Free Carioca Fletch by Gregory McDonald

the upper windows of the plantation house.
Everyone loves the Tap Dancers…. They’re sleek
.
    “Remember …” Toninho was saying. “A skill developed by the young male slaves, in defense against their masters. They would practice at night, to drums, so if their masters came down from the big house, to look for a woman, they could pretend to be dancing. Thanks to—what is the word in English?—miscegenation, such skills ultimately were not needed….”
    There was a loud
Thwack
! and Tito began to fall sideways. He had taken a hard blow to the head from the instep of Orlando’s foot. The blow could have been much, much harder. Tito did not fall completely.
    “I told you to wake up,” Orlando said regretfully.
    Recovering, Tito charged Orlando like a bull, right into his midriff. Orlando fell backwards, Tito on top of him. Laughing, sweating, panting, they wrestled on the grass. At one point their bodies, their arms and legs, were in such a tight ball perhaps even they could not tell which was whose.
    Eva, moving like Time, went down to them.
    Finally, Orlando was sitting on Tito and giving him pink-belly, pounding Tito’s belly hard repeatedly with his fists. Tito was laughing so hard his stomach muscles were fully flexed and no harm was being done.
    Standing over them, behind Orlando, Eva laced her fingers across Orlando’s forehead and pulled him backward, and down.
    Kneeling over Tito as he was, sitting on him, bent backward now so that his own back was on the ground, or on Tito’s legs, Orlando looked up Eva’s thighs. He rolled his eyes.
    He jumped up and grabbed Eva by the hand.
    Together Orlando and Eva ran down the grassy slope from the swimming pool and disappeared.
    “You see?” Toninho said. “Uncomplicated.”
    After resting a moment on the ground, breathing hard, Tito rolled over and over and on into the pool of water.
    “Your
Moby Dick”
Toninho said abruptly. “By Herman Melville?”
    Fletch looked at Toninho, wondering what new surpise was coming. “Yes,” Fletch said. “I read it while waiting for a bus.”
    “‘Call me Ishmael,’” Toninho quoted.
    “Not a bad beginning,” Fletch said. “Simple.”
    “Is it?” Toninho finished his
cachaça
. At the long side of the pool, Norival was finishing his fourth. “Is that Ishmael meant to be some spirit of the United States? Some guardian?”
    “Almost anything can be said,” Fletch said. “And has been.”
    “In a way,
Ismael
is the guiding spirit of Brazil.”
    Fletch said nothing. Necrophilia, slant-six car engines, the nature of
arigó
, robotics,
capoeira
, now a discussion regarding American literature.
    “I’m quite certain Melville stopped in Brazil on his voyages. Have you even thought of that interpretation of
Moby Dick
?”
    “Melville meant Brazil is the guiding spirit of the United States?”
    “Maybe of the hemisphere.”
    “Toninho …” Tito’s forearms were flat on the edge of the swimming pool, holding his head up. Water streamed down his face from his hair. His right ear was red from Orlando’s kick. “I think we should do Norival a favor.”
    Toninho looked over at Norival stretched out in the sunlight. Norival bubble-belched. “Yes.”
    Toninho stood up.
    Together Toninho and Tito tipped the slow-reacting Norival out of the long chair.
    Fletch went to watch what new trick they would play.
    Each taking an arm, they dragged Norival, belly down, to the bushes. The towel dragged off him in the dirt. Then, methodically, standing behind him, Toninho and Tito each picked up one of Norival’s feet. They raised him so that his shins were on their shoulders.
    Not all that gently, somewhat from the sides, they kicked Norival’s soft, upside-down belly with the insteps of their feet, once, twice, some more.
    “
Arigó”
Toninho said, kicking Norival’s upside-down stomach.
    “Empty out the sack,” Tito said. “Very practical.”
    It didn’t take too many kicks for Norival to begin vomiting his