Duarte’s building in Lapa does not look like a place where a person could get lost. From the street it is a narrow door, the green of old shutters, and a tile with the number worn almost off. Inside, the hall turns. Then it turns again. I am twenty-two. I had been in the apartment for twenty minutes and I had already opened a door onto a piano nobody played, and another onto coats that smelled of a winter the city was not having.

Duarte is twenty-four. He has been my friend since the year we both failed the same maths exam and decided that was a bond. Inês is twenty-five, his girlfriend, and she kissed my cheek at the door as if I had been expected for longer than tonight. Aiko was on the sofa when I came in from the wrong corridor, laughing…