I keep my hair up at the gym, and even then it is too much hair. The ponytail starts high and falls almost to the small of my back, black and heavy, and I walk between the machines like I have somewhere more serious to be. I am thirty-two. I train like a…

The spa sat behind a black iron gate on a side street off Calle de Serrano, the kind of Salamanca address that does not need a name on the sidewalk. Only a brass plaque and a buzzer ashamed of making noise. Inside, the air was cool and smelled of eucalyptus…

I am Juliana. I am twenty-nine. Morena, the kind São Paulo makes without asking, brown skin that holds the late light on the walk home, black hair I wear down after work because putting it up all day is enough. I live in Pinheiros, a third floor that looks…