“Armadilha!” Caridade winced. “Me seein’ much betrayal from bot’ a dem. Sneakin’ backhand trickin’. Ya Narcis-sara, her gots ta beware dem peoples!”
The old lesbian was the one, she inferred, who had been feeding Narcisa to Doc, selling him information about all our comings and goings—details she must have picked up from Narcisa’s innocent boasts. It all made sense. Narcisa never trusted anyone—but when she did, it was always the wrong one. Broken picker.
Caridade spoke on, making reference to Narcisa’s mother and other things. It was all a big tangled web of treachery, deception and danger . . . What a fucking mess! God help us!
My head was reeling as the old woman rested a cool, gentle hand on my arm. “Don’ ya be vex now, hey, young gypsy boy. Dem dark works don’ got no kinda power! No power a’tall! Because ya carries de mos’ high protection.”
I could feel tears welling up in my eyes again as her smile warmed my soul.
“Only God love gots real power! Don’ ya gots no doubt! Salve Ogum!”
Then, she stopped talking. Silence. An unseen portal closed. She shut her eyes. When she opened them again, they were changed. Sedate. Her whole presence seemed to have deflated. It was done. I sat looking at her, feeling dazed and drained.
Caridade nodded and smiled. “Have you understood what the Vovó told you?”
It was a tired, meek little voice—completely different in tone and inflection from the one who had just spoken with such unearthly power and authority. This timid, sad-faced old woman sitting before me now seemed even unsure of the things that had been channeled through her.
“Have you understood the messages?” she asked again with a tired look.
I nodded, pulling a handkerchief from my pocket and wiping away my tears.
She reached over and hugged me again, with a formal ceremonial kiss on either cheek. Without touching my face. Like a spirit.
Then, very slowly, she stood up and shuffled away.
85. CATCH 22
“AND AS HE, WHO WITH LABORING BREATH HAS ESCAPED FROM THE DEEP TO THE SHORE, TURNS TO THE PERILOUS WATERS AND GAZES.”
—Dante
Now I knew for sure. The Crack Monster was killing Narcisa, and driving her mad on her way out. Desperate, I prayed for a break. Something had to give.
They say to be careful what you pray for, ’cause you might just get it. I would soon come to understand exactly what that meant. After my visit to Caridade, I began to pray for Narcisa harder than ever. Then, one day, out of the blue, all my prayers were answered at once.
Narcisa decided to quit smoking crack. Just like that. Cold turkey.
But this kick was worse than ever before. After endless days and nights of fist-clenching, teeth-grinding abstinence, and all the nightmarish emotional turmoil and abuse that always went with it, I came home one afternoon to find her sitting on my sofa, talking on my phone, calm as a lizard basking in the sun. An unattended cigarette was burning a smoldering hole in the cushion. Speaking an odd language I didn’t recognize at first, Narcisa was laughing, chattering away as if I weren’t there. In a flash, I realized she was speaking some sort of broken Hebrew.
What the fuck? Jesus! It must be that John Gold, the gringo banker! Her husband! And she’s having a grand old time talking long-distance to him in God-knows-where! Bitch!
I couldn’t believe my ears. She was roping her victim in all over again, and doing it right under my nose this time! On my telephone! Running up a huge long-distance bill for me! Bitch!
I stood frozen at the door, listening in mute shock, watching the whole bad movie unfold as she yapped on, cool as a cat, cooing and waxing with amorous, cynical charm . . . Laying another trap for the poor bastard!
I stared at her, fists clenching, my heart pumping with betrayal . . . Bitch! Blackhearted whore! I wanted to yank the phone line out of the wall and strangle her with it. But I swallowed my rage like a bubbling black cancer. Seething, I watched her lips move, like a pair of vipers slithering across my heart, as she spun her poisonous web. As she switched from Hebrew to a mixture of Portuguese and English, I realized the shift was intentional . . . Dirty bitch! She’s doing this shit on purpose! She wants me to understand every word she’s saying!
Like a knife in my back, I got it all. No excruciating detail was spared; he’d send her a ticket to Paris, where he was going soon on business, and then they’d have some quality time together; a second honeymoon . . . Vile, detestable whore! Gold-digging, backstabbing, bottom-feeding, bloodsucking vampire! Harpy! Succubus! Snake! Medusa! Witch! Monster!
My guts were cold as the bottom of a grave by the time she said goodbye with a phony Judas kiss and hung up. As she looked up at me, I lowered my head, feeling bitter tears of frustration, betrayal, horror and loss rolling down my face.
“Why you make all these cry for, hein, Cigano?” Her cold eyes taunted me. “You look just like a little gir-ool! Hah! E’stupid old trick! You think these e’sheet life with you got any meaning for me? Fala serio, porra! You really think I gonna e’stay around here an’ be you focking girlfriend, de cheap whoo-ore for you ugly old self after I e’stop e’smoke de crack, hein? Hah! Think again, e’stupid!”
Feeling lost, powerless, unable to speak, I was that little five-year-old ghost again, watching his mother in a spitting, hissing, violent, drunken rage, tearing up the house, the furniture, the world; tearing his soul to little scraps of treachery and terror and abandonment, again and again and again. I could hear a strange, childlike voice leaving my mouth; tiny, helpless little words, like albino moths fluttering up from an open casket.
“I know it’s been rough sometimes, princesa, but . . . I love you . . .”
She threw her head back and howled. “Love? Hah! I never gonna love you, Cigano! Nunca! You don’ mean nothing to me! I wanna young man what got a future, no some e’stupid old walrus like you! Fala serio! Hah! I love only my husband, e’stupid! An’ now I am clean an’ e’sober, I gonna get ever’thing back! Thank you come again! Next?”
Her spiteful grin curled up into a cruel, self-satisfied sneer. “Ahh! Two week in Paris, together with my young, handsome, rich husband! Hah! Is so-oo romantico de Narcisa life, hein?”
I gawked at her, openmouthed; the way you look at some horrible tragedy unfolding, and wondered what could possess her to treat anyone so badly.
She cracked her bubble gum and studied me like a dying fly. “Why you make de long face like e’stupid old dog, hein? If you really love me, then you e’suppose to be happy for me. Now I gonna get it back, all de good life with my beautiful young husband. You e’suppose to e’say congratulation to me!”
Congratulations? I stood there, shaking my head.
She glared back, then started screaming. “But no! You no happy! You so falso, so hipocrita, you only wanna see me fail, wanna see me die, e’same like all de other e’stupid clones peoples, cuz you all full up with de inveja!”
Envy?!? That’s it! Bitch!
I snapped. “Inveja? Fala serio, porra! You gotta be fuckin’ kidding! Envy YOU? Gimme a fuckin’ break, ya pathetic whore! You ain’t looking fer a husband, ya frigid little two-faced liar! Ya just want an easy full-time trick!”
Smirking like an evil lizard, she started humming, trying to drown out my words like a belligerent little brat. “La la, I can’ hear nothing what you e’say, la la . . .”
Red-faced, I cranked up the volume. “Yeah? Well hear this, bitch! You got th’ fuckin’ balls to sit here and run yer foul trap about LOVE!? Eu hein! You’re a snake, Narcisa, a fuckin’ worm! Yer not even human anymore!”
She jumped up from the sofa and began dancing, shaking her ass as she scampered around, ransacking my apartment, throwing her things into her knapsack, singing her wicked little song. “Can you show me—de exit—to these e’sheet place—cuz I tire tire tire of Cigano—Tire tire of e’stupid monkey face you you you, la la la . . .”
I watched in disgust as she packed. It was really over. This time she wouldn�
�t be back. I knew it, and I was relieved; and I was devastated . . . So this is it! Fuck! It’s finally done.
“Okey, Cigano!” She sashayed over and stood in front of me, zipping her bag shut. “Now I gonna go de Casa Verde an’ e’stay there, together with my poet friend an’ all de e’squatter peoples, de punk anarchist peoples, my peoples, my familia. I gonna wait there for my husband send me de tickets, an’ then I gonna go away, fly fly away to Paris! ‘I wanna fly away. I wanna get away, I wanna fly-yyy awa-ayy!’ Merci boucoup come again! Next? Hah!”
Speechless, I stood watching her, waiting for the torture to end.
It didn’t. “Eiii, why you look so sa-aad for, Cigano, hein? You e’suppose to be happy now, mané!” She was snickering, gloating, digging the knife in deeper and deeper. “Now you got ever’thing back again, you nice clean apartamento, e’same de way was all de thing for you before de crazy who-ore come an’ destroy you life, hein? Hah! Happy now?”
Bitch! I stared at her with poison pumping into my heart.
Her malevolent grin was a postcard from hell. “Okey, gotta go now! Bye-bye, Cigano. Hah! Next? Thank you come again!”
Then, Narcisa walked out; right out of my life. Again.
86. THE LAST STRAW
“THE ONLY VICTORY IN LOVE IS FLIGHT.”
—Napoleon
Days dragged by with no word. I went and tried to see her at the Casa Verde. Every day, I would sit on the bike out front while her friend Pluto went inside, trying to persuade her to come out and talk to me alone, away from her stoned-out cronies and her hateful lesbian sidekick. But each time, Narcisa told him to tell me she was “busy.”
Bitch! Busy doing what? Busy sniffing glue in the dark . . . Busy my dick!
The few times I did manage to catch her alone, away from her man-hating twin, Narcisa was always too fucked-up to make any sense. And when she wasn’t whacked out of her skull on wine, paint thinner or glue, she was colder than ever, distant, sullen and indifferent; shut down.
Finally, one day she came out and invited me in—ostensibly to look at some of her new “artwork.” Of course, it was just another emotional booby trap. As soon as we got inside, though, Narcisa turned on me like a viper, insulting me loudly, mercilessly, viciously, trying to humiliate me in front of her bull dyke guru and an audience of slack-jawed bottom-crawlers.
She aired out our dirtiest laundry, right in front of a room full of stoned-out, lice-infested bums. I looked around at all her “good friends” and my heart folded in half . . . Drooling, incoherent, shit-babbling, garbage-picking, bottom-feeding losers . . . Lunatics . . . Goons . . . Nihilists . . . Anarchists . . . Rats! All laughing at me like the cackling, heckling demons of hell!
This fucking does it! I’m finished!
Seething with hurt and humiliation, I turned and stomped out the door. I rode straight home and packed. Then, I did what I do best. I beat it. I took off running, leaving Rio and Narcisa behind—not caring if I’d ever see her again.
For a moment, out on the highway, just before the final turnoff to the long stretch of bridge connecting Rio to the highway north, I had a sudden powerful urge to turn around. I could feel my little travel valise strapped to the bike behind me, right where Narcisa used to sit.
Stop! Go back! Just turn around and go back to her! Go go go go go!
I slowed down and considered my options.
I could beg her . . . Bribe her . . . Threaten her . . . Kidnap her . . . Sedate her . . . Kill her and have her stuffed . . . Whatever! Anything to get her back and start over.
But I knew it was too late. There was no going back. Even if I stayed, even if I could coax her into another temporary cease-fire, soon she’d be stomping on my heart with her big dirty Nazi boots again, threatening my life, using me as a doormat for the Crack Monster.
It never ends with this horrible, demented whore! Just keep going, man! Go!
I hit the throttle and picked up momentum again. Soon I was riding through the countryside, speeding farther and farther away from Rio.
At the end a long day’s ride, I stopped. I parked and looked around, and there I was: far from Narcisa, all alone in Vitória, Espírito Santo, a medium-sized coastal city, a few hundred miles north of Rio. I rented a room, just a block from the port, right in the middle of the seedy old red-light zone, and just a quick ride to a beach.
A good enough place to lick my wounds in the quiet solitude of the damned.
Journal entry: July 2010—Vitória, Espírito Santo—Feels like I’m kicking heroin all over again here, sitting in this godforsaken hole on the forgotten edge of nowhere.
But this is worse than any heroin kick. Worse than anything! At least when you put the dope down, you can just walk away, and that’s that. You never have to see the evil shit again.
Not this. This is like having a perpetual junk supply strapped to your nutsack, with a mainline straight to your heart, feeding you cruel, taunting little doses that are never enough, always whispering to you, calling you back, all day long, every day . . . “Come back, Cigano, I miss you, mano, come back, come back home now, come back come back, go go go go go . . .”
Even far away from her fiendish sphere now, I’m fucked beyond fucked! Because I finally know the whole ugly, devastating truth: that no psychic vampire or ghoul or hobgoblin or zombie or ghost could ever enter my experience, my life, my reality, my home, my mind, which I haven’t invited in somehow, somewhere deep in the core of me. That’s why Narcisa came creeping into my life like a phantom echo of recurring trouble and trauma, drama and doom. Because she really is Nobody. Nobody but the sum total of me! The sweaty, greasy, angry straitjacket of Self.
No way out! I can’t even blame her for all this heartache. Because she is me and I am she, and that’s all this crazy little spectacle ever was—just a dirty old broken mirror’s reflection of my own deepest wounds. This screaming hissing snapping Snake Woman, this Medusa, this Monster, this Boogie Man, this Nobody, this Nothing is nothing but a physical out-picturing of my own inner landscape of troubles and traumas, memories and worries and wounds.
My memories. My mind. My own wounded, unhappy psychic perceptions.
That snarling, angry face staring back at me in the mirror is the face of the Curse! And if I ever want to change this fucked-up nightmare I’ve been living in all my life, I’ve got to find some way to alter my own reality as my mind sees it, really sees it, as I really perceive everything, right down to my deepest innermost being. Easier fucking said than done! No wonder Ogum is depicted as the warrior. This is a relentless, bloody battle, just like the one I lost to drugs.
Narcisa is just another drug now; my latest drug of choice. But was there ever really any choice? No. Never. Even now, after I’ve gotten away from the source and supply of the drug, the longing, the craving, the addiction itself lives on. Stronger than ever. I try and satisfy the compulsion with these small-town hookers. Pathetic! Trying to find comfort in sex, where there can be no love, only dependence. Addiction. Want.
July 18, 2010—Vitória—I’m a tired, lonesome old ghost again, staggering around, lost and haunted in the dirty gray fog of another dreary nightscape, another baffling maze of cold, lonely solitary shadows, limping along the rain-slick streets of another tired, faceless industrial port town, all alone again. Shit.
So close to Rio, it feels like I’m a million miles away in this sleazy sexual exile from my bombed-out, ravaged little world back home. Seeking relief where there can be no relief, haunting the sleepy ruins of another heartless, homeless nowhere, trudging through this rusty old seaport, where the ships lay rotting at anchor, like dark, unfathomable shapes conjured from my own desolate memory banks.
I look up at the crumbling, weather-damaged buildings of sleeping souls as I pass in shadows, walking hand in hand with these little dockside whores, making our way to cheap hotel rooms by the port, little red-lit pinpoints of rented love and artificial warmth in a cold, dingy landscape of empty coastal winter. Why do they always have
those irritating little red lights everywhere, even inside the rooms, I wonder? Just to remind you you’re in a whorehouse? Just in case you forgot, maybe, as another strange chick starts to take off her clothes, pulling a rubber out of her purse and throwing it down on another anonymous bed?
Wandered into a half-dead boteco on a bleak, salty, damp corner, another sad little space of tired-looking sailors and aging hookers. I lingered at the bar awhile, just to pass the time, waiting to find another girl to pass the time with some more. Making love to pass the time; the time that makes the love pass. But there’s no such luck. The love doesn’t pass, and the time is what’s eating me alive here.
Later, I’m plodding down the street with another one. We turn a corner, and there’s this big black dog standing at the crossroads, like a spirit shadow of some misplaced Macumba statue. Weird. He’s just standing there, looking around, as if debating which way to go next. A freight train blasts through the night, traveling fast between the dim warehouse alleys by the docks. The train passes and the dog takes off, trotting up the street at a steady, determined clip, like he’s late to an appointment he just remembered or something.
The whore tugs at my sleeve, breaking the spell, and we enter a place of muted yellow light. We trudge down to the end of a long, dark corridor dotted with little red lightbulbs, all glowing like some eerie old funhouse Tunnel of Love. At a reception window of thick, blurry Plexiglas, a hard-faced little man with eyes like bullets demands ten bucks, then shoves a key through the slot, and it’s on: another hour’s worth of cheap fireworks for another fifty, until we’re both worn-out, tired of grappling with each other on the sweaty black vinyl mattress.
Afterward, she gets up and starts getting dressed, while I stand in the bathroom, washing my dick off in the sink, glancing back over my shoulder, just to make sure she isn’t rifling through my pants or something. But she’s cool. Just another honest hardworking girl, peddling what the Good Lord gave her—not some crooked, crack-smoking, soul-sucking, merciless little bandida like Narcisa. We walk out together, and part ways on the corner with the usual quick, obligatory peck on the cheek, then off she goes, back into the whorehouse. I make my way down another clammy, deserted avenida of shadows and late-night silence, where people sleep in dark rooms all around me, dreaming of nothing. Nothing at all. Shit. What a fucking life!
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