Nowhere People

At this moment, he and the two lawyers to whom he directly reports are in the meeting room, the jewel in the firm’s crown, not just for its decorative details (walls clad in English fabrics and all manner of framed items — even manuscripts by renowned jurists), but for the view onto the Praça da Matriz: you can see the tops of the jacaranda trees, the Court of Justice, the São Pedro Theatre, a bit of the Legislative Assembly, the top of the monument to Júlio de Castilhos. They have reached an impasse. Paulo who, as they have already mentioned, is only an intern, doesn’t want to agree to halving the percentage he receives from income generated around collection, payments and the termination of rental agreements that he calculates for the Chimendes Machado estate agency. Eleven months earlier, when the younger lawyer, the younger of the two sitting there at the table, had the idea of passing the estate agency account to Paulo in order to free up some of his own time and devote himself to prospecting for new clients, he made it almost impossible to refuse. Paulo didn’t like the imposition, the last thing he wanted at that point was to work exclusively for people who make their money exploiting those who don’t have a place of their own to live, and, on top of that, to have to put up with the unstable moods of Rafaela, the agency’s owner and one of the most difficult people to deal with he had ever met. Certain sacrifices can’t be justified in the name of experience. He knew that the new task was no more than a test. He treated it as a matter of honour. He decided to tackle the situation head on. He would get to keep a fifth of what the firm invoiced on the transactions; it wouldn’t be a fortune, but it would give him a nice little extra income. This recent idea to change their fee distribution came about when the partners realised that the sums being awarded to the estate agency under favourable judgments (following a change in the legal guidelines) had increased significantly, and it didn’t seem reasonable to them that an intern should be pocketing so much money. ‘It’s not my fault if the procedural criteria changed from one moment to the next, and Chimendes Machado expanded their portfolio of commercial and industrial properties and the value of the cases went up; it isn’t fair, you have to stick to what you promised,’ says Paulo, who has run out of patience with this conversation. He looks at his watch: one-fifteen. ‘I have to go to the Canoas Central Forum to deliver a foreclosure notice … As I told you earlier, I won’t be coming back into the office today.’ The lawyers say that they’ll have a think and respond in the coming days. The younger lawyer tells him to call from the Forum to ask whether they need him back in the office for any tasks that might come up. Paulo agrees, but only to be polite. There’s no way he’s coming back. He’s all set to see Maína, for what will be the third time. On their second meeting, they sat in a clearing on the bank of the Guaíba at the end of one of those many faintly sketched lanes that branch off the Estrada do Conde (a subsidiary road with pot-holed tarmac that connects the district of Eldorado do Sul to Guaíba), funnelling out until barely any cars come past; a tiny beach, just a dozen metres long, surrounded by rushes and elephant grass; a lovely, peaceful place, but dangerous in its isolation. This time they’ll go out to a plot of land on the Ilha da Pintada, a small, leafy, grassy place on the banks of the Jacuí river, surrounded by a wire mesh, with no constructions save for a little lean-to with a barbecue, a sink and a bathroom, the property of a former Varig pilot who is friends with his father. He just needs to stop at a little shop three hundred metres further up, say he’s a friend of the owner, collect the key that opens the padlock and that’s it.