Nowhere People

Luisa’s decision to adopt renewed the feeling of complicity between the two of them. The series of appearances before the judge, the Public Ministry, the Children’s and Youth Supervisory Council, meant that they behaved perfectly to show off the solid structure of their new family. Assessments are awkward, they encourage those being assessed not to take them seriously. They are standing, now, outside the civil registry office. They have come to the city centre specially to get the certificate on which, from here on in, will appear the names Luisa Vasconcelos Lange and Donato Henrique Lange Becker (his name has four names now). It takes just a few minutes, as it is the end of the working day and there are no longer queues at the windows. Minutes from now he will sit down with her at the table of a popular restaurant in Higienópolis and they will order a bottle of Pol Roger Brut Reserve. The real extravagance will begin, however, when she orders a second bottle of the same champagne and challenges him to join her; he is after all just about to graduate with honours, very possibly with the highest average in his year, to première a play, as both playwright and director, and to move away with her far from São Paulo. He doesn’t hesitate, he allows the waiter to fill his glass. The head waiter is going from table to table holding out a bag of round, numbered chips in imitation mother-of-pearl, one for each customer, referring to the establishment’s week-long twenty-sixth birthday celebrations by way of justifying the interruption. There are two draws per evening for the chance to win one night in a luxury suite at the Paulista Plaza on Alameda Santos. Once he is sure everybody has been given one, the waiter randomly draws exactly the number that is in Luisa’s hand. She asks Donato to make himself known, to shout something: he is the man of the house, after all. The head waiter approaches and hands them an envelope which explains that the night at the hotel can be used at any time and includes consumption of up to a hundred reais of food and drink. She asks whether it would be valid for that very night. He straightens himself up and immediately assures her that it would. She asks him to fill their glasses and she proposes a toast, another one. They finished eating the lobster in pitanga sauce and she ordered a tiramisu for dessert accompanied by two glasses of Kir Royale, and then he suggested that the two of them go straight from there to the Paulista Plaza. She smiled with tense lips and let out a why not? As they drove down Avenida Paulista, looking at the buildings from the back seat of the taxi, she said that the two of them would never be coming back here, that a few weeks from now there would be no more São Paulo ever again. In the hotel they were given a suite on the penultimate floor. They had no luggage, which didn’t stop the bellboy from accompanying them to their room with the twin single beds they had requested, and showing them how all the gadgets worked. The hotel employee withdraws. The two of them are sat on the sofa, the lights turned out, sharing their exhaustion. The brightness of the buildings thickens in the polluted air and is enough to light them up, leaving room for doubt about where their boundaries are. Then the accident. Coming closer. Donato moves his first kiss against Luisa’s mouth. She witnesses his awkwardness, his determination to discover, and is left wordless, confused, distressed.