Page 83 of The Secret Dinner

Pair of eyes: US$745.00

Scalp: US$450.00

Liver: US$22,700.00

Kidney: US$144,000.00

Bone marrow: US$27,468.00

Coronary artery: US$683.37

Skin (per inch): US$5.86

Hand and forearm: US$230.43

Heart: US$55,600.00

Pair of lungs: US$64,255.00

Liter of blood: US$222.23

Gallbladder: US$1,000.00

Skull with teeth: US$720.00

Small intestine: US$1,752.84

Spleen: US$240.00

Shoulders: US$270.00

Stomach: US$122.23

PINGO D’ÁGUA

1

The series of bureaucratic steps you’re faced with after the death of a loved one—identifying the body, registering the death, obtaining the death certificate, making phone calls and final arrangements—often leaves you so numb that you have no time to cry or grieve. When everything around you starts to crumble, you have to be unshakable, like a lighthouse leading the way forward through the darkness.

First thing Saturday morning, I went alone to the morgue to identify Miguel’s body. Afterward, I stopped by the police station to give a statement, filled out paperwork, and arranged payment for the body’s transport back to Pingo d’Água. Around noon, I called my mom to tell her what’d happened. To me, telling friends and family was such a no-brainer that I assumed somebody had already done that while I was dealing with the bureaucratic shit. But no. My mom listened to the news in distraught silence, which morphed into a series of heaving sobs, broken by logistical questions.

“Let me tell his mother … My God, how did something like this even happen?”

I tried to remember everything the detective had told me at the police station, with as much detail as possible: Miguel was walking alone along Rua Tonelero at around five PM when two men on a motorcycle pulled up beside him. According to witnesses, they took his phone and a briefcase he’d been carrying. Miguel didn’t resist, but the muggers shot him three times, and he died instantly, just a few blocks from home. The detective justified their initial difficulty in identifying the body by citing the fact that the muggers had also taken his wallet containing his ID. When they were removing the body from the crime scene, they found his hospital badge tucked into his shirt pocket. It was a straightforward case of armed robbery, one of many daily muggings in Rio de Janeiro.

“We’ll do everything we can to catch the culprits,” the detective had told me, with the weariness of someone who’d made that same promise too many times before.

I was able to get the body released from the morgue that same day, to be transported to Pingo d’Água the following morning. Back at the apartment, everyone was still in shock. Piglet had become a different person: I’d never heard him go that long without letting out one of his boisterous belly laughs, which always lightened the mood. We were somber, empty, sapped. Cora stayed close by, ever faithful, careful to respect our space. She hadn’t been that close to Miguel and didn’t try to force things in that regard. She wept quietly, hugging her boyfriend with a lost look in her eyes. After the initial shock, Hugo had wiped his tears and tried to help. He offered to accompany the hearse and organize our trip home to Pingo d’Água.

I couldn’t sleep at all that night. What was Miguel doing on Rua Tonelero? He never went past that corner on his way to the subway or the gym. Before the sun was up, we were in a cab to Galeão airport. It was a two-hour flight to Curitiba followed by a six-hour drive in a rental car amid rural fields and abandoned farmhouses, following the hearse carrying Miguel’s body, until we finally arrived in Pingo. We exited off BR-277 highway, taking the dirt road to the right that leads into town, while the hearse went straight to the cemetery. Though there wasn’t much time before the wake, I wanted to go home.

Before driving under the large arch at town entrance—WELCOME TO PINGO D’ÁGUA—we passed the large abandoned structure that had once been Madam Adélia’s famous brothel. Now all that remained was a rusted skeleton, charred rooms where local teens went to do drugs and lose their virginity. Piglet glanced at the burned-down building, its dusty beams rising out of the rubble like horns, but he kept his face blank, as if none of it had anything to do with him.

It had been six years since I’d last set foot in my hometown. My parents came to visit me about twice a year in Rio, and whenever we said our goodbyes, I’d promise to come to Pingo, even set a date, but I’d always come up with an excuse at the last minute and put it off indefinitely. It might seem silly, but I was terrified of returning to my roots only to realize that this was the place where I belonged all along. That I never should have left.

It didn’t take me more than ten minutes of driving around the few streets downtown to confirm that nothing had changed—like so many others, it was a town stuck in time. Around the main square sat the town hall, the clerk’s office where my father was a notary, the same old clothing stores, same bars, Mr. Italo’s video store that had fueled my childhood imagination, and the tiny, washed-out Catholic church, now completely overshadowed by the excessive grandeur of the Universal Church of the Crucified Lord just a few feet away. The only sign of change was the handful of hotels and motels for the faithful who came from far away to attend Bishop Lygia’s concert-like worship services.

A service had just let out, so the center of town was bustling. When I got to the house, my mother was waiting for us at the gate in a black dress, her face puffy. It took me only a few seconds to reach a bittersweet conclusion: This was no longer home. The unpaved streets, the houses with their small fences and big yards, that obsession with knowing everybody’s business, the stalls selling Bibles in various sizes—none of that belonged to me anymore. I was an outsider. I didn’t have the patience anymore for all this peace and quiet.