Naiara
Hermano pushed his bike up the cement path that ran across the lawn, knocked on Bonobo’s door and, sitting on his bike frame while he waited, admired the album cover of Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy for the fiftieth time, trying to find a new interpretation or detail he hadn’t noticed before in the montage of naked children climbing a large pile of rocks in Ireland.
Naiara opened the door with a smile, said hi, and continued vigorously stirring a sticky mixture of condensed milk and chocolate powder in a tempered glass mug.
He asked if Bonobo was home.
She said he wasn’t.
He asked if she knew when he’d be back.
She said she didn’t, but if he’d only come to leave a record for Bonobo, she could give it to him later.
Hermano didn’t just want to lend him the record; in one of his first conversations with Bonobo after walking home together the night of Isabela’s party, they had discovered they were both Led Zeppelin fans, and now he was hoping for an opportunity to spend some time with his new friend. Lending him the album was merely a pretext, so he decided to leave a message saying he’d come back later.
Instead of saying goodbye and closing the door, Naiara almost choked as she tried to swallow a spoonful of the condensed-milk mixture too quickly. She had suddenly remembered that her brother had said he’d be back before lunch, which meant he shouldn’t be more than ten or fifteen minutes, she was positive, so Hermano could come in and wait.
From the notable absence of any cooking smells, domestic noise or sign of movement inside the house, Hermano gathered that no lunch was being prepared and that Naiara, in baggy tracksuit bottoms with oval-shaped leather knee patches and a red boob tube that her tiny breasts didn’t look capable of holding up for long, was home alone, tricking her stomach with spoonfuls of an improvised, calorie-packed sludge.
She opened the door a little wider for Hermano to come in, and asked if he wanted anything to eat or drink.
He said no.
The living-room floor and furniture were made of ipê wood, whose caramel-streaked, dark-brown grain gave the place a slightly sinister, cavernous feel. There was a strong smell of wood and clay, hemp rugs on the floor and embroidered woollen hangings on the brick walls. Even on a hot day, with most of the windows open, the interior of the house was chilly and poorly lit.
Naiara told Hermano to have a seat on the sofa, but he took the armchair and she ended up sitting on the sofa herself.
He leaned over, gripped the tip of his shoe and began to stretch his calf muscle.
Naiara asked what record it was.
He gave her a succinct description of the album and his reasons for liking it.
She left her mug on the sofa, stood, and came to peer over his shoulder at the cover of the album on his lap.
He told her his theory that the children climbing the pile of rocks were Robert Plant’s.
With her hand on the back of the chair, Naiara sat on the arm and leaned forward to stare at the album, very close to Hermano.
He inhaled the choc-milky breath that she breathed on his ear at regular intervals, while one of her little breasts pressed against his shoulder, which made him think of chocolate-filled pastry pillows, his favourite dessert.
She leaned her cheek against Hermano’s face.
The album slid off his lap on to the floor.
She began softly rubbing her cheek on his face, up and down.
He sat there stiffly, straight-backed, looking at her out of the corner of his eye, his face unmoving, as if it were just a manly support for a fragile and needy girl to rub her cheek on.
She went on rubbing.
Hermano’s impassivity slowly crumbled as he felt growing tremors in his hands and legs, and he began to give in, his control of the situation slipping away, until he had no choice but to turn his head a little and allow his lips to meet Naiara’s in an indecisive kiss, trying his hardest to disguise the fact that it was his first.
Whispering in his ear, Naiara suggested they go to her room.
Everything in it that could be red was red. Red pillowcases, red blanket, burgundy curtains. The wall behind the bed was dark red. In a corner, atop a trunk, was an abandoned doll cemetery, with everything from life-sized babies to voluptuous little women in miniature. Some, without any clothing, sported exaggerated deformations of the human anatomy, with curves and details in pink plastic, their faces crudely made up with red lipstick and other kinds of ink and beauty products. On the ceiling, constellations of glow-in-the-dark stickers were opaque green blobs in the daylight. A jumble of clothing and plush toys occupied the bed, shelves, and spaces in the wardrobe. Underwear, tops, sandals, bears, badgers, dolphins. A small red glass-topped dressing table with a mirror was covered with a thorny flora of bobby pins, butterfly clips, perfume bottles, nail polish, brushes, combs, pencils and a can of hairspray.
The Shape of Bones Page 11