Summary

“Escape” begins with Dores’s lyrics to her song, “Escape.” It describes a love that provides practical and necessary comforts, lamenting its lack of reciprocation. In Chapter 3, Dores remembers listening to records with Graça and connects music with memory. She remembers when she and Vinicius watched Graça perform in Las Vegas during an atomic detonation until revealing that she conjured the memory from her imagination. Dores reveals that Vinicius had Alzheimer’s, but in moments of clarity, he always remembered Graça.

In Chapter 4, a few weeks after Graça returned to Riacho Doce from her aunt’s, she lured Dores out to the cane cutters’ shacks where they played music every night and felt inspired. Senhor Pimentel drank more alcohol and was less discreet with his trysts with young servants after his wife died. He did not support Graça’s...