Café Atlântico

The night spit metal and sweat. Under the bridge, the sound of car tires and brakes was ripping the horizon far across Setúbal. Painful like a chalk against the school blackboard, it was fading away before it became a buzz at the other side. The bridge… Symbol of the fragile power of a dictator who, sunk in his vanity, gave it his name just to see it changing by the revolutionaries into the birth date of their carnations. Ponte 25 de Abril… From that moment on, river Tagus was never the same again… Twenty years later, in mid-summer, Lisbon lives through its warmest night. That was my first summer in the city…

(Soon in bookstores near you?)