Blood-drenched Beard

He gets up again and pulls on jeans, sneakers, and a clean T-shirt. The clock on the beach promenade says that it is just past midnight. He walks quickly to the pizza parlor. Two tables are still occupied by customers who are smoking and dawdling over their last few drinks. The employees are clustered in the small interior of the restaurant, impatient, staring outside and biting their nails. He looks for the curly hair, the tallest waitress. He should have asked her her name. There are lots of curls here. In his memory, her face is now an almost abstract caricature of watery brushstrokes. But he recognizes her from her posture. She is outside, farther back, half hidden in the penumbra of the small gallery of closed shops, trying to pack up a folding table. Something isn’t snapping into place. He approaches her timidly. There is nothing left of the momentary impulsiveness of customer-chatting-up-waitress. He thought she was beautiful the first time around, and this fact remains, but the content of her beauty was lost and is now recovered. He gazes at her as if for the first time. She smiles when she sees him. Everyone can tell when they’re recognized, but he has refined this ability more than most out of sheer necessity. An expression of recognition may contain everything he needs to know.

Hey. Want to do something when you get off work? Want to go out for a beer?

She thinks for a moment, as she finally manages to fold up the table.

There’s a little party today over at the Pico.

Pico.

Pico do Surf, don’t you know it?

No. I got here today. I don’t know anything.

Over in Rosa. I said I’d meet some girlfriends there. But I haven’t got a lift.

I’ve got a car. Want a lift?

Her name is Dália, and she asks him to come back for her in half an hour. He runs back to the hotel, takes a quick shower, and heads for the adjacent parking lot. He stands there a moment, staring at the car still piled high with his belongings. He takes out the other suitcase of clothes, the TV, the bag containing his PlayStation, a box of documents, and everything else of any value that can be seen and takes it all into the hotel room. He has to make three trips. Beta is asleep and doesn’t wake up. He is running late and sweating by the time he turns the key in the ignition. The car smells of dog.

Dália is smoking in front of the closed pizza parlor, accompanied by a young man in a baseball cap and board shorts.

Is he coming too? I don’t think there’s enough room in the backseat.

She opens the door, gets in, and says the guy was just keeping her company until he got there. He has already forgotten her face again. He isn’t able to get a proper look at her in the short instant of a peck of greeting on the cheek, and now she is looking straight ahead, revealing only her profile.

I need to swing by my place quickly, okay? To get changed. If you don’t mind?

She guides him through roughly paved back streets that lead to the town’s older districts. Enormous dogs and swift cyclists move through these nocturnal streets that have only the occasional lamppost. Everything is dark, with the exception of a few taverns. The houses are asleep, and the hills surround the town with their imposing shapes. The radio is playing reggae music at a low volume. She talks about her routine at the pizza parlor, and he explains that the junk in the backseat is part of his move from Porto Alegre. They turn onto a dirt road and then a trail of tire tracks through the grass. A streetlight illuminates old tree trunks and the fronts of four or five houses. She points at one of them, and he parks.

Wait here, okay? I’ll be right back.

She takes almost an hour. He waits without getting out of the car, investigating the radio stations. He knows how to wait.

Dália reappears smelling of vanilla-scented perfume and wearing jeans, light-blue sandals, a black top with almost invisible straps, and a necklace with a silver sun pendant. Her hair is strangled by a white elastic band on top of her head, sprouting over it like black coral. Her lips are shiny.

Let me see you, he says, and she turns to face him.

Along the way she asks to stop at the gas station. She reemerges from the corner shop with a beer and a bar of chocolate. He accepts the sip and the bite she offers him. The road is empty, and she likes to talk. She is twenty-two, was born and raised in Caçador, where a lot of tomatoes are grown, until she was a teenager, and intends to move to Florianópolis in July to study naturology at the university. She isn’t particularly interested in the fact that he is a PE teacher but enthusiastically approves of his move to Garopaba.

You’ll be happy here. Everyone’s happy here. This place is so beautiful. I’m really happy here. Can I smoke a joint in your car?

She lights up and offers it to him. He takes a few puffs and starts feeling afraid of other cars’ headlights.