Nowhere People

And now, on the stage and in the mask, in the important role of male lead, Donato imagines being Henrique, and this doesn’t frighten him as much as it should.

At the Rolling Stones’ concert on Copacabana Beach, Luisa hugged Donato and said, her mouth right up to his ear: ‘Have you got any idea what it’ll be like in Recife?’ He turned his face towards her, taking advantage of the deafening noise, and, under the effects of the five cans of Itaipava beer he’d drunk, he laughed cockily, in the way he thinks he would have laughed at Rener — had Rener been there, obviously, and had he not persuaded her he was never again going to write letters to her or send messages and that he was going to try and forget her forever. His feet in the sand (and more distant than he has ever before felt from the French girl; he used to think he existed only for the French girl) he pulls Luisa towards him and, surrounded by a mass of one million three hundred thousand euphoric people, brings his mouth to hers and bites her lips, his hands slide round her waist and stop firmly on her ass, she puts her own hands on his and encourages him to squeeze her as hard as would be expected of a man who knew women. Donato could never have imagined what it would be like, this detachment from every other gaze. As soon as Keith Richards finished singing ‘This Place Is Empty’ Luisa invited him to leave and they walked to the apartment on Joaquim Nabuco where they were staying. He wanted to wait at least till ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’, but the Stones and all the cultural memorabilia he had been able to accumulate in thirteen years can’t compare to what he’s feeling now; any information right now is useless. Luisa and her muscular body and her sharp sense of humour that many twenty-year-old women would envy, confidently leading him by the hand through the maze of crazy people that Avenida Atlântica has become, leave no room for doubt: she is the final thing of his stepfather’s that remains for him to take.

what’s to be done with the usual? ‌

metals protecting metals

After Recife. (Recife as a place of transit.)