WAIT

WORDS

One of those innumerable cities without personality. One of those big shapeless buildings. One of those burning days. And Luisa, dressed with a fine linen blouse and light trousers, is looking through one of those identical windows. Further below, at the feet of that human anthill, the crowded pool. And she is still poking with her finger at the bottom of a glass, looking for the trace of a single drop to kiss her fingertip and transport, embraced to it, across the most uninhabited bends of her neck and her soul. The blades of a fan are groping her legs, but she is fainting of the heat. And that is why finally, exasperated by that silent breath of summer, she takes some shoes, some hope, a hat, a resigned face, and leaves the bedroom. In the deserted corridors, not even a moth has survived that stifling midday. None, therefore, will witness the sudden anxiety that hounds her when she passes by a metallic door, on her way to the lift: No Entry: Terrace Roof. She looks to both sides of her conscience, and finds them empty. Nothing, therefore, will stop her. Determinedly, she turns the handle and leaps into that solitary, dark stairwell.

Luisa climbs the steps one by one, while they applaud her nerve at the rhythm of her heels: slow, brave, expectant. A hazy brightness is taking shape high up, and after a last rasping breath of darkness, the orgasm of the sun splashes indecently in her eyes, on her face, all over her body, leaving her stunned for a moment. Luisa half-opens her eyes, lost in that moor of light and heat, and sees an aerial, a chimney, a ventilation exit; they escaped there looking for solitude, that’s for sure, just like herself. And in that company, Luisa spreads her towel out and undresses her clothes. Soon, her beautiful body will be defenceless under the lust of the evening, which will harass every pore of her skin with its cohort of volcanic fingers; a film of transpiration will sprout to protect her, but only in vain.

Luisa stands up, dehydrated and breathless, and looks for shade. She skirts the walls of the lift shaft and sits down behind it. A gentle breeze stabilizes her breath gradually. And it is only then when she notices the other pair of unwary legs, asleep under that devastating summer, sticking out behind a fold of the terrace. The feet rest on top of the parapet that prevents them from falling into the precipice, but the body lies hidden from her perspective, and Luisa wonders how will the face under those unworried feet look like, those feet that sometimes scratch their soles on the wall, and other times stroke each other affectionately, unaware of her, of nothingness, of love, of death…

MOVIES

In the mood for love, Wong Kar Wai, Hong Kong, 2000.

Possession is the cancer of memory: what fits in a hug will never be as big or as powerful as the reminiscence of that little elusive desire that always evaded us.

Footprints will be obscured by the most discreet snow. Scars will be covered with some clothes. A kiss is nothing but transplanted saliva.

But, how to dry the tear not yet shed?

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Shanghai Street, Hong Kong Circa 2008, by Daniel Chen.