Luna: New Moon

Motos glide in to the lobby, silent and accurate.

Ariel’s heels are glorious and impractical but they add elegance to her flounce to the lobby. But Marina is surface-fit, a Long-runner and she catches Ariel by the elbow.

‘I don’t like it either, but your mother ordered me—’

A hand, a grip, a twist and Marina follows the path that doesn’t end in dislocated joints, snapped bones. The party spins and she’s on her back, winded on the waxed wooden floor.

‘When you can do this to me, maybe then I’ll need a bodyguard,’ Ariel says and steps into the moto that has opened up like before her like a hand.

‘It’s still my job,’ Marina mutters as Corta security picks her up and sets her on her feet again but the moto is a half of Kondakova Prospekt away by now, a bright bauble of advertising, tracked by the balloon bestiary.

‘Hey.’

‘Hey.’

Abena’s touch on Lucasinho’s arm.

‘You doing anything?’

‘Why?’

‘Just, some of us are going on to a club.’

She could have messaged him through Jinji, but she came in person, to touch him.

‘Who?’

‘Me, my abusua-sisters, Nadia and Kseniya Vorontsov. We’re meeting up with some of the folk from the Zé Ka Colloquium. You coming?’

They’re looking over at him, in their party clothes and coloured shoes and he wants more than anything to go with them, to be with Abena and look for chances; to redeem himself, to impress her. Two images won’t leave his head: his father’s two suits on either side of him. Flavia huddled among her saints, fighting to breathe.

‘I can’t. I really have to go spend some time with my madrinha.’

Parties decay by half-life. Conversations lose momentum. Topics are exhausted. It’s tiring to talk. Everyone who should be cruised has been cruised. The hook-ups have hooked up, or failed and no one’s listening to the music any more. The staff begin to clear. There is an evening service in an hour’s time.

Lucas lingers, aware that he is in the way and that his presence is barely tolerated but wanting to bestow thanks here, a handshake there, a tip or a bonus. He has always appreciated work well done and believed it should be rewarded.

‘My mãe was delighted,’ he says to the restaurateur. ‘I’m very happy.’

The band pack their instruments. They seem pleased with their performance. Lucas thanks them individually; Toquinho is generous with its tips. A whisper to Jorge: A moment, if you would.

A look from Lucas clears the balcony.

‘Another balcony,’ Jorge says. Lucas leans on the glass wall, looking down the length of São Sebastião Quadra. The birthday blimps have been flown down to ground level, puny humans struggle to wrangle the floating gods with ropes and grapples and deflate them.

‘Thank you, Jorge,’ Lucas says and there is a tone in his voice that kills every quip or levity in Jorge’s conversation. A rawness, a choke.

‘Thank you, Senhor Corta,’ Jorge says.

‘Senhor …’ Lucas begins. ‘You made my mamãe’s day. No, this isn’t what I want to say. I am bu-hwaejang of Corta Hélio, I argue strategy in the board, I talk for a living and I can’t speak. I had a preamble, Jorge. All my justifications and realisations. All about me.’

‘When my fingers freeze, when I can’t get a line, when I feel the music wrong in me, I remember that I’m there because I’m doing something no one else in that room can,’ Jorge says. ‘I’m not like everyone. I’m exceptional. I’m allowed to be arrogant about that. You, Lucas; you’ve every right to say whatever you want, whatever you think.’

Lucas starts, as if realisation were a nail driven between his eyes. His hands grasp the glass rail.

‘Yes. Simple.’ He looks at Jorge. ‘Jorge, will you marry me?’

This time, Duncan Mackenzie is summoned to the glasshouse. The shuttle has arrived

, Esperance announces. Duncan adjusts the lie of his lapels, the fall of his trouser turn-ups, the length of his cuffs. He checks his appearance once more through Esperance. A whistle of breath through the teeth and he steps into the shuttle.

His father waits among the tree ferns. The air smells of damp and rot. Duncan can no longer read any emotion in his father’s face. Everything is age, lines deep moon-carved. How easy to pull that plug, tug that line, rip out that tube and watch his father leak and gurgle himself to death all over the floor of his precious Fern Gully. Compost to compost. Food for plants. The medics would only bring him back to life again. They have done it three times already, catching that light in his eyes before it guttered out and using it to rekindle his ruin of a body. This is what I have to look forward to.

Behind Robert Mackenzie stands Jade Sun.

‘Her birthday. Did you sing “Happy Birthday to you, dear Adriana”?’

‘Not her.’ Duncan flicks a look at Jade Sun.

‘Whatever you say to Robert you say to me,’ Jade Sun says. ‘With or without familiars.’

‘What she says,’ Robert Mackenzie says. ‘I thought we were a laughing stock before. Jesus God boy, you went to her birthday party.’

‘I talked to her, Dragon to Dragon.’