Brasyl

Brasyl

Ian McDonald

Marcelina watched them take the car on Rua Sacopã It was a
C-Class Mercedes, a drug dealer's car, done up to the tits by the
Pimp My Ride: Brasileiro design crew with wheel trim and tail and
blue lighting that ran up and down the subframe. Subwoofers the size
of suitcases. The design boys had done a good job; it looked a
fistful more than the four thousand reis Marcelina had paid at the
city car pound.

One time they passed it: three guys in basketball shorts and vests
and caps. The first time the looking time. A second time, this time
the checking time, pretending to be interested in the trim and the
rosary and Flamengo key-fob hanging from the mirror (sweet touch) and
was it CD multichanger or a hardpoint for MP3?

Go, my sons, you know you want it, thought Marcelina in the back of
the chase car in a driveway two hundred meters up hill. It's all
there for you, I made it that way, how can you resist?

The third time, that is the taking time. They gave it ten minutes'
safety, ten minutes in which Marcelina sat over the monitor fearing
would they come back would someone else get there first? No, here
they were swinging down the hill, big pretty boys long-limbed and
loose, and they were good, very good. She hardly saw them try the
door, but there was no mistaking the look of surprise on their faces
when it swung open. Yes, it is unlocked. And yes, the keys are in it.
And they were in: door closed, engine started, lights on.

"We're on!" Marcelina Hoffman shouted to her driver and was
immediately flung against the monitor as the SUV took off. God and
Mary they were hard on it, screaming the engine as they ripped out
onto the Avenida Epicicio Pessoa. "All cars all cars!"
Marcelina shouted into her talkback as the Cherokee swayed into the
traffic. "We have a lift we have a lift! Heading north for the
Rebouças Tunnel." She poked the driver, an AP who had
confessed a love for car rallying, hard in the shoulder. "Keep
him in sight, but don't scare him." The monitor was blank. She
banged it. "What is wrong with this thing?" The screen
filled with pictures, feed from the Mercedes' lippstick-cams. "I
need real-time time-code up on this."
Don't let them find the
cameras
, Marcelina prayed to Nossa Senhora da Valiosa Producão,
her divine patroness. Three guys, the one in the black and gold
driving, the one in the Nike vest, and the one with no shirt at all
and a patchy little knot of wiry hair right between his nipples.
Sirens dopplered past; Marcelina looked up from her monitor to see a
police car turn across four lanes of traffic on the lagoon avenue and
accelerate past her. "Get me audio."

João-Batista the soundman waggled his head like an Indian, the
gesture made the more cartoonish by his headphones. He fiddled with
the mixer slung around his neck and gave a tentative thumbs-up.
Marcelina had rehearsed this–rehearsed this and rehearsed this
and rehearsed this–and now she could not remember a single
word. Joao-Batista looked at her:
Go on, it's your show.

"You like this car? You like it?" She was shrieking like a
shoutygirl-presenter. João-Batista looking pityingly at her.
On the car cams the boys looked as if a bomb had gone off under their
Knight Rider
LEDS.
Don't bail, Lady Lady Lady, don't bail.
"It's yours! It's your big star prize. It's all right, you're on
a TV game show!"

"It's a shit old Merc with a cheap pimp from graphics,"
Souza the driver muttered. "And they know that."

Marcelina knocked off the talk back.

"Are you the director here? Are you? Are you? It'll do for the
pilot."

The SUV veered abruptly, sending Marcelina reeling across the
backseat. Tires squealed. God she loved this.

"They decided against the tunnel. They're taking a trip to
Jardim Botânica instead."

Marcelina glanced at the satnav. The police cars were orange flags,
their careful formation across Rio's Zona Sul breaking up and
reordering as the chase car refused to drive into their trap. That's
what it's about, Marcelina said to herself.
That's what makes it
great TV
. Back on the talkback again.

"You're on
Getaway
. It's a new reality show for Canal
Quatro, and you're on it! Hey, you're going to be big stars!"
That got them looking at each other. Attention culture. It never
failed to seduce the vain Carioca. Best reality show participants on
the planet, cariocas. "That car is yours, absolutely,
guaranteed, legal. All you have to do is not get arrested by the cops
for half an hour, and we've told them you're out there. You want to
play?" That might even do for the strapline:
Getaway: You
Want to Play?

Nike vest boy's mouth was moving.

"I need audio out," Marcelina shouted. João-Batista
turned another knob. Baile funk shook the SUV.

"I said, for this heap of shit?" Nike vest shouted over the
booty beat. Souza took another corner at tire-shredding speed. The
orange flags of the police were flocking together, route by route
cutting off possible escape. For the first time Marcelina believed
she might have a program here. She thumbed the talk back off. "Where
are we going?"

"It could be Rocinha or up through Tijuca on the Estrada Dona
Castorina." The SUV slid across another junction, scattering
jugglers, their balls cascading around them, and windshield-washers
with buckets and squeegees. "No, it's Rocinha."

"Are we getting anything usable?" Marcelina asked
João-Batista. He shook his head. She had never had a sound man
who wasn't a laconic bastard, and that went for soundwomen too.

"Hey hey hey, could you turn the music down a little?"

DJ Furação's baile beat dropped to thumbs-up levels
from João-Batista. "What's your name?" Marcelina
shouted at Nike vest.

"You think I'm going to tell you, in a stolen car with half Zona
Sul up my ass? This is entrapment."

"We have to call you something," Marcelina wheedled.

"Well, Canal Quatro, you can call me Malhação, and
this América"–the driver took his hands off the
wheel and waved–"and O Clono." Chest-hair pushed his
mouth up to the driver's headrest minicam in the classic MTV
rock-shot.

"Is this going to be like
Bus 174
?" he asked.

"Do you want to end up like the guy on
Bus 174
?"
Souza murmured. "If they try and take that into Rocinha, it'll
make
Bus 174
look like a First Commmunion party."

"Am I going to be like a big celebrity then?" O CIono
asked, still kissing the camera.

"You'll be in
Contigo
. We know people there, we can set
something up."

"Can I get to meet Gisele Bundchen?"

"We can get you on a shoot with Gisele Bundchen, all of you, and
the car. Getaway stars and their cars."

"I like that Ana Beatriz Barros," América said.

"Hear that? Gisele Bundchen!" O CIono had his head between
the seats, bellowing in Malhação's ear.

"Man, there is going to be no Gisele Bundchen, or Ana Beatriz
Barros," Malhação said. "This is TV; they'll
say anything to keep the show going. Hey Canal Quatro, what happens
if we get caught? We didn't ask to be in this show."

"You took the car."

"You wanted us to take the car. You left the doors open and the
keys in."

"Ethics is good," João-Batista said. "We don't
get a lot of ethics in reality TV." Sirens on all sides, growing
closer, coming into phase. Police cars knifed past on each side, a
blast, a blur of sound and flashing light. Marcelina felt her heart
kick in her chest, that moment of beauty when it all works together,
perfect, automatic, divine. Souza slid the SUV into top gear as he
accelerated past the shuttered-up construction gear where the new
favela wall was going up.

"And it's not Rocinha," Souza said, pulling out past a
tanker-train. "What else is down there? Vila Canoas, maybe.
Whoa."

Marcelina looked up from her monitor, where she was already planning
her edit. Something in Souza's voice.

"You're scaring me, man."

"They just threw a three-sixty right across the road."

"Where are they?"

"Coming right at us."

"Hey, Canal Quatro." Malhação was grinning
into the sun-visor cam. He had very good, white big teeth. "I
think there's a flaw in your format. You see, there's no motivation
for me to risk jail just for a shit secondhand Merc. On the other
hand, something with a bit of retail potential . . . "

The Mercedes came sliding across the central strip, shedding
graphics' loving pimp job all over the highway. Souza stood on the
antilocks. The SUV stopped a spit from the Mercedes. Malhação,
América, and O Clono were already out, guns held sideways in
that way that had become fashionable since
City of God
.

"Out out out out out." Marcelina and crew piled onto the
road, traffic blaring past.

"I need the hard drive. If I haven't got the hard drive I
haven't got a show, at least leave me that."

América was already behind the wheel.

"This is sweet," he declared.

"Okay, take it," Malhação said, handing
monitor and terabyte LaCie to Marcelina.

"You know, you kinda have hair like Gisele Bundchen," O
Clono called from the rear seat. "But curlier, and you're a lot
smaller."

Engine cries, tires smoked, América hand braked the SUV around
Marcelina and burned out west. Seconds later police cars flashed.

"Now that," said João-Batista, "is 'what I call
great TV."

The Black Plumed Bird smoked in the edit suite. Marcelina hated that.
She hated most things about the Black Plumed Bird, starting with the
195Os clothes she wore unironically in defiance of trend and fashion
(there is no fashion without personal style, querida) and that
nevertheless looked fantastic, from the real nylon stockings, with
seams—never pantyhose, bad bad thrush—to the Coco Chanel
jacket. If she could have worn sunglasses and a headscarf in the edit
suite, she would have. She hated a woman so manifestly confident in
her mode, and so correct in it. She hated that the Black Plumed Bird
could exist on a diet of import vodka and Hollywood cigarettes, had
never been seen taking a single stroke of exercise and yet would have
emerged from an all-night edit radiating Grace Kelly charm and not
skull-fucked on full-sugar guaraná. Most of all she hated
that, for all her studious retro and grace, the Black Plumed Bird had
graduated from media school one year ahead of Marcelina Hoffman and
was her senior commissioning editor. Marcelina had bored so many
researchers and development producers over Friday cocktails at Cafe
Barbosa about the stunts and deviations the Black Plumed Bird had
pulled to get head of Factual Entertainment at Canal Quatro that they
could recite them now like Mass.
She didn't know the mike was
still live and the guys in the scanner heard her say
... (All
together)
Fuck me till I fart
...

"The soundtrack is a key USP; we're going for Grand Theft
Auto/Eighties retro. That's that English new romantic band who did
that song about Rio but the video was shot in Sri Lanka."

"I thought that one was 'Save a Prayer,''' said Leandro, moving
a terracotta ashtray with an inverted flowerpot for a lid toward the
Black Plumed Bird. He was the only editor in the building not to have
banned Marcelina from his suite and was considered as imperturbable
as the Dalai Lama, even after an all-nighter '''Rio' was shot in Rio.
Stands to reason."

"Are you like some ninja master of early eighties English new
romantic music?" Marcelina sniped. "Were you even born in
1984?"

"I think you'll find that particular Duran Duran track was
1982," the Black Plumed Bird said, carefully stubbing her
cigarette out in the proffered ashtray and replacing the lid. "And
the video was shot in Antigua, actually. Marcelina, what happened to
the crew car?"

"The police found it stripped to the subframe on the edge of
Mangueira. The insurance will cover it. But it shows it works; I
mean, the format needs a little tweaking, but the premise is strong.
It's good TV."

The Black Plumed Bird lit another cigarette. Marcelina fretted around
the door to the edit suite.
Give me it give me it give it just
give me the series.

"It is good TV. I'm interested in this." That was as good
as you ever got from the Black Plumed Bird. Marcelina's heart
misfired, but that was likely the stimulants. Come down slowly, all
say, and then a normal night's bed; that, in her experience, was the
best descent path out of an all-nighter. Of course if it was a
commission, she might just go straight down to Cafe Barbosa, bang on
Augusto's door with the special Masonic Knock, and spend the rest of
the day on the champagne watching roller boys with peachlike asses
blade past. "It's clever and it's sharp and it hits all our
demographics, but it's not going to happen." The Black Plumed
Bird held up a lace-gloved hand to forestall Marcelina's protests.
"We can't do it." She tapped at the wireless control pad
and called up the Quatro news channel. Ausiria Menendes was on the
morning shift. Heitor would probably call her midday for a little
lunch hour. The scuttling fears and anxieties of a middle-aged news
anchor were the very un-thing she needed this day. A fragment seemed
to have fallen out of her brain onto the screen: Police cars pulled
in around a vehicle on the side of a big highway.
São Paulo
, said the caption. Cut to a helicopter shot of military cruisers and
riot-control vehicles parked up outside the gate of Guarulhos Main
Penitentiary. Smoke spiraled up from inside the compound; figures
occupied the half-stripped roof with a bedsheet banner, words sprayed
in red.