There’s always a way. Let me meet him first.
He’s got big ears.
I’ll figure it out.
Okay.
I’ll put a bike seat on for him.
Don’t worry about it. He sits on the bar. He never…
She trails off without finishing her sentence. Outside, the Lendário blows its long, shrill whistle once, twice, while tourists hurry down the path outside his window. They are couples and small families trying to make the most of the schooner tours during the last few warm weekends of the season. The knowledge that this is a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning before an afternoon of rain in late March is written in their eyes and their reverent attitude before the schooner. He kneels next to the sofa Dália is on and kisses her. The bitter coffee tastes nice in her saliva. They shoo away the dog, close the living-room shutters, take off their clothes, and are soon in the bedroom. The rumble of the diesel engine passes through the walls, the whistle sounds again, and the schooner takes off. A cloud covers the sun behind the closed shutters, and the room slowly darkens. With him on top, Dália comes without a sound, and a tear slides out of each eye. She rolls over and sniffs.
Shit.
You okay?
No, I’m not. If I were moaning like a whore, it’d mean I’m okay.
The cloud uncovers the sun. Dália rolls back and places her hand on his chest.
Just pretend I didn’t say anything.
• • •
It takes about ten minutes pedaling slowly to get from the Pinguirito Municipal School, where Pablo is in the first grade, to Dália’s house, but today he takes a detour past the Gelomel ice cream parlor before handing the boy over to Dália’s mother, who had a foot amputated a few months ago as a result of a diabetic ulcer. She always invites him in for some cake and juice. Sometimes he accepts the invitation. Dália’s mother likes him. She claims to be something of a witch and says she dreamed about him before they even met in person, perhaps influenced by the things Dália had already told her about him.* At each visit she adds some details to the dream, things she has remembered or new interpretations she has made. He has already told her he doesn’t believe in such things, but she doesn’t seem to care. Sometimes he gets the impression that she makes up her dreams on the spot.
He is still riding down the main avenue to the ice cream parlor when he passes a corner block in front of the supermarket and hears a shout and a loud thud. Two men are demolishing the wall of a semidestroyed kiosk with kicks and an enormous sledgehammer. He has never paid the place much attention but is sure the kiosk was intact yesterday. The bold, dark-skinned man holding the sledgehammer has a pear-shaped body, with a potbelly, short arms, and no shoulders. He waves at Pablo.
Hey, Pablito! Go Grêmio!
The boy raises a fist and shouts, Grêmio!
They arrive at the ice cream parlor. He leans the bike against the glass door and unbuckles Pablo from the bike seat.
Who was the man with the sledgehammer?
Bonobo.
Booboo?
No, Bo-nooo-bo!
At the ice cream counter, Pablo fills his bowl with balls of coconut, grape, and chocolate chip ice cream. To top it off, jelly teeth and a good dose of condensed milk. According to his mother, he can put whatever he wants in his bowl as long as he doesn’t overdo it on the quantity. It can’t cost more than five reais. Pablo is an easy child to deal with, at least as far as he is concerned. He doesn’t complain about anything and doesn’t make extravagant requests. Dália says that sometimes he is stubborn and hyperactive, and she thinks he might be bipolar or something of the sort. He never recognizes Pablo among the dozens of children in the schoolyard, but Pablo always gets his backpack and comes running over. All he has to do is wait a little.
Pablo pulls out of his SpongeBob backpack the swimming goggles that he gave him as a present the day they met. He has been the Goggles Guy ever since. Pablo puts on his goggles and attacks the ice cream. There are milk teeth alongside half-grown adult teeth in his mouth, smeared with melted ice cream.
So, Pablito. Are you going to learn to swim now?
No.
I’ll teach you.
Okay.
You can use your goggles to protect your eyes when we ride on the bike. They’re for that too.
Okay.
He takes an alternative route through back streets and drops Pablo home. He doesn’t stay for juice or cake today. He doesn’t want to know why he is a vampire. On the way back he passes the corner where the two men were trying to demolish the kiosk wall. Now they are trying to get an ice cream freezer onto the back of a pickup. It isn’t working. The shoulderless man who had waved at Pablo turns his head and shouts.
Hey, dude! We need a hand here. Quick, quick!
He brakes the bike and surveys the scene. Two walls of the kiosk have been brought down with the sledgehammer. There are shards of glass everywhere, pieces of brick, crumbling cement, iron bars, a wooden door and window frames and all manner of debris lying around. At one end of the property, next to the wall of the neighboring house, is the abandoned carcass of an old beige VW Beetle destroyed by rust and exposure to the elements.
A dozen crumpled beer cans are scattered about the crushed grass, which looks as if it has been trampled by hordes of vacationers during the summer. Near the kiosk is a half-full bottle of Smirnoff Vanilla Vodka. The tendons in the men’s necks are bulging, and the freezer is slipping from their hands. He dumps the bike on the ground and runs to help them.
Over here, says Bonobo. We need to get this freezer on the back, but it’s a bitch. Give us a hand ’cause it’s about to fall.
Afternoon, says the other man. He looks a little older. He has a dyed-black pompadour, a small chin, yellow teeth and a sunburned face with deep wrinkles and grooves. Hoop earrings in both ears. He is wearing blue-and-black-checked board shorts and a filthy pink polo shirt drenched with sweat.
This is Altair, says Bonobo as he helps lift the freezer. After a few more pushes and adjustments, it is safely positioned in the back of the pickup.
Thanks for the hand, man. I saw you giving Pablito a lift on your bike. You hooking up with Dália?
Yeah.
Cool.
But where are you from? asks Altair. You’re new around here, aren’t you?
He explains that he moved there not long ago and tells them the whole story. The two men listen without hearing. They are out of breath, exhausted, addled from the alcohol and the physical exertion. The faded, stained, and torn yellow T-shirt that Bonobo is wearing, with black sleeves and yellow stripes, is a Grêmio Football Club jersey. No one remembers this shirt, he says with pride. It’s the goalkeeper’s. It was worn by Gomes and Sidmar in ’91.
He is wearing a necklace of wrinkled brown beads that look like nuts, and covering his legs is an item of clothing of indeterminate color that could be long shorts or short pants.
So, what are you guys doing?
Knockin’ down the kiosk, says Altair.
Yeah, but why?
Altair has to return the property by two o’clock tomorrow afternoon, says Bonobo. Without the kiosk. It’s in the lease.
Between swigs straight from the bottle of Smirnoff Vanilla, they explain that Altair leased the land in the middle of the previous year to open a business during the summer months. He built the kiosk with money from a small bank loan and the sale of a motorbike. His friends helped him build it. It took longer than planned and wasn’t ready until after Christmas, when the tourists had already arrived, and suddenly he found himself with a debt and an empty kiosk on one of the best corners in Garopaba at the peak of the busy season. He quickly arranged for a visit from a Kibon Ice Cream representative, and a few days later he was given the freezer on consignment. By New Year’s Eve he had a dozen surfboards made by a shaper friend of his on display. By the second week of January the kiosk also had a stand of trinkets and costume jewelry made by a well-known itinerant hippie couple who come to town every summer, three small tables for customers to sit at, and a well-stocked Skol Beer fridge, and a table where Lisandra, a voluptuous young masseuse from Goiás who had been in Garopaba for three years, provided massotherapy, chiropractic, lymphatic drainage, and reiki at any time of the day or night. At night the kiosk began to host bands playing samba, pagode, reggae, and Brazilian pop music. The samba sessions were especially lively and went on into the small hours with people occupying the vacant lot around the kiosk and spilling over onto the sidewalks and even into the middle of the street, which forced the police to put in the occasional appearance and stop the fun. On January 22, Altair organized a luau to celebrate the first full moon of the year on the sands of Ferrugem Beach and attracted hundreds of summer tourists thirsty for beer, refreshing cocktails, massages, and drugs, which he also arranged for them. He sold all the surfboards at gringo prices. Everything sold like hotcakes: the ice creams, the wire and resin earrings, the coconut shell bracelets, the beer, the kiwi caipirinhas, Lisandra’s famous hands with her almost erotic sessions of do-in, the LSD and the E. It became a sales outlet for tickets to all the major parties of the season. Before January was over, he had already raised enough money to pay for the lease of the land. Before mid-February, he had paid off his loan too. He doesn’t want to say how much he profited, but he indicates that he won’t need to work until next summer and that he is going to buy a new motorbike, much better than the last one. Now, at the end of April, he needs to return the land in the same state as when he leased it. The owner isn’t interested in the kiosk.