Los Angeles (22 page)

But no one greeted me.

At baggage claim, I used a courtesy phone to make reservations at the Copacabana Palace. Then I stepped onto the sidewalk
and immediately found a taxi.

“Excuse me,” I asked the driver, “do you speak English?”

A small man in a yellow baseball cap turned to look at me. He made a pinching gesture with his fingers, meaning
a little,
and said, “My English…”

He might be young enough, I considered, to know where the concert was. I leaned forward. “Have you ever heard of ImmanuelKantLern?”

He nodded excitedly. “ImmanuelKantLern! Yes! Rock music!”

“Can you take me to the concert?”

“Concert?”

I wasn’t sure if he understood. “They are playing tonight. Somewhere in Rio.” I waved my arms around like a fan in the audience.
“A concert.”

“They are rock… concert,” the driver said.

“Can you take me?”

“Yes, yes,” he said, finally understanding. “I take you.” We sped away from the curb.

It was already almost nine o’clock. The concert was scheduled to begin at ten, according to their website, and I was beginning
to worry that I’d miss it. Perhaps I’d be staying in the same hotel and I could find that Joey Descartes fucker there. I wasn’t
sure how I would approach them, but I imagined that Angela would turn to me, and that whatever had caused her to leave me
for him would melt away as she rushed into my arms, moving in exquisite slow motion, her eyes glossy with tears.

I also imagined the look on that bass player’s face.

We drove, first through the industrial wasteland that separates all airports from all cities, then into a literal urban jungle,
threading the car through the small streets and avenues lined on either side by terraced apartments and enormous, quivering
trees. We finally came out onto a wide, pale beach, waves catching the faint light of the moon in the satiny water.

“Ipanema,” the driver reported.

He drove along this beach for several minutes, then turned into the city again, where great vines climbed over fences, and
thick branches rustled over densely shadowed alleys. Eventually he stopped in front of a crowded sidewalk. I looked up and
saw a high wall stretching half a city block, with several sets of double doors opening onto the street.

“Can you wait?” I reached into my wallet and pulled out one of those hundred-dollar bills.

He understood immediately. “I wait. Yes, yes. I wait for you.” The driver indicated with a sweep of his arm the area in front
of the concert hall, and I stepped out.

I could hear pulsating music coming from inside, and I wondered how I might get in. I went to the first set of double doors.
They opened easily onto a long hallway throughout which were gathered tight knots of teenagers. One of these knots was crowded
around another set of doors. The music coming from inside the concert hall was unbearably loud, rhythmically brainless, falling
like hot lava into my ears. The air was no cooler in here, and the stifling, nauseating odor of thousands of human bodies
penetrated the atmosphere. I began to walk toward the door before I noticed the two bouncers who guarded it. One of them held
his hand up and gave me a look, the one that means
hold it, pal
in any language.

“Do you speak English?” I asked, trying to make an innocent face.

He spoke again, and whatever he said made the other bouncer laugh.

“English,” I said stupidly. “American.”

He put a hand against my chest and pushed. I needed a ticket, he was telling me.

I reached into my pocket for my wallet, not thinking how dumb this was, and pulled out three of Angela’s crisp hundred-dollar
bills. “Can I buy one?”

He took the money and turned to the other bouncer, saying something sly, no doubt, and slipped the bills into his pocket.

I stepped forward again, hoping he’d let me through this time, but once again, he pushed me, fingers positioned like a huge
spider against my chest.

I turned imploringly to the other bouncer, who only laughed, flashing an open, pitiless grin.

Outside, a handful of kids were selling T-shirts. They rushed up to me, speaking in indecipherable incantations, instantly
identifying me as a sucker. I sidestepped them and walked around to the edge of the building, where I found an alley lined
with putrid garbage cans. Here, a group of people passed a joint from hand to hand. I walked through them and discovered a
parking area in the back, just beyond a high chain-link fence, which separated the alley from the rear of the concert hall,
and there it was…

A long, white limo.

A couple of security guards loitered nearby, smoking cigarettes. This was the vehicle that would take the band back to the
hotel, I realized.

I turned around and hurried back, coming out into the street again. I saw the driver on the other side. He was parked in the
wrong direction, standing against the taxi with his door open, flirting with a couple of shiny-haired girls.

“Hey,” I said, approaching.

He immediately opened the back door for me. “Hotel?”

“No,” I said. “I want to wait.”

“Wait?”

“For the band.”

His expression told me that he didn’t understand.

“ImmanuelKantLern.” I mimicked the act of holding a steering wheel. “We’ll follow them, okay?”

“
Ahhh.
” The driver tapped his temple with his forefinger.

We waited for another half hour, listening to the clamor inside the concert hall. The crowd cheered maniacally for every song,
adding an extra element of violence to the evening’s already savage pitch.

Then, after several encores, the music finally stopped.

“Are they leaving?” I asked.

Just then, we saw the white limo pulling away. The driver turned the ignition and waited briefly as the limo turned onto our
street. Then he slipped directly behind it into traffic. We tailed the limo for several blocks, then turned onto the beach
in Ipanema. It stopped in front of a pale modern building, and the driver pulled up directly behind it. I jumped out and caught
a glimpse of the group as they slipped inside. The door was held open, and the handful of young men with colorful clothes
and crazy hair moved quickly into the lobby.

She was there. She was with them. I couldn’t see her face, but I definitely caught a flash of Angela’s fake blond hair.

“Angela!” I yelled. “Wait!”

But the door was already shut behind them.

I came up to it and leaned on the handle. It started to open, and a man stuck his head out from behind it. “Can I help you?”
he asked.

“I need to…to see the band—the guys who just went in there.”

“ImmanuelKantLern are attending an invitation-only party,” he said coldly. “Can I see your invitation?”

I sighed. “But it’s important.”

He smiled a very American bullshit smile. “If you have an invitation, then you can come inside. Otherwise—”

“Otherwise?” I thought for a moment he was about to suggest another way in.

“— get the fuck out of here.”

I thought about bribing him, but then remembered what had happened with the bouncers. I didn’t care about the money; it hadn’t
been mine anyway. I just knew it wouldn’t work. Besides, the door had already closed and had the look of a door that was not
likely to be opened again anytime soon.

I could wait until they emerged, if they ever would, and try to accost them then.

Or I could try again tomorrow.

I knew from the schedule on their website that they were playing at the same concert hall in less than twenty-four hours.

“Can you just take me to my hotel?” I asked the driver after walking back to the taxi. “The Copacabana Palace?”

He started the engine and drove away. “It’s about maybe…twenty minutes,” he said.

We turned onto the beach again. I hadn’t noticed the bars and clubs, or the people walking up and down the broad sidewalks
before. There were small kiosks surrounded by crowds of people — people dancing, partying, drinking. In the distance was the
ocean, smooth waves lapping an iridescent shore under a glass-eyed moon that seemed to be hanging in the wrong place in the
sky. We turned into the city, weaving through the tree-lined streets and tiled boulevards, and then, after penetrating a long,
busy avenue, emerged onto another beach, where a wide road separated a phalanx of high-rises from a pearly crescent of sand.
I tried to remember if I had ever been here before. It would have been with my parents, if I had, in the hushed, air-conditioned
seclusion of whatever the most expensive hotel would have been at the time, and they wouldn’t have dared to take me outside
in a climate like this, not during the day, anyway.

I remembered cool evenings in places like Rio when I was a kid, recalled standing at the window of the hotel and wishing the
sun would descend a little more quickly, wishing I could speed up the tape. I’d run back and forth from the curtains to my
mother in her bed, saying, “It’s almost all the way down,” anxious, panicking, repeating, “Mom, we’re going to miss it, we’re
going to miss it,” as if the night itself would slip by.

“We won’t miss anything,” she would say. “There’s nothing to miss.”

I’d tug on her hand, pleading, “
Mah-ahm.
”

Finally, a wan smile would cross her lips, and my mother would get out of bed and squeeze into a pair of jeans, sandals, and
an elegant tank top. We’d walk through the hotel, passing the bar, the restaurants, the people coming in for the night, and
I would run with my arms wide toward the water.

“Angel,” she would call after me, “be careful!”

I’d run straight into the ocean and let the waves splash against my body, crushing me up to my bony, albino chest.

After a day in the sun, the water would still be warm and soft enough for me to wade a little way out.

My mother would remove her sandals and dangle them in one hand. She might even roll up the cuffs of her jeans and wade in
herself, calling after me, “Angel, Angel, be careful, little prince.…Don’t go out too far.”

And when the sun descended completely and there was no more light in the sky, and the stars had come out to shine like pinpricks
of pink and yellow, she would call me back in, saying it was time to get dressed, that we were meeting my father for dinner.

I held on, of course, staying in the water, in the cool, wet sand, experiencing something close to what other children take
for granted, until I heard in the tone of my mother’s voice that I could no longer press my luck. She would wrap a rough towel
around my body, pulling me in to her, and I’d take her hand again and walk back to the hotel, wherever we happened to be —
the Caribbean, Hawaii, Spain — defeated by the brevity of the time I’d had outside but also elated by the water and cool evening
air.

My mother might say she would take me to the pool after dinner if I was lucky, if I was good, if I played my cards right.

______

The driver pulled up to a white, rectangular building that looked like a multitiered wedding cake. Bright yellow windows shone
over a mosaic sidewalk. A uniformed man opened the door for me; he wore shiny gold buttons across his chest and practically
genuflected, speaking in a heavily accented English: “May I please welcome you to the Copacabana Palace?”

I gave my yellow-capped driver a couple of those hundred-dollar bills, thanked him, and slipped out of the car, walking into
the gardenia-scented lobby.

The walls were paneled in marble. The light fixtures were gold. On every table were silver punch bowls filled with polished
apples. At least ten employees hovered around nervously, including a young man down on his knees wiping the floor with a lace
handkerchief.

“I made a reservation earlier,” I said, approaching the desk. “My name is —”

“Mr. Veronchek, of course.” The clerk was an older, distinguished-looking man in a suit that seemed slightly too big for him.
His hair was about thirty years too young. “We have a suite waiting for you, sir.”

“Thanks,” I said, relieved.

“Can we take an imprint of your credit card for incidentals?”

“Absolutely.” I handed it over. “I was also wondering if you could help me get a ticket to a concert.”

The toupeed man behind the counter looked up and smiled. “There are many wonderful musical performances in Rio,” he said.
“We have classical music, a national opera house, and, of course, Samba, which is —”

“ImmanuelKantLern,” I interrupted.

He paused. “Excuse me?”

“It’s a rock band. They’re playing here tomorrow night. I tried to see them tonight, but I couldn’t get in.”

His smile soured. “Very well, sir. I will make the arrangements and have a ticket waiting for you in the morning.”

“Thank you.”

“Can you —” He sighed. “Can you please spell the name of this group?”

I spelled it for him, painfully calling out each letter and explaining how they ran it all together.

Then he looked down at his computer and frowned.

“Is something wrong?”

“Your card,” he said quietly, “has been rejected.”

I shook my head. “That’s impossible.”

“I’m sure it is a mistake. Do you have another?”

This is what had happened at the supermarket a few days before Angela had disappeared. I had called Frank’s office about it
but realized now that no one had ever bothered to clear it up. These cards had huge limits, and I hardly ever spent anything.
Was it possible that someone had let a payment lapse? Or maybe they had made a mistake at the bank. Thankfully, my other Visa
worked, and a minute later, I followed a young man through the marble hallway, then around a pool that glowed like a liquid
moon and past a bar where a handful of wealthy Europeans spoke quietly to one another while a guitarist plucked a whispery
bossa nova.

We crossed through a pink candlelit restaurant and stepped into a gold-paneled elevator.

I walked like a griever in a funeral procession.

Finally, the bellman opened a door for me and started to show me the room.

I gave him a huge tip — those hundreds were the only bills I had — and begged off, saying, “I’ll be fine, please…you can go
now, thank you.”