Minutes later, I was jolted awake by the Crack Monster and its endless, hyperactive noise machine, going, going, going . . . Go go go go go go go!
Bang!! Boom!! Crash!!
Fuck! She just broke something else down there . . . Pretty soon there’ll be nothing left to break in this fucking place!
I didn’t move. I just lay there, listening, beat, destroyed. Narcisa hadn’t slept at all; and after three days up, without food or water or rest, she still wasn’t tired.
Finally, I got up and stumbled back out onto the balcony. Groggy, I stood there, scratching my ass, staring off into space. A parrot flew by, squawking away into the distance. Dogs barked. Roosters crowed. A soft summer breeze rustled through the palm trees down below. A ship blew a deep, mournful horn, heading out to sea. I watched it out on the horizon, moving across the sparkling blue carpet of water, thinking of my own long-ago days as a sailor, my first few days at sea, feeling glad to be back in Rio.
Taking in the sleepy sights and sounds, I thought of how nice it would be now to lie down in the raw cotton comfort of my hammock and spend the rest of the day just lounging on the balcony. I could sleep out there, unperturbed, while she clanged and banged around inside, battling the invisible demons.
Then I remembered. There was no hammock anymore. Narcisa had pulled it down and used it to cover the window, to block out the sun, the sea, the beautiful green view. Then she’d set the fucking thing on fire.
Fatigue was overcoming me like a shadowy shroud. I limped back inside, climbed up to the loft bed and closed my eyes again. But I couldn’t sleep.
She was still down there, dancing all alone, her taut, wiry body gyrating around like some deranged spring-wound marionette . . . Go go go!
I looked down. Narcisa was wearing nothing but the pink polka-dot bikini she hadn’t taken off for days now, except to fuck. I watched her as she twisted and turned, writhing and shimmying across my dirty, scuffed-up floor, hurtling through time and space . . . go go go . . . dancing to the earsplitting monkey chatter from the boom box I’d bought her after she traded off my radio for crack. The noise assaulted my ears, torturing my nerves, making me want to kill. I wondered if she knew or cared that I wanted to kill her.
Finally, she turned the music off and there was silence . . . Sweet, blessed silence . . . I tried to fall back into the pillows and rest. But it wasn’t a peaceful silence. This new silence was haunted by the creepy Crack Monster and its desperate, manic demands for attention, movement, action . . . Go go go go go!
I listened to the sounds of her crashing and banging around down there. She was going mad, right below my head, dragging the remnants of my wrecked, soot-blackened furniture across the floor like a paranoid, psychotic wrecking crew; scuffing, breaking, dismantling, destroying my home, building her crooked little barricades to hide from the Shadow People.
The clumsy, frantic noises seemed to be rattling outward from the hellish core of her mind—punctuated by the sound of her little red Cricket lighter, flicking, flicking, flicking in the dark . . . Ssskkk. Ssskkk.
Too creeped out to move, I just lay there, listening.
Ssskkk. Ssskkk.
Silence.
“Cigano . . .”
“Yeah?”
Silence.
“Cigano . . .”
“What?”
Silence.
“Cigano!”
I didn’t answer . . . She’s tweaking . . . Spun . . . Crazed! Shit! Please stop!
“Cig-aa-noo!!!”
“What!?!”
“Where are you?”
“I’m right here.”
“Where?”
“Up in the loft, Narcisa. Where I’ve been the whole time. What th’ fuck?”
Silence.
Crash!
Great! Breaking my stuff again! Fuck! She’s gone completely nuts!
Silence.
Flick. Flick. Ssskkk ssskkk.
Her lighter . . . Smoking another hit. Shit!
Silence.
“Cigano.”
Silence.
“Cigano.”
Silence.
“Cig-aa-nooo!!”
“Shut th’ fuck up, Narcisa!!”
Like a grotesque jack-in-the-box, her startled face appeared at the top of the loft ladder. Her eyes were darting around like maddened houseflies, her features frozen in a cold gray mask of terror . . . Crack paranoia . . . Great! Now what?
I sighed in disgust as she crawled across the bed like a crippled spider.
Without a word, she began examining my tattoos carefully, one by one, checking to see if I was an impostor. I groaned, rolling my bloodshot, sleepy eyes.
She thinks I’m a fucking “clone” again . . . I’ve seen all this before . . . Shit!
Narcisa picked up on my disdain. Sitting down beside me, she lowered her head like a sick parakeet.
“You are tire of me now, Cigano. I know.”
“What makes ya say that, baby?” I ran my hand through her hair.
41. THE GHOST
“THERE ARE MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH, HORATIO, THAN ARE DREAMT OF IN YOUR PHILOSOPHY.”
—Shakespeare
Before I could grab Narcisa in another horny embrace, the room started spinning, slowly at first, then faster, faster. I was going cross-eyed, dizzy, my vision blurry.
Surrendering to fatigue with a sad little grunt, I fell back on the mattress and passed out. I slept for a while. Maybe a whole hour. Or maybe it was only minutes. Time had turned sideways. The world was a dreamlike, fuzzy smudge.
It was the middle of the night, just before dawn, when she poked me on the arm, waking me with a start.
My eyes jumped open. “Wha’ . . . wassup?”
Narcisa was sitting on the bed beside me, looking at me with a dazed expression. “Come down an’ watch me dance, Cigano.”
“Por favor, baby, I just gotta rest a little more, just a few more minutes, okay?”
Without a word, she slithered back down the ladder. Just as I was losing consciousness again, her pallid, ash-blackened hand appeared beside my head.
The long, spindly white crack-claw grabbed and tugged at the corner of my blanket, slowly, strategically snatching it from atop my defeated carcass.
I couldn’t move. I just lay there, wondering what time, what day it was.
It was cold and damp and uncomfortable on the dirty, bare mattress . . . Whatever happened to all the sheets here? There was no time to do laundry anymore; no time for anything but tending to Narcisa like a sick, retarded child.
I knew she was down there, sitting like a mangy dog on the cold, dirty floor, studying her ash-gray, raccoon-faced image in a sliver of broken mirror . . . Using my blanket as a floor pillow for her lazy, self-centered ass while she smokes herself stupid . . . Shit!
I stuck my head over the ledge, like a shy turtle peering out of its shell, looking down at a depressing, self-absorbed display of unrestrained narcissism running amok.
Finally, my vision dimmed and I fell back again.
Just as I was fading out, I felt another urgent little tapping at my shoulder.
Startled awake, I sat up . . . There she is again! That fucking hand! Bored with lighting the goddamn crack pipe! Waking me up again, for a fuck, a touch of human companionship, warmth, company, money, cigarettes, an argument, something, anything to lift her up out of whatever deadly pit she’s smoked herself into, sucking on that filthy little funnel to hell . . . What now?
Coming to, I looked around in the clammy predawn stillness.
Silence. Dimness. Nothingness.
It wasn’t Narcisa in the bed with me.
It was something. But it wasn’t her!
What the fuck?
Baffled and disoriented, I leaned over the loft and looked down.
There she was. Still sitting in the same place, transfixed before her little mirror scrap, staring at herself, obsessed, lost in her own private hell.
Then, I felt it again! “Arrr
ggh!” I let out a stifled yelp.
Fuck! Some ghostly hand, touching me! Ugh!
Wide awake, I could feel the goose bumps covering my body in a crashing wave of panic as I scrambled down the ladder. Narcisa barely glanced up as I threw on my clothes and stumbled for the door . . . Gotta get outa here, go for a cup of coffee, anything . . . Gotta get away from this madness . . . Gotta breathe!
Just as I was about to close the door behind me, I turned and looked at her.
That’s when I saw it. I saw it in her face.
The same creepy something that had just awakened me out of a sound sleep with a scream and a chill . . . Jesus! She’s really done it now! She’s finally managed to open some horrible portal to hell and conjured up an ugly spirit of self-obsession. She’s unleashed some heartless, inhuman, hateful phantom, unleashed a demon into herself, into the room, into the world! Shit!
Narcisa was still sitting on the floor, staring at herself in the mirror as I picked up my case of heebie-jeebies and bolted out the door, without looking back.
I ran downstairs, got on the bike and sped off to the corner paderia.
Sitting down at the counter, instantly I felt better, surrounded by busy normal people having their normal morning coffee there, on their way to work. Comfort. A normal world of normal things. Old Roberto Carlos music playing on the radio. Buses and taxis rumbling down the street. The sun emerging into a cloudy 6 a.m. sky.
Sipping my coffee, I lit a cigarette and stared into space, fretting, trying to muster the courage to go back and rescue Narcisa from the Crack Monster.
I knew I had to try to save her. But how?
I called for another cafezinho. I smoked another cigarette. I worried. I prayed. I stared off into space some more, thinking.
I’d known right from the start what I’d signed on for with her.
Didn’t I? I’d been warned . . . Why the fuck didn’t I just listen to her then?
I could still hear the pleading sincerity of Narcisa’s words.
“You don’ wanna get involve with me, Cigano. I am de Crack Monster gee-rool now! I can really fock it up de life to you, brother, got it?”
I’d gotten it. I thought.
But I’d always had plenty of her overpowering Love Drug in steady supply, blinding me, seducing me, overpowering my reason.
Now, I realized I’d only thought I was ready for whatever came with it.
I remembered my own words that night, as I’d laughed off her shy little warning . . . “Long as I’m going to hell, baby, I may as well try to beat the devil . . .”
Now, I knew the sinister occult forces were really closing in.
42. EXTREME NARCISSISM
“THE EDGE. THERE IS NO HONEST WAY TO EXPLAIN IT, BECAUSE THE ONLY ONES WHO REALLY KNOW WHERE IT IS HAVE GONE OVER IT.”
—H. S. Thompson
After three cups of sweet black coffee and half a dozen cigarettes, I got on the bike and rode back. Climbing the creaking wooden stairs up to my flat, I could have sworn I saw a fuzzy, indistinct shadow darting around in the darkened hallway. Spooked, heart pounding, I held my breath and opened the door. There Narcisa sat. Right where I’d left her an hour ago.
Still sitting in front of the same broken mirror . . . Playing around with that fucking crack pipe . . . Opening the gates to hell again and again . . . Jesus!
I stood in the middle of the room and glared at her. She looked up. Somehow, she seemed a bit more human in the soft morning light.
“What’s up, Narcisa?”
“Last hit . . .” She loaded up the pipe.
“Great . . . Fucking hell . . .” I scowled and turned away, muttering.
I limped out onto the balcony. Brooding miserably, I avoided saying what was on my mind. I lingered there, thinking, worrying, watching the bright red sun of another sleepless morning emerging in the murky sky, like a cigarette point burning through a sickbed sheet. I could hear squawking parrots and the distant rumble of the awakening urban machine.
After a while, I peeked back inside.
Narcisa sat in her ash-strewn corner, mumbling strange, incoherent words, babbling, conjuring up dark spirits.
I stood there in silence, shaking my head, watching her slap at the invisible phantoms nipping at her flesh. She was coming undone, a demented, demon rag doll.
With a heavy sigh, I limped back inside.
I plopped down on the sofa, holding my head in my hands.
After an eternity, I looked up and said it. I begged it. “Baby, please! Just go up to bed and lie down for a while. Por favor! You just gotta try to get some sleep now . . .”
“I don’ gotta do nothing you e’say!” She snarled at me. “You only wan’ for me to go e’sleep so they can kill me, an’ then you got you revengence!”
My mouth fell open. “What?!”
“Hah! You think I so e’stupid, hein?” She recoiled, moving across the floor like a shell-shocked crab. “I know all about it you conspiriation together with them for finish me! Well, fock you an’ go to e’sheet, seu velho otário! I never gonna go e’sleep around you focking Shadow Peoples! Nunca!! Got it!?”
“What Shadow People? It’s just me here, man. This isn’t even you talking, Narcisa. It’s the demons, the crack. It’s all in yer mind! If ya just try to sleep and get some rest they’ll go away. I promise! Just try it, por favor . . .”
“Menos! Shut de fock up an’ e’stop make all these focking pressure on me! I don’ wan’ no e’sleep! E’sleep is for de old peoples, e’stupid peoples, retard peoples, got it? I no got de time, Cigano! Too much e’speriment an’ research for do . . . An’ don’ try an’ make no more you sabatoge on me! I know what you up to, cara!”
“I’m not up to anything, Narcisa! Jesus, just look at yerself, man. You’re a fuggin’ mess! Maybe ya oughta think about getting some help and putting that shit down, before ya end up goin’ nuts and killing yerself . . .”
“Hah! I wish I can kill myself, Cigano!” Her big, anguished eyes blazed.
I sighed. There was a long, uncomfortable silence.
Finally, she broke it with a dark whisper. “Narcisa know you working together with them!” She fixed me with a hateful look that froze my soul.
I could feel gooseflesh on my arms. I knew that look. The same look that poor, mad drunk woman used to give a frightened little boy named Ignácio.
“Arrrggghhh!! You think I so e’stupid, hein? Tá bom! Just e’say it to me! Which one of them send you to kill me, hein? E’say it to me, porra! Don’ be so focking covarde! Got de balls to look me on de face an’ do it when I awaked!”
What the fuck? Oh, God, please help her!
She fell silent again as I prayed . . . Help us, God! Por favor!
Then, with a tone of iron-fisted authority, she barked like a seal. “Food! Fome! Foo-oood! Na-oow, Cigano, hungry hungry, go go go!”
As I fixed her a sandwich, Narcisa ranted on about the Plot, a big, sinister Satanic Plan. Slipping into a greasy bog of panic and despair, I stood there in the little kitchen, hiding, worrying, contemplating my situation.
Is this my fucking life now? Am I a slave to the Crack Monster, like her?
I knew she wanted nothing to do with my suggestions to get help. How many times had I begged her to let me take her to treatment, or to an NA meeting? Somewhere. Something. Anything. It was no use. Narcisa always rationalized her delusional behavior by insisting it was all a part of some big Satanic Mind Control plan.
I’d thought my feet were planted in a solid bedrock of my own recovery. I’d told myself I was grounded enough to reach into the pit when the time came and pull Narcisa out.
But now I was losing my footing, getting sucked down with her.
Now the Curse was taking a bitter toll.
My life was reduced to a sordid little comedy. Four-hour shifts of worried solitude and prayer, punctuated by two-hour stints spent together, fucking like angry baboons.
Or fighting. As if anything we fought about mattered anymore.
43. CRASH DAY
“THERE ARE SOME REMEDIES WORSE THAN THE DISEASE.”
—Plutarch
In a world of untold uncertainty, one thing was always certain. When Narcisa didn’t sleep, nobody slept. The Crack Monster unfailingly saw to that.
According to her bulletproof armor of irrational rationalization, all her insane behavior was just part of some big, elaborate Pact she claimed to have made with Lucifer. And now, she announced, Satan had brought me to her at last, like a cat dropping a crippled mouse at the feet of the one who serves it.
According to Narcisa, I was her new mind-control slave. Her zumbí.
Handing her the sandwich, I wondered.
As I watched her devour the food like a hungry dog, I thought back to when we’d first met, how she’d been fixated on the idea that I was the Dark One himself, come to collect for delivering the goods with her Golden Banker. Since the husband was history now, maybe I was the next sacrificial lamb. Still, I knew that the sandwich and all the mad, delusional ranting that went before it were a prelude to imminent relief; a sign that her mission was about to expire. Narcisa was coming in for a blessed crash landing. I knew it the minute she asked for food.
As she babbled on, I bit my tongue, waiting for her to run out of fuel.
I prayed as she whirled around the room, spitting out curses, knocking things asunder. I was waiting the demons out till they would suck away her last frantic burst of energy; waiting for the Crash. I lived for the Crash.
Watching as Narcisa began to go glassy-eyed. I sighed with relief as her knees grew wobbly. Then she crumpled to the floor like a dropped puppet, the half-eaten sandwich dangling in her hand and a cigarette burning at her fingers.
She stayed in a comatose state for the next twenty-four hours.
After moving her to the sofa and lying down beside her, I began to relax. As a hot summer rain droned outside the window, I lay there, half awake, savoring the moment like some exotic new drug. It was the first real rest for me in a long time too. But, tired as I was, just lying there beside Narcisa, inhaling her wild, intoxicating essence with every sleepy breath, it was too much to bear.
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