RED: A Love Story [Featured List]

Part 1: White 11 - Close encounter of the third kind

All discretion was still not enough. At school, Marco and Marisa barely spoke to each other. In certain moments, though, when no one was watching, they sent caresses at distance. And text messages.

Marco: You look very pretty in turquoise. I like your top. 

Marisa: It's new. I bought it thinking of you.

Marco: Drop your pen on the floor.

Marisa: What for?

Marco: That way I can admire your cleavage.

She smiled, raising her eyes. Around her, the other students were absorbed filling out a form about Clarice Lispector's works. With her head half lowered and her eyes fixated on Marco, Marisa brushed the pen off with her forearm until it rolled to the floor. Then she leaned toward it, allowing one of the top's straps to slide off her shoulder. She retrieved the pen, straightened up in no hurry and pretended to concentrate on the form.

At his desk in the front of the room, Marco concealed his cell phone behind an open book (a study by Giles Deleuze about the works of Sacher-Masoch, purchased the day before). He directed a silky gaze toward Marisa before typing again.

Marco: Would your top be up for an evening out tonight?

Marisa: It needs to finish some writing when it gets home. But that shouldn't take too long.

Marco: Great. I'd like to invite it to dinner at a bistro out of town. A place with antique décor and candle light. Do you think your top would be up to that?

Marisa: Absolutely... btw, do you know it made you that dessert you like and bought you a gift? My top found something on ebay that you were dying to get. But it shouldn't be telling you any of this, you know? It should make it a surprise. It's just that it gets all excited about it, this silly top of mine.

Marco: Don't tell me is that rare album by... oh, no, it can't be... and lemon cheesecake...?

Marisa: Sorry, honey, now its lips are sealed.

She raised her eyes again to find Marco's twinkling with enthusiasm. And curiosity—he was quite, quite curious. Marisa always played that game. She liked to watch his reaction. It had been long since Marco was in a relationship, and he welcomed her attention with almost exaggerated contentment. That, of course, gave Marisa an almost exaggerated contentment too.

That evening was an exception—the sky speckled with stars and the two of them on the deserted road heading to a nearby town best known for its arts and crafts. The tiny bistro held half a dozen tables and lay by a set of steps linking two streets on a hill. There, Marco and Marisa tasted vintage wine, shared chocolate soufflé for dessert and forgot all worries of being seen together: it was Tuesday, an improbable day for romantic dinners out of town. Before returning, they took a stroll in the surroundings, wandering on alamedas of purple and white melastomaes.

That was the exception. As a rule, in the evenings when Marisa was not studying, the two of them would go to bars and eat at Arab delis. Or spend time at the movies: they watched hand in hand Woody Allen's Whatever Works and Midnight in Paris, as well as a special session of Hitchcock's Psycho. The pair, however, usually remained in the Downtown vicinity, for the crowd from school seldom visited that area at night. The heart of the richest metropolis in the country was there, beating madly at daytime and hibernating after working hours.

It was ironic that, in its origins, the city founded by Jesuits in 1554 was no more than a grain of dust that any fiercer wind could sweep off the map. It was by sheer luck that a tiny coffee seed—descending from another one brought clandestinely into the country—fell on the state's purple soil. With the explosion of the "black gold", the capital entered the twentieth century like a wealthy lady with Old World flair.  Its motto became Non ducor, duco: "I am not led, I lead." From the downtown area, Sao Paulo kept stretching. It stretched so much, there wasn't even enough time to include all the streets in the city map. A number of vintage mansions were demolished to make room for high-rises and, twelve million inhabitants later, the city was still shape-shifting.