Chapter 12

«I’ve ... got a girlfriend?»

He looked to his side. Johanna ripped through the gigantic pretzel like an animal, the sound of her starved, desperate bites sometimes mirroring, sometimes contrasting the waves that crashed on the shores. “Hmrrr! Zer gutt! Zer zwaißer gutt!”

He too carried a massive, almost two-palm-sized pretzel in his hand, yet he didn’t find in himself the stomach to eat it. How could he, after all, when by his side there was a lioness devouring her meal with such dispiriting, menacing lust?

“You don’t want this one, do ya?” She threw her napkins in a trash can. BANG! How the linen made such a loud and brash pop against the metal, John didn’t know, yet he got startled all the same. “I guess you had enough back in the bar.” Johanna allowed herself a very gentle, very damselly burp, covering her lips with her fingers and squinting so graciously as she relieved her esophagus from the impolite gas. “Oh, goodness, you’re shivering!” She laughed as she saw his trembling face. “Oh, your poor, poor thing! It’s the autumn winds, aren’t they?”

«No. It’s the fear from a stray bullet.» John thought, still hearing the loud Bang! she had made in the trash can, his sour, shoddy memories unearthed from very deep, long hidden chests. The memories of the crossfires in the favelas. The image of fire beetles whisking by the skies, bringing down meaty bodies from fast-flying choppers and inviting more flaming bugs, like thousands of little comets you could hold in your hand, to shoot back and erase many shacks, even small hills from nature, flattening the horizon red.

Johanna drew a deep breath, feeling the ice cooling her muscles. “Hare mai, yare mah! I will never get tired of them! Some people think it’s still too cold, but I think some people are just silly.” She purred like a lynx, then giggled to herself, making a silly dance around him. “So, sweetheart, will you have your pretzel or can I have it?”

“Hmm ... no.” He gave it to her. “All yours, uh ... Johanna.”

She took his dough with a rush, yet her expert, meticulous movements never made her look indelicate or uncouth. «Wow.» With his eyes irresistibly, unavoidably drawn to her, John could only battle with the furious thoughts in his mind, his voices gone awry, one side wanting to annihilate him, the other to uplift him, the two equally splitting him apart. Be careful there, John. You know what they say about spiders, don’t you? The black widow types?

Looking at her, John wondered how could a slender, elegant woman like her ever pose a danger to any man. «These spiders, the ones that devour their males... » He reasoned. «They are supposed to be huge, aren’t they?» Like his doll. Like his lover back in his shack.

You know what they say about the quiet ones.

There was this property in some animals, indeed, where the small preyed on the big, and the big cowered from the small. Seeing her pretty, little mouth munching on that biscuit, dandy like a doll, yet unrelenting like an ant, reducing a snack the size of her arm into crumbs snowing down from her pretty, little fingers... «Oh.» John realized that ... yes. He could be danger.

“Darne! I swore this was it!” Jonathan grumbled in frustration. The lights they were seeing on the horizon a couple of seconds later became much dimmer, and eventually the gang noted that the vehicle was much smaller than it should have been: a simple beetle car passing by without much sound, not the big and long and louder worm they had been waiting for. “Schultz fükken!” Jonathan checked his watch. “They’re late. Quite late.”

Johanna laughed. “I told you, Jojo. I told you many times, but you don’t listen!” She moved her fists brusquely, emphatically around her head. “No one follows the time anymore. No one needs to.”

“Mmph!”

“You’re the only one who keeps track of time like it’s some religious matter. And, beg I ask you ... why? Is it so demanding, your job as a doormat, I mean, a doorman, that you need to keep track of time like some bizzy bosses of mine?”

“Some people just like a little bit of order in their lives, Johanna.”

“Some people are silly. That’s what I think.” She threw her arms up, stretched them out until John could hear her joints cracking. “There were times for order. Now it’s time for chaos.”

“Right, right, Joh.”

“Take it from me: there’s no beating entropy. I know it. That’s my job, you see, knowing it! Not a laywoman’s opinion, but a scientific fact! All things in the universe are going to scatter into inert mass. All the flow of information will eventually, inevitably come to a halt.” She chuckled like a mistress confiding a secret to her lover. “Abandon your sweet memories of predictable times, or the hopes that they shall one day return.” She moved abruptly to Jonathan’s side, abandoning John to the wind and cold, and leaned over his shoulder to whisper in his ear like a devil. “Entropy is everything. Entropy is all. Whatever order you think you live in, you know what it truly is? An illusion!” Her heavy tone belonged to no woman, no man, quite honestly, to no earthly creature at all. “Jonathan, Jonathan. Jojo, my darling, my dearest. You should have known better by now: order is just a brush on the canvas. A drop in the ocean. Like a surfer riding atop the wave’s crest, you believed you were flying when you were in fact simply enjoying the high before the fall. Chaos is all the highs and all the lows, with order being just a snapshot of the whole picture.” She walked out, moving like she was tapdancing, prancing with springs for heels. “How foolish of us humans for mistaking the snapshot for the film, the drop for the ocean, the brush for the painting. Foolish, utterly foolish!” She shook her head like a nanny to her babies. “Entropy is not an end, nor is it a beginning, nor is it any part in the middle. Entropy is the whole story! We’re living through it every second, yet we cling to only the words that make us feel cozy and safe, ignoring the rest of the tale, the full totality of the text, and calling it evil, deeming it an aberration when the aberration, in reality, is us. Us panicky little monkeys for whom this story was never written, wannabe protagonists of a song where we weren’t even meant to be extras, nothing but background characters of the thinnest footnotes.”

Jonathan drew a deep breath, rolled his eyes, and pointed a finger at her. “You are the worst type of drunk.”

“Ah, yes? And what is it, this type?”

“A lousy drunk. Of the tedious and annoying sort.”

“Oh, in this case ... you’re welcome!” Johanna did a graceful bow. “I try my best.” She then called out for John with her hands. Unrequited.

“So many words to excuse yourself for being tardy.”

“Maybe, but you wish you were as eloquent when excusing your own petty faults.”

“Hmm. Indeed do.”

Johanna went back to John, Joshua’s eyes following her closely, clung to her face like bedstraws. “I feel like eating something sweet!”

“We just came back from the bar, Joan.”

“Yes, Jojo, but you know how I am with alcohol: booze makes my belly thrice as large. Something to do with my livers and me being so tall and thin. The metabolism of long, ‘stretchy’ creatures is always faster, as you know.”

“Yo, Johanna.”

She appeared to ignore the call at first, burrowing her face on John’s neck, hugging him tight so he didn’t flee, just like how he looked like he always was about to. “What, Josh?”

The unrequited lothario rested the back of his head on his hands, arms raised over his shoulders, his body resting upon nothing, his eyes quickly lost in the skies. “Say you had our lives.”

“Your lives?”

“Our money, or lack thereof. Say you were poor like us and you had no perspective of becoming any better. What would you do in this scenario?”

“I would kill myself.”

Jonathan coughed. “Johanna! How can you say something like this?”

“With my mouth.”

“Johanna.”

An honest second passed. “Oh.” Her face subtly changed. “I mean, isn’t it obvious? For me it is. It’s always been. If I’d been less fortunate in life and saw really no hope in ever improving my fate, I would do away with such a useless life, and in death find the good fortune of the rich: that of eternal tranquility, of no worries in one’s mind.”

“You mean our lives are useless?”

“If you don’t enjoy them, yes.” She shrugged. “Yes, they are useless.”

Joshua whistled. “I know you, so I’m not surprised by your words, yet ... somehow I still am.”

“You’re not surprised, but you’re shocked.”

“This...” He snapped his fingers. “Yeah. This is, uh, the correct way of putting it. I think.”

“Johanna, don’t say such things again, okay? Not in front of, uh, visits.” Jonathan gestured clunkily towards John.

“Jonathan, Jonathan.” Johanna rubbed her scalp sweetly on John’s neck. What a blessing that her face was so warm, for her words now were so, so very cold. “You and your silly clinginess to the morals of old. João here, I feel like he’s more up-to-date. Aren’t you, Joãozito?” She smiled upon seeing John’s reluctance. “Yes, he does. I feel it.” She laid one hand on his breast, protecting his heart from the chill of her voice. “The ‘mericas teach you a thing or two about life, don’t they? The meaninglessness of it all? The vulgar disposability of the flesh? Yes. Oh, yes they do.”

Just as John looked like he was about to utter something, she moved her scalp away, her face closer to his neck and...

...

... not a kiss, but a whiff of air. Almost a kiss that never was. A rub. A tender, sweethearty snuggle with the tip of her nose on his neck, done in an instant, less than a blink, but with a force that shook John’s soul through and back in time, past and future all eroded, leaving him stronger than all the hills from his land.

“Jonathan, Jonathan. I never understood you. Or people like you. Life is only worth living when it’s good. If it’s not good, it’s no life at all.”

“Fine. Maybe one day you will be one riding the wave as it crashes. With all due respect, Joh, for all your highty-mighty talk, you never really experienced anything lower than the top of the wave’s crest, anything lesser than prosperity and good luck, so I will be excused in calling bullshit to all your nonsense.”

“Right on. Though it is not nonsense.” She purred, stretching all over John’s body and making her hug all the tighter because of it. “You can doubt the integrity of my soul, yet not that of my words. You know, after all, this is the truth: life is not what matters. A good life is. There are people who live no matter what, and there are people who only live lives that are worth living. Biiig difference!” She gestured broadly, stretching one arm out whilst keeping John tettered with the other. “To most people, life is good. To a few, a good life is good. Again: biiig difference! I never quite understood those who prioritize life above all else. To me, a single day in luxury is greater than a hundred years in misery. If I had to make a choice, I would choose the former in a heartbeat.” She bit one lip, her gaze growing razor sharp, blizzard cold. “And so would you two if you weren’t so cowardly.”

“Fine, Johanna.” Joshua huffed. “Pretend that I asked you nothing.”

“Indeed. Big talk from a flimsy girl like me, isn’t it?” Johanna shook herself and John along with her, and the four pairs of eyes then turned to see another wall of light rising beyond the ave, this time much stronger and wider than the deception that had come before.

“This has to be it.” Jonathan mumbled, and Johanna was left to muse to herself—and to her confidant:

“Most people don’t live. They survive. Big difference! And I ... oh. I want to live. Live well. Live beautifully!” She looked at him, gracing him with her gaze. “Ain’t that right, João?”

Like before, there were half-aborted utterances, severed attempts by the poor man to sp...

... spe...

... s-p-e-a-k...

... to speak, but Johanna... “No.” She placed her fingers on his trembling lips and whispered, so coolly that even his soul could barely listen. “Not yet. Keep your words to yourself. At least while we still have company.” She cast a dubious gaze upon the others. “They’re not cut from the same cloth as us. They’re weak. We’re strong.” She whispered calmer, lower, in a volume so low that even his soul now was deaf to it, and only its heart, the unconscious of his subconscious could possibly hear it. “They cannot understand our ways of thinking. They can only ... resent them.” She winked. “Wait just a little longer and then ... then ... our real talk will finally begin.”

In those circumstances, John would have felt his heart race, his brain hurt, and a painful squeeze bring intense pangs of suffocation to his head, the veins up there in his gray about to balloon and pop, but...

His left hand made a move. It tiptoed on Johanna’s back, slid its fingers around her waist, and...

“Hmm.”

He said. She said. There was a whisper, a hum, both of their souls somewhat, somehow connected, and... “Hmm.”

A nod. A blink. And the two groups now worlds apart: the couple in their little bubble, then Jonathan and Joshua stepping over the street.

“That’s our go.” Jonathan turned, gesturing to Joshua, then catching wind of the two silent birds nestling so much closer together. “What you two up to?”

Johanna... “We’re getting pretzels.”

Jonathan was silent. After a couple of seconds of hesitation, so was Joshua. “Come, Josh, come.” He gestured to his friend, his voice descending many octaves into hell. “If you’re too drunk to walk, I swear I will...”

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t sweat it.” Joshua trotted on the street, turning around briefly to deliver John “a final word of advice, eh, lad?”

“Hmm?”

There was a change in the air, a swift shift of attitude, and John couldn’t initially quite put his finger on what it was. Johanna, however, eyed Joshua with something beyond a mere murderous intent. Choose your next words carefully, you whore-bred son of a swine, or I’ll make sure your tongue and your throat end up very far apart. Her whole demeanor screamed, and one would never doubt its deadly sincerity when meeting her icy, bloodstained eyes.

Joshua’s mojo died out completely, and he walked backward on the empty street as the rectangle of light engulfed his ever-fading body in an aura of white. “Remember the spider!” He shouted out, simply, only to quickly follow Jonathan and catch with him the long cart, sliding in it to the city rims.

“Hmm! Delicious!” Johanna licked her lips as John came back to her side, returned from the past. “The cold and the booze and the night, they all make me hungry.” She cast her eyes upon him, her gaze glittering with all the stars that were lacking in the skies. “You’re newlander, so you’re not used to the cold, are you? Oh, no? You’re used to it already? Then why are you shivering like this, baby?”