All discretion was still not enough. At school, Marco and Marisa barely spoke to each other. In certain moments, though, when no one was watching, they sent caresses at distance. And text messages.
Marco: You look very pretty in turquoise. I like your top.
Marisa: It's new. I bought it thinking of you.
Marco: Drop your pen on the floor.
Marisa: What for?
Marco: That way I can admire your cleavage.
She smiled, raising her eyes. Around her, the other students were absorbed filling out a form about Clarice Lispector's works. With her head half lowered and her eyes fixated on Marco, Marisa brushed the pen off with her forearm until it rolled to the floor. Then she leaned toward it, allowing one of the top's straps to slide off her shoulder. She retrieved the pen, straightened up in no hurry and pretended to concentrate on the form.
At his desk in the front of the room, Marco concealed his cell phone behind an open book (a study by Giles Deleuze about the works of Sacher-Masoch, purchased the day before). He directed a silky gaze toward Marisa before typing again.
Marco: Would your top be up for an evening out tonight?
Marisa: It needs to finish some writing when it gets home. But that shouldn't take too long.
Marco: Great. I'd like to invite it to dinner at a bistro out of town. A place with antique décor and candle light. Do you think your top would be up to that?
Marisa: Absolutely... btw, do you know it made you that dessert you like and bought you a gift? My top found something on ebay that you were dying to get. But it shouldn't be telling you any of this, you know? It should make it a surprise. It's just that it gets all excited about it, this silly top of mine.
Marco: Don't tell me is that rare album by... oh, no, it can't be... and lemon cheesecake...?
Marisa: Sorry, honey, now its lips are sealed.
She raised her eyes again to find Marco's twinkling with enthusiasm. And curiosity—he was quite, quite curious. Marisa always played that game. She liked to watch his reaction. It had been long since Marco was in a relationship, and he welcomed her attention with almost exaggerated contentment. That, of course, gave Marisa an almost exaggerated contentment too.
That evening was an exception—the sky speckled with stars and the two of them on the deserted road heading to a nearby town best known for its arts and crafts. The tiny bistro held half a dozen tables and lay by a set of steps linking two streets on a hill. There, Marco and Marisa tasted vintage wine, shared chocolate soufflé for dessert and forgot all worries of being seen together: it was Tuesday, an improbable day for romantic dinners out of town. Before returning, they took a stroll in the surroundings, wandering on alamedas of purple and white melastomaes.
That was the exception. As a rule, in the evenings when Marisa was not studying, the two of them would go to bars and eat at Arab delis. Or spend time at the movies: they watched hand in hand Woody Allen's Whatever Works and Midnight in Paris, as well as a special session of Hitchcock's Psycho. The pair, however, usually remained in the Downtown vicinity, for the crowd from school seldom visited that area at night. The heart of the richest metropolis in the country was there, beating madly at daytime and hibernating after working hours.
It was ironic that, in its origins, the city founded by Jesuits in 1554 was no more than a grain of dust that any fiercer wind could sweep off the map. It was by sheer luck that a tiny coffee seed—descending from another one brought clandestinely into the country—fell on the state's purple soil. With the explosion of the "black gold", the capital entered the twentieth century like a wealthy lady with Old World flair. Its motto became Non ducor, duco: "I am not led, I lead." From the downtown area, Sao Paulo kept stretching. It stretched so much, there wasn't even enough time to include all the streets in the city map. A number of vintage mansions were demolished to make room for high-rises and, twelve million inhabitants later, the city was still shape-shifting.
In Downtown, however, the past persevered. One of Marco and Marisa's favorite places was a bar founded in the late forties, with art deco columns, checkered flooring and pastel yellow walls covered in wooden paneling with golden friezes. The décor displayed antique furniture, crystal chandeliers and mirrors. Its narrow space was dominated by a very long hardwood counter flanked by leather stools, having behind it golden draft beer taps and the inevitable espresso machine Above it, a curved mezzanine with a piano bar immersed in half light.
One warm Friday evening, Marco and Marisa were having a beer on the mezzanine as usual. He wore light pants and a white T-shirt, she had a little flowery dress on. They had come on his black Ducati: summer was right around the corner, with all of its delights.
"Tell me that poem," Marisa asked him.
"Which poem?" Marco inquired, reaching for her hand over the table.
"The one I like. About truth. By Carlos Drummond de Andrade."
He thought for a moment, eyes wandering across the mezzanine to graze the piano with its quiet player, and the walls lined with old sepia photographs of the city, many of which portrayed places that no longer existed. Then he turned his gaze back to Marisa and declaimed... The door of truth cracked open, but only gave way to half a person at a time. So the half-persons went in and each brought out the profile of half truth. People compared the profiles and—can you imagine?—they did not match. Distressed, people broke down the door and found the truth busy with its luminous fires. It was made of two different halves, none of which entirely beautiful. A debate ensued to decide which one was better. They didn't reach a verdict.
"So each person chose according to their own whim, their illusions, their myopia," Marco concluded.
"I love it even more when you recite it." Marisa sighed, leaning over the guardrail.
She recoiled with a nervous gesture.
There was a couple downstairs sitting at a table opposite the bar. And Marisa recognized the man straight away: medium height, a face that was neither attractive nor repulsive, blue eyes and dun hair thinning on the top of the head (a condition he dissimulated by parting it above his left ear and using the survivor strands to cover the flaw).
"Don't look now." Marisa lowered her voice. "The school principal is here. Apparently with his mistress."
"Oh please, give me a break. Can't he go somewhere else with that librarian?" Annoyed, Marco pressed his lips together.
"Here's the thing. He's not with the librarian. He's having a drink with his secretary."
"Jane?"
"Yep."
Marco cast a glance downstairs. Yep. There he was, the school principal in his corniest performance, holding the hand of a young blonde with red-framed glasses in a pink dress. Who would have thought? The guy moved fast. Although... Maybe it was no coincidence he had got another mistress with high-prescription glasses: without a certain eye-sight deficiency, the women wouldn't look at him twice. There you had well illustrated the old saying that love was blind.
Marisa wanted to leave straight away. There was, however, a technical problem. In order to exit the bar, they would pass by Belvedere and his rosy princess' table. Marisa considered hanging around until the couple left, but Marco rebuffed the idea. Belvedere and Jane could drag there for hours, keeping the table while honest citizens waited to be seated—or to leave in peace.
"I'll tell you what. I go first and you exit ten minutes later. I'll wait for you on the corner," Marco instructed after thinking for a moment.
She instinctively brought her hands up to the wig, to make sure it was in place.
"What if they recognize me?"
"When you're passing by them, lower your head and pretend to be searching for something in your purse."
"What about you?"
"I'll be fine."
The check was requested and brought by Jorge, an employee who usually waited on them. He was a man from Northeastern Brazil, with curly hair and skin the color of mocha coffee, who lived by himself and loved talking with Marco about literature. Marco had recommended and given him several books as a gift, and now the waiter was dying to tell Marco about his latest finding, Tower Struck by Lighting, by Spanish author Fernando Arrabal.
The last thing Marisa wanted was for Jorge to begin a literary discussion. Sure enough, that was exactly what he did. She had therefore to keep her anxiety at bay and endure the usual rigmarole. It's really a fascinating book, isn't it, Marco? Yes, it is, Jorge. See, Marco, even without understanding a thing about chess, I'm following the story and taking the side of Tarsis: I want him to defeat Amary in the championship, because that Amary is such an obnoxious weirdo, always talking to a bunch of people in his head. Yeah, Jorge, chess is merely an artifice for structuring the plot in a logical manner while the back stories of both protagonists unfold in a blast of color and paradox...
Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
After the fates of Tarsis and Amary were dissected to exhaustion, Marco paid the check and stood up. Then he stroked Marisa's hand in a tranquilizing manner.
"Relax, my love. Everything's gonna be fine."
Marco brushed his lips on hers and headed for the stairs, leaving Marisa dazed on the chair. She still retained the warmth of his touch, it pulsed within her like a million tiny golden chameleons changing colors, now an intense copper hue, then such a bright shade that seemed a gleaming handful of sand. Within her, the sun sparkled, throbbed, exploded.
My love.
Marco had never called her that way. Several thoughts intersected in Marisa's brain, bumping into one another, blinded by the sun. Belvedere and Jane, wait ten minutes. What Marco had just said—my love. Lower head, fumble with purse. Her brain spiraling, her hands tingling. And what she had wanted to say back to him—my love.
Love of my life...
When Marisa realized, it was almost time to meet Marco outside. She waited a few more minutes and risked a peek downstairs: Belvedere and the secretary had started dinner, and the director was fork-feeding the girl some stroganoff. Marisa descended to the ground floor and tiptoed forward. Belvedere had his back to her. Jane managed to steal a glance at Marisa's face and frowned, a spark of familiarity surfacing in her eyes.
She's gonna recognize me in the next second, flustered Marisa, furiously fumbling with her purse. Things became more interesting when she was approaching their table and saw from the corner of her eye the silhouette of a man in black pants and a white shirt... Jorge! Here he comes with a tray full of beer glasses.
"Everything okay?" he asked, his face solemn.
Marisa nodded, with no intention of stopping... and stopped: Jorge was parked right in front of her with the barrier of glasses. Marisa assumed a contortionist's pose to talk to the waiter and simultaneously prevent Jane and Belvedere from seeing her face. She stood in an ambiguous position, neither frontal nor lateral or posterior, like the statue of some exotic divinity.
Trapped in such an angle that defied both the mind and the body, Marisa rebelled against her situation. Why did she need to pose as a ridiculous Zen parody? Because people judged others to feel better about their own flaws. The idea was that everyone should be perfect in the image of God, which naturally couldn't be. So people must have two faces. One, smiley and tidy and perfect to the world. The other, a scarecrow hidden in the basement with its flaws and weaknesses and a massive headache.
People pretended their scarecrow didn't exist—not even an aspirine for the poor rejected wretch. They'd rather look for the scarecrow of others to criticize it, and if they couldn't find it they'd promply make up one. That was why, Marisa concluded, she was there resigned to her Zen posture and a damn neck cramp while Jorge's blabbering inundated her ears.
"... then I saw Marco leaving earlier and... I hope you two didn't have an argument because of me," Jorge went on mortified, the tray tilting slightly to the right under his bracketing hand. "I noticed you were nervous and I should have quit talking. I'm so sorry!"
"It's okay, it's okay," she said in a low and incisive voice.
Now keep quiet, you chatterbox, and not another peep about Marco.
With one stretching eye Marisa could see that Jane chewed with an intrigued expression as the director prepared another mouthful for her. The secretary told him something, he glanced at Marisa and made a negative gesture. Jane shrugged and opened her mouth to receive the food. In her face, though, a question mark lingered. Oh-oh, thought Marisa. She ought to leave before the secretary took a good look at her...
"Are you sure?" insisted the immovable waiter, and now the tray tilted left.
"What?"
"Is everything really okay between the two of you?"
"Sure, Jorge, he left ahead to... get the bike," she improvised.
"Oh, thank God. And sorry again for my intromission. It's just that it's such an interesting book. Have you read it?"
"No, I haven't, Jorge..."
Marisa fixed one hypnotized eye on the tray that oscillated like a ship on the waves of an increasingly turbulent sea... Oops...oooops. The other eye, she twisted in Jane and Belvedere's direction while sending them telepathic messages... Eat, eat, and forget about me! And her third eye, the mystical one, longed for the exit door. Aaah... It was too much. She was growing mentally cross-eyed.
In the meantime, the waiter had come to the conclusion that, if he couldn't exchange with Marisa impressions about that masterly work, he would at least convert her to his literary cause:
"If you'd accept a suggestion, read the book. As I said, you don't even need to understand chess in order to appreciate the story. Me, I can't wait to end my shift here and go home to finish reading it, you know? It's riveting. I'm in the next-to-last chapter and I'm going crazy in anticipation with—"
CLINK, CLINK, CLINk, CLInk, CLink, Clink, clink! He was going crazy, alright. Here, his animation became such, that while gesticulating he caused a blast of glasses—the glass tower struck by the lighting of his enthusiasm. To the impassible checkered floor they all tumbled, the only survivor being one jaw-dropped tray. Everything happened too fast, like in a nightmare. Marisa jumped back. The floor before her got covered in shiny shards, golden puddles of beer and personal effects falling in single file from her gaping purse. She and Jorge crouched to collect a cell phone, a lipstick, a mini organizer, a ballerina key holder, a creased receipt, a folding toothbrush, a leather wallet... and two bright-yellow condoms that jovially sprung out of it.
Now Marisa just wished she could disappear into the nearest manhole. Patrons at close-by tables, including Belvedere and his secretary, watched with great interest the condoms that floated like buoys on the wet floor. So far, the general reaction had been ranging from empathy to mild curiosity—now everyone in the room could barely refrain from laughing. Marisa hurried to shove the dripping items into her purse and zipped it up with exasperation: swiiiiisssh! Jorge helped Marisa get to her feet amid profuse apologies, he bowing a thousand times, she dying to get the hell out of there. In the middle of disconcert and haste and demented gestures, the wig got displaced. That was the last straw, or rather the last drop of beer. Grasping the wig, Marisa gave an Olympic jump over the broken glass and ran away.
She chewed her heart up to the newsstand on the corner. Marco was serenely reading a gardening magazine with tips for growing Vanda coerulea orchids. He returned the copy to the pile, concerned with Marisa's distress. She told her version of the facts while fixing the wig with a nervous tick.
"I survived, but now I'll probably need a Prozac..." She caught her breath. "What about you, how did it go?"
It was easier than expected. A waiter carrying a platter of stroganoff showed up and covered his back as he passed by the director's table. That was it. No glass cascades or special effects. Relieved, Marisa urged that they left straight away. Marco didn't move. He was quite annoyed that she should go through such a fuss because of the director. Then he smiled—mouth twitching upward in a reflex while the eyes ignited like a pair of flames. He wasn't happy at all indeed. Marisa knew that smile.
"What's the matter, Marco?"
"Wait for me here. I'll be back in a minute."
He didn't give her a chance to protest. Marisa saw him retracing his steps and couldn't believe when Marco reentered the bar. Her gaze on alert hooked to the entrance as if to pull out the door and see what was going on inside. The possibilities stretched out on the horizon: a conspiracy with Jorge to sneak some laxative into the director's beverage (anything was possible with Marco), an altercation between Marco and Belvedere, a full-blown fight, Marco fired... And there was nothing she could do now. Actually, there was one thing she could do: bite her nails to death and destroy her manicure.
Marisa began meticulously with the right index.
___________________________________________________________
So there you are... Want to know where they're heading? Read on.
Vote, comment, have a nice steak... ;-)