Nowhere People (5 page)

He goes into the club, Enigmas, having promised the bouncer (Gregório ‘the Grinder’, an old acquaintance from his skateboarding days in the Marinha do Brasil park) that he won’t touch the Domecq that he’s carrying and which is now suitably stored away in the law-trainee rucksack on his back. He’s come here to find Lugosi, the youngest of the place’s resident DJs; though there’s only three years’ difference between them (she is eighteen) and despite his friend’s complete alienation from politics, they have cultivated this friendship for the tough times, as they like to say to each other. The nightclub, an LGBT hangout of no great consequence, has in the last year been attracting rent boys (the rent boys who, thanks to an agreement between the club owners, are not allowed into Peter Pan Seven, Polio Garage or Silhouette Cocktail), models of both sexes who are already starting to lose their looks and their jobs and
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this is the decisive factor
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employees from other clubs on their nights off. Three factors which, in combination with other trends and rumours, meant that Enigmas had quickly gained a reputation as a place that promised a good time, attracting the attention of all kinds of punks and lovers of The Cure and The Smiths. Lugosi could take a lot of the credit for popularising the place, with her goth muse attitude and her ability to choose just the right tracks to play when everyone’s fed up having made a big difference. A lot of her friends who are regulars at the Taj Mahal, always up for blowing a load of cash on a night out, even if they don’t have all that much cash to blow in the first place, began to show up at Enigmas once she started there.

It’s early. There’s no one on the dance floor. Lugosi is with her latest old-beautiful-perfect-boyfriend, Castro Two: both of them bored, they’ve just eaten a portion of chips at the table next to the decks. ‘Sweetie, go get us some cigarettes over at the petrol station, tell them I’ll settle up tomorrow,’ she orders her boyfriend as soon as she sees Paulo approaching, ‘and take as long as you like, ok?’ Castro Two (yes, there had been a Castro One, even if Castro Two didn’t know this) gets up, greets Paulo without a handshake and heads for the door. ‘These boys of yours are looking more and more like girls, Lugosi,’ he teases her even before saying hello. ‘I screw androgyny, you know,’ and she moves along so he can sit beside her. ‘Well, of all people … ’ she takes the initiative. ‘Yeah well, you’re always saying I never come to hear you doing your DJ thing. So I came. So here I am, girl … And, well … ’ he tries to disguise his haggard expression and his own drunkenness. ‘So what’s up?’ She knows he isn’t here just in passing. ‘I quit the internship and I quit the Party, all on the same day: today,’ and he takes a chip from the cardboard tray. ‘But there’s more … ’ Lugosi raises her index finger like a well-behaved schoolgirl asking permission to speak. ‘And could I guess what this “more” might be?’ she ventures. ‘Feel free. I’ve got all night,’ he says, and this time takes several chips. ‘Is it the Indian girl you took to the Baltimore?’ and she gives him an ironic look, her face a caricature of someone who’s just said something she oughtn’t. Paulo shows no sign of surprise, he gestures to the waiter to come over, calm in his drunkenness. ‘How do you know about the Indian girl?’ he asks. Lugosi takes a cigarette from her pocket. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ she says, and picks up a box of matches from the table and puts it in his hand. ‘It was your friend Titi, she told me. I asked her what you’d been up to and she said she met you at the entrance to the cinema with a frightened little Indian girl.’ Paulo strikes the match and brings it toward Lugosi to light her cigarette. ‘She’s nearly fifteen, and I’m falling for her.’ He blows out the flame (in that moment he thinks how it’s only with Lugosi that he can speak so candidly). ‘Nearly fifteen?’ she says. ‘It feels like millennia since I was nearly fifteen.’ The waiter arrives. ‘Get us a couple of gin-fizzes, Diego,’ Lugosi asks. The waiter gives her an anything-else-bitch look, and getting no answer he turns his back and walks away. ‘You fucked her already?’ Lugosi asks. ‘It isn’t that simple … ’ he tries to slow Lugosi down. ‘She barely speaks Portuguese, she lives in a tent on the side of the highway … It’s a pretty sorry sight.’ Lugosi gets up, goes into the space reserved for the DJ, mixes one track into the next, sits back down with Paulo. ‘I get it, she’s the Tarzan of the Minuane tribe and you’re her Jane-in-breeches … Ha ha ha … ’ She pats him on the head. ‘You’ve outdone yourself, old man,’ (she rarely spares him). ‘And all that today. Fucking hell. This is a day that’s going down in history,’ she mocks. ‘Nope … That’s a good one … It’s your Independence Day … Weren’t you saying it doesn’t make sense any more to do that stuff you do for the Party, that in law the only thing that made sense was the philosophy and stuff, that it’s been ages since you’ve been in love … ’ He interrupts her. ‘I’m not in love … ’ The waiter arrives with the cocktails. ‘Sorry, but you are. You’re in love, and you’re trying to get over the Christian guilt they shoved up your ass when you were nine and taking your First Communion. You want to have this girl, which is fair enough … I lost my virginity when I was twelve to a guy who was eighteen, did you know that?’ she says and holds her own tab out to the waiter. ‘This first round is on me.’ The waiter makes a note of the drinks and goes. ‘I have no idea what can have happened to you. I can imagine how weird it must be getting involved with someone who’s so different … But the passion in your eyes, that’s definitely there … I know you, sweetheart, I know you very well.’ Paulo takes the drinks and passes one to his friend. They clink glasses. He downs the cocktail in one go, he doesn’t really appreciate the taste of alcoholic drinks; when he drinks it’s with the specific intention of getting a buzz as quickly as he can. He turns towards Lugosi; she looks back at him without blinking, serious, with her light skin and very short black hair, just the way all actresses in horror films ought to be. Wordlessly, Paulo tells her that things are really getting out of hand, which is why he’s going to do everything he can to understand Maína, confounding all expectations that might still exist about this middle-class guy, perhaps intelligent, perhaps with a future in some promising profession, the son of civil servants from the upper levels of the Federal Civil Service, both recently retired, a perfect little type from a class with serious ambitions to climb the social ladder. Wordlessly, Lugosi tells him not to expect any great advice from this girl from Higienópolis, the poorly daughter of lecturers at the Federal University, who has been diagnosed with depression and who has already enrolled at three different universities, each time dropping out in the middle of the first semester, and who supports herself, or kids herself that she is supporting herself, playing in clubs. Wordlessly, he will tell her it’s good to be there having a drink with her, and, still wordlessly, Lugosi will tell him he’s just as complicated as any of these other twenty-something guys who read too much and think too much and believe they know what a girl wants even if in practice they do not. And an hour and a bit from now, when the Enigma’s clientele are starting to fill up the dance floor, she’ll ask if he wants to split a tab of LSD that the boyfriend of a friend sent over from Los Angeles in a box of flick books (not to go into just how square she and her friend think he is for being so unnecessarily scared when it comes to popping a pill from time to time; he won’t even smoke a joint, like a good little doctor, losing out on the chance to understand what’s really missing from this world of ours), and, not hearing her, he’ll be amused when she puts on ‘Relax’, that Frankie Goes to Hollywood song full of double entendres, accepting the little slip of paper that she will put in his mouth.

They are in NATO, the bar that Passo Fundo has made his favourite. Paulo wants to go home. In the state he’s in, however, it would be a real mistake. His parents are travelling early this morning to Montevideo with friends, that’s less than two hours from now. When that happens (they usually go to Montevideo by car) his mother doesn’t do her packing till shortly before they go, which means that right now she will be awake with almost every light in the house on, chasing after all the accessories and items of clothing that she cannot possibly leave behind under any circumstances. A conversation between the two of them would be a disaster. Paulo is afraid of what he might say, of acting out the scene that reveals the truth of the universe to someone you love, or of being assailed by an attack of paranoia that will make him want to wish he were dead as soon as it all passes. (Paulo does not like losing control.) No, better to stay here and wait for the dawn. Passo Fundo gets up every fifteen minutes to go to the bathroom to snort some of the coke he got earlier from the Colonel. He and Paulo are at Igor and Luciano’s table, two guys who share the same girlfriend, Márcia Boo. She kisses one, then she kisses the other. Cristiane and Magali are there, too, they don’t stop talking. Paulo knows he can have either one of them, but whenever he tries to look closely at them in that dark bluish haze he sees Maína’s face. The cognac he brought in his rucksack is nearly finished, he fills his glass under the table so the manager of the bar doesn’t see him, the waiters aren’t paying any attention at all: each time he does this, the two girls sitting beside him laugh like hyenas. He contemplated inviting the two of them for a threesome, he even started imagining he was fucking them under the table and then while the two of them were sucking his cock he would be going down on Márcia Boo while she kissed Igor and Luciano, Luciano who’s also known as Posh-boy Luciano. This daydream lasted just a few minutes. It passed. He heard someone at the table more than once mention the name David Cooper and the title of the book
The Grammar of Living
, and (as if he were in a tunnel of psychosis in which the possibilities of reaction are delayed) he gets up, theatrically, saying: ‘Language was invented in order to destroy communication, which in turn has been used to destroy communion. The final strategy ought to be to use what destroys us to destroy the very thing that is destroying us, in such a way as to allow for areas of hope and the conclusive death of cretins.’ He looks around at everyone sitting at the table. ‘Many thanks for your attention,’ he shouts, as if he were being strangled, and sits. At the other tables there are musicians from the blues band who were on earlier in the evening, a company whose play is on the bill at midnight from Thursdays to Saturdays at the Arena Theatre, two people from the group who will be coordinating Luiz Inácio da Silva’s presidential campaign. A few couples in clinches. There is, in short, that kind of harmony in the air (the sharing of a fleeting victory). And at that moment Paulo is a man of steel, he’s proud of his bearing, of his courage and his health, he has no doubt that if he had money in his pocket for a taxi he’d go off to find Maína. He’d spend several days there trying to work out the secret of getting used to having so little. And at that moment, Paulo discovers what he is going to do with the money from the office. Tomorrow afternoon he’s going to seek out one of those companies that specialise in pre-fab homes, he will get costings, then he will tell Maína. Paulo is at NATO, he has his arms stretched out across the top of the table, his hands with fingers laced together, his eyes lost in an unseemly gladness, and everyone around him knows that he is not his usual
self.

Maína had said it wasn’t his problem when Paulo returned to the subject of building the wooden room, five by four, so the girls could all sleep more comfortably, saying that he would use the money from the office to do this. ‘It’s the government’s problem, not yours,’ was her short answer, which she followed by putting her hand over his mouth to stop him going on. She looks at the time on her watch (when Paulo gave it to her, she said it didn’t feel right getting so many presents from him), she looks towards the north, spots the Beetle approaching. By her count, this is the eleventh time they meet. As soon as he has steered the car over, she runs to his window, she makes a point of showing him the calendar she has drawn up on the last page of the exercise book. He opens the door, she gets in. He drives to the usual place. When they stop by the grocery shop to collect the key, he is told that the owner has replaced it for a different one, that he has changed the padlock for a bigger one, determining that from that moment on
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and this was the day before yesterday
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no one was allowed to get onto the property without written authorisation. Paulo asks Maína whether she wants to go to Porto Alegre. She says yes. Yes, of course.

They are in Paulo’s house, in the little room next to the garage at the back of the property, the place his mother used to paint her pictures, do her clothing designs, sew, all this before the slipped disc at the end of last year that made her stop indefinitely (she’s talked ever since about boxing up those things and getting the place done up). As soon as they came inside, Maína ran over to the pile of magazines on top of the table, one of those tables that designers use, or architects. She’d never seen magazines like them, they had huge pages inside, pages that unfold, till they end up as big as a road sign. On each page there are a lot of scribbled lines, drawings made up of different coloured dots that almost muddle your vision. Paulo hands her a pair of scissors saying she can cut out anything she likes, do whatever she likes, and that’s what she does. She also uses some large sheets of paper and pieces of cardboard that are hanging on the wall. He goes over to one of the bookcases, takes out a plywood box, puts it down on the table, asks Maína to look, opens it. Inside are a dozen little glass jars with classroom gouache, oil paint, different-sized brushes. He shows her how to use the paints, he finds a large roll of sticky tape, says that he’ll try and find his sister’s old camera, the kind that develops the photos instantly (Maína doesn’t really understand what he means by developing the photos instantly). Paulo is some time coming back. When he does return, he enters the room to find Maína finishing the first outfit, the one she’s going to wear. ‘Preparing some costumes, Maína?’ he asks. ‘Spirit dress,’ she replies, seriously. ‘And are they for us?’ She approaches him from behind, uses her hands to measure the breadth of his shoulders. ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘for us to know.’ He is intrigued. ‘To know?’ ‘Yes, to know,’ and she measures the distance from his face to his waist. He shows her the Polaroid, says there’s still one photographic sheet left to use. They mustn’t get the picture wrong. She doesn’t answer. He sets up the camera, sits in the only armchair in the room, watches. Maína gets his outfit ready even more quickly than she’s done her own, she opens up the black and brown gouaches, takes one of the finer paintbrushes and passes it to him, inviting him to paint with her. They paint around the edges of the holes that will be the eyes, the one that will be the mouth, they cover the chest and forehead with inscriptions. The paint dries quickly. In those minutes Paulo explains how the polarisation of the photographic sheet works; Maína doesn’t take her eyes off her creations for a second. She gets hold of his costume, tells him to take off his t-shirt, puts it straight on to his body; his head is covered, his upper back and trunk down to just below his waist, she takes the purple paint and paints a few more details, she adds the sleeves, asks him not to move. She crouches down, takes his trainers and socks off his feet, then brings her hands to his belt buckle, removes his trousers and underpants. He doesn’t react. She takes off her trainers, her t-shirt, her skirt and knickers, puts her one on, she only asks for help attaching the second sleeve. ‘Now what?’ he asks. ‘You can move,’ she replies. Moving with some difficulty so as not to tear the paper, he walks over to the armchair where he had left the Polaroid. He positions it on one of the bookshelves, setting the timer to go off in ten seconds. He presses the button. He walks as fast as he can over to her. They get themselves into position. ‘Ready.’ The flash goes off after winking three times less brightly, it makes Maína laugh under her decoration. ‘Shall we go outside?’ she suggests. ‘Are we going to catch fire like in the story you told me that time, is that it?’ She doesn’t answer. They leave the room and walk perhaps five metres, which is the mid-point between the two buildings. She embraces him as hard as she can, and his jacket tears over his shoulders. He doesn’t move. She bites his chest, tearing off a bit of paper. He takes her whole body in his arms and, without even noticing the paper outfit coming apart, carries her to his room, lies her on the bed, turns off the light, turns on the one in the corridor, strips her naked and strips himself, too. Maína is barely participating, she rolls about in the bed, she slips, forcing him to change the way he’s kissing her, the places he’s kissing her. With more than half of his body off the bed, he holds on to her hips, his face rough and unshaven slides down her belly, he breathes out, mouth, lips, the slowness of the zig-zagging motion moistens
her.