Blood-drenched Beard

He asks the bouncer at the entrance for instructions on how to get back to Garopaba by car. He drives drunk and tense and starts to hiccup. He drives down the empty highway and crosses the dead city. The hiccups still haven’t stopped by the time he enters the hotel room. He gets a surprise when he walks in. The dog is sitting on the bed. Beta, Beta, Beta, he repeats affectionately, hugging her tight. She is warm and submissive, and her soft hide slides over her muscles. He inhales her salty smell with pleasure and finally lets her go. She remains sitting near the pillow. He notices that he has stopped hiccuping only when he is brushing his teeth.

Before lying down, he looks for his cell phone to see what time it is and finds a missed call from his mother.* There is also a birthday text message from her. No matter how much I curse you I love you son. A mother has no choice, has she? Happy birthday darling. I hope you got there okay. Take care. Mother.

It’s four o’clock in the morning. He types an answer and sends it. Thanks. I got here fine. Love u too.

• • •

A coal-colored dog slumbers in the ethereal blue of a fishing net coiled up on the lawn in the square. The sun strikes the gray stairs up the hill to the parish church face-on. The short, steep cobbled street next to the church passes a boat shed and a prefabricated wooden house. He waves at the tanned old lady basking in the sun on the veranda in a colorful beach chair. A salty northeasterly rustles the trees and waves. Vast clouds advance in formation from the sea to the continent like an army in a trance. The street curves to the left and passes in front of a small eighteenth-century building with peeling white walls and freshly painted cobalt-blue window frames. A craft shop exhibits striped rugs, miniature ships, and wicker baskets piled up in the doorway and windows. A group of hyperactive children in blue and white school uniforms passes in the opposite direction, led by a tense teacher. The street continues toward Vigia Point, passing summer homes perched on the hill. He slowly surveys the sweeping view of the ruffled ocean and the beaches and hills stretching around in a big curve to what he imagines to be the distant Guarda do Embaú Beach. He walks slowly so Beta can keep up. When she decides to stop once and for all, he fastens the leash to her collar and urges her on with little tugs. On the tiny Preguiça Beach, he sees parents sunbathing as they watch their children playing on the stretch of sand protected from the wind. Washed-up bits of algae, tree branches, and mollusks form fans on the ochre sand and give off a pungent smell. He nods at the bathers as he passes and takes a trail that starts at the rocks. His feet sink into the warm salt water hidden under the prickly grass. The houses here are immense palaces with glass fronts, solar panels, and ample wooden verandas jutting out over land that has been radically reworked by landscapers. At Vigia Point a megalomaniacal mansion leaves little room for pedestrians, and on the other side of the low wire fence, a hysterical toy poodle wildly dashes back and forth, squeaking like a bat, while a woman in the house yells at it to come inside. Beta completely ignores the fellow member of her species. Cloud shadows slide across the frothy sea, and he imagines the fish believing the shadows to be the clouds themselves. He walks along, jumping over rocks, until he comes to a series of corroded metal girders sticking out of a concrete base. The sharp skeleton of a mysterious structure has long been disfigured by the sea breeze, and its crusts of orangey rust give it a deadly look. From here he can see all of Garopaba Beach head on. Beta watches water bugs darting through the rocks at the tideline.