Chapter 10

“Honey, I...” His voice cracked briefly. “I’m home.”

He stepped clumsily onto the shadow, left foot to the right, right foot to the left. «Empty.» He looked around his living room, sensing an uncommon weight in his chest.

Empty. When returning from the world, it used to warm his heart to see his home like that: empty. Now, it just left it like the home: «empty.»

He groped his forehead, feeling his brain about to throw up. “Honey ... I’m...” He paused. He heard his own voice echoing in the shadows. «Oh. What am I saying?» He looked to the right. To the corridor. To his room. «Yes. I mean ... no.»

It wasn’t empty. His room. His house. Certainly not his heart.

“Honey...” He said again, going to his beloved, stepping errantly through the hallway, into his room. His muscles were so sore at points he felt like he was carrying gravel in his legs, and that the body did not really belong to himself. «Ai ... caralho. I’m pooped!» The pain was great, yet his smile ... greater. Pain in the body, bliss in the soul.

After that long night, that blessed morning, he was left so full of confusing thoughts, so choked with conflicting emotions, that all he felt was an urgent, vital need to burst into his home, walk into his room, and... «Oh! Oh, honey!»

... pour out his heart, all of his emotions into his love. The only love he would ever need. «You have no idea... » Hiccup! «Of the night I just had!»

He touched his forehead, hands covering his eyes, which were threatening to drop out of his sockets like marbles cut from their strings. “Sor-” He paused. He took a breath. “Sorry.” A hiccup. Two. Fight against this throat, trying to keep his bile in the stomach. “Sorry. I was thinking, not ... ooh ... talking.” He lifted his head, his room in fact three, all shadows with colors swirling in a visual stew. “I am talking now.” His smile brought some much-needed light to his chamber. “I’ve got so ... much to talk about!”

He stepped forward. «Hmm... » He ignored the strange sensation he’d just felt. A weird, ominous feeling that’d struck him right as he stepped through his bedroom door. «Weird... »

His eyes, after much spinning and rolling, settled on his muse laying on the bed. Her face was up, and her thunderous body was covered only by a thin piece of blanket, breast and nethers hidden like a model posing to a sensual shoot.

“Oh.” He reminisced, washed over by a cool sensation from a very unexpected source. “You look ... you look just...” If the environment around him was confusing and hard to pierce together, even more so were his memories. “You look ... just like one of the posters I made ... long ago.”

He admired her. “Cristo.” A soft whisper, warm from his chest. “Você. É. Gostosa!” There was no position, as tasteful as it looked, where she was also not intensely sexual, deeply obscene. “Heavens. You. Are. Hot!”

Her breasts made big, round mounds on the sheets. Her muscles were so ripped and so finely cut that there was a kind of queerness in admiring her that way. «Like being gay, but ... not going all the way.»

His body swayed like a pendulum upside-down, but his eyes kept him balanced, tethered to her sculptural physique. She was a woman, but she was truly masculine. She was the manliest woman a woman could be while still being seen and regarded as a woman. Scarcely a man would not kill to have arms like hers, or such abs to grate not cheese, but concrete, or thighs to make an amateur out of a rugby player, or calves like bowling balls filled with tungsten. She was all this, then double, then more. “Oh. Dear heavens...”

He was hard. Though every muscle of his body ached, yes ... he was hard. Hard as stone. Hard as the tungsten her calves were made of. His member pecked against his jeans, leading him to undo them. “My heart...”

How easy, even shameless was his undressing. Even when compared to the nights prior, he felt totally not like himself, but instead like a man whose body needed undressing: a hunky, dazzling stud who was more used to being shirtless than chaste, for none of his women would allow his body to be covered for too long. “My heart ... hey, my ... my honey.” He had only sweetness in his voice. “This night...”

Tears? Were those tears in his eyes?

Yes. They were. “Oh. Oh, heavens.” Was it the exhaustion or the emotion? “I just had ... the most amazing night ... of ... of my life.”

His doll was lifeless. Motionlessly staring at the ceiling, just like he’d left her the evening prior. All her emotions and actions, all her words and sentiments lay only in his head...

... and yet he could feel her gently smiling at him, and her pose becoming slowly, only slowly and very slightly, very smoothly more open and receptive, welcoming him to her warm, muscular embrace. “Love...”

He nested on her arms, several kisses blossoming on her face, then her neck, then her strong, muscular shoulders. “Your body is such a wall.” He curled on her torso. “Such a cradle of ... power.” His lips met her muscles, her many, many muscles, making them warmer and firmer. “So unlike ... her.”

Before he knew it, he had turned soft, fallen asleep on her body, snoozing on her bountiful breasts just as the memories receded into dreams.

«Yes, lover. Tell me.» A voice peered into his mind. «Show me how amazing it was this night of yours.»

Joshua sang atop of his lungs for the whole city to hear:

“What I saw yesterday Is no more what I see t’day! Searching for a child That child wit’ut their shoes Stepping, stepping in the snow Crushed electrodes, tangled wires Whispering in the cracks of the hanging tree What I saw yesterday Is no more than I see t’day! Searching for a child Who drinks the water The water from the well, well dried up! (Dried up! Dried up!) No more water, no more no! Stepping, stepping in the snow Stepping in the snow without its shoes! No more shoes, no more water No more child No more memories No more no! I will still stir no more memories No more memories I will still stir no more memories No more memories No more no!”

The trio laughed and followed him closely. “Okay, Josh, tone it down.” Jonathan chided him, keeping a nervous eye on the buildings across the street. “No getting into fights like last time.”

“Fights? Fights?! No fights with hic! Jooosh! Josh’s love!”

“Ja, ja!” Jonathan puffed, exasperated, as he carried Joshua by the torso, keeping him balanced with one arm over his shoulders while his body swayed wildly in every direction. “Just please, uh, stay ... ugh, stay put!”

Then... “Hein fukkerts!” The fiend switched from druken joy to unending wrath. “Værdøse, kastrade vilswinne!”

“There, there, tiger.” Johanna strolled behind them, laughing off Jojo’s misery. “We’re all very proud of you. No one is going to dare rob us now that you’re here.” Jonathan’s tensed expression, as if his face had become a pressure pot, added jolly to her giggles. “You’re both very, veeewy brave!” She hugged an arm by her side, causing the tension to rise and the temperature to boil the waves that were crashing beside them. “Now, now, my big, strong, burly men, let’s cool off a bit. You both had enough bravery for the month.” Her voice climbed a few octaves, a mommy pecking on her children’s cheeks.

That doting tone caused the temperature to rise further on poor John’s head, melting his brain as the threads of his thoughts seeped through his nostrils. «She’s hugging me.» He looked to his left, her hands wrapped around his arm and her torso leaning against his. «She’s ... hugging me.»

The waves crashed and sprinkled the foursome with much-needed ice. They walked alongside the ocean banks, risen from the breaking waves a dozen feet or so, and separated from the waters by white and elegant balustrades, which had been built, like most things in that city, so as to resemble marble.

“I always get this.” Jonathan muttered to himself as Joshua began to sing again. “Always get the task of babysitting your drunken ass!”

“No more pains! No more struggles! Oh, sweet child, no hic! No more no!”

The waves crashed, and their coolness tamed John’s heart. «Hmm.» He looked to his left. A beautiful woman was there, hugging him. «In a way, she’s like ... her.» A couple more steps were spent as his brain slowly regained its form. «She barely weighs a thing when she’s walking with me.»

Her every step was laden with lightness, her inquisitive gaze stripping bare every detail on the streets, from the lamposts glimmering with blue to the two huge, mirrored moons in the horizon—one on the sky, the other by the sea. She walked as if she owned the city, her chin high, her breast tall, and her eyes turning often to check on that most dilettante member of the quartet. “How ya doing, bello?”

John always felt a cozy warmth when he heard her voice like that. “Hmm.” To her verbose love, all he could muster was a monotone nod. “Hmm.”

“Hmm! Hmm!” She hugged him harder. “Mysterious.”

Several silent steps were given, the crashing waves and the soothing winds being the only music they needed. “It’s getting late.” Jonathan checked his watch, then the street to their right. “Come.” Judging by Joshua’s sickly, animalistic noises, it seemed like he was just seconds away from puking. “Stop’s down there. Half a mile close.”

“At least I got meself some sweet franchesa booty!!” Joshua cried out in pride, a small strip of paper shaking between two fingers. “Darn-ee-ooo!! Im’ma get some sweet culo soon!”

“There, there, steed.” Johanna giggled, following them more closely. “Will be a wonder if her address is actually right. Shitfaced as you both were, it’s amazing you got anything other than childish scribbles.”

Joshua released himself from Jonathan’s grip. “Hey!” The friend grasped for the drunkard, but quickly realized it would be more trouble than it was worth. “Suit yourself. If you fall into the sea, I am not jumping after you.”

His words fell on deaf ears, for Josh only had ears for Johanna. “Oh, I see. I see it there, Joh.” His smile outshone the moon. “You’re jealous. Don’t tell me you ain’t.”

This time, it was John’s turn to be released, his body growing colder and his soul lonelier as the woman crossed her arms and turned her head away with a scoff. “Neja ai! I’m just ... laughing at your miserable state, honestly.” Her eyes, in spite of her mouth, always returned to Joshua’s body without fail. “How sad, Joshua! I remember the time when your body could take more booze than this.”

“Is it one’s fault, jähre? Time is a thing. We all grow old.” His voice lost all traces of stupor. “I’m no longer the young steed you got used to.”

Johanna kept her arms crossed. “No one’s fault, you say?” There was a playfulness in the way she swung and swayed her hips, her legs crossing with cocky self-assurance. “I remember someone was at fault, clearly, and quite faulty this someone was.”

Out of nowhere...

Bump!

Joshua dropped to his knees and clasped his hands together, his smile like a third moon on the land, the piece of paper firmly squeezed between his fingers, but altogether ignored, forgotten. “Oh, Johanna, I’m... hic! I’m sorry! I am so incredibly sorry!”

“Uh-huh. Yeah, right.” She rolled her eyes. “Sorry steed, sorry ass.”

“Do not doubt my words, hardi maia.” He winked. Then burped. “I am drunk! The words of a drunken man might not be beautiful, but they’re always honest!”

“Uh-huh.”

“I really am, mái harta!” He hiccuped. “Sorry, I mean.”

“Oh, oh.” Johanna stopped. “I am harta now? Mái harta again, eh?” She turned her cheek. “Ship’s long sailed. You’ve been long left at port. I hope you know it.”

“Not for a day do I forget, Joh.” Joshua licked his lips in a way that ... it was difficult to describe. Or not pay attention to. “Not for a day can I forget, Johanna, for how could I? How could any man?”

“Mmph!” Still, with her many glances, she couldn’t help but pity him, nor meet his face with a gentle blush. “You’re a second-rate barn breeder, you know that?”

“Ay.” Joshua’s smile was triumphant. “But a breeder still I am, eh?”

Johanna scoffed, pulled away, yet ended up closer to him somehow. “If there’s a good thing that came out of our ... fling, you poisonous demon, is that I learned to have standards.”

“You sure did.” Joshua’s grin flared. “For I set those standards. Now, thanks to me, you finally know what a real man tastes like.”

Johanna laughed, and John felt a weight, a constriction on his heart. «Ouch.» It was that same open, loud, tremendous laughter that she had given back at the bar: sharp, piercing, incisive. Destructive. To hear it was to be cut, to have one’s heart mercilessly slashed. “BWAH!! HAH!! HAHAHAHAHA...!!” The pain of that laughter wasn’t all too unfamiliar to John, hence his shortness of breath, the gnawing pangs in his heart, all that agony and asphyxiation forcing him to lift one hand to his breast and squeeze it, hoping to relieve it and calm it down.

«How ... how...?» His eyes turned to Joshua, whose grin, though a little slimmer, was still shiny and warm. «How ... h-how can...?»

How could anyone hear that laughter and not shrivel in fear?

“You’re funny. I give you that.” Johanna quipped, wiping the tears off her face, and her initial words were a little vacillating as they squeezed past the gushes of her dying chortles, freeing themselves from her throat. “That’s why I got into you in the first place.”

“And why I got into you as well.”

Johanna gave him an icy look. “Be quiet now, you perpetual five-year-old, for we are in the presence of respectable people.” She looked at John, who seized up, hard as a stick (and just as thin). “Real men, at last, not fickle little fillies like you!”

“Uh-huh.” Joshua looked at John, whose redness was all the more obvious under the moonlight.

“Folks, can we move?” Jonathan tapped his feet a couple of yards ahead of them. “I’ve got a tram to catch.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Joshua went ahead, tripping over his feet, nearly rolling over the baluster and into the sea. “Hare, fukk!”

The only reason why he didn’t was Jonathan. “I always have to babysit your ass.” He grumbled, grappling the irredeemable fiend on one arm. “How come I always end up playing the babysitter?”

“Because you love me and you care for me, nana!” Joshua moved in and... mwah!! Smacked a loud kiss on Jonathan’s cheek. “And I loved you t-”

Slap!

Joshua was quickly silenced as Jonathan’s palm landed on his cheek—a soft blow, judging by its target’s negligible flinch, but painful enough to cause Joshua to curse and attempt to wrestle with Jonathan.

“Boys, boys, no fighting.” Johanna clapped, tugging John along again by the arm. “This is what we get, querido Joãozito, by going out with a bunch of five-year-olds.”

Joshua pulled away from Jonathan, waving one fist at Johanna’s face. “Huh! Huh! And you’re sooo much more mature than we are, eh, ye devil woman?” The small piece of paper flapped on his clutched fingers. “You’re jealous! Stop hiding it. Tell me: would an eternal five-year-old get the address d’un fino culo franco like hers?” He stretched his arm, showing her the little paper more closely. “You saw her, Joh. Shitfaced or not, you can’t deny her looks.” His grin burned with the arrogance of a man with no real problems in life. “She’s a hottie! And a red-hair just like you!”

John pulled back for a split second, flinching as he heard Joshua’s tone and saw his wicked grin. «Mas que homem!» The thought crossed his mind as his heart beat a little faster.

Joshua had the face and the attitude, if not the body of those men he worked with tirelessly on his projects: a daredeviling lothario whose exploits he only witnessed in the filthy works of some of his clients—or in the darkest corners of his imagination. «Senhor dos céus...!»

The presence of that man intimidated him, but Johanna was there, thankfully, to remind both him and Joshua of who was in charge.

“I see.” With a calm smirk and a feline sway, she plucked the piece of paper from Joshua’s hands and flicked it into the sea.

“NAAAI!!” Joshua cried, running towards the waves, reaching out fruitlessly to the paper as it became smaller, then finally disappeared into the starless sky, carried on by the artic winds over the dead seas and into the realm of the moon. “What have you done, you c-!”

“Enough of your goddamned clown show, you piece of shit!!” Jonathan pulled him from the shirt and restrained him, this time aggressively, with an arm around his neck. “You’re going to get yourself drowned, you cockless donkey!”

“She threw away my culo, Jojo!” Once imposing and indestructible, Joshua sounded now exactly like what Johanna had deemed him to be: a five-year-old. One whose toys had just been stolen by another bigger, stronger kid. “She threw away my pussy, Joey!”

“Serves you fucking right, fuckhead! Now come before I’m forced to knock your miserable ass and carry you passed out again to your fucking hole!”

John winced as he saw Jonathan handle him with such assertiveness. “They’re ... they’re not going to fight, are they?” He whispered to Johanna, hoping to get some reassurance from her.

“Who knows?” She gave him none. “Let’s keep an eye on them, make sure they behave.”

John wondered what he could possibly do in case they didn’t behave, but somehow none of it mattered that night, with that warmth by his side, Johanna hugging him so kindly. She was light as a leaf falling from the tree, gliding onto the ground, yet he knew she was firm; that she could latch to his body like an anchor whenever she wanted. «She’s a diamond.» It occurred to him: a frail-looking stone, but said to be the hardest of rocks. «And quite precious.»

He cast more frequent and open looks at her as they walked. With every step, she seemed to be getting closer to him, hugging him harder, and at every yard he felt he was blushing less intensely, and the pace of his heartbeats becoming more subdued.

“Not to be a pain, but let’s move, folks, shall we?” Jonathan shook the watch on his wrist. “There’s a cart only every two hours at this time and I’ve got work early tomorrow, too.”

“How’s that so?” Johanna asked. “Iørdag ist!”

“Sadly, Johanna, not everyone is born with a purse up their behinds like you.” He growled. “I only get one day out a week.”

“That’s rude!” She stomped. “Isn’t it illegal?”

“I can assure you it most definitely isn’t.”

“Everyone needs at least two days of leisure a week!”

Joshua turned, fighting against the tight lock of Jojo’s arm. “Don’t you work, like, all the time, Joh?”

“Well, that’s different.” She beamed. “For one, I love what I do. Ain’t much work if you’re enjoying yourself. And two: I’m literally the one keeping the lights on.” She pointed to a lamp as they walked by it, looking at it with the same sense of ownership as she did everything else. “The nature of my job requires ... hmm, how would you say it ... a little more tact.”

“Ja. Keep rubbing it on our faces.” Joshua jeered. “The pain of poverty isn’t stinging hard enough, after all.”

“There’s still time for you to turn your life around, you feeble donkey.” She pulled John a little faster. “I’m talking only to Joshua, okay, Jojo? This doesn’t apply to you.”

“Noted.” Jonathan calmly replied.

“If you’re talking about finding better opportunities, I guess I need to remind you of the land you’re in.” Joshua retorted, little lightness now clinging to his tone. “Or what? Have you been spending so much time away in that plant that you became so clueless about reality outside of it? Or is it that thing about rich people, that you’re all too detached from reality to care?”

Johanna puffed. “The former.” There was a slight contrition in her voice. “Working too much, granted. These past couple of months have been on the backbreaking end of the scale, I admit.” She cracked a trembling smile. “Backbreaking enough to test one’s love for their craft, even.”

The two friends ahead walked a little slower, turning from time to time to check on her. “You’re okay, aren’t you?” Jonathan asked. “It has been a while since we last saw you.”

“And I am sorry for that, Jojo. I am good, yes, I am okay. There is no need to be concerned.” She drew a deep, deep breath. “Almost a year since the whole thing started. Spent entire weeks cooked up in that plant, can you believe it? A whole month straight in the worst of it, and two whole weeks even just now, with everything almost taken care of, all things mostly in place.”

“Häevla thorun!” Joshua griped. “Pay aside, how can anyone love a job like this?”

Johanna hugged John harder by his arm, spreading the warmth of summer on his head, flowers blossoming and birds chirping all over his brain. “Hmm. Beyond the storm, the plenty. Worst’s long past now. Like springtime past the winter, I guess, I can finally blossom again.”

“Had a vacation yet? Or is your job so important that even this is denied to you?”

She chuckled. “So nice you asked this.” An enigmatic grin sprang up on her face. “I shall get perhaps even more than a vacation. Something a little bigger, a little braver, I’m planning.”

“Oh, oh.” Joshua tried slowing down, but he knew better than to dare and pull back against Jonathan. “Care to tell?” To this question, he saw her simply shake her head and grin enigmatically. “Huh. Mysterious girl, eh?”

Their feet met more ground until the street had merged with another and widened out into a boulevard, catching John’s attention. «Goodness.» Was that the same wide street that led to his home? «We’re so far away, though.»

The waves crashed on his left. The four walkers were swaying gently like mariners on the high seas, the booze muffling their minds like soft pillows, adding such great weight to their eyelids. “There we have it.” Jonathan pointed ahead, at a box of light rising from the middle of the road. “And we got some time to spare.” He checked his watch before pulling Josua with him. “Come, Josh. That’s our stop.”