Daniel Galera - Blood-drenched Beard

Come again?

It’s beautiful down. But I can imagine it up. Do you ever wear it like that?

Sometimes.

The way it is now it hides your face a bit.

Sometimes hiding’s a part of the game.

She leaves bashfully, and he quickly downs his beer with satisfaction.

Later he strolls, belly full, down the main avenue and through the cross streets, marking on his map a café, a hardware store, a Laundromat, and a Uruguayan grill, until he realizes that many of the establishments are transitory and open and close with the summer season. Taking a look around, he sees that many have already closed after Carnival, and some of the windows are covered with brown paper or cardboard. A handwritten sign in an ice cream-parlor window says that it will continue operating during the winter on another street. Everything that isn’t summer is winter. A sign on the Laundromat door says it will reopen only in December. A bookstore, a corner shop, and several boutiques selling women’s clothes appear to still be in operation but have already closed for the day, and an Internet café is turning out the last few clients from its computer terminals. People are still drinking beers in snack bars, and there is a hot dog stand in the supermarket parking lot with clients sitting on little plastic stools on the sidewalk. There is a European-style pub called Al Capone. Adolescents smoke and shout on the lawns of the empty summer-rental houses. He returns along the main avenue and stops just before the seaside boulevard at the Bauru Tchê, a snack bar operating out of a trailer with a tarpaulin covering half a dozen metal tables. He takes a seat and orders a beer. A small TV over the counter is showing a documentary about Pantera on MTV. Phil Anselmo is banging the mike against his forehead until he bleeds and Dimebag Darrell is soloing. A drunk of indeterminate age and a fat teenager are glued to the program. At another table an old man and two youths in baseball caps who look like locals are drinking beer. The old man is talking, relaxed in his chair, while the youths listen.

Ninety percent of the world’s evil is the rich guy paying for the poor guy to do it, he says. The young men nod in agreement.

A boy of about ten, the snack bar owner’s son, comes to clean his table even though it doesn’t need it. He wipes it down with ostensive efficiency, removing the bottle and putting it back when he is done. He thanks him. The boy says, You’re welcome, and races back to the counter.

The kid begs to work, says his father at the counter. I’ve never seen anything like it.

The accent of the old man at the next table is hard to understand, and the blaring Pantera video clips don’t help, but now he is saying that the Department of Public Prosecution owes him two million reais . His two listeners nod.

The boy comes back and looks at him.

Heard the one about the pool table?

No.

Leave him alone, says his father without taking his eyes off the money he is counting.

What’s green on top, has four paws, and if it falls on your head, it’ll kill you?

A pool table?

How did you know? the boy hollers, and dashes back behind the counter, cackling with laughter.

Leave him alone, repeats his father.

He has two beers while joking with the boy, eavesdropping on the conversation at the next table, and watching people going past on the sidewalk. On the TV, Dimebag Darrell is shot dead on stage by a crazy fan. He is a little tipsy when he gets up to leave. He pays the manager, a friendly, tired-looking man with deep bags under his eyes and stubble growing on his chin.

My family used to own Rua da Praia in Porto Alegre, the old man is telling the youths in baseball caps as he leaves. I’ve got the deed to prove it. The youths nod.

He walks along the seaside toward the fishing village and the hotel. The waves make a crashing sound like breaking tree trunks. He carries a flip-flop in each hand and feels the wet sand on his feet. The idea that the day is ending disturbs him. Behind Vigia Hill, speckled with the lights of houses and lampposts, looms precisely the emptiness that he came here to look for. It’s too early to find it. He has fantasized about a long or even infinite search, and it is frustrating to be reminded so soon of that which he would rather keep pretending not to know, that the feeling of emptiness he yearns for is dormant inside him, that he takes it with him wherever he goes. It’s like a surprise party announced in advance or a joke that is explained before it is told. He remembers the boy in the bar’s joke. He hadn’t laughed at the time, but now he does so, absurdly.

The dog has eaten her food and drunk all her water. He refills her water dish while she watches him from her favorite rug on the sticky tiled floor of the hotel room. He brushes his teeth and throws himself onto the bed, wearing only his underwear. The room smells of cement and fabric softener. He listens to the waves breaking two hundred yards away. He hears motorbikes at high speed and the prevailing silence.

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.