It takes a while to start, but once it does, it doesn’t die, says Bonobo.
On the fourth try, the engine starts. Bonobo steps on the accelerator and revs it scandalously until he hears a couple of explosions in the exhaust pipe.
Can you get me my eye patch from the glove box?
Your what?
My eye patch.
He opens the glove box and fishes an eye patch made of cloth and black elastic out of a jumble of used tissues, business cards, bars of wax, condoms, a filthy rag, and a pair of broken sunglasses. Bonobo takes the eye patch and adjusts it over his right eye.
It’s to stop me seeing double.
Only then does he put the car in first gear. It moves forward. The grass and debris from the kiosk scrape its undercarriage. He feels as if he is riding inside the engine itself. They take the state highway out of Garopaba. A car passes them going in the opposite direction, and the lit-up tarmac looms beneath his feet through a hole in the floor. Bonobo zigzags a little, but considering his degree of intoxication and the state of the vehicle, his driving is actually quite comforting, focused, at a moderate speed, his sight limited by the absurd eye patch. He is hunched so far over the small steering wheel that his simian nose almost touches the windshield. Figures such as cows or cyclists come to life in a flash and go back to being specters in almost the same instant. They turn left onto the road to Rosa Beach. The Beetle needs to halt almost completely before he can drive it over speed bumps. The stone-paved streets give way to steep dirt roads. The car’s clutch doesn’t disengage automatically. To deal with the problem, Bonobo has tied a length of blue clothesline between the pedal and the door handle. The operation to take his left hand off the steering wheel and tug on the clothesline at the exact moment after each gear change is complicated and requires a certain amount of skill and timing. In more complex maneuvers, Bonobo looks like a puppeteer manipulating a prop car.
The party is on the deck of the sushi bar, and there is hardly anyone there. A hip-hop duo is rapping in the corner of a veranda that has been made into a dance floor. The music is really bad, and there are eight men and two women dancing and talking on the veranda. He takes a look out back and finds a meticulously designed Japanese garden with rock arrangements, a fountain, a lake inhabited by a small gang of carp, and a stream. Three girls are drinking in silence at a table in the garden. That’s the extent of the party. He orders a beer and is given a warm can. He is hungry, but there is no sign of food. Bonobo orders a mojito and goes to talk to someone on the dance floor.
He goes back to the Beetle parked near the entrance and lets Beta out. He returns with her to the restaurant and sits in an armchair on the front veranda. Dirty glasses and empty cans left on the tables indicate that a lot of people have already been there and gone. Beta sits next to the armchair, and he stares into the surrounding vegetation to forget the monotonous vocals of the rappers, who don’t seem to have the energy to keep up with their rhymes. His cell phone rings. It is Laila, a former student from Porto Alegre who is now his friend. He doesn’t find out why she is calling so late because the roaming charges gobble up his credit in seconds.
In his mind he starts putting together the training session he is going to give his students in the pool tomorrow. Meanwhile two men walk onto the veranda talking in low voices, with furtive gestures, their heads hunched down between their shoulders, and it is a while before they notice he is there. They stop talking when they realize they have company. One of them has peroxide-blond hair, and he is almost certain it is the guy who was with Dália at the Pico do Surf the night they met. Peroxide-blond hair is common around here, but the guy gives him a long stare. He begins to feel threatened.
Do we know each other?
The blond guy just stares at him and doesn’t answer. He is younger than him, twenty-something, and has obviously been snorting all night. He looks for some other feature to help identify him in the future. He has a shark tattoo covering one whole side of his left calf. The two friends abort whatever they have gone there to do and go back into the restaurant.
He waits a few minutes and goes to look for Bonobo. There is no sign of him. There is no sign of almost anyone. The three girls in the garden have disappeared. The rappers have stopped singing and are talking to the few survivors gathered around the deejay. He leaves the restaurant and sees Lockjaw still parked in the same spot. He puts Beta in the car, closes the door, and goes to the bathroom. When he walks out, he bumps into Bonobo in the corridor. He is accompanied by two girls.
Where you been? slurs Bonobo, completely off his face but still standing, an experienced drunk. I’ve been looking for you for ages. This is Liz, a really good friend of mine, and this here is Ju.
Bonobo and Ju are in the middle of a conversation dripping with terms such as soul, impermanence, and vanity. Liz looks as if she is just along for the ride, accompanying her friend. Neither of them seems drunk, and he isn’t really sure what’s going on but senses that it must be obvious.
Bonobo’s bed-and-breakfast is near the sushi bar, and in a few minutes Bonobo’s Beetle and the girls’ red Parati are driving up a steep, narrow driveway between bamboo fences that leads to a well-tended property with a large two-story building and two smaller cabanas behind it, all built with a combination of bricks, mortar, and wooden logs, with green Portuguese roof tiles and glassed-in verandas. A sign over the front door says BONOBO’S BED-AND-BREAKFAST, and on the adjoining building with French windows another sign says BONOBO’S CAFÉ. He climbs out of the Beetle with difficulty. He scratches his forearm on a rusty corner of the door and tries to remember when he had his last tetanus shot.
Bonobo opens the door and tells them all to make themselves at home but asks that they try not to make too much noise because there are guests in one of the upstairs rooms. Downstairs is the reception desk with a cozy sitting room and access to the kitchen, a guest breakfast room, and another room with an engraved wooden sign on the door saying BONOBO’S BEDROOM. It isn’t long before Bonobo and Ju go into his room. Ju is from Brasília and has large breasts, and that is all he has had time to find out about her.
In the reception area, he sits on a small, comfortable sofa, while Liz sits in the armchair next to him. Liz is a native of Garopaba. She has recently had highlights put in her brown hair and has an athletic body and a slightly masculine face. There is zero attraction. They chat at a calm, tired pace, listening to the reggae music that Bonobo has put on at a low volume in the background. They are songs about the beauty of the moment, the importance of freedom, the need for awareness, about stars and love and the ocean waves. Liz’s full name is Elizete, and she hates it. She says there is a whole generation of girls in Garopaba of her age with names that end in ete, just as her and her girlfriends’ mothers and grandmothers’ names end in ina, which are so much simpler and sweeter and sound like parents’ terms of endearment for their daughters: names like Delfina, Jovina, Celina, Ondina, Etelvina, Clarina, Angelina, Antonina, Vivina, Santina, and the more common ones like Carolina and Regina. But now it is the era of the Elizetes, Claudetes, and Marizetes, with their rather stunted sound. She muses, I wonder why? If I have a daughter, I’m going to call her Marina, or Sabrina, or Florentina — what do you think? He thinks she is right. Her voice is soft and sibilant like that of other locals he has spoken to, including Cecina. Maybe it is a characteristic of Azoreans. After the music stops, they hear only the silence of the night and gusts of intermittent wind rustling the trees and the bamboo thickets. Occasionally the low murmur of a halting conversation comes from Bonobo’s room. Beta has fallen asleep on a knitted rug. Liz wants to know something about him, and he talks about swimming, triathlons, how he competed in the Ironman in Hawaii some years ago, and she seems only partially interested but still interested enough. It’s almost as if they were intimate and were having one of those conversations that people have before they fall asleep together. I don’t have the build to really compete properly, he says. I’ve got small feet. Liz murmurs things so he’ll know she is listening, and he keeps talking. Time flows at the pace that it should always flow, he thinks. A slowness in keeping with his inner discourse. They hear a short moan from Ju, the bed banging against the wall or the floor, then a longer moan, which she tries to muffle unsuccessfully. It goes on for a few minutes. When the door opens, Ju walks out fully dressed and perfectly composed and tells her friend that she needs to go because she has to get up early the next morning. The Parati drives off, and the girls crank up the radio. The beat of the electronic music fades into the distance.