Page 7 of The Little Porto Book Club

His waving becomes almost comical. Excessively exuberant. I didn’t think people could actually ‘light up a room’ but Tiago sort of does. He’s got this vibrancy about him, his eyes reflect his joy. I’ve never seen that in a human before. Now the term ‘puppy-dog eyes’ finally makes sense.

I must hover too long because he bounds out, golden-retriever energy at the ready. I clutch the straps of my handbag tight. I’m not sure he’s a very good candidate for a friend. Boisterous people suck the lifeblood from me. The only thing stopping me from bolting is the fact that he has exceptional taste in reading material.

‘Viviane! It’s so good to see you. Book four, wow! It’s the manor handyman, isn’t it? What on earth would he need a vat of hydrofluoric acid for if not dissolving body parts? I mean, a manor handyman surely has no need for such a chemical, especially one so corrosive it has the ability to disintegrate teeth!’

I relax my grip on the straps of my handbag. ‘I really cannot say.’ It’s not the handyman, who was once a glass etcher before he gave that up for his live-in position at the manor. Tiago has missed the paragraph describing the etched-glass front doors of the manor, and how the handyman made them as a gift for the homeowners after they admired some of his previous work in other buildings in town. Although if you don’t know that hydrofluoric acid is used for glass etching, then it’s an obvious clue to miss.

‘Got to be him. Always skulking around, he is.’

I lift a brow in a way that I hope comes across as mysterious. ‘Only one way to find out.’

‘Yes, shall we?’ He offers me his elbow like we’ve travelled back in time to an era where men are chivalrous. It’s not awful but I hardly know the guy, so I pretend not to see his proffered body part and continue into the pastelaria to take my seat, at my table, with a good view of the door so I can hightail it if necessary.

‘Oh, I was sitting … never mind,’ Tiago says. ‘You sit there. I’ll sit opposite.’

‘You’re early.’

‘Yes, well, I don’t have much on at the moment.’

He touched on this before. Tiago seems like the type of person that needs to have a purpose. Annoyingly, I’m intrigued. ‘You mentioned that you were on a sabbatical of sorts, but I get the feeling you’d rather be … working?’ His energy seems pent up, somehow. Like he needs an outlet.

He grins. ‘That obvious? I developed an app called GameCore where players link their gaming consoles and it stores all their data. It records a gamer’s achievements, leaderboards, winning streaks, quests. It tracks weekly playtime, compares stats, has a battle board where users can challenge high scorers, that kind of thing. Gamer nerd stuff.’

‘Interesting.’ I’m impressed, but does that only heighten screen time addiction for these gamers? It would be churlish to ask, so I do my best to zip my lips.

‘Thanks! I lived and breathed it but recently sold the company. Now I’m lost with what comes next. I worked so hard for so many years, and it’s so strange to wake up and not have a thing to do all day. What do you do for work?’

Should I be giving out personal details so early into this tenuous friendship? I’m taken again by his demeanour, so open, so eager. Really, it could be an act. You see it all the time in fiction, the happy-go-lucky next-door neighbour who steals mail. The inept co-worker who moonlights as a corporate spy. I’ve left the question dangling too long, so against my better judgement, I blurt, ‘I’m a copyeditor.’

‘Wow!’ His eyebrows, like thick expressive caterpillars, shoot up. ‘Which publisher do you work for?’

My hackles rise. Why would he need to know that? ‘It’s confidential.’

‘Oh, sorry, totally understand. You must – ah – love words.’ He rests his chin on his hand and stares openly at me as if I’m fascinating. I’m not quite sure what to make of it.

‘I’m fond of storytelling. Stepping into other worlds is the best escape from a rather dull reality. Punctuation helps stitch those worlds together.’

‘Copyeditors, the unsung heroes of literature, eh?’ His grin is vaguely of the cheeky variety even though his comment is accurate.

‘Yes, exactly. Authors and structural editors have their gifts too but without copyeditors books would be harder for the reader to navigate.’ Confusion settles on his face for some inexplicable reason. ‘Think of it this way, without copyeditors, books would be like the most exhilarating rollercoaster ride, and on page two, you discover the bolts that hold the machine together have not been tightened. Down goes the rollercoaster, exploding into a fireball as it hits the ground. All because the bolts were overlooked.’

‘Oh.’ Clarity dawns on his dancing features.

I toy with the strap of my handbag to settle my nerves. ‘We, and I speak for the copyediting faction here, provide a sense of clarity, of readability.’ For me personally, literature and copyediting have helped me navigate language conventions. As a child, I processed language in the literal sense.

It all came to a head at a Christmas performance when my role as an elf was thwarted because a parent helper told me to get out on stage and break a leg. Whose leg, I wasn’t quite sure. However, the parent helper was a person in authority and so I figured that I’d been assigned a task and … I’ve never been back on stage since. After that debacle, mother fostered in me a love of reading, while we worked through the complexity of language, and that opened up the world to me in ways that previously made little sense. Of course, I quickly learned that ‘break a leg’ means good luck, and I have always wanted to reach out to the other little elf and apologise for my gaffe.

‘I – uh – see,’ he says, with soft laughter in his voice, his smile widening. As far as smiles go, it’s rather wholesome. ‘So have you ever wanted to write a book yourself?’

‘Never.’ I eye the display fridge, spotting a bolo de mel, Madeira honey cake, and consider it. As a rule, I prefer to eat alone in public. Food can be so messy and managing to talk and eat simultaneously is tricky. Mum has finally stopped inviting our entire extended family over for Friday night dinners and expecting me to participate too. I’m more than happy to grace them with my presence, but not when they’re around the dinner table, cutlery clinking, laughter spurting, the endless drone of voices. Which leads me to quite the conundrum today. Do I risk ordering a slice of bolo de mel, which will no doubt crumble all over me and quite possibly lead to an embarrassing social faux pas if I were to exhale at the wrong moment, or be safe and order still water with a slice of lemon? I understand the owners of Pastelaria História might frown upon me taking a table for the best part of two hours and not contributing much fiscally to their business. Then there’s Tiago’s almond allergy to worry about.

A stray lock of hair falls across his cheek, and as he idly pushes it back, he exposes the curve of his jaw, his cute dimple on display. ‘I’m going to order some coxinha, can I get you something, Viviane?’

I double blink myself back to the question at hand. Coxinha. As far as I know that doesn’t have almonds in it, so now we only have to hope that the worktops are thoroughly cleaned after their almond-centric baking sessions, so there’s no risk of cross contamination for my unwitting tablemate.

‘I’ll have the same.’ Peer pressure is real. Coxinha is just as hard to eat, if not more, because there’s a very real chance of third-degree burns if I don’t let the deep-fried dough ball cool enough, especially if it’s filled with cream cheese, which stays hot like molten lava. It could leave a person pulling all sorts of unattractive faces mid-bite, fighting for their life if they’re not aware of what lies within.

Although it might be perfect since we’re not here to chat, we’re here to read, so if both hands and mouths, as well as eyeballs, are occupied, that sends a clear message to Tiago the time to talk is not nigh.