Lucasinho waves his hand over the cooker panel to clear the glass, peers in at his batches. He glances anxiously at Grigori. This is not the time for the beast to wake. A few minutes more. And out and cooling. Lucasinho feels the shadow on his skin before the press of Grigori’s hair and muscles.
‘Hey.’
‘Hey.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Baking.’
‘What, like?’
‘Brownies. They’re good. They’ve got hash in them.’
‘Do you always bake like this?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like no clothes.’
‘It connects me.’
‘I think it’s hot.’
Lucasinho’s heart sinks. Grigori is close and tight against him, getting hard. Is this boy made of cum? Lucasinho picks of a crumb of cooling brownie and turns to slip it between Grigori’s lips.
‘Sweet.’
Then they go back to it again.
Marina has a balcony. It’s small but quite addictive. At the end of each day she returns from her training group bone-weary and aching from the new things her body must learn for Corta Hélio and goes to her balcony.
The apartment Corta Hélio has assigned her is on the West 23rd of Santa Barbra Quadra so the drop from the balcony to the street, while not as high as the one from Bairro Alto to Gagarin Prospekt, is an overhang. The vertigo attracts her. And the sounds. João de Deus’s Portuguese-speaking streets have a different timbre from Meridian. Shouts and greetings; the look-at-me cries of teenagers, the voices of children buzzing up and down Kondakova Prospekt on big-tyred tricycles. Different voices. The hum of the moto engines, the elevators, the escalators and moving walkways, the airplant; different noises. The light of the skyline is brighter, the spectrum more yellow than Meridian. The colours of the neons cluster around blue green and gold, the colours of Old Brasil. The names, the words are exclusively Portuguese. Different, exciting. João de Deus is a compact city; eighty thousand people in three quadras, each eight hours out of phase with its neighbours: mañana, tarde, noche. In many ways João de Deus is an old-fashioned place, sculpted from the lava tubes that thread the skin of Mare Fecunditatis. Santa Barbra Quadra is three hundred metres in diameter and feels cramped to Marina. The roof feels close and heavy. She is a little claustrophobic. But there is not enough airspace for fliers and for that Marina is thankful. She hates those fit, arrogant aeronauts.
‘O bloqueio de ar não é completamente despressurizado,’ she says. She tries to speak Portuguese around the apartment. Hetty has been programmed not to respond to Globo.
Daqui a pouco sair para a superfície da lua, Hetty responds. Seu sotaque é péssimo. Her familiar not only speaks better Portuguese than her, she does so in a perfect Corta Hélio accent.
Hetty breaks off her lesson.
Carlinhos Corta está na porta, she says.
Hair good, face good, straighten clothing, check teeth, fold unmade bed back into wall. Within twenty seconds Marina is ready to receive her boss.
‘Oh.’
Carlinhos Corta is dressed in a pair of shorts, footgloves and coloured braids around his elbows, wrists, knees and ankles. That’s all. He greets her in Portuguese. Marina barely hears him. He is a beautiful sight. He smells of honey and coconut oil. Beautiful, intimidating.
‘Get dressed,’ he says in Globo. ‘You’re coming out with me.’
‘I am dressed.’
‘No you’re not.’
Senhor Corta está acessando a sua impressora, Hetty says. The printer dispenses shorts (short) a bra top (skimpy) and footgloves. The instruction is clear. Marina slips them on in her washroom. She tries to pull the top down, the shorts up. She feels nakeder than naked. In her room is her boss and she doesn’t know what he is doing, why he has come, who or what he is really.
‘For you.’ Carlinhos scoops handful of green braids from the printer. ‘I’m giving you the colour of my orixa, Ogun.’ He shows her how to tie them around her joints, how much of a tail to leave hanging. The footgloves feel as if they are sucking her toes. ‘You can run, can’t you?’
Marina follows him down ladeiros. The staircases are narrow and shallow, difficult to jog. Passersby press in to the walls and nod greetings. She runs at Carlinhos’s shoulder along Third, parallel to the central Prospekt but three levels higher. Bicycles and motos whirl past. Marina smells grilling corn, hot oil, frying falafel. Music beats from tiny five-seater bars carved into naked rock. The skyline dims towards purples and reds. Carlinhos takes a left on to a cross-passage. Marina is now under artificial lights. From a T-junction main tunnel ahead she thinks she hears chanting voices. Then she sees a body of runners sweep past along the tunnel, their familiars a hovering choir. Bare skin glistens with oil, sweat, body-paint. Tassels and braids stream from elbows and knees, wrists and throats and foreheads. Singing. They are singing. Marina almost stops dead in surprise.
‘Come on pick it up,’ Carlinhos says and adds half a metre to his stride. Marina lunges after him. She is not a runner but she still has Earth muscle and she catches him easily. Carlinhos turns into the intersecting tunnel, a wide service way curving gently to the right. Marina is unfamiliar with this part of João de Deus. Ahead is the pack of runners, tightly bunched, a peloton. Under lunar gravity they surge and lunge like running gazelles. A rolling sea of movement. Marina hears drums, whistles, the chime of finger cymbals over the chanting. Carlinhos catches up with the back markers. Marina is two steps behind him. The runners part to admit them and Marina falls in easily with the pace.
‘Pick it up again,’ Carlinhos calls and pulls ahead. Marina kicks and follows him into the heart of the pack. Beats engulf her, their rhythm the rhythm of her heart, her feet. The chanting voices call to her voice. She can’t understand the words but she wants to join them. She is expanded. Her senses, her personal space overlap with the runners close around her, yet at the same time she is radiantly conscious of her body. Lungs, nerves, bones and brain are a unity. She moves effortlessly, perfectly. Every sense is tuned to its highest possible note. She hears the drums in her knees, her heels. She smells the sweat of Carlinhos’s skin. The play of the tassels across her skin is erotic. She can distinguish every hovering dust mote. She recognises a shoulder tattoo at the head of the pack and, as if her look was a touch, Saadia from her squad turns and acknowledges her. A wave of undiluted joy breaks through Marina’s entire body.
The words. She knows them now. They are Portuguese, a language she doesn’t fully understand, in a dialect she can’t comprehend, but their meaning is clear. St George, lord of iron, my husband. Saint strike boldly. St George has water but bathes in blood. St George has two cutlasses. One for cutting grass, one for making marks. He wears robes of fire. He wears a shirt of blood. He has three houses. The house of riches. The house of wealth. The house of war. The words are in her throat, the words are on her lips. Marina has no idea how they got there.