THE ALUMINIUM SHEET

The last light struck the whitewashed wall of the bar and revealed the dust caught in the cables that ran up to the service cabinet. Antônio was sitting on the porch, the cistern lid beside him and a thin sheet of aluminium across his legs. The Arco Norte Company had opened a new charge on the panel, locational reserve, a fee that made every address with a technical load pay for infrastructure kept waiting for a works project. The house owed three nights of that waiting. The amount showed in yellow, above the custody the man held for the rotor. The screen offered a discount if the address agreed to widen the data centre's water strip when the facility received territorial clearance. Antônio read to the end. Then he closed his eyes long enough for Luzia to count to nine. Is it going up, she asked. It'll get expensive before it goes up, he answered. Ilva stayed near the kitchen, where the wooden mortar had been pushed into a corner, its crack overtaken by a pale crust. The cold mirror was still at low volume. Antônio had asked for the third rehearsal and, since then, no one had touched the subject, as if the file could lose weight for lack of a voice. The man leaned the back of his neck against the wall, his good leg stretched out before him. Custody of the load allowed him to open the cabinet's thermal reading. He brought his face close to the sensor. The screen showed two columns. Air went in at forty-eight degrees. It came out at sixty-two. Antônio saw the difference and pulled the sheet closer. When the first refrigerator arrived at the bar, Nael had wanted to leave it pushed up against the storeroom wall. Antônio spent a whole afternoon moving the machine from place to place, listening to the motor change its effort. Nael laughed and said ice was ice in any corner. That night, the compressor stopped. Antônio took off the back grille and found the air intake covered by the dust the road kicked up. Since then, he left space behind every machine that needed to breathe. The sheet was too narrow. He measured the gap at the cabinet with his fingers, laid the aluminium on the ground and marked three folds with the tip of a clip. There was no paint, no mark that would last in the dust. There was the pressure of metal against fingernail, repeated until it left a scratch. Luzia brought two slats left over from the grey box. The man tried to get up. Stay, said Antônio. He fastened the slats to the aluminium with cable ties taken from old wiring. The first snapped when he twisted it too far. The second held. He made a narrow cut in the edge with the hacksaw, slowly, so as not to warp the piece. The heat of the metal passed into his palm and stayed there, dry, while he bent the sheet into an open curve. Ilva watched the distance between the sheet and the cabinet grille. Four fingers, she said. Antônio brought his hand to the gap, checked. Four. The shield had to cast shade without closing off the air intake. Fixed flush to the wall, it would turn the cabinet into a cooking pot. Too loose, it would let the afternoon sun beat straight onto the fins. Antônio rested one end of the sheet on a slat, pulled the other until it formed a slanted cover and asked the man to follow the reading. Fifty-nine, he said. Still rising. Antônio loosened a cable tie, moved the sheet outward, tightened it again. The clip cut the hardened skin of his hand without drawing blood. He kept going. The panel showed sixty. Then fifty-eight. The outgoing air began to lose heat. Luzia sat on the ground and counted the numbers as they appeared. Fifty-seven. Fifty-six. Fifty-six again. The shadow of the sheet came down over the cabinet like a second wall. The rotor kept turning behind the plate. Nothing shut down. The house went on paying for the cold it did not receive. On the panel, the charge recalculated itself. The locational reserve fell by a small fraction, less than a portion of pasta, large enough to defer the fee until the next cycle. The Company attached another message. The thermal alteration made the address eligible for a future commercial classification. Antônio read the word commercial twice. The sheet cast a narrow strip on the ground, and Antônio watched the fraction fall without touching the message. Ilva saw the man look at her. He did not need to ask whether this would go into the parallel ledger. The screen already carried the record of the change, the time, the temperature and the bodies that were nearby. What would stay outside it depended on another device, shut away at low volume. Antônio wiped the dust from his hands on his trousers and sat down under the porch roof. Now, he said. Ilva did not move. Now what, asked Luzia. The third rehearsal, said Antônio. The girl looked towards the kitchen. Night was beginning to cover the wall, but the heat still rose from the ground. Ilva stayed where she was. Antônio did not repeat himself. Instead, he opened the house's message channel and requested a voice window. The panel warned that one short, non-priority transmission remained. He accepted with his iris. The recording opened. Antônio breathed close to the sensor. He told his son that he had put a shade over a machine, that the bar was still standing, that the house was full and that there might be food if he came back. He stopped before asking for anything. The transmission ended while he was still holding the air in his chest. The network marker linked to his son stayed dark. Ilva put away the panel's screen. The third rehearsal stayed closed. Antônio lowered his head towards the dark panel and stayed like that until Luzia came back from the kitchen. Outside, the aluminium sheet held the last of the light over the whitewashed wall, and the cabinet breathed beneath it.