THE DUST ON THE BOWLS

The strip fastened to the ring creaked three times when he turned over behind the partition. Ilva recognised the interval between the movements, too long for sleep. In the kitchen, the mat took up the way through, the bowls lined up had dried mouth down, and the light of the tracking cameras swept the porch with every cargo that climbed the street. He came out with the blanket folded over his arm. I found a place, he said. Where. At the house up the hill. One night costs three portions. Yesterday it cost one. Every bed in Buritaçu had acquired the value of an imported part. The house up the hill accepted food, thermal balance or six hours of unloading. You don't have three portions, she said. I have the blanket. The sentence made Ilva close her bandaged hand. Behind the net, the empty bag and the grimy shirt barely made up a life, but they filled the corridor enough to keep the compatibility sampling away. Without that body, Antônio's house would look available again. He laid the blanket on the table. The dust gathered in the fabric drew a dark rectangle. I'll go before they raise it again. Ilva picked up the terminal. She looked for the conversation sent to Antônio, the forty-three seconds in which the two of them admitted the occupancy, the food used, the waiting. The official playback could be harmonised by the platform's owners. The copy she had prepared could not. He noticed when the indicator of the cold mirror brightened inside the low compartment. You copied my voice. I copied our message. I asked you to send it. We sent it. I didn't ask you to keep it. She kept the data collector resting against her thigh. His last sentence remained open on the audio line. Antônio, when you come back, I'll explain what I ate and leave if you tell me to. The voice had a roughness the transmission had corrected, reducing the breath between ate and leave. In the offline file, the pause lasted almost two seconds. That proves you didn't take the house, said Ilva. Proves it to whom. To Antônio. He pushed the blanket off the table. The fabric struck the edge and raised dust over the bowls. For one hundred and seventeen days, he had handed words to the network because he believed he was talking to her. Now he discovered a second listening, smaller, domestic, fed by the same woman who had learned to fear the company's corrections. Delete it. If I delete it, only their version is left. She did not delete it. She put the data collector in the compartment and closed the lid. She did it slowly, giving him time to stop her. He did not touch her. The blanket is worth a night, he said. Ilva pulled the mat to clear half the way through. He gathered up the blanket, but did not go to the door. He took it behind the partition and brought the bag out from there. I'll stay until Antônio comes back. Then you play everything you kept of me. All of it, in front of me. She nodded. And if I tell you to delete it, you delete it. This time, Ilva took a while. He placed the bag on the mat, on the kitchen side, outside the space that pretended to be a room. The house kept its threatened priority, but lost the appearance of agreement. I'll delete it, she said. Behind the closed lid, the breath of almost two seconds remained intact.