The Air You Breathe: A Novel by Frances de Pontes Peebles

Author:Frances de Pontes Peebles [de Pontes Peebles, Frances]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-08-21T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

It was past midnight. In the glow of gas streetlamps, Madame L.’s sharkskin suit shone as if it was wet. Graça, Vinicius, and I followed him far past Carmelita’s Alley and wound our way into a neighborhood I didn’t recognize.

Madame L. whistled, which made me less nervous; perhaps this was simply an excursion and not a punishment for late payment. Vinicius was with us, after all, and he didn’t owe Madame L. a centavo. These were the things I told myself as we moved in a line through unknown streets until Lucifer finally stopped at a rusted metal door. “Here we are,” he said, and knocked.

A peephole slid open. Then several bolts were turned and the door creaked wide. A muscular youth—no older than Graça and I—greeted us. His eyelashes were so long and thick, they nearly touched the arch of his eyebrows. He wore a tuxedo.

“Just in time,” the youth said.

We walked into the empty office of an abandoned factory. The youth guided us through dark corridors until there were voices and light. The cramped hallway opened to a vast, smoky warehouse filled with tables and chairs. Men in tuxedos and women in beaded gowns—people who should have been at the Copacabana Palace—filled the tables and crowded the bar. Upon closer inspection, I saw that several of the elegant women had Adam’s apples bobbing at their necks. Some of the tuxedoed men had full lips and high cheekbones. Waitresses (or were they waiters?) wearing jaunty police costumes darted from table to table, the glasses on their trays rattling. Onstage, a band played samba.

As soon as we were seated, Vinicius asked: “What are we doing here?”

“We’re being entertained,” Madame L. replied before ordering a bottle of sugarcane rum.

The band quickened their pace. Several couples joined the crowd on the floor. Graça swallowed her drink, uncrossed her legs, and stood. “Dance with me, you oaf,” she said, and tugged Vinicius from his chair.

She’d borrowed an evening gown from Anaïs: a long silk frock with a nipped waistline that looked as if it had been poured onto her. Graça and Vinicius joined the cluster of couples near the stage. Vinicius was clumsy, staring at his feet and bumping into the dancers around him. He sighed, then pulled away from Graça. He began to leave the floor but Graça gripped his arm. They both stood very still, the only ones who weren’t moving. Graça whispered in his ear and Vinicius stared at her, incredulous. Then a smile slowly spread across his face, brightening it. I’d never seen him look so happy, not even after we’d written our best sambas.

I grabbed my cocktail glass and emptied it in one swallow. Madame L. refilled it and pushed the glass back toward me.

“How long did it take for that to happen?” he asked, nodding at the dance floor where Graça and Vinicius now moved in perfect unison.

“What?”

“The bandleader and the singer,” he said. “What a tired old story! I’d hoped your act would avoid it, but we’re all animals, aren’t we?”

I felt the room tilt.

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