Brasyl (9 page)

"Hey, Efrim!" Big Steak is over by the bar, one arm holding
up a caipi, the other curled around fiancee, Serena. He owns a half
share in the gym with Emerson, Edson's brother number one. "Are
you enjoying it?" From his ebullience and sway, Big Steak's been
loving the hospitality of his own gafieira. Serena Most Serene frowns
at Edson. She has glasses but is too vain to wear them. Big Steak's
engagement present to her is a lasering in a proper Avenida Paulista
surgery. "Looking foxy." Efrim curtseys. Serena checks his
fab thighs. "So you finally got yourself a good act. How long
can she keep it up?"

"Longer than you," says Efrim, gabby on the TalkTalk and
striking the kind of pose you can only get with spike-heel boots and
a monster Afro. Serena Most Serene creases over. Big Steak waves him
away and someone is beckoning him over from beside the gas tanks,
Hey
Edson, get on over here
. It's Turkey-Feet with a posse of Penas,
that old gang of Edson's, at the back of the garage where they're
storing the knockoff vodka.

It had never really been a gang in the sense of honor and guns and
ending up dead on a soft verge; more a group of guys who hung
together, stealing the odd designer valuable, dealing the occasional
dice of maconha or illicit download, here a little vehicle lifting,
there some community policing, all as The Man up in the favela
permitted. It had gone that way, for the younger ones saw no other
road out of Cidade de Luz than walking up into the favela and taking
the scarifications of a soldado of the drug lord. By then the old
Penas were moving on, moving out, marrying, getting children, getting
jobs, getting lazy and fat. Edson inevitably followed his older
brothers into the Penas, but he had understood at once that it would
ultimately be an obstacle to his ambitions. Edson subtly loosened the
ties that bound him to the gang, flying farther and freer as his
separate identities developed until, like a rare comet, he drifted in
shaking his gaudy tail only for parties, gafieiras, wedddings, and
funerals, a fortunate portent. He was his own gang now.

"It's Efrim, honey."

"Efrim Efrim, you got to see this."

It catches the scatter-light on its curves like a knife, it fits the
fist like a knife, it smells like a knife—but Efrim can see a
shiver along the edge of the blade, like a thing there and not there,
like a blade made from dreams. This is much more than a knife.

"Where did you get this?"

"Bought it from some guy from Itaquera, says he got it from the
miliitary. Here, want a go?" Turkey-Feet waves the knife at
Efrim.

"I'm not touching that thing."

Turkey-Feet masks his rejection by making three sharp passes, blade
whistling. Curting air. Efrim smells electricity.

"Look at this. This is cool."

Turkey-Feet squats, sets a brick on the oily ground. With the
delicacy of a dealer measuring doses on a scale, he rests the handle
on the ground, sets the edge of the blade against the brick. The
knife blade swings down through the brick as if it were liquid.
Turkey-Feet quickly props a cigarette packet under the hilt. The
blade continues its downward arc through José's Garage floor
until ir starts to slide, to pierce, sliding into the concrete until
its hilt finds purchase.

Q-blade. Yes, Efrim has heard of these. No one knows where they come
from: the army, the US military, the Chinese, the CIA, but since they
started appearing in funk-bars as the weapon of preference, everyone
knows what they do. Cut through anything. Edge so sharp it cuts right
down to the atoms. From his sessions with Mr. Peach, Edson knows its
sharper than that. Edged down to the quantum level. Break one—and
the only thing thar will break a Q-blade is another Q-blade—and
the shard will fall through solid rock all the way to the center of
the earth.

"Is that not the coolest thing?"

"That is a thing of death, honey." He can feel it from the
blade, like sunburn. Streets' pirate empathies have a fresh little
synesthetic edge.

José's Garage quakes as Kid DJ starts up a new set. Efrim
leaves the Penas playing finger-and-knife games with the Q-blade.
You
will never get out of Cidade de Luz that way
. It is time for De
Freitas Global Talent's other act to make its debut.

"Senhors senhoras, pod-wars! Pod-wars! Pod-wars!" the DJ
bellows, his voice reverbing into a feedback screech. "Round
one! Remixado João B versus PJ Suleimannnnnnn! There can be!
Only! One! Let the wars begin!"

A wall of cheering as the contenders bounce onto the soundstage.
Petty Cash will face whichever of these two wins the crowd's hearts,
hands, and feet. Efrim positions himself by the churrasco stand to
check our the competition.

"Foxy, Efrim," says Regina the churrasco queen. Efrim
grins. He loves the attention on the special occasions when he trots
out in his travesti aspect. He lifts the bamboo skewer of fatty,
blackened beef to his glossed lips. PJ Suleiman takes João B
so easily it is embarrassing: the kid's got no beats, rakes
everything down to this vaqueiro guitar riff he thinks is funky but
to the audience sounds like the theme from a gaucho telenovela. They
pelt him off with empty caipiroshka cups.

Senhors, senhoras, Petty Petty Petty Caaaaaash!

Petty Cash had been the perfect alibi-quiet, no gang connections,
deeply deeply devoted to the beats trilling out of his headphones. In
Total Surveillance Sampa even the most respectable man of business
needs an alibi to swap identities with sometime: many were the
afternoons Edson had gone abour Cidade de Luz and even up to the
favela with Petty Cash's identity loaded on his I-shades while Petty
Cash sat missing beats as Edson Jesus Oliveira de Freitas. Then one
day Edson, as he switched identities back, actually listened to the
choons dancing across Petty Cash's I-shades, and for the first time
the words crossed his lips:
I might be able to do something with
that.
On that tin-roofed verandah De Freitas Global Talent was
born. Now the world will see him shake mass booty.

Straight up Petty Cash catches PJ Suleiman's hip-swaying samba
paulistano, hauls a mangue bass out of his sample array, and brings
in a beat that has the bass drivers bowing and booming in their cabs.
The crowd reels back all at once, whoa! Then in midbeat everyone is
up in the air, coming down on the counterpoint, and the bloco is
bouncing. Suleiman tries something clever clever with a classic
black-metal guitar solo and an old drum-bass rinse, and it's itchy
and scratchy but you can't dance to that. Petty Cash takes the guitar
solo, rips off the bass section and bolts on funk in industrial
quantities: an old gringo bass line from another century and a
so-fresh-they-haven't-taken-the-plastic-off pau-rhythm. Efrim can see
the track lines on Petty Cash's I-shades as his eyeballs sample and
mix in real time. The audience are living it loving it slapping it
sucking it: no question who wins this face-off.

Then God says,
Tonight, Efrim/Edson/everyone else you ever were or
might be, I smile down from beyond satellite and balloons and Angels
of Perpetual Surveillance on you.

Her. At the bar with a caipiroshka in a plastic cup in her hand and a
gang of girlfriends. Pink jacare boots (what is this she has with
endangering the cayman population?) and a little silver snake-scale
A-line so short it skims her panties but moves magnificently,
heavily, richly. Korr I-shades that go halfway around her head.
Space-baby. Her hair is pink tonight. Pink and silver: perfect match
for the seasonal must-have Giorelli Habbajabba bag on her arm. She
came.

PJ de Peeeeeepoooooo!
Kid DJ announces the next challenger as
Efrim moves through the crowd toward the bar.

"Efrim Efrim Efrim!" The cries in his ear are like pistol
shots. When Edson was in the Penas, Treats followed him like a dog
around a bitch. Treats's eyes and manic insistence betray a load of
drugs. "Trampo's dead, man. He's dead!"

Trampo is—was—a dirty little favelado stupid enough to
want to look mean who presumably took Edson's place as the sunshine
in Treats's life when Edson walked out of the gang. Some are born
with bullet marks on their bodies, like stigmata. Even in semi
respectable Cidade de Luz murder is the most common death for young
males. You properly come of age if you make thirty.

"They cut him in half, man; they fucking cut him in half. They
left him at the side of the rodovia. There was the sign cut into the
road."

It would be a slope-sided rectangle with a domed top, a stylized
garbage can.
Take out the trash
. Cut with one of those same
weapons that the Penas played with so casually in the back of José's
Garage. That's how everyone knows the Q-blade. It's the real star on
what has for the last six seasons been São Paulo's top-rated
TV show. No network could sanction a reality program where José
Publics compete to join the resident team of bandeirantes to hunt
down street hoods. But this is the time of total media, of universal
content provision, wiki-vision. A bespoke pirate production house
casts it payview to twelve million pairs of I-shades. Reformers,
evangelical Christians, liberation priests, campaigning lawyers, and
socialists demand something be done, we know where these people are,
close them down out of great São Paulo. The police turn a
blind eye. Someone has to take out the trash. Efrim would never
filthy his retinas with such a thing, but he admires their business
plan. And now they've come to Cidade de Luz. This is not a
conversation for now. Frightening people at a wedding gafieira, and
Efrim on the hunt. She is still there, at the impromptu bar made from
trestle tables borrrowed from the parish center. The priest has more
sense than to come to see what is being done with his tables; but the
crentes, with their infallible noses for the unsaved, are handing out
hell-is-scary-and-real tracts, all of which have been trodden
underfoot into alcohol-soaked papier-mache. Women scoop caipiroshkas
into plastic glasses from washing-up basins. Two guys in muscle tops
pound limes in big wooden mortars. Get rid of this fool quick. Efrim
rolls a little foil-wrapped ball of maconha out of his bag.

"Here, querida, for you, have this." The kid is wasted
already, but Edson wants him so far away that he can't scare anyone
else. How rude. "Go on, it's yours, run on there."

Senhors, Senhoras, PJ Raul Glor—ee—aaaaaah!
G-g-g-gloriiiiai
Another win for Petty Cash.

"Hooo honeys!" Efrim cruises in, hips waggling samba-time,
looking their style up and down, down and up. "My, what shocking
bad shoes." Fia and her girlfriends whoop and cheer. Efrim lets
the TalkTalk roll, swaggers up and down in a mock military inspection
of each in turn. "Honey, has no one told you pterodactyl toes
are no no no? Oh my sweet Jesus and Mary. Pink and orange? Efrim
shall pray for you, for only Our Lady of Killer Shooz can save you
now. Now you, you need a workout. Make an effort. Efrim is the one
has to look at you. Telenovela arms, darling. Yours sag like an old
priest's dick. And as for you, honey, the only thing can save you is
plastic. I'll have a little whip round. I know a couple of cheap
guys—don't we all wish?" He stops in front of Fia. The
Habbajabba is crooked over her arm, comfortable as a sleeping cat.
You don't know who I am. But I know who you are.
Efrim loves
the anonymity of the mask.

"Bur for you, I do some travesti magic. You don't believe me? We
all have the magic, the power, all us girls. You give me that bag and
I will tell you magic things." Laughing at the damn effrontery
of Efrim, Fia hands over the Habbajabba. Efrim rubs his hands all
over it, sniffs it, licks it. "Ah now: this bag says to me that
it was given to you, not bought with money. A man gave this to you:
wait, the bag tells me he is a businessman, he is a man with contacts
and connections and people." Efrim puts the bag up to his ear,
pouts, eyes wide in mock shock. "The bag says the man gave it to
you because you did him a big favor. You saved his dumb-ass brother
from the seguranças."

Efrim has been carefully steering Fia away from her girlfriends. They
think it is funny—they wave, they kissy-kiss—and she is
willing to be steered on this gafieira night. Edson holds the bag up
and whispers to it, nods his head, rolls his big big eyes.

"The bag says, the man of business still owes you. After all, it
was his brother, and he may be useless but he is still worth more
than a bag. Even this bag."

Fia laughs. It is like falling coins bouncing from a sidewalk.

"And how does this big businessman want to treat me?"

"He is about to do a deal on an Arabic lanchonete. Their kibes
just slay you. He would like you to be the first to try what will
surely be Sampa's hottest food franchise and make him a rich rich man
with an apartment on Ilhabela."

That has always been Edson's great dream: a house by the sea.
Someday, before he is too middle-aged lazy to enjoy it, he will have
a place down on Ilhabela where he can wake every morning and see the
ocean. He will never visit it until it is built, but when it is he
will arrive by night so all he can sense is the sound and the ocean
will be the first thing he sees when he wakes. Santos is half an hour
away by the fast train, but Edson has never seen the sea.

"Flowers are cheaper. And prettier," says Fia.

"Flowers are already dead."

"The bag told you all this?"

"With a little travesti magic."

"I think you've worked enough magic tonight, whatever your name
is." Efrim's heart jumps.

"Tonight, I am Efrim."

"So what other little secrets have you got, Efrim/Edson or
whoever else you are?"

Only one
, says Edson/Efrim to himself,
and not even my
mother knows that.