RED: A Love Story [Featured List]

Part 1: White 1 - Drink this moment to the last drop

Red symbolizes extremes: it dresses the Pope just like it paints the Devil. The first visible color in the light spectrum, it signals passion-which is nothing more than the extremes of joy and pain.

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PART 1 - White: Welcome to the surface

Spring, November 2012

THE NIGHT WAS AN EMPTY HOUSE. Its lights bore lone reflections, and its sounds, belated echoes of a distant thunder. Those who came in and walked out at daytime hadn't left any marks. Now a bluish mist lingered there carrying a green smell of moss, the herald of the storm with its unseen horn.

From the pricked-up trees, leaves fell whirling around in a rain dance that mirrored Marisa's disquiet. Cautiously, she advanced on the deserted street with a sudden knot of apprehension. Adrenaline gripped her chest like the claws of a predator. She shivered when her coat half-opened and flapped, ready to take off. Her Mary Jane shoes stamped a solitary voice on the asphalt. Clog, clog, clog...

They seemed to be saying: Stop, stop, stop... She sped up the pace.

A grayish rat with bloodshot eyes leaped from the curb and startled Marisa. She looked to the sides as she cursed herself for not taking a cab. Rushing around the corner, she followed a wide avenue in downtown São Paulo. Her steps left behind locked buildings and dormant store windows in pitch-black slumber. Marisa only stopped when she reached a quaint building with a blue-tiled façade typical of the fifties.

She rang the bell, all the while pounding one fist on the glass door. The porter recognized her and pressed a button behind a shiny cedar counter. As the door opened, Marisa quickly crossed the travertine marble lobby as she nodded to the porter. On her face blossomed a smile he did not see.

Marisa waited for the elevator, one Mary Jane shoe tap dancing discreetly. She ascended to the fifteenth floor, where she arrived with a slight pant. In the vestibule with no ornaments, the door did not offer resistance when Marisa pushed it to sneak into the dark living room. A shy rectangle of light guided her to the hallway. She stopped before the office, caught her breath, went inside.

As Marisa advanced, the walls lined with books receded into dimness, leaving behind the smell of paper and lavender furniture polisher. The tic-tac of a pendulum clock-methodic, impatient-dotted the silence. Marisa paused in the middle of the room, the sight of Marco imprinted in her retina. All anxiety, all guilt, all fear was forgotten.

The glass shade of the lamp on the desk glowed like a jade lighthouse in the sea of shadows. Behind the green reflection, seated on a high-backed chair, he waited. His eyes, a solid brown on the brink of black, contemplated Marisa even before she entered, picturing her at the sound of each step. In its stillness Marco's body held a torrent, denounced by the gleam in the irises and the way one hand curled on the desk's edge. He bore a dark rather than fair complexion, meditative forehead, and mouth drawn with firm lines. His straight, black hair was parted on the side, with a hint of formality that matched his gray slacks, narrow leather belt and white shirt with a loosened silk tie.

Now he rolled up his sleeves in a deliberate manner.

"You are late," he finally said in a stern tone.

"I apologize, Master. It won't happen again."

"This time I'll let it pass. In the future, however, I will not tolerate it. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Master," she replied in a feeble voice.

"You can remove your coat."

She obeyed, revealing what hid underneath-a short navy blue skirt, indigo T-shirt, thigh-high white socks. In that pretended school outfit, her compact build was of a woman. Feeling exposed, slightly abashed, she played with the end of the braid hanging over her shoulder. The luscious hair was straight, the same golden brown as her lowered eyes. The visage emanated the beauty and glow of her eighteen years.