Nowhere People

He walks into the apartment telling everyone that there is to be no messing around with Maína: no alcohol, no coke, no weed for her. He doesn’t leave her alone for a minute. As soon as the group who were on the balcony vacate the place, he invites her to sit there and look out over the city. ‘Pretty,’ says Maína, ‘light, lot of light’. Paulo doesn’t hold back. ‘Chaos, Maína.’ He doesn’t even know if she knows what chaos is. ‘It’s a pretty place, but not always a good one.’ Luana appears with a tray of savoury pastries, Maína takes two. ‘You sure she isn’t up for smoking just a little one?’ and gives him a wink. Luana, always Luana. Paulo gives her a get-out-of-here look. Luana turns around. Adrienne has spread posters of Fernando Collor de Mello, the National Reconstruction Party’s candidate for president of the Republic, all over the living room and she refuses to explain this décor; Adrienne and her eccentricities. The soundtracks of her little parties are limited to Brian Eno, Roxy Music, Talking Heads, The Doors, Velvet Underground, King Crimson and Kraftwerk. So long as he respects the magnificent seven, as she’s dubbed them, a guest is free to put on any music he chooses. Paulo likes hanging out with this crowd, it’s good being a part of the group without actually being one of the group; it’s less hard work, less stressful. Paulo doesn’t find it easy being involved with groups or people for too long. Everyone there is teeming with ideas and plans; no doubt at all that at least half of them, ten or fifteen years from now, are going to be calling the shots in Rio Grande do Sul and the rest of the country. In the meantime they’re no more than a gang of stoners who think they’re the shit. Paulo is waiting for the mini-gig by the band Vulgo Valentin that has been promised for midnight on the dot but that ends up only happening at half past one. (Adrienne loves to torment her neighbours, always with the same strategy: the mini-gigs get going and only finish when the police turn up asking them to put an end to the performance.) As soon as the boys finish playing — this time it is the woman who manages the building who has switched off the apartment’s power mains and is now giving Adrienne the biggest lecture at the door to the apartment — Paulo calls Maína and they leave. The chosen route is: down Independência, onto Riachuelo, past the town hall and then the old Gasômetro factory, back along Duque de Caxias, then taking Borges at Demétrio Ribeiro, on as far as the beginning of Veríssimo Rosa, turn left, turn right, arrive home.

He’ll give Maína his room to sleep in, he shows her how to lock the door from the inside (he feels a bit stupid explaining, the girl has trusted him so far, there shouldn’t be any further reason to be afraid, but all the same it seems the right thing to do). He goes up to the study, sits in his father’s leather armchair, turns on the television. They’re showing The Thing, the John Carpenter version, which was called Enigma do outro mundo — Enigma from Another World — in Brazil. He watches the first half, tells himself he’ll stay awake until the bit where Kurt Russell tests his team-members’ blood with a piece of hot wire to see which of them is infected. He can’t fight off his tiredness. He falls asleep before getting to it. In one of his dreams, he gets up at nine-thirty, opens the bedroom window, walks downstairs, goes straight into the pantry, where he finds Maína sitting at the table, keeping herself entertained leafing through the magazines she was given. He says hello, she responds with the same word. He prepares an omelette with mozzarella, he toasts four pieces of bread in the toaster and pours two glasses of chocolate milk. He says that when they’ve finished he’ll take her back. In the last dream, he is surprised to discover that the previous day he had stopped very close to where her family is. Maína opens the door, he says bye. She gets out of the car in silence but, when she closes the door (through the open window), she says Thank very much. Thank you very much, he corrects her, but she says again Thank very much, and he notices the lightness of her hair in the sun, and she turns her back on him before her mother discovers that her daughter has just been driven home by someone who hasn’t even realised he has gone much too far.

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a porcelain sky