New Worlds
Page 12
"Yes. That's all you have left to sell, Nigel. The last aspiration."
"But what about me?" he yelled. "What about after?"
"Try earning a living," Miranda said. "I wish you luck. Really, a lot of luck."
<
~ * ~
A NIGHT ON THE TOWN
BY NOEL K. HANNAN
“El capitalismo convirta a Caracas en un inferno”
— graffiti on Caracas bus station
Miguel is trying so hard to impress her, he really is. He has greased his hair and brushed his teeth—twice, with the new American toothpaste that nanotechnically scours your mouth—and lightly rouged his cheeks. He is wearing his older brother’s favourite outfit (Carlos would kill him if he came back from his school outward bound holiday on Margarita Island and found him wearing it)—nylon and leather parachutist’s boots, baggy cotton pants and skinny-rib black T-shirt showing off his concave stomach and multicoloured Inca sunburst tattoo encircling his navel. He looks gorgeous, like a rich seventeen-year-old alone with a beautiful young woman in his family apartment in Nuevo Caracas should look. And still she is not impressed.
She sits in the moisture-slicked bay window, looking out over the firefly city as the sun is eaten by a storm sky, toying with a narcotic All-Day Sucker, her long brown legs dangling naked from the dramatic split in her halter-necked blood-red ball gown. She does not even flinch as the slam of thunder rocks the city. Maria is eighteen years old and a raven-haired Latin beauty. A year older than Miguel— it may as well be a hundred. She has made an art form of cynicism and world-weariness. The narcotic lollipop that Miguel bought her from a street vendor on their way here should be making her buzz. Instead, it appears to intensify her boredom.
Miguel is desperate. Maria is a goddess, her body curved and voluptuous. He very much wants to return to school on Monday and boast of his sexual adventures—which he will of course, even if he does not bed this impressively unimpressible siren. But the conditions are so right! His botanist parents away on a field trip in the rainforest—no school until Monday morning—a Saturday night city stretching and limbering thirty stories beneath them—his creditocard full and active (praise Jesus!) and his father’s brand-new red Ford Machos “Matador” Special Edition waiting in the basement garage. They can go anywhere and do anything. God, what will it take to make this woman horny?
He slumps in the formocouch and watches her. She slips from the window sill with a bored sigh and is momentarily highlighted by sheet lightning as the storm breaks over Nuevo Caracas, wild photons dopplering her bare shoulders with jungle tiger patterns. She moves toward him with liquid grace, bare feet padding on thick carpet. She kneels at his feet and places her hands firmly on his splayed thighs. He stiffens.
“I need to eat,” she breathes, running her tongue across her glossy lips. A faint whiff of lemon drifts from her breath, the scent of the narcotic.
“Take me to dinner,” she insists, settling back on her haunches like a karate fighter awaiting a bout.
He swallows hard before answering her.
“What would you like to eat, Maria?”
Her dark eyes flare. The first sign of passion he has seen since he brought her here.
“Something special,” she purrs. “Something unusual. Something exotic.”
As she speaks her fingers trace the inside of his thighs. He feels the pressure of her sharp nails through the thin cotton pants.
“Take me somewhere different, Miguel.” It is, he thinks, the first time she has spoken his name. She makes it sound like treacle being poured on velvet. Miguel. Miguel. Miguel.
So, he thinks, let’s recap. Saturday night. Parents in the forest. Carlos on Margarita. Apartment free. City buzzing. Ford Machos “Matador” Special Edition in garage, keycard in pocket. Money no problem. Beautiful, high-as-a-kite Maria Del Fuego in a thigh-split red cocktail dress on her knees—on her knees!—in front of him. There is, of course, as mad as it seems, only one serious course of action.
There are myths and legends that permeate Nuevo Caracas like no other city on Earth. In this place where the rainforest hugs the cyberscraper as it smothers the congested, disease-ridden barrio, the brujo or witch-doctor of the forest tribes is as respected as the Catholic priests who ply their trade from streetside booths, whispering Latin mantras from under smog masks and rain capes. There is a story that Miguel has heard many times and which he is frantically trying to recall the details of now. The story concerns a brujo in the southern part of the barrio that rings the cybercity. The brujo owns a restaurant situated in the abandoned ruin of a nineteenth-century mission church, a tiny collection of crates and candles stuck in wax-encrusted wine bottles, huddled beneath corrugated plastic sheeting. In this “restaurant” the brujo weaves culinary magic that brings the affluent down from their crystal towers to run the gauntlet of muggers and lepers and beggars, of car thieves and body-part bootleggers and army deserters fleeing the war with Ecuador. The brujo accepts no money or creditocards—only trade for things he will find useful, or can trade on. What will Miguel give to him? The dish tonight—for there is only ever one dish on the menu, no choices—will be the mutopargo, an enormous multi-headed, many-finned mutant fish caught upstream in the poisoned Orinoco, where the chemical sprays that help the rainforest survive drain into the water. The fish are resilient and difficult to capture. When they are caught they often remain alive through days out of water as they are brought to the city. Miguel has heard that some are even still living as they arrive at the diner’s table, to be eaten raw like Japanese sushi, a dozen eyes watching mournfully and fins flapping as the knife cuts home. Why would anyone want to partake of such a grotesque and cruel experience? Because the flesh of the mutopargo is the most delicious known to man. It is the food of the rainforest gods.
He stands and puffs out his shallow chest. She gets up and does the same—her plumage is much more impressive. She draws on her red spike heels and is taller than him by a head. He sucks in a breath.
“We will go to see the brujo,” he tells her. Her eyes sparkle—she knows the story. He thrusts one hand into his pocket and closes his fist around the comforting keycard of the Ford Machos “Matador” Special Edition, and he knows now that he has her.
~ * ~
Nuevo Caracas, at night:
Black hardtop rolls by beneath the Ford Machos “Matador” Special Edition’s fat tires. The car corners like a tram and Miguel holds the tiny electronic steering wheel with one casual hand. His other caresses Maria’s naked brown thigh, revealed by the split of the red dress. So smooth, so smooth. She does not complain, nor does she agree to his touch. Ambivalence comes naturally to her.
Nuevo Caracas, at night:
Half the population is nocturnal. As the sun sets and the thunder clouds sweeping in from the forest fast-darken the sky, these creatures scuttle from their daylight boltholes to play or work, whether that work be selling their bodies (or body parts) or preaching infernal Papist damnation to anyone who will listen. The air is thick and damp and heavy with acidic ozone. Not that it bothers Miguel and Maria— the Ford Machos “Matador” Special Edition is equipped with an aerospatial-grade air conditioning system that keeps humidity, temperature and pollution levels within the car to acceptable levels. It is, perhaps, a little chilly. Miguel’s nipples are erect beneath his brother’s T-shirt. As he turns the corner where the polizei are threatening streetdwellers with electric batons, he decides he will see if Maria is similarly affected.
Nuevo Caracas, at night:
The city is a living organism, mutant child of the rainforest, an amoeba split in two, the squalid barrio and the cyberscrapers, with the streets the neutral ground where beggars and bankers can be murdered or raped or hustled by armoured riot-ready polizei, without fear of prejudice. Nuevo Caracas is nothing if not democratic. Bolivar would be proud.
Nuevo Caracas, at night:
The landscape changes as Miguel begins his ascent into the domain of the barrio. T
he Ford Machos “Matador” Special Edition’s massively overpowered engine grumbles sulkily in its restraint mode under the sensuous haunch of the bonnet. Miguel’s foot is barely touching the accelerator. He reluctantly forsakes Maria’s delicate thigh and grips the wheel with both hands, begins to pay more attention to the road.
If a barrio gang emerges from a side street armed with a battering ram made from old crane parts, he will stamp his foot and the Ford Machos “Matador” Special Edition will—stylishly—carry them from nought to sixty in four seconds. The veloured bucket seats press their flesh reassuringly, ready to catch them if the Ford Machos “Matador” Special Edition rears like a stallion making a mad dash for freedom.
“How much further?” Maria whines, shifting in her seat.
Miguel is loath to take his eyes from the road. Street lighting disappeared a few miles back and the Ford Machos “Matador” Special Edition’s powerful headlights spear the dark tunnel of the way ahead, picking out figures moving to either side. They pass a solitary polizei-mobile, parked on a junction with its doors and windows sealed, a single red light glowing weakly on its roof, like the last gas station for a hundred miles. They flash by at speed, into the dead heart of the barrio.
~ * ~
The barrio, at night:
In Nuevo Caracas, money changes hands and business is the order of day and night, the pursuit and accumulation of wealth, whether the vast riches of the interbankers or the savings of the whore hoping to escape the streets. Here in the barrio, there is only one business— the business of day-to-day survival.
The barrio, at night:
The city is alive but the barrio is dead, its heart ripped out by corruption and greed and man’s inhumanity to man. Here life has been made cheap. A child can be sold for a meal. A man can be killed for a bottle of beer. When people have nothing, they have nothing to lose.
The barrio, at night:
Victim of the city, the barrio lies crushed between the cyberscraper and the mountains, compressed by need for that most valuable of commodities, real estate. A thousand people living in the space for a hundred with no power except for that which they might generate through ingenuity or desperation. A thousand people with dead hearts and dead minds and dead lives. A dead city to mirror its neighbour, so very much alive.
~ * ~
“How much farther?”
Miguel swallows hard and prepares to admit that he has no idea. The Ford Machos “Matador” Special Edition has slowed to a crawl and is making its way along steep winding streets choked with debris and the detritus of life in the barrio. Suspicious eyes view him from behind heavy hessian drapes and the paint-smeared windows of old trucks and buses that some of these people call home. He feels that if he stops moving, they will descend on the car like a plague of locusts and strip it of everything of value, including himself and Maria. In the barrio, everything has a value, including things that the city dwellers consider trash. That strange, sad thought terrifies Miguel.
The streets of the barrio are almost deserted, the thunder and lightning driving the people indoors to their shacks and shanties, to cling to their possessions in case the coming torrential rain tries to sweep them away. Miguel needs directions or they will circle this godforsaken place all night, and he knows Maria will not be impressed by that.
Instead, he thinks, she will be impressed by his nonchalance at stopping the car and asking one of the barrio residents for help. He has a small amount of currency in a billfold in his pocket, he knows that these people will want paying for information, and you cannot expect barrio dwellers to accept creditocards! He smiles at the thought as he parks the Ford Machos “Matador” Special Edition by a large black injection-moulded dumpster where the blue glow of a television screen seeps from the edges of a filthy sheet slung over the propped lid. Maria turns to him, horror on her face.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I just need to ask the way.”
And he gets out of the car.
Miguel is a foolish, ill-informed, spoilt youth of the cyberscraper culture. He knows no more of the barrio than the wild stories of the brujo and his ilk. He does not know that there is no reasoning with the people of the barrio when you have something that they want, especially when you are dressed in your older brother’s best clothes and have a beautiful woman by your side. Maria could have told him this, if she were not paralysed with fear. Her family is less affluent than Miguel’s—they live in the borderlands where you can smell the barrio, not just imagine it as a dark horizon or a scattering of twinkling fires in the distance. Maria has arrived home to find barrio kids in her room, rifling through her underwear drawer. She’d thought Miguel knew all this. She’d trusted him. Now, he has turned off the engine of the car, unlocked the door, and got out.
Miguel does not want Maria to know how frightened he is. He feels very vulnerable in his smart borrowed clothes as he approaches the dumpster. The side of the plastic box is painted in psychedelic swirls of luminous paint, cryptic symbols and figures. One resembles the Inca sunburst tattoo on his bare stomach. He fingers the tattoo selfconsciously. He doesn’t know what the tattoo symbolises, he just thought it looked cool. What if it offends a follower of one of the barrio’s myriad religions?
He gingerly lifts the hessian that obscures the dumpster’s lid. A child is inside, sitting crosslegged on a carpeted floor, leaning forward with its face pressed up to a television screen, nose almost touching it. Miguel cannot tell at first if it is a boy or a girl. The inside of the dumpster is strung with cheap Christmas tree lights, thin wires leading from them and the television up to the makeshift power lines sagging from the building next door. The supply is dangerous and unreliable and every few seconds the television picture recedes to a dot and then springs back again, each time apparently changing channel. The child does not seem bothered by this unintelligible assault on its senses.
“.. .stay tuned stay tuned will you open the box or take the money buy the new CoCo-narcobar NOW it’s full of flavour and can help prevent twenty types of cancer Ecuadorian paratroops landed today in northern sectors scandal hits new mining complex on the Orinoco delta stay tuned stay tuned stay tuned... “
Miguel stubs his foot against the dumpster and the child jumps up, an enormous hunting knife in its small hands. Miguel sees now that it is a boy, no more than ten years old, with raggedy clothes, copper hoop earrings and a dirty face. The boy does a double take at Miguel’s clothes, then waves the knife around in front of Miguel’s nose. Miguel jumps back.
“What you want, clown man? You want my ass, huh? Not for sale, clown man. Go somewhere else! Unless you want to speak to my brother.” The boy waves the knife again. Miguel presumes that this is his “brother”.
“I’m not going to hurt you. I just want directions.” Miguel holds up the palms of his hands in a placatory gesture. The boy’s rodent eyes glance from empty hand to empty hand, and he relaxes slightly.
“I just want to watch my television, clown man. Why should I help you?”
Miguel keeps one hand outstretched and digs in the pocket of his brother’s parachute pants with the other, bringing out the thick billfold. The boy’s eyes light up like his television screen.
“What do you want to find in the barrio, then, clown man? Not much in the barrio to interest city types. Girls we got. You want girls, clown man?”
Miguel shakes his head and peels off several notes from the billfold. The boy licks his lips hungrily.
“The brujo, little man. We’re looking for the restaurant of the brujo.”
Standing up to his waist in the dumpster, the boy is a head above Miguel, and looks over his shoulder to the Ford Machos “Matador” Special Edition parked behind him. He can see Maria in the passenger seat. He reaches forward for the money but Miguel pulls it away and the boy almost topples over the plastic rim.
“Directions first. I’m in a hurry.”
The boy clambers from the dumpster, his “brother” still in one hand. He wipes the other hand
three times on his pant leg and offers it to Miguel, giving a slight bow as he does so. Miguel gingerly accepts the greeting.
“Bruno Del Santos El Rodriguez at your service,” says the boy. “You want the restaurant of the brujo, and I am the man to show it you. But it is much too difficult to explain the way. I must come with you.”
Miguel looks at the dirty boy and thinks of his beautiful car and the beautiful woman inside. He finds it difficult to imagine the two pictures in the same frame. But what are his choices? The boy has a big knife and information that he needs. He can only hope that Maria is not too appalled and that later he can clean any stains off the upholstery before his mother and father return.
“Okay,” Miguel says. “But your brother stays here.”
~ * ~
The Ford Machos “Matador” Special Edition roars around the barrio’s narrow streets with greater confidence as Bruno leans forward from the narrow ledge of the car’s back seat and points left and right, giving Miguel precise but, invariably, dangerously late directions. They are climbing into the storm sky, the ground above them thinning in its concentration of shacks and slums as they near the summit of the barrio.