Cooper marveled at his companion, reclined and sleeping in her cramped economy class seat.  Her face was smooth, her breathing regular.  One hand was tucked underneath her chin and the other lay open across her lap.  Her head, cradled in the cheap airline pillow, was turned toward the window.

            He, on the other hand, had apparently been condemned by the gods of slumber to watch a red line move at a snail’s pace across continents and oceans on the map thoughtfully displayed by the airline.  He wondered if they tortured their sleepless passengers intentionally or if someone actually thought this was a good idea.

            Not even fifty milligrams of Benadryl and a glass of white wine had been enough to induce sleep to come to him this evening.  The claustrophobic quarters weren’t the problem.  It was the face that came to him whenever he closed his eyes.  He could have stood it if he were seeing Laura alive.  But the face he saw was blue and gritty, though strangely no less lovely for that.

            And so he sat and stared at Starling until the first blush of dawn stained her pale skin.

            It was the smell of coffee that awoke her, finally.  She resisted, feeling the last echoes of a dream fading, but it was too late.  The only part of it she could call to mind were two voices, one rough and one velvet, speaking in perfect harmony.  “That’s my girl.”

            When she opened her eyes, she saw Cooper, freshly shaved, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper Folha de São Paulo.

            “I didn’t know you were so fluent,” commented Starling in a voice rusty from sleep.

            He turned to her and grinned, but she could see the dark shadows beneath his eyes.  “I’m not, really.  But it’s good mental exercise.  And I can get the gist of things.”

            She nodded and crawled over him, deftly avoiding either coffee spillage or newspaper creaseage.  Opening the overhead compartment, she took out her travel bag and made her way down the aisle to the tiny bathroom.  She decided to settle for washing her face and brushing her teeth.  More complete preparations could wait until São Paulo, where better facilities would be available.  She looked once in the mirror, ran her fingers through her hair, and exited the bathroom just as the fasten seat belts light went on.

              Their descent was unremarkable, and soon Starling found herself waiting with Cooper at the baggage carousel, silently offering a prayer to whatever gods might be listening that her luggage would arrive.  Apparently, one or more deities were paying attention, and they were able to grab their things.  Cooper, who had only a single small suitcase and one garment bag, assisted Starling, who looked like she was drowning in black leather.  They made their way to the crowded customs station and, by dint of FBI identification and a little sweet-talking from Cooper, were able to skip the whole sordid process.

            Once out in the main thoroughfare of the airport, Starling finally began to notice how dull and dingy everything looked.  She cast a critical eye over the orange plastic seating, the brown and green tiles on the floor.  The whole place looked one step away from a Howard Johnson’s scheduled for demolition.  Cooper noticed her gaze and the slight frown on her face.

            “Welcome to a third world country, Special Agent Starling,” he said.

            She didn’t respond, but continued her survey of her surroundings.  Her eyes marked the beggars at the intersections of hallways, mostly handicapped, crying out in words she did not know but she understood them all the same.  The children who accompanied the panhandlers, dressed in little more than rags, would dart in and out of the crowd, and Starling began to keep one eye on her things.

            Cooper gave her a searching look, but said nothing more.  They walked down the wide, high corridor until they found a moneychanger.  Starling stopped.

            “You’ll get better rates outside,” said Cooper.

            Starling favored him with a withering glance.  He shrugged, and they entered.

            After receiving a large wad of reais, the Brazilian currency, and a warning about carrying so much cash, they proceeded once more down the corridor.   Starling’s shoulders were aching from unaccustomed burdens.  She spotted an empty bench down a side hallway and motioned Cooper over to it.  Setting down her bags, she sighed and stretched.  He sat next to her, grinning.

            “Are you so out of condition, then?”

            “Not on your life, doughboy.  Here,” she replied, pulling a fair-sized manila envelope out of her bag.  She opened it only to pull out another envelope.  This one she opened to reveal two fresh-looking passports.  She handed him one along with a thin file of other documentation.  Flipping through, he saw a credible picture and all appropriate visas and entry stamps.  Noting briefly that his name was Kyle Moore, he looked up and raised an eyebrow.

            “You’ve been a busy girl.”

            She flushed.  “I thought it best to be prepared, just in case…”

            He smiled and tucked the papers away in his bag.  She gave a mock groan and stood up, hoisting her luggage into place.  They moved at a brisk pace until they reached the other end of the airport, where the smaller domestic carriers were housed.  It was no trouble at all for Cooper to arrange seats for Kyle Moore and Julianne McLachlan on a small plane bound for São Paulo.

            That city from the air was like nothing Starling had ever seen.  It stretched as far as she could see, an ocean of corrugated aluminum and plywood.  But even the smallest hovels had tall wire antennas, raised to the sky like an army of pikemen advancing on the information age.  The boundaries of class were as apparent as lines on a map as they flew closer into the city’s center, where poverty gave way to gleaming skyscrapers and a modern skyline.  Her face, like a child’s, was pressed to the window during their descent, drinking in the scene.

            They disembarked in the open air, and the smell of the city hit her all at once.  Now she knew at least one reason Lecter had elected to stay in a hotel on the coast.  Praia Grande, the small town that boasted the Hotel Praia Plata, was about 60 kilometers from São Paulo, to the east and on the sea.  She felt it turning her like a compass needle, directing her orientation in this strange foreign land.

            A young man in a grimy brown uniform had piled their luggage on a cart.  They followed him across the tarmac to an outbuilding, where a taxi was waiting, just as Cooper had requested.  Sliding into the back seat, Starling leaned her head back and let out a long, low sigh.  The driver assisted in loading the luggage into the trunk, and returned to his place.  He turned around and met Starling’s eye.  “Pra onde vai, a senhora?” he asked.

            “To the Hotel Ca’d’Oro,” said Starling, needing no translation.

            Cooper’s eyes widened.  He’d run across references to that hotel during his Brazil research, and it was, by all accounts, one of the marvels of the city.  Colonial atmosphere, sheer elegance, and priced to match.

            The taxi lurched in and out of traffic like a drunken sailor dancing a jig on a heaving deck.  Starling was amused to note that stoplights seemed to be mere recommendations instead of commands, and that the average New York city cab driver would likely be frozen, white-knuckled in fear, in this grand chaos.  Somehow, they wound their way through the city into the fashionable Jardins district, and did arrive intact at the hotel.

            The Grand Hotel Ca’d’Oro rose, white and gleaming in the morning sun, high into the skyline.  Liveried bellhops met their taxi and efficiently extracted the luggage while Starling and Cooper looked around.  The cab driver cleared his throat.

            “Cuanto custa?” asked Cooper.

            “Pra o senhor?  Sòmente vinte reais.”

Cooper reached into his pocket and withdrew a fifty reais bill.  “Você nunca nos viu, comprende?”

“Ah, claro, o senhor.  Bom dia,” said the taxi driver, who winked, took the money, and then took off.

Starling looked at Cooper quizzically.  Her Portuguese was pretty much limited to “Where is the bathroom?” and “Freeze, put your hands up!” – both phrases she had felt it essential to learn.

“Security, my dear Starling,” said Cooper expansively, enjoying a brief moment of superiority.  “Unless I miss my mark, that cabbie is now suffering from currency-induced amnesia.”

Starling’s only answer to that was a smile.

 

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            Clarice luxuriated in the deep tub, barely visible beneath the mounds of foam that covered her like a lush, thick blanket.   The grime of nearly twenty solid hours of travel was soaking away nicely, and the jasmine floral scent of the bubble bath wouldn’t clash with the perfume she planned to wear.  The piping hot water soothed aching muscles and tempered, to some degree, the adrenaline rush that she’d been riding ever since she got off the plane.

            It was with an odd regret that she opened the drain and stood.  She turned on the shower, letting the driving rain of water sluice the bubbles from her body.  Her hair she’d washed already, and it was about half dry.  She turned off the shower and dried herself with one of the thick white towels close at hand.  She’d never felt cotton this soft before.  She slipped on one of the hotel’s bathrobes, and the texture was the same, almost silky next to her skin.

            She crossed over to the counter, looking up into the mirror.  “It all starts here,” she whispered.  A smile curved her lips and was quickly gone.  She opened the black case she’d brought, stuffed with all sorts of goodies from the helpful saleswoman at Nieman-Marcus.  She pulled out a small glass jar and dipped her fingers in the glossy pomade.  She smoothed it into her hair, noting that the lemony scent was fresh and pleasant.  She dried her hair carefully, keeping the hair dryer on the lowest setting, coaxing the sleek, straight mass into something that resembled the fabulous ‘do she’d gotten at the posh Washington salon.

            She covered her face with a light moisturizer, and decided that foundation was unnecessary for her clear, pale skin.  A dusting of fine powder, and she was ready for the difficult part.  For the last 15 years, since she began reluctantly to use makeup, a dash of eyeliner and a sweep of nearly translucent lipstick had sufficed as the whole of her beauty regimen.  Now she held an ebony brush in a hand far better suited to holding a firearm.  Taking a deep breath, she flicked the bristles across the gunmetal gray eyeshadow, then slowly applied the color to the crease of her eyes.  Following with lighter and darker shades of the same color, she attempted to remember all the instructions given to her.  She blended and blended, trying to avoid looking like a raccoon and succeeding admirably, given her lack of experience.  The darkness threw her blue eyes into sharp relief, and accented the contours of her face.  She smudged black kohl liner just from her pupils out towards her temples, and with a larger brush, applied just the barest hint of rose blush.  Her cheekbones needed little assistance.

            As she picked up the lip liner, she recalled arguing with the cosmetics girl over whether or not redheads could wear red lipstick.  She had lost that battle, but seeing the stain spread over her lips, she conceded that she had been wrong.  This matte hue, the color of old blood, did suit her well.

            Gazing at her reflection, at once familiar and strange, she wondered if this was what Lecter had seen in her all along.  The potential to become this elegant creature… but it was just a mask, now.  There was so much she would need to learn, if…

            She forced her mind away from ifs and back into the moment.  Diving her hand yet again into the black case, she retrieved a small glass bottle from its protective wrapping.  Long had she wondered about what scent she would wear, knowing as she did the importance of the olfactory to Lecter.  She had discarded the idea of her old L’Air du Temps.  For some reason she didn’t want to evoke the memory of dungeon days.  Rather, she had decided on an old classic.  She remembered it as her mother’s one extravagance, saved only for the most important events.  She’d never forget the smell of it on her at her father’s funeral, as her mother stood there, watching them lower the casket into the ground.  Starling had watched all the way, until the first shovelful of dirt was tossed in, then she had buried her face into her mother’s chest.

            As she dabbed L’Heure Bleue onto her throat, beneath her ears, onto her wrists, the inside of her elbows, and the center of her cleavage, she inhaled deeply.  The odor of strength, virtue, and love filled her with peace.

            She laughed at herself as she recognized how deep her tension had truly run, now that it was gone.  She wasn’t even certain she would meet Lecter tonight… it was tomorrow that the stars would align.  Even so… it would not do to be unprepared.  She picked up the convenient bathroom phone (ah, the luxuries of this hotel!) and dialed Cooper’s room.

            “Hello.”

            “Do me a favor, Coop?”

            “Sure.  What is it?”

            “Rent us a car, and put on your fancy duds.  We’re going out on the town tonight.”

            He laughed.  “Eat, drink, and be merry?”

            “You got it.”

            He hung up, and for all his outward jocularity, was not able to escape the inevitable follow-up as he dialed the concierge.  As he listened to the ringing, he said it aloud.

            “For tomorrow, we die.”

 

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            The drive to the shore was pleasant, especially as the sea breezes grew strong enough to waft the smell of the city away.  They talked as they drove, of inconsequentials and trivia, neither one willing to broach the more serious subjects at hand.  The setting sun glowed behind them, the smog of the city creating a truly amazing sunset, resplendent in reds and purples.

            They had settled into a slightly uncomfortable silence as they neared the town of Praia Grande.  The sun was absent now, and only the painted sky remembered the light.  Starling could stand the quiet no longer.

            “Any moment now, Coop.  You know that.”

            His hands tightened on the steering wheel, but he made no reply.

            “He won’t be happy that you’re here.”

            “Was there anything else I already know that you wished to tell me, Agent Starling?”  He made a point of keeping his eyes fixed on the road ahead.

            She blushed, and her hands twisted in her lap.  “I guess what I’m trying to say is thanks.  For everything.  In case I don’t get a chance to say it later.”

            There was a long pause.  They arrived in the town, a picturesque collection of colonial buildings, and Cooper pulled over at the first opportunity.

            “Having doubts about your ability to protect me, are you?”

            “I’ll do everything I can.  But I’m only human.  I can’t do anything about what’s inside you.”

            The heat of his anger cooled abruptly.  He turned his whole body towards her, a maneuver awkward in the tiny Fiat Uno that had been his only choice of a rental car.

            “I know,” he said softly.  “I don’t expect you to.”  He reached out a hand and lightly traced a finger across her cheekbone.  “You’re truly lovely tonight.”

            Starling’s heart skipped a beat at the sudden change of mood.  She felt like a rabbit frozen in the middle of a lawn.

            “Because I know I won’t get a chance to later.  And because I want to know what might have been,” he whispered, and leaned into her.

            She closed her eyes, still unable to move.  She felt the softness of his lips on hers, smelled the pine scent that always hovered around him, and warmed to the heat of his kiss.  She was just about to part her lips…

            He pulled back.  It was as chaste a kiss as could be imagined.  It could have been brotherly, even, except for the tingle that still throbbed around her mouth.  She opened her eyes to see him watching her, an unreadable expression on his features.

            He smiled then, his eyes bright.  “Don’t worry, Clarice.  We both belong to someone else.  I won’t jeopardize that.  But I needed to get that out of the way.”

            She ventured a small smile in return.  “It’s a beautiful evening.  Let’s walk, shall we?”

            They got out of the car, their fine attire out of sync with their mundane conveyance.  Cooper wore, of course, a suit black as night, dark as coal, with his usual brilliant white shirt and red tie.  Starling was garbed in the obi dress, the sheer black fabric like a sensual shroud over her glowing, pale skin.  She stood tall in the Gucci shoes, and did not stagger as she once had in the daringly high heels.  He took her arm as they strolled through the crowd of locals and tourists.  The rhythm of the night had begun to possess the town, and they could hear the beat of the samba leaking through walls and making its way into the street.

            It was an upscale place, and they stood out only as first among equals as they mingled into the pedestrian traffic.  They stopped for dinner at an outdoor café.  Cooper ordered for them, and they sipped caipirinhas while feasting on lobster.  Starling ate lightly, as much for the sake of her dress as for fear of being too weighed down with food to be ready for whatever else the night might bring.

            The lights of the café created an island in the darkness, and the strum of a classical guitar enveloped them in sound.  As hyperaware as she was, she couldn’t help but relax a little in the gorgeous atmosphere.  And, though she had but sipped her drink, the kick of the cachaça began to work, unbeknownst to her, in her bloodstream.

            So perhaps it is not surprising that Cooper was the one who felt it first.  An icy hand gripped his heart, and the breath was sucked out of his lungs.  He choked on the fluid in his mouth, coughing and spluttering.  Starling looked at him in concern, handing him a napkin.  When his streaming eyes had cleared and his voice returned, Cooper looked nonchalantly around.

            “Sorry about that,” he said calmly, even though his nervous system had gone into high alert.

            Starling nodded and began eating a small piece of the sticky sweet coconut custard dessert that had just arrived at the table.  She gave a little sigh of pleasure.  “This is so good, it is unbelievable.”

            He smiled, glad that her attention was elsewhere.  The bright lights prevented him from seeing anything outside their immediate vicinity.  He closed his eyes and let his awareness expand slowly, searching for…

            He had it, for just a moment, before it was gone, submerged in the throng of people and passions wandering the avenue.  It was an unmistakable presence, and he shook at the malice and desire he felt entwined in that aura.

            The sound of glass cracking brought him abruptly from his reverie.  He looked down at the stinging in his palm.  The alcohol burned in the shallow cut that was bleeding profusely.  The pieces of his glass glittered on the pavement.

            Starling pressed the linen napkin into his hand, holding pressure.  “What is it, Coop?” she asked, her eyes worried.  “Is it…”

            He shook his head.  “I’m just a little keyed up, that’s all.”  No need for her to know.  She’d find out soon enough.  He didn’t have anything useful yet, nothing concrete.  “I need to work off this adrenaline,” he said, forcing a small chuckle.

            Her eyes looked around and settled on a neon sign across the street.  “I think I have the perfect idea.”  She laughed then, a silver sound that cascaded over him like a net, pulling him into her joy.  “Tonight I am going to do what I was always too busy studying, or working, or worrying to do.  Tonight, my friend, we are going to dance.”

            He summoned all his strength, and with a blow, quashed the darkness that had loomed up inside him into a tiny ball.  He exhaled, and smiled, genuine this time.

            “Well, why not?  Going to let your hair down, then?”

            She gave him a mock glare and giggled.  “As if I have any left.  Come on,” she cried as she pulled him to his feet.  “Or are you too wounded to keep up with me?”

            He pulled the napkin off his hand.  The bleeding had stopped.  He stuffed the napkin in his pocket and pulled out his wallet.  Dropping a few bills on the table, he said, “The question is, Agent Starling, can you keep up with me?”

            They laughed as they left the outdoor patio and crossed the street to the building advertised as the Clube Discotecnique.  Neither one marked the figure standing in the darkness of the far side of the café, his fedora pulled down low.  A stray gleam of light penetrated the shadows, and a flash of silver glimmered briefly and was gone.  The man took his hand out of his pocket and strode into the crowd, moving quickly between the jostling bodies.  He paused for a moment outside the nightclub, licked scarlet lips, and pulled the door open.