"Not really, no." She smiled as the words left her mouth while she continued walking two friends of a similar age. The moco, not really a boy but not fully developed, maybe a garoto, he smiled back, even though she had already turned, and thanked her by saying "obliged" like they do there in Brazil. No, running along the copacabana is not safe at this time of night (the clock that told him it was only 9:00 PM would later be exposed and identified as being set three hours behind the actual time, which was hence 1:00 AM), not really, so he would just walk home in dejection, which first entailed stepping off the sidewalk-an endless array of black and cream-colored Portuguese stones tapped into place-each one of them-in a cooperative effort to reproduce the wavy design of one famous Brazilian architect. The next requirement of returning to his apartment-no, the apartment of his host-was to cross Avenida Atlantica, the broad road lined with countless types of people: thin children passing time with soccer balls, their seems filled with Rio's sandy earth; young women dressed to attract an element of male society-also present-whose lack of exposure to genuine intimacy made them crave a false version of it; average-looking men and women together, sometimes with a pet dog; men that had left more fully-clothed clones of themselves on Venice Beach; and of course vendors offering a vast assortment of delicacies: hot churros rolled in cinnamon and filled with either chocolate or honey; green coconuts ready to be opened with three swift machete chops and then emptied of their "sweet water"--a supposed remedy for alcohol-induced headaches--by a consumer with a plastic straw; hamburgers; and then the most amazing thing: salty popcorn seasoned with bacon by no means more complex than simply loading the container of popped kernels with a dense population of cooked bacon pieces.