Girl at the Italian restaurant on the first night in Lisbon

"Por que, por que" she pressed her glasses in mock indignation - tiny goblets - against the tumblers held by the owner. The night was a little nippy but people waited patiently, smoking, drinking; people bundled up with Glovo delivery baskets strapped, awaiting the pizzas. We had walked the alley that had tiled artwork with faces and poems of Florbela Espanca and her love for the vast plains of Alentejo, beyond the Tagus.

I did not see her at first. In fact, we had only chatted with the owner Matteo to negotiate a table indoors and noticed the mousy girl in a plush sweater scurrying between the two spaces across the alley that the restaurant spanned, carrying pies and wine. After a tentative wait, we had slid in for a drink inside the left hand part, and there she was, with focused narrow eyes. Hair tightly wound in a horsetail, her grey sports jacket showed a casualness that contradicted the busy filling of beer glasses. No lipstick, she only had a tiny ring that pierced the end of the bridge of her nose. But her body moved with the beat of the music that was playing, and moved differently each time it changed.

It took her a whole eleven minutes to notice me leaning eagerly at the bar. "What would you want?", came the question in clear English, having profiled me correctly as a non-local and non-Hispanic. I only noticed her completely mismatched blue dangling filigree earrings when she came by to our table with the drinks. And then, the flowing baggy striped pants that were so not fashionable and extremely so. A vaping device hung from the belt around her waist and moved with the pulsing rhythm that seemed to originate from her core. Even when she swirled water into the tall glasses or ducked down to gather a mop from below the bar, her movement seemed to keep the beat. In fact, it was the beat.

We came back to the restaurant the next night. It was the new year's eve and we were a little early in anticipation of a rush. As a new server settled us at a table, this time on the other side of the restaurant, I saw her coming in to start her shift. This night, she had glistening stars painted on her face and was wearing an even brighter cheer on her body. She passed by our table and recognized us, greeting us with an easy wave and hi.

She went back behind the bar, to the non-stop mixing and shaking, and I could see her across the alley, through the window that I faced now from my seat at our table. At some point in the night she took off her jacket and I could see her bare arms out of the generously cut holes of the black sweater she was wearing. The arms moved like brushstrokes in the canvas of the night and painted it young.