Narcisa

by Jonathan Shaw

  I got it. Narcisa had disappeared into the shadows of the concrete forest for good, only going home now to awaken Mr. Gold in the middle of the night, shaking him down for cash with desperate, wild-eyed pleading rants, emotional blackmail and threats . . . If he didn’t give her what she needed right now, it would be on his head that she had to go out and spread her legs for fat ugly old niggas who took better care of her than his cheap Jewish ass. But she really loved him, sob sob, and she really didn’t want to have to do all those terrible, nasty, degrading things, and she was really going to quit! I swear, I promise! Tomorrow.

  Narcisa squealed with delight as she described her reign of biblical vengeance on the Jewish banker. I could picture her with those big, teary E.T. puppy dog eyes, pleading, sobbing crocodile tears, expertly guilt-tripping the unfortunate gringo with cynical, heartless command performances. Justifying her foulest terror tactics, she accused him of turning her into the Crack Monster. And there it was again, Narcisa, the eternal victim.

  Of course! All her fanatical crack attacks were someone else’s fault! His evil doing, his wrong for being too busy to give her all the love and attention and care she needed! It was all his just reward for the heinous crime of neglecting poor Narcisa in a big hard, mean-spirited capitalist land, just a poor innocent waif, seduced away from her humble country roots, abandoned in that cruel, sterile alien culture! She had no choice but to raise hell! Of course! It was all just a stifled little cry for help! Got it? She just needed More Love and More Compassion, More Understanding . . . More More More . . . “More twenty dollar, just these one last time, por favor, I swear to God . . . Please please, if you really, really love me . . .”

  I knew Narcisa could be as coldhearted as any Waffen-SS officer; and at the same time, the neediest person who ever lived; clinging, clutching, demanding constant attention, energy, care, feeding, companionship, love and compassion, twenty-four eye-bleeding hours a day. And God pity the poor bastard who didn’t give in to all her irrational, infantile demands!

  She told me how she was finally arrested for breaking in to ransack the apartment at the end of another weeklong crack mission. After Mr. Gold filed for a restraining order and had the locks changed, Narcisa had come slinking home again, while he was away at work. When her key didn’t fit, she’d lost her shit, and in a crack-fueled burst of supernatural Crack Monster strength, she’d put her shoulder to the door, knocking it right off its hinges. Then, she laughed, she’d gotten into a “little argument” with a neighbor lady.

  When I prodded her for details, I learned she’d actually beaten the poor woman bloody when she threatened to call the cops. After ransacking the apartment, Narcisa flew off into the night like a bloodthirsty vampire bat.

  They caught up to her wandering the street in front of a Jamaican Chicken Spot on 125th and Lexington at three in the morning—demented, raving, violent and foaming at the mouth.

  According to her, it had taken a half dozen of New York’s Finest to restrain the ninety-five-pound screaming, hissing, biting Crack Monster.

  She’d then been sentenced to a course of court-ordered psychiatric care and mandatory compliance with a state-approved drug-abuse outpatient program, as a condition of her probation on charges of breaking and entry, burglary, aggravated assault, and drug possession.

  “Drug possession? Caralho!” I howled with laughter. “Sounds like ya shoulda been charged with demonic possession, man!”

  To worsen Narcisa’s dilemma, she whined, there was pressure from her husband’s family that she check in for long-term treatment at some fancy Long Island rehab they’d found. I could imagine how well that must have gone over with her. Rather than suffer the indignity of some “boring” recovery clinic, when the whole problem was “all his focking fault” to begin with, Narcisa decided it was time to do what she did best; time to burn another bridge.

  She burglarized their not-so-happy home one last time, scraping together enough swag and cash for one last mother crack mission, and a one-way ticket back to Brazil. Then she split—a fugitive from justice in the Red White and Blue. An Undesirable Alien from Alpha Centauri . . . Thank you come again!

  And thus ended Narcisa’s fairy tale American Dream marriage to her fabled Prince Charming Gringo . . . The End. Next?

  Even all those months later, she remained blind to the real-life implications of her self-inflicted exile from the big Air-Conditioned Nightmare. Narcisa was still clinging to the delusion that her victim would soon come running back to Brazil to rescue her from herself again.

  She was so convinced of that persistent pipe-dream, she even had me half believing it. And she used that threat as a constant bludgeon to inflict jealousy, insecurity and anguish on the Crack Monster’s latest willing hostage: me.

  31. PETS

  “CATS ARE A STANDING REBUKE TO BEHAVIORAL SCIENTISTS WANTING TO KNOW HOW THE MINDS OF ANIMALS WORK. THE MIND OF A CAT IS AN INSCRUTABLE MYSTERY.”

  —Lewis Thomas

  No matter how brutal Narcisa ever was to me during those first long months after her return, whenever the dust cleared, we always made up. Sex was a last, grasping hope of salvation for us in an irate universe of pounding mutual confusion.

  After each new raging battle, we would end up fucking like a pair of delirious weasels, cannibalizing each other alive with all the frantic desperation of two lost souls clinging to one last fading scrap of goodness. Sex was that one tiny blossom of hope, sprung up like a mutant flower, leaping like a bullfrog from the stinking sewage of our common agony.

  Aside from the Venus flytrap between her legs, Narcisa had other subtle ways of atoning for her many mad transgressions. One way or another, she always reeled me right back into her hypnotic web of drama, trauma and high-tension adventure.

  One afternoon, after threatening to have me murdered, she called a few hours later, begging me to meet her by the beach in Copacabana. When I got there, she was waiting on the corner, wearing this red plastic strap-on clown nose she’d ripped off from one of her squatter friends at the Casa Verde. My heart melted as she ran up to greet me with a wry little smile.

  How could I ever hold a grudge?

  Before I could say hello, Narcisa reached in her pocket and handed me this weird exotic-looking tropical flower. It looked like an alien spore sitting in a big brown seed husk, like a heart-shaped walnut shell. It was a heartwarming gesture, a quiet little declaration of love.

  Then she took me by the hand and led me to a crowded little eatery. “Lookit what I get, Cigano!” She winked, flashing a horse-choking wad of cash. “Where’d ya get that?” I stared, dumbfounded, not really expecting the truth. “I liberate it from a gringo!”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Fala serio!”

  “Na moral!” She giggled. “I teef these e’sheet! Hah! Listen how: de trick wan’ me get him some cocaína, so I e’say, ‘Okey then, you gotta give it to me two hundred reais, an’ then I gonna be right back with de bagulho!’”

  I sat back and listened to Narcisa describing her latest golpe.

  “Then he insist he wanna come up with me. Fock! Why de gringo always so, how do you e’say it, par’noided, hein? An’way we go up de morro, an’ he looking real nervous when he see all de guns! Hah! I e’say, ‘Hey you! Is danger for you come up in here, maybe de guy gonna wan’ teef you an’ kee-eel you, got it?’ So he e’say, ‘Okey, okey!’ Hah! An’ he give me all de money an’ then I run in de alley an’ get the fock out! Thank you come again!”

  I sat across the table, staring at her in awed admiration. Narcisa had more balls than any full-blooded gypsy horse thief I’d ever met.

  She smirked, gracing me with another wicked wink. “These e’stupid gringo pro’lly e’still wait up there now for de Narcisa come back, too e’scare for move! Crowwn crowwwn! Hah! Perfect, Max! E’stupid trick! Ahhhh!! Hahahaha!”

  Narcisa cackled with glee as I dug into her delicious stolen meal.

  A week later, following another hysterical blowout where she’d threatened
to torch my place with me in it, Narcisa appeared at my door a couple of hours later, sporting that old crooked grin, as if nothing had happened. Before I could speak, she presented me with a huge bouquet of colorful bird-of-paradise blossoms. I was so overwhelmed with the quiet poetry of the gesture, I didn’t even ask whose garden she’d just laid to waste. That wasn’t the point.

  Something else was happening.

  Suddenly, Narcisa had become more than just a friend; more than a regular fuck partner. Even more than another sick, suffering addict I hoped to help someday. Narcisa was morphing into something resembling a girlfriend.

  Whenever she came knocking at my door to wake me from a fitful slumber, she always seemed to be holding out some weird little peace offering: flowers, scraps of trash, and other singular found objects she would convert into mini-sculptures to present me with as she stood waiting to be let in from the wars.

  As we grew closer, Narcisa started acting oddly domestic.

  One day, she announced that she wanted a pet—a unusual ambition, on the face of it, since I knew she was incapable of caring for another living being. But I had a feeling it wasn’t so much about the animal for her, as the idea, the image of “having a pet.” For Narcisa, it would be a handy little prop, connecting her with the “real” world; a safe, predictable fantasy realm beyond the nightmare hellscape of her own haunted mind. She instinctively craved something cute, cuddly and furry to love now; something to identify her with all the wholesome, normal things that so-called normal people supposedly did.

  After she pestered and nagged me for days, how could I refuse?

  First, there was the Fish.

  She begged me to go out and get it for her, since she never seemed to have the time to pick one out herself. After all, Narcisa only wanted to look normal—not actually act normal.

  “Narcisa too much busy now, Cigano!” She pleaded and whined. “I wan’ you go buy it de surprise fee-eesh for me, go!”

  I took a deep breath. “Well, what kinda fish you want me to get, Narcisa?”

  “You know it what kinda feeshes! I donno what de title, bro. Just de little feesh who sit in de bowl an’ e’swim around, whatever. Go an’ give it to me, go!”

  I asked her to at least tell me what color this thing ought to be.

  There, Narcisa was more specific. “He gotta be super-colorido! De crazy color! Multi-psychedelic color, mano, got it?”

  I got it. The next day, while she was off smoking crack somewhere, I stopped by the little pet store in Lapa, the one where they sold barbecue grills right out front. I never quite got that . . . What are the grills for? Filet Meow? Only in Rio!

  I went in and picked out a healthy-looking, shiny little indigo-blue Siamese fighting fish called Betta. The clerk told me of its homicidal nature when I tried to purchase another one to keep it company. It was a solitary, narcissistic creature, he warned me, who despised the company of its own kind.

  The perfect mascot for Narcisa.

  I smiled to myself as I paid for her new pet, its food, a bowl and the little bottle of drops you put in the water—the whole deal.

  The Fish occupied a shelf my bathroom, swimming around in a little glass jar above the toilet. It spent its lonesome, watery days there, doing battle with its own hated image in the little hand mirror Narcisa placed beside it.

  She was thrilled with her new aquatic companion. For about a minute. Of course, I always had to feed it and change the water when it got so cloudy you couldn’t even see it. She rationalized not wanting to feed her fish, claiming she didn’t want it to get “fat.”

  Then, one scorching hot afternoon, feeling sorry for the thing, she dropped some ice cubes from her Coke into the fishbowl—killing it dead as rust.

  Narcisa woke me from a sound sleep as she tapped at the bowl with a furious toothbrush—pling pling pling pling pling!—yelling at the floating Betta. “Oi!”—pling pling pling pling!—“Alô! Alô!”—pling pling!—“Oiii-iii! Hey you in there! Fee-eesh! Wake up!!”—pling pling!—“Moo-oove, e’stupid!”

  I rose up with a groan, then went over and dumped the Fish into the toilet, its final resting place . . . Thank you come again! Next?

  32. THE KITTEN

  “THE TROUBLE WITH A KITTEN IS THAT EVENTUALLY IT BECOMES A CAT.”

  —Ogden Nash

  After the Fish, there was the Kitten.

  We were riding down the hill from the favela one day, when, all of a sudden, Narcisa started slapping me on the back like some demented midget race horse jockey.

  “Pare aqui! E’stop, Cigano!! E’sto-op!!”

  Before I could pull the bike over, she hurtled off the back and ran across the street, almost getting herself flattened by a passing taxi.

  A moment later, she swaggered back, smiling that lopsided, toothy grin, holding a tiny, mewing gray-striped furball—the cutest little kitten.

  Narcisa was in love. A heart-warming moment.

  That all lasted a couple of days. But the Kitten wanted far too much attention.

  One evening, Narcisa’s pride and joy started playing with her boot strings while she was taking a hit of crack. The honeymoon was over. She punted it across the room like a football, and I said, “That’s it! One more stunt like that . . .”

  The next day, the unfortunate kitty was perched over the toilet bowl, lapping up water. A sweet, idyllic picture of furry innocence.

  “Look, princesa! C’mere and see. Look how cute!” I fawned.

  She crept over to watch the magical Kodak moment as I turned away to get my little camera. Suddenly, splash! The kitten screeched like it was being dismembered by hyenas.

  What the fuck? I turned around and ran over.

  Narcisa had pushed it into the toilet! Shit! The unfortunate creature came scrambling out, looking like a drowned rat. Shoving Narcisa out of the way, I felt like murdering her on the spot. For a second. Then I remembered what they’d done to her when she was little.

  I glared at her as I wrapped the shaking kitten up in a towel, like a burrito. “Why!?! What th’ fuck is wrong with you, Narcisa!? How could ya do some fucked-up shit like that to an innocent little kitten, man?”

  “I do these only for help de gato, Cigano.”

  “All right.” I stood looking at her, holding the trembling bundle in my arms. “So tell me now, just exactly how does pushing a cat into a toilet help it, huh?”

  “Is because she too much trusting de human being, bro. She gotta wise up! From now, she never gonna let her ass expose to de peoples no more got it? Is best for de cats these way. De next time, she gonna be e’smarter, got it?”

  I got it . . . Next time? Ain’t gonna be no next time!

  I took Narcisa’s kitten and gave it to an elderly neighbor down the hall. The woman was happy with it. It grew to be a big, beautiful, healthy mouser. I liked to stop and pet it when I saw it prowling the hallway. It always came right up to me, arching its back to rub up against my leg and purr. Nice cat.

  It always kept its distance from Narcisa, though . . . Guess she really taught it . . . She would even get jealous when I’d bend down and stroke it, telling me that was the only pussy I’d get anymore if I didn’t hurry up . . . go go go!

  But who needed a pet? Having Narcisa around was already just like having a cat—a big, exotic, dangerous feline; her funny little peace offerings dropped like dead mice at my feet.

  Being with Narcisa was like keeping a wild young tiger for a pet. You never quite knew when it might turn feral and rip your bleeding lungs out in one playful moment of savage instinct run amok. And I was her big old shaggy dog. That’s what she called me. And whenever she called, I came—again, and again. A dog comes running, wagging its tail when you call it. It’s loyal, faithful and obedient.

  Narcisa was none of those things. She just came when she wanted, then left when she was done . . . Thank you come again!

  But when she was around, sometimes she’d sit on my lap and purr, tolerating a bit of love and kindness and affection
—until she’d had enough, and it was time to get up and stretch her beautiful, long legs. Then she would hop off and slink out into the night again, like a magnificent, silent predator, out on the prowl for a victim.

  Sadly, Narcisa’s victim was usually herself.

  She would always come back, though; whenever she was cold and hungry, fed up with the wild life, the brutish struggles of the concrete forest and its murderous faces and poisoned booby traps. Then she’d come limping inside to lap up some milk from a saucer and purr.

  She’d curl up on the sofa to rest for a while, maybe even play with some string, all cute and cuddly, and I’d go oooh and aahhh and call her Cream Puff and Princess, fawning over her stunning, untamable elegance, all goo-goo eyed in her electric, feral presence.

  I knew I could never be a part of her unstable, deadly world out there, though. Those days were done for me. The best I could hope for was to admire her from afar, while basking in the rare privilege of getting to feed her and fondle her from time to time—before holding the door open to let her go off again, slinking back out into the restless, angry city night, all alone.

  And still, Narcisa always returned—often a lot worse for the wear—all cut up and hurt, bleeding and ruffled up; half an ear chewed off, chunks of fur torn away. And then she would sit on my lap and purr again, for a while. She would lick her wounds and recover, getting ready for her next wild, death-defying adventure.

  33. CAT WOMAN

  “AND IN THE END, WE WERE ALL JUST HUMANS, DRUNK ON THE IDEA THAT LOVE, ONLY LOVE, COULD HEAL OUR BROKENNESS.”