A 38-year-old Brás is sitting on an airplane next to a passenger who is holding a copy of his book, Silken Eyes. The passenger asks for his autograph. Brás meditates on the nature of his success as a novelist: Readers think they know him, but just like his book, it’s all a fiction.

He quickly flashes back to young adulthood to when he first met Jorge. Back in the present day, he dearly misses his friend, and the reader learns that he is traveling in search of his friend using a postcard he received in the mail from Acemira with the message “I can’t do it without you” -J” (164). Brás grows anxious that they may no longer be the same friends they once were.

Brás flashes back once again, this time to a conversation with Ana upon receiving the postcard. She reminds him that just because his friend sent him a postcard doesn’t mean it is a good idea to go after him. Undeterred, Brás asks around about Jorge in Acemira, a tourist beach town, and learns that up until a month earlier he’d been homeless and living in an abandoned shack, writing postcards all the time.