Narcisa

by Jonathan Shaw

  This is it. The End. End of the line. And I’m still here. Broken. Damaged. Wrecked beyond repair or redemption. A pathetic old sex junkie looking for a fix!

  I trudged on through that deathly, dark circus of broken souls. Finally, giving up on finding Narcisa, I spotted one who looked half alive. I made the approach, and off we went through a dim little bar and up a wobbly metal spiral staircase.

  After a lackluster ten-minute fuck, I zipped up my jeans and beat it out of the dank, greasy little cubicle, longing for air . . . Thank you come again!

  Wiping the sweat from my face, I wandered over to an open-air food stand. The old mulatto gave me a knowing grin as he handed me a stale sandwich that smelled of rotten eggs and rotten sex. I limped over to a sidewalk table and sat, watching the worn-out, slimy old sex parade slithering by; saggy, tragic-faced whores and confused-looking insect droves of hungry men. Wage slaves. Worker ants out on the town, searching for a quick, cheap grunt.

  All of a sudden, a booming, crabby voice, like a giant spider talking to a fleet of flies, came bashing through the shadows. Some beer-drunk moron had turned up the bar TV to watch the political debates for the upcoming presidential elections.

  I winced at the candidates’ faces as they spoke, spewing their incoherent political double-talk into the night. They reminded me of a bunch of lousy actors, reading bad dialogue from a boring old soap opera script.

  What the fuck are these shit-breathing, sanctimonious ass-clowns talking about?

  I couldn’t for the life of me understand a word they were saying.

  Taxes. Sewers. Education. Inflation. Labor laws. Infrastructure. Child prostitution. Health care. Swine flu. Shit-eating. Rat-fucking. Public safety. Order. Progress. Jobs. Drugs. Culture. War. Peace. Change. Hope.

  Bullshit. Horseshit. Catshit. Dogshit. Ratshit. Batshit. Flyshit.

  Death was all I could see and hear. I gawked at the woman candidate’s angry reptilian face and I shuddered in revulsion. The smug, pugnacious, short-haired old crab who would soon become Brazil’s first female president looked as dreadful as the most decrepit old whore staggering by on the sidewalk.

  I looked out over the stumbling legions of worn-out, drunken floozies, tottering around on their battered whorehouse heels. It was all the same shit. Shit-talking, shit-eating, lies, betrayal and death. That’s all there was to look forward to.

  I got up and crept into another whorehouse. A snaggletoothed guy with a decent selection of stolen cell phones was working his game at the bar counter in there. I sat down in a dark corner, looking over the purloined devices, waiting for him to finish snorting his next line of coke, hoping to hurry up and pay him off so I could have a cheap phone to give Narcisa, if I ever found her again.

  It would be nice to stay in touch with her somehow, I mused, ignoring the concept that a cell phone, like anything else, wouldn’t last a fucking night with the Crack Monster. Finally, Snaggletooth slid up beside me at the bar, chewing on his words like some furious, hell-bound, nocturnal rodent. I handed him a ten spot and pocketed a shiny pink Motorola with a glittery plastic heart sticker on the back.

  Some unfortunate whore would be incommunicado now. Oh well.

  Out on the street, two young hookers stumbled along in shiny new high heels and skimpy, tipsy rags of glittery nothing. Holding hands, shrieking in drunken delight, they skipped across a puddle of bum-vomit in the greasy cobblestone road, like a pair of schoolgirls playing hopscotch. In their wake, an obese mulatto whore waddled past like a hideous, crippled human garbage truck. Tired-out fuck music blared from a pair of weather-damaged speakers beside me; an earsplitting avalanche of hellish, nonsensical monkey-spew.

  I was done.

  I knew Narcisa would rather die than end up in this place. Time to go.

  I walked off down the road, jumped on my bike and headed out the way I came.

  Riding away from the decrepit old fuck-jungle, past the sullen clusters of undernourished killers and thugs who patrol its shadowy outskirts like gangs of toothless barracudas, I wondered again where on earth Narcisa could be.

  57. BROKEN PICKERS

  “WE ARE ALL BORN MAD. SOME REMAIN SO.”

  —Samuel Beckett

  As the days oozed by, I worried about Narcisa; but on another level, I knew it was a blessing for me that she was gone; a rare chance to rejoin the world for a moment.

  It had been months since I’d seen any of my friends. The next day, I called Luciana. She asked me if I’d been away traveling again. Over the phone, I gave her a brief rundown. She got it. That’s why it’s good to have friends. They get it. Friends are like God’s way of making up for the fucked-up families people like Narcisa and I got. I was grateful for the few I had. And I really missed Luciana.

  She told me to meet her at the late-afternoon AA meeting we used to go to over in Copacabana. It turned out to be a fine idea. When I arrived, she greeted me with a warm hug. We sat in our regular corner. The coffee and homemade snacks were good, and the meeting was inspiring. Some guy was talking about the misadventures of his active addiction. His ribald war stories made me chuckle. I laughed long and hard, despite a dull, lingering heartache.

  It felt good. I hadn’t laughed in quite some time, I realized. It was liberating. The laughter of identification—the best kind. Laughing at yourself is like strapping on a clown nose and thumbing it at the Curse.

  As I sat there giggling, Luciana grinned at me.

  I leaned over and nudged her, whispering. “When ya can’t make fun of yourself, it’s kinda like inviting the whole world to do it for you, huh?”

  Even as I said the words, I knew I was still thinking about Narcisa.

  After the meeting, we wandered over to the beach. We sat at a table by one of the little shacks by the waves. It was a warm late-summer afternoon and people were out strolling on the sand. We got a couple of côcos and sat looking out over the ocean, talking and laughing, sipping our coconut water. I wished Narcisa was there to enjoy the evening too. I wished that talking and laughing, or anything at all, could ever come easy with Narcisa.

  Luciana ordered a plate of fried fish. When she offered me a bite, I realized I still had no appetite, despite not having eaten much for days.

  Worried sick about Narcisa again, I fell silent, brooding.

  Luciana got it. “She has you going pretty bad, hey, Ignácio?”

  I shrugged. “It’s that obvious, Lu?”

  She pursed her lips and grinned. “Takes one to know one, baby.”

  I laughed. “Oh yeah, I almost forgot. What was his name? Santiago, right?”

  “Ha! You got a pretty good memory for an old dope-head . . . Aiií, Santiago, meu amor!” She giggled, poking fun at herself.

  That cracked me up. Luciana’s last “true love” had been a dog-eyed, homeless alcoholic scam artist, a comical, tragic little derelict from the favela where she lived. He’d pretty much run her life into the dirt, I remembered, before ending up in a ditch.

  She stifled another sad little grin, shaking her head. “We sure do know how to pick some winners, hey, Ignácio?”

  “Yeah, well, they say people like us got broken pickers. But it’s strange . . .”

  She shot me an inquisitive look.

  I sighed. “This girl, Narcisa, I dunno . . . She’s different, Lu.”

  She guffawed. “They all are, man! But even with your broken picker, I can’t wait to meet her. Sounds like my kinda people.”

  After an hour, we parted ways. I went back home.

  No Narcisa.

  I knew I couldn’t afford to think about it. But I did. I reminded myself that worrying is like praying for bad shit to happen. In an effort to keep my mind off all the bad shit, I tried to write for a while, but I couldn’t concentrate.

  Exhausted, finally, I passed out on the sofa.

  A couple of hours later, just before nightfall, I woke up in a cold sweat. My fuzzy thoughts zeroed right in on Narcisa again, wondering where the hell she could be. I tried to
go back to sleep, but I couldn’t. I sat up. I tried to pray. I puttered. I paced. I wrote in my journal again for a while, but I couldn’t focus.

  Just when I thought I’d crawl out of my fucking skin, the phone rang. I jumped up and looked at the screen. . . . Collect call. Thank God! Narcisa!

  Her raspy, crack-ravaged voice was a song of angels . . . Oh, thank Christ! She’s alive! Salve Ogum!! She told me to come and meet her at Arpoador, the big granite rock overlooking the surf at the end of Ipanema Beach.

  I threw on my boots, picked up my keys and hurried out the door.

  Twenty minutes later, I was rolling along the shore. I slowed down and cruised out to the end of the little cobblestone road, looking over the long golden expanse of sand. I could see the giant green hills of São Conrado off in the distance, twinkling across the water. The lights were just coming on in the sprawling hillside shantytowns of Vidigal and its sister community, Chácara do Céu, the favela where Luciana lived in a humble hut with a spectacular view of the ocean. Searching for Narcisa, my eyes scanned the area like a pair of searchlights.

  I stopped and stared at the rocky cove with its giant mounds of granite jutting out into the crashing waves. Swimmers and surfers dotted the water’s surface. Families were sitting around on kangas, talking and laughing at day’s end, drinking cold sodas, beers and fresh lemonade, eating greasy homemade snacks peddled by the ever-present troops of leather-skinned roving beach vendors.

  I started the bike again and rolled along some more, cruising slowly, breathing it all in. Clusters of palm trees rustled in the warm, salt air by the little seaside kiosks selling beer, green coconuts and fried fish. Working-class families were out strolling. Dusky Negro children and teenagers from the neighboring favelas rolled around on the sand. The odd tourist wandering around, looking lost. Local couples out for a walk after work. Distant figures down by the shore, silhouetted against the sparkling waves in the setting sun’s orange reflection.

  No sign of Narcisa anywhere. Just as I was about to ride off, she jumped out from behind a clump of palm trees like a deranged monkey.

  “Perdeu! Surprise attack, Cigano! You dead! Hah! Perdeu! Give it to me de moto, go go, give it to me all you money, you life, go! Ha-ah!”

  I gawked as she stood before me, waving her arms around like a mad, animated scarecrow. Shocked at her sudden appearance, I was even more taken aback at the state she was in . . . Jesus! Fuck! She looks like a fucking train wreck! Shit!

  Narcisa was a demented human rag doll . . . Poor baby! Her face looked like a melting Carnaval mask of the Grim Reaper. Her tall, wiry body contorted in mad, jittery puppet movements as she rattled out a litany of incoherent, ranting, apocalyptic gibberish.

  Her eyes popped. Spittle flew in spasms of soul-shivering crack madness as she grabbed my shoulder, hoisting herself up onto the bike behind me like a wild chattering demon.

  “Ha-ah! I wanna destroy! I am de goddess of Chaos! I am de devil! I gonna destroy these focking place an’ all these e’stupid peoples! Look out, you fockers! I got de neuron detonator inside my brain!” She dug her fingernail into the side of her head. “If I go, ever’body go! These whole e’stupid world finish now, got it?!”

  I held my breath, speechless.

  “Hey, eííí, oííí, Cigano! I wanna get a hamburger, de big fat burger, an’ a giant size milk shake too, go! Go! ’Bora daqui, mano! Anda, vai vaii-ííí!”

  “You got it, princesa!” I exhaled, feeling a sudden gnawing bite of hunger.

  58. TAINTED

  “IF THERE’S A HARDER WAY OF DOING SOMETHING, SOMEONE WILL FIND IT.”

  —Ralph E. Ross

  Feeling as if I’d been locked away in a dark sensory-deprivation chamber for days, weeks, months, a great longing swept through me as I looked out over the beach, remembering how much I missed being outdoors.

  Contemplating the tranquil surroundings, I turned to Narcisa and gave it a shot. “I was just thinking, baby, I kinda wanna go for a quick swim here first . . . Okay?”

  Even on such a long, hot, muggy afternoon—perfect for a dip in the sparkling blue summer waves—I knew it was a risky proposition. I didn’t really expect it to be okay. It was rarely okay with Narcisa if she didn’t get her way immediately and without question.

  To my surprise, her eyes lit up.

  “Sim sim!! Ti-bum! Ti-bum! Ya-asss, I wanna go for de e’swimming, Cigano! Yeh! Perfect, Max! E’swim e’swim! Ti-bum! Ti-bum! Now! Go! Go!”

  Gratitude filled my heart as I maneuvered the bike over by the edge of the big rock. I got off, stripped down to my underwear and headed toward the water, as she threw her filthy jeans to the ground beside the motorcycle. Thankfully, she was still wearing the bottom of her pink polka-dot bikini.

  Narcisa charged out onto the sand, flinging her shirt at me as she passed, her perfect little tits bouncing like bare 100-watt lightbulbs in the setting sun.

  “Wha’ de fock you looking, hein, e’slaves?” She flew past me, scowling at a gang of suntanned adolescents sitting under an umbrella, staring at the weird topless spectacle. “Why don’ you take a focking foto, hein? You too focking e’stupid for know you even alive! Hah! Focking clones! Arrrggghhh!”

  As she ranted off down the beach, curious onlookers gawked at her weird, ghostly white visage. Pretending not to know her, I followed behind at a distance, prepared to step up and defend her if anybody got bold.

  They didn’t, of course.

  Somehow, nobody ever messed with Narcisa. Something just told them she was insane; deranged, off-limits. Tainted. It was uncanny how, for the most part, even the craziest, most fucked-up, most dangerous people always seemed to just stay clear of her. It was as if she were invisible or something.

  Just the week before, I remembered, she’d talked me into giving her a ride in the middle of the night to go cop at the Complexo do Alemão, an unfamiliar, ultraviolent favela deep in the sprawling, dusty backwaters of the Baixada.

  The area had a deadly reputation. But there had been a shoot-out going on at her regular spot. Rather than wait for things to calm down closer to home, she’d insisted on risking her life to score elsewhere. Located somewhere south of hell, the place was a godforsaken, volatile no-man’s-land, which even the most desperate addicts shunned.

  Not Narcisa. She didn’t give a shit . . . go go go!

  After a long, hair-raising ride down the ass end of Avenida Brasil, I could smell the filthy, gargantuan, impoverished hell-pit, even before I saw it. As we entered the notorious complex of tangled favelas, the stench was unbelievable, as if every living soul living there had shit their pants all at once.

  Turing off into the chaotic, septic, raw-brick morass, I steered down into the heavily fortified boca. It was the ugliest slum I’d ever seen. As I cut the motor and coasted forward, I could hear a prolonged flurry of gunshots up ahead, all different calibers, popping away like firecrackers in the dark ghetto sprawl.

  I knew we were in the kind of place where people just disappeared, where your cheap plastic wristwatch is worth more than your fucking life. Concerned for Narcisa’s safety going in there alone, I’d offered to walk with her to the spot and watch her back.

  She gave me a look like a dog sucking on a mango.

  “Y’know . . . just in case . . .” I shrugged.

  She grabbed my shoulders, fixing me with those crazed, blazing eyes, her hot, feral breath licking at my face like hellfire serpent tongues of doom.

  “In case what? There no kinda cases here, bro! Lissen, Cigano, I don’ need you protect me or watching my back in here, got it? You know why? Because ever’body know I don’ got no-thing for loose, okey? Only one thing I got to loose now is you, got it? So now you e’stay here an’ take care for you own self, cuz any bad thing ever happen to you, mano, de Narcisa finish forever, got it? Just you sit an’ wait me here and I gonna be back right now. Go!”

  Before I could utter another word, she snatched the money from my hand and took off running like a rat in a maze,
disappearing into a dark, musty, garbage-strewn alley of memory.

  With a sigh, I followed as Narcisa dashed across the sand like a ragged comet, shooting straight into the water with a blood-curdling whoo-oop.

  Splash!

  Right away it started.

  “Ooohhh, e’sheet! Fock! Brrrrrrrrrrr! Fock fock fock! Porra! Is too much focking cold in here, cold! Arrrggghhhh, e’sheet sheet sheet! Brrrrrrrrrrrr! I am fro-zing to death, come here fast, fast, Cigano! Come here now an’ hold me, go! Go go go!”

  Wading into the shallow, lukewarm cove where she floundered like a drowning porcupine, I wrapped my arms around her pale, scrawny frame.

  She pushed me away, screeching like she’d been stabbed with an icicle.

  “Na-ooo! Left me go, no, no, don’ touch me, get away! You all over wet! Is too focking wet here, Cigano! Oohh! Brrrrrrrrr! Arrrggghh! Fo-ock!”

  “It’s the fucking ocean, baby.” I laughed. “Of course it’s wet, what th’ fuck do ya think? You just told me to come and hold you!”

  “Never mind it whatever thing I e’say, go! Pay no attention at me! I am de crazy bitch, remember? Crazy, in-sane! Gotta go now, go, go! We gotta go-oo, Cigano! Right now, hurry, go go go! Please Cigano, go! Por favor! Bora!”

  Still yelling, she stomped out of the water and stormed across the beach, looking nervous, miserable as a drenched kitten.

  I ran up behind her, dripping wet. “Whaddya wanna do now?”

  “Arrrggghhh! Some other place now, go, go! Naa-oow! Por favor!”

  She spun around and around like a mad, disheveled, drunken dervish. Still laughing, shaking my head, I sprinted back to the bike. Catching up to her a ways down the beach. I yelled her name, but she didn’t seem to hear. That’s when I noticed her staring at something, with a fixed, fearful look of panic slashed across her face. I gunned the motor to get her attention. She snapped out of it and came running over, a nervous, waterlogged little ghost.