potiphar’s wife.

“How much time?” the woman said again. She seemed to be losing her patience.

“I am …” McLeod said. “I’m not from around here.”