It was smooth and slippery, firm yet soft, sweet with a distinctive flavor all its own. They sat for a while hacking at the pieces and slurping them up while Julia declared that she could never go home because now that she’d discovered eating coconuts on the beach, how could she return to a life without them?
Blake scooped up a piece with his little coconut-spoon. “Maybe you can start an import-export business.”
“Then I’d definitely know why I was doing it.”
“Yeah, purely selfish reasons. Making sure you have a constant supply of fresh coconuts.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of bringing it to the cold, deprived masses in Chicago. I guess they’re not as cold and deprived in Sydney.” She paused. “Or wherever it is that you live.”
“Sydney.” He nodded. “There are coconut palms in Australia, but Sydney is definitely not the same as Rio. I’d say we’re still just as deprived.”
“I’m not going to tell you what the current temperature probably is in Chicago with the wind chill because I don’t want to ruin my day by reminding myself of what’s waiting for me.”
“Good plan. All thoughts of home life officially banished today.”
“Deal,” she nodded, picking at the last scraps of coconut clinging to the inside of the shell.
“Good. Now that that’s decided, what’s on the agenda next?”
Julia looked down the beach, hugged by the mountains and the buildings behind. “Anything? Everything? You know what’s good here—I’m up for whatever you want.”
Blake shook his head. “None of that. You have to decide what it is you want to do.”
“I see.” She leaned in close. “Is this another one of those times when I have to declare what I want, and then beg for you to give me exactly what I’m asking for?”
Given how little clothing most people on the beach were wearing, she felt no compunction about sliding her finger up his bare skin, raising the hairs on his forearm, before kissing him on the ear.
“I don’t know which I like more, when you ask or when you take.” His lips tasted like coconut, sweet and sticky, and he wrapped one arm around her neck and slid her hair out of her ponytail as he pulled her close.
“Is there anywhere with a good view?” she asked. “It seems like there’s so much to see with the city nestled in the mountains like this.”
Blake jumped up and extended a hand. “Your wish is my command,” he said as he helped her up, planting a kiss on her temple. “I know just the thing.”
It turned out that asking for a good view in Rio was like standing in the middle of the beach and asking to see sand. They started by taking the cable cars up to Sugar Loaf Mountain, Pão de Açúcar in Portuguese, a peak on the mouth of Guanabara Bay. First they went up a smaller hill that stretched beside the mountain. Then the cable car took them straight across from one peak to the other. It had glass windows all around and gave them a view of the whole city as it grew out of the mountains, the buildings a small attempt to mirror the peaks rising up to the sky. It was dizzying and terrifying and so beautiful it seemed unreal to float from one mountain to the other, water below them and the sky above.
When they finally reached the top, Julia was amazed to see rock climbers scaling the nearly vertical sides. Some people even climbed all the way up, sleeping on the ledges when they needed a break. The thought made her stomach clench.
“That is. So. Terrifying.” She pointed to the small figures inching their way up the sides.
Blake laughed. “I guess we know the limits of your adventurous spirit.”
She spun to face him. “You would do that?”
“Hell no! There are about a million other ways I’d rather die. Top of that list being quietly in my sleep when I’m old.”
“Or at least with both feet on the ground.” She shuddered, unable to pull her eyes away.
“But I like the idea of it,” he clarified, “even if I wouldn’t do it myself.”
“You want to be that adventurous?”
“In my next life. Maybe.”
“You keep working on that,” she said. “I’m happy to spend all my lifetimes watching other people do crazy things.”
“Always on the sidelines?”
“Sometimes you have to know who you’re not,” she said emphatically, even as another voice inside her wondered if that were really true.
“What if who you’re not changes?” Blake asked as he grabbed her hand and led her around to the other side of the peak, and it was like he was reading her mind.
She didn’t have an answer for that.
Later they crossed the city and climbed up to the famous Christ the Redeemer statue, one hundred feet of concrete and soapstone on a twenty-foot pedestal standing with outstretched arms. It topped the Corcovado Mountain in Rio’s Tijuca Forest National Park, an enormous rainforest that Julia couldn’t believe was in the middle of a city. Sugar Loaf and the Redeemer looked like they were facing each other, two points flanking the sprawl of buildings below them, endless blue water and mountainous green on either side. They were in the city, surrounded by concrete and throngs of tourists taking in the views. But they were also above it, surrounded by color and light, breathless and floating over everything on street level that hardly seemed to matter at all.
“Does this qualify as decent enough views?” Blake asked as he came up behind her and helped slide the strap of her patterned red sundress back up her shoulder from where it was starting to slip.
“I had no idea a city could even be like this,” Julia said, not sure where to look first.
“I told you Rio was amazing.”
“It’s so close to São Paulo, yet so completely different.”
“To be fair, I think São Paulo is a great city if you give it a chance. But you probably have to know where to go and what there is to do. It’s not like this, where you can basically go anywhere and find something amazing.”
“There’s a rainforest in the middle of the city. The middle! How can that be?”
Blake laughed. “Sounds like you’ve been converted.”
“I’m with Chris. Remind me why I’m not moving here?”
“Because you agree with Jamie that sometimes it’s nice to go home.”
“I thought we weren’t talking about anything having to do with the h-word,” she reminded him with a grin.
“Right, you caught me. I have no reason whatsoever why you shouldn’t move to Rio.”
“Except I don’t speak Portuguese.”
“You can learn.”
“And I probably couldn’t get a job.”
“Everyone needs math teachers.”
“If I’m doing the same job somewhere else, isn’t it just my same life transplanted?” she asked, gazing up at the impressive statue above them.
“I have no idea what the answer to that is. All I know is that it doesn’t snow here.”
“That’s a good enough incentive for me. What about in Sydney?”
“Coldest temperatures we get are in July, where sometimes it’s all the way down to eight. I don’t know what that is in Fahrenheit, though.”
“About forty-six,” Julia said, doing the quick computation in her head. The thought made her laugh out loud. Forties in Chicago in the dead of winter would be considered downright balmy.
“What, that doesn’t count as cold to you hearty Chicagoans?”
“Sorry, but you’re a total wuss.”
“Sometimes it even snows!”
“Yeah, like it snows in Florida and everyone freaks out from a dusting.”
“In Brazil when it drops into the seventies, everyone reaches for a sweater.”
“That’s what I’m saying. Sounds like a good life to me.”
“Okay, you teach math while Chris opens up an inn.”
“What about poor Jamie?” she asked.
“He’ll love being the house boy.”