Nowhere People

Rener had invited him round to hers for this pasta with tomato sauce over two weeks earlier, she was sure today would be a difficult day for him, and because she said she could no longer bear to keep meeting him in bars, and because he’s got to stop living off Twix and Coke. Paulo knows exactly what she thinks. He walks up the stairs in the building in Elephant and Castle, stops outside the flat. Rener is the closest he has managed to get to family these past months; it’s been hard to be with her. He knocks three times. She says to wait a moment. She opens the door, her right eye is bruised and there’s a cut on the left side of her forehead. ‘Hi, brésilien,’ she greets him without any awkwardness. ‘What happened, Rener?’ He’s surprised. ‘Looking pretty cute, aren’t I?’ she says ironically. ‘Brand new Halloween makeup, I’ve had it on since Friday. Three mammoth sons of a Lebanese businessman, the owner of a house we went into on Wednesday, appeared out of nowhere and threw some punches.’ She pulls him inside and closes the door. ‘There were three of us there, me and a couple, still messing around with the electrics so that the rest of their family could move in as soon as possible. They caught me unawares. Three against three, it wasn’t hard for them to get us out of there. I ended up leaving my tools behind, my Walkman was left behind, they lost their things, too. I misjudged it. I wasn’t careful enough. I learned my lesson. I’ve already drawn a line under it … Want some wine?’ And suddenly Paulo feels as though he’s in a patch of quicksand from which he will never be able to escape. ‘What they did isn’t right, Rener. Let me have the address of the house, I’ll go there tomorrow and fetch the stuff that belongs to you and the couple.’ He walks straight over to the bottle of gin by the herbs next to the oven. ‘If you think I’m going to let you go there, you’re crazy. What’s done is done.’ She takes a glass from the cupboard and passes it to him. ‘Ok, we’ll discuss this later.’ He knows now isn’t the time to insist. ‘Any news of the elections back home?’ she asks, changing the subject. ‘I ended up going to the Brazilian consulate … ’ he replies. ‘And?’ He pours the gin. ‘I wasn’t in the mood to talk to any of the people who were there cheering the parties on … To be honest, I found the whole thing a bit embarrassing … ’ He puts the bottle back in its place. Silence falls between them. ‘The sauce is ready, I made it myself … ’ She takes the initiative: ‘I’ll prepare the pasta then you get to eat the best spaghetti with tomato sauce in Elephant and Castle.’ Without bothering to raise the glass in a toast, Paulo drinks the gin. He knows she doesn’t approve of what he’s been doing, he knows that in this kitchen he is the official representative of the Dark Side. ‘Let’s get drunk, francesa. Save the pasta for another day. I’m not hungry.’ She puts the pan back in the cupboard. ‘You can’t quite stomach it. That’s what you mean.’ She takes his hand and leads him over to the sofa in the living room. ‘You drink your gin, I’ll smoke my hashish, I’ll have a few sips of the expensive wine that you ignored, and let’s go to bed,’ she says. ‘So be it,’ he retorts. ‘Do you think your candidate stands a chance?’ she asks. ‘I don’t think so. Oh, I don’t know … ’ He takes off his boots, puts his feet up on the pouffe. ‘What do you know about Trotskyism, Rener?’ he asks. ‘The same as everyone else. It’s the name given to the doctrine invented by an embarrassed communist who tried playing at revolution and didn’t have the balls to confront Uncle Stalin. In short: a wimp,’ is her reply. ‘I was a Trotskyite in Brazil, and the more time goes on the less I know what that meant. I’ve been thinking … ’ She interrupts him. ‘You think too much, Paulo,’ she says. It’s strange hearing this. ‘I think I’m just as competitive as the guys I used to attack back in the days when I was a militant. Sometimes it’s like I only started being a militant because I wanted to be different, I needed to be on show, I needed attention. I’m empty, Rener, hollow.’ She laughs. ‘Hollow men,’ and she pays him a compliment, ‘I don’t think you’re one of them, Paulo.’ He gets up to fill his glass. ‘I’m rich, did you know that?’ This time he will get a few ice cubes. ‘I don’t want to talk about that. You will always be welcome here so long as we don’t talk about that,’ she warns him. He comes back into the living room, turns on the ceiling light, he can see better: her face is all smashed up. What little physical attraction had remained (when, last time, he had to make an effort to deal with her issues with sex) was no longer there. There’s no doubt they are friends, in so far as each has a lot of tolerance for the other. There is a strange and uncommon trust between them. They talked about what happened on Friday. Rener smokes her joint, while she tells him the details. He fills her glass with more wine, asks all he needs to know to find out where the house is. She lets down her guard, tells him what she really felt about the violence she suffered. He doesn’t put his arms around her. First she says the name of the street and then the house number. The conversation continues, she says that he could have been her great ally. It is different to how he imagined it, they end up fucking, and Rener offers no resistance when he puts his cock in her vagina.