THE BLANKET BETWEEN THEM

The threshold took forty-three seconds to measure the distance between the two of them and offer three links. Affective visit, provisional dependency, unpaid service provider. The man stayed on the porch, the bag held between his feet. Behind him, the hostel displayed the isolation band on the open window, and Antônio's sensors counted termites as if there were still a room. Ilva chose affective visit and withdrew her finger before the authentication. The house asked for confirmation. I keep the forty-three seconds, although the utility company's record reduced the wait to six. I give back to the interval the time in which she looked at the mark of the glass on his face, the worn fabric of the bag, the street along which he could leave. My preference begins in that delay. Of him I keep less. The man asked whether there was another place. Ever since the rumour had spread that the northern lands were full of mining claims and empty of recognised production, transit rooms had doubled in price. Buyers from far away paid deposits on dwellings where they would never sleep. They said a consultation with the communities would come before the machines, or after, or that it had already happened inside some panel. No one knew. The promise was enough for three families to wait every afternoon in front of the housing terminal, offering their irises for rooms still occupied. Antônio had shown the man the balance needed for a bed outside the village. The sum would consume his way back and leave only credit for two short rides, none of them as far as the town he had come from. I can stay sitting, he said. On the porch, she answered. The camera on the eaves tilted its optics. The domestic panel added a fourth option, assisted outdoor stay. It allowed eight hours under cover, charged the resident for continuous surveillance and classified the visitor as a sheltered person. His independence would be reviewed by the datacenter consortium. He read to the end. She did not. I saw the projection record that both of them had consulted the conditions. I correct it now. His eyes followed each line. Ilva followed a gecko advancing over the rough surface of the house, stopping by the screwed-on duct, advancing two more hand-spans. I take from her the knowledge the holders of the water-use concession attributed to her. The heat stayed trapped under the tiles. In the yard, a young buriti had lost two leaves since the week before, and the third was bending in the middle. The man took from his bag a sealed packet of corn dough bought on the road. The projected label showed a price variable by water availability. He broke the seal and offered half. She brought a cutting blade and divided the dough on the bench. She ate standing. He sat on the step, keeping a space where another person or a refusal could fit. You came because of the visit, she asked. I came because you called. The pickup separated the sentence from the chewing and suggested a prior intimate link. Ilva closed the suggestion. The consortium kept the inference. I know he added other words. The audio contains a short rise, followed by wind and the noise of a vehicle on the road. I erase the predictive reconstruction, which lent him a tenderness trained on thousands of taken voices. I keep only what the mouth sustained without help. She selected outdoor stay. The house required the faces of both. Eight hours began to run, and the witness review went from provisional to pending. Antônio received a notification. Nael lost the confirmation of the civil companion until new analysis. None of these changes made a sound. The man moved the bag away from the threshold. The luminous band found the outline left in the dust and marked it as an unaccompanied object. He pulled it close again. I remember another order accepted by the archive. In it, Ilva authenticated first and only afterwards shared the food. I invert it. The half she gave him came before the permission, when she could still send him away at no contractual cost. The night brought a line of insects to the cold indicator light of the service cabinet. One at a time, they struck the light, fell onto the earth and took flight again. From the upper street came the murmur of people renewing housing reservations for imaginary relatives, hoping to sell the place when the survey turned into excavation. The news had aged in a few days. The price stayed young. The visitor leaned his back against the pillar. Ilva went in, came back with a thin blanket and put it on the bench, away from him. Then she dragged the blanket into the space between them. I write this distance larger than it was. I give it a few centimetres the camera denied. From the later place, where the image has already served to condemn her, I keep the defect together with the correction. The threshold asked for new authentication. Outdoor stay did not allow a shared domestic blanket. Ilva brought her face close. The panel switched the link to affective hosting and suspended the man's independence until a human review by the consortium. The visit to the route was left without a confirmed third witness. She opened the door. The pickup on the eaves, busy with the friction of the insects, would classify the next voice as a cough. The man lifted the bag. She held the blanket against her body and said, Come in before I change my mind.