Remember how Sebastião justified it? He said that summer kings were above morality, and he was right, and he was wrong. Gods are what people worship. Men are what die. The trouble, the truth that I realized only after I saw you facing those cameras, was that I love Gil. And now you will say that I love everyone, and I do, but not all in the same way. You’re the other reason he didn’t declare, I don’t know that he told you. Even before we met I owed you his life. Maybe he could have beat me, but then, maybe not. If he were the summer king, if I were the boy dancing on glass, would we have come together? Would he still love me? Would I still hurt him? I won’t call it a mistake — though it was a mistake. The summer kings are gods, and we are finally, in the end, just men. Gil peels the shells from shrimp as if he’s undressing them for the evening.
