He followed the wall until he came to a gateway, where two muscular young men lounged on folding chairs. One had bat-like wings, too small to be functional; the other had a shaven head crowned by a circle of white lumps—molar teeth—and was drinking a Coke.
Both men carried machine guns.
The man with the teeth wiped his mouth and tossed the can, rattling, into the gutter. That made Tiago wince—back at the landfill, aluminum cans fetched almost two reais per kilo. “Welcome to Nova Brasília,” he said. “What’s your business?”
“I’m a curinga,” Tiago replied, gesturing to his face. “I need a place to stay.”
“He’s a curinga,” the man replied, smiling at his partner, who smiled back. The man with the teeth dropped the smile and glared at Tiago. “We don’t care what you look like, you don’t come into this favela unless you’re on approved business.”
“Approved by who?” Tiago replied. These men wore civilian clothes and carried no identification.
“Comando Curinga,” the man with the teeth replied—Joker Command. It was a name Tiago hadn’t heard before, but it echoed the names of the drug gangs Comando Vermelho and Terceiro Comando—Red Command and Third Command—which were all over the radio. “We took over this favela from the Amigos dos Amigos back in March. And no one goes in or out without our say-so.”
The bat-winged man shrugged. “Nothing personal, kid.”
By reflex, Tiago snagged the Coke can from the gutter as he walked away. But half a block later he stopped.
He had walked all night. His belly rumbled. He had no money and nowhere else to go.
The man with the wings was, at least, not actively hostile.
He looked at the can in his hand.
Then he sat on the curb and took out his Swiss Army knife. Using the can opener, small blade, and corkscrew, he cut and carved and shaped the can’s soft aluminum until it was a bird—a stupid-looking cartoon bird with big round eyes and a spray of shredded aluminum feathers on its head. It was ugly, fragile, and covered with dangerous edges, but kind of adorable.
He went back to the gateway and presented the thing to the bat-winged man. “Here,” he said, “I made this for you.”
“Did you now?” said the bat-winged man, with no visible emotion, but he put out his hand and took it. The one with the teeth frowned at him, but said nothing.
The man turned the stupid little bird over, poked at its beak, and considered it at arm’s length while Tiago’s heart stood still. He expected the man to crush it in his fist and toss it away.
But instead he just grunted, “It’s cute. My girlfriend will like it.”
“So … can I come in?”
“All right,” the bat-winged man said, ignoring his partner’s glare. “And did you say you needed a place to stay?”
Tiago swallowed. “I did.”
The man eyed Tiago for a moment, considering, then scribbled on a scrap of paper. “This is my cousin Luiza’s address. Tell her Felipe sent you.”
Tiago tucked the paper in his pocket. “I don’t know my way around. Can you tell me how to find it?”
* * *
Luiza lived at the top of a “street” so steep, narrow, and twisty that not even a bicycle could traverse it. Tiago’s heart pounded from the climb as much as his nervousness as he rapped on the rusted metal door.
The door was pocked with bullet holes.
“Yeah?” came a voice from within, over the thumping funk music.
“I’m looking for Luiza.”
The door creaked open a finger’s width. One eye peered through the gap. “I’m Luiza.”
“My name’s Tiago. Your cousin Felipe sent me.” He briefly described the circumstances.
The eye regarded him for a moment, then the door closed. There was an extended rattling sound, then it reopened more fully, letting out a blast of music and a sweet whiff of maconha.
Luiza was a girl not much older than Tiago. Thin, with the black hair, medium-dark skin, and prominent cheekbones of one with a lot of indigenous heritage, she looked nearly normal except that her eyebrows were made of feathers—long, black, and shiny like a raven’s. They made her dark eyes look fierce and predatory. She wore a white sleeveless top and camouflage pants, and her belt and pockets were heavy with cell phones, pagers, beepers, and media players.
“That’s a lot of gadgets,” Tiago said.
“Cool, huh?” Luiza uncrossed her arms and looked admiringly down at her array of devices.
“Why do you need three cell phones?”
Luiza smirked. “This one works.” She pointed to the oldest and most scarred of them. “The rest are for show. But pretty soon I’ll be able to afford all this for real. So will you. Everybody wins in this business … except for the losers.” She pointed a finger at the side of her head and mimed a gun going off. “Bang, you lose.”
She ushered Tiago inside, closing and locking the door behind him. The room was dark, the window covered with old newspaper. Boxes and bags of Tiago didn’t know what, but could guess, were piled in corners. Most of the rest of the floor was covered with mattresses; a giant sound system pounded the air. “You know the drill?” Luiza said, raising her voice above the music.
“Drill?”
Luiza rolled her eyes. “What we do here?”
“Uh … no.”
Theatrically she cradled her forehead in her hand and shook her head. “Nossa…” She looked up. “Okay. You’ll be an avião, right?”
Tiago was completely baffled. “I’ll be a jet plane?”
“A courier! Look, do you know anything?”
“I guess not.” But he was beginning to understand.
“You pick up the packages, at the dock, and bring them here,” Luiza said, making each word clear and distinct as though Tiago were a complete idiot, and deaf to boot. Which he likely would be if he stayed in this noise too much longer. “Then you take deliveries to the bocas and the bigger customers. If you get arrested, they just let you off because you’re underage. Entende?”
Tiago understood all right, but didn’t like what he was hearing. He’d seen too many people messed up by drugs and killed by traficantes to want any part of the process. But this was the only lead he had on a place to stay. He thought quickly. “No, no, you misunderstand. Felipe didn’t send me here to be an avião … he liked the little bird I made. I thought I could maybe make things like this and sell them.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. The bat-winged man hadn’t said anything about Tiago being a drug courier, he had liked the bird, and Tiago did think—or at least hope—that he could sell them.
Luiza looked extremely skeptical, but the invocation of her cousin’s name seemed to pacify her somewhat. “Well … okay, you can sleep in the corner. But you have to pay your share of the rent.”
Tiago was skeptical too … that he wanted anything to do with this crowd, that Luiza wouldn’t kick him right out once she talked with Felipe, that he would be able to afford whatever his share of the rent was, that he would be able to sleep at all with this noise. But it would be a roof over his head, for as long as it lasted. “It’s a deal.”
* * *
Tiago spent the rest of the morning prowling the streets for raw materials. His years as a catador stood him in good stead … He could spot reusable materials from a long way off against any background, no matter how messy, and could tell from the outside of a garbage bag what it was likely to contain. He picked up bottles, cans, plastic bags, broken electronics, and even a pair of metal shears that could be repaired. Those would be useful for cutting things his Swiss Army knife couldn’t. The best find was a tube of glue, mostly dead and hard but with a little usable glue left at the bottom.
In the afternoon he stuffed bits of packing foam in his ears against the music and reassembled the things he’d found into things he thought he could sell. He made a bunch of aluminum can birds—all goofy, all different—some plastic bag bouquets, a sort of teddy bear from brown medicine bottles, and an airplane made o
f old greeting cards that was colorful and actually flew. He probably spent too much time on that last one.
As he worked, aviões came and went, picking up or dropping off packages and money. Most of them were boys, mostly dark, and mostly curingas, but there were also some girls and some normal-looking people—which he learned were called by the curingas “limpos” or “nats.” Some looked curiously at Tiago, but mostly they seemed focused on their jobs; also, a lot of them were somewhat or more than somewhat stoned. Tiago decided he was happier not getting to know them any better than that.
When hunger and fatigue made him stop, he packed up the things he had made in an old suitcase he’d found and headed down the hill in search of someone to buy them.
It was a long walk from Luiza’s place at the top of the morro to the nearest busy tourist street. He had to endure questioning from the armed Comando Curinga guards at the favela’s entrance, and handed over the brown-bottle teddy bear as a good faith offering. On the way he scrounged some pizza crusts for his dinner. Eventually, following his ears, he found a well-trafficked corner with a spot by the wall where he could spread out his wares.
Mostly people just passed by, and that was okay. In general the city people, cariocas and turistas alike, didn’t seem afraid or disgusted of him because he was a curinga, but on the other hand they weren’t interested in him either. But some of the playboys—well-dressed young men—sneered or spat or kicked at him. One group of playboys kicked his little display across the sidewalk, laughing the whole time; he never did find all of the items. He did sell some birds and a couple of bouquets, though, earning a handful of reais for his day’s labor.
He hadn’t been there all that long when a couple of self-important men came and stood over his little sidewalk shop. They were big and beefy and pale and wore uniforms and carried big guns, but they weren’t police.
Luiza had warned him about these militias. “Mostly ex-cops, or off-duty cops,” she’d said. “The real cops won’t charge you if you’re underage, but these guys don’t care—they’ll just kill you unless you pay up.”
Tiago hadn’t realized that he had set up shop in a militia-controlled area.
“We can’t have street trash like you bothering the tourists,” one said, his eyes hidden behind reflective sunglasses.
“I’m not—” Tiago’s mouth had gone dry. “I’m not bothering anyone.”
“You’re blocking traffic with your garbage,” the other one said. He nudged one of Tiago’s birds with his shiny boot tip.
Tiago pulled the bird back out of the way. “Sorry.”
“Sorry won’t cut it,” said the first. He leaned down and took the glasses off; his eyes were just as hard and cold without them. “There’s a fine.”
Tiago looked from one to the other. Neither of them looked the type to forgive a fine in exchange for a handcrafted bird or a bunch of plastic flowers. “How much?”
The man smiled, but there was no humor in it. “How much you got?”
Without a word, Tiago held out the money he’d made.
Without a word, the man took it.
“Cai fora!” said the other.
Tiago scrammed, as ordered.
* * *
The day wasn’t a total loss. He hadn’t given the man everything; the proceeds of his first few sales were safe in his zippered pocket. And he’d retained his unsold stock, some of which he managed to sell by walking beside turistas and offering it to them on the move. But the effort was great, and the strain of keeping a wary eye out for militia was significant, for the paltry few reais this brought in.
It was very late when Tiago returned to Luiza’s apartment. He was so tired he had no trouble falling asleep despite the pounding bass, and he slept right through until the next morning when Felipe slapped him awake.
“What is this shit?” the bat-winged man said, shaking a plastic bouquet in Tiago’s face.
“Plastic flowers?” Tiago blinked quickly, panic and sleep mingling in a confused mess in his head. “I sell them to pay the rent. I’ll do better today.”
Felipe threw the flowers on the floor. “You were meant to be an avião!” Luiza stood behind him, arms crossed on her chest, feathered eyebrows making her look like one of the vultures that always circled above the landfill.
They were all vultures—the traficantes, the militias, the playboys, the cops who’d killed his father. They perched at the top of the heap and took their pick of whatever got stirred up by the people below, people trying to recycle trash into something beautiful or useful.
“I can’t do that,” Tiago said, knowing that it might get him hurt or worse.
But Felipe just made a disgusted noise. “Cai fora!”
* * *
He’d lived on the street before, and he could do it again. He was older and smarter and tougher now.
He stayed within Nova Brasília, mostly—curingas were not as welcome in the other favelas, even less so on the asfalto. He learned where and when the militias patrolled and how to avoid the traficantes and the cops. He found the warm dry places to sleep, the dumpsters where the food wasn’t too spoiled, the places to drink and wash, the hidey-holes and routes for escape.
When he could, he remade trash into something he could use or sell. But he couldn’t carry a lot with him, and no matter how much money he made it was never enough. Though many of the necessities of life could be scavenged, there were always things that required cash, like paying the militia for protection.
He begged when he had to.
Eventually he began to steal. First food from sidewalk markets, then goods from shops, then unattended cell phones and purses from café tables. He was small and lithe and fast and he knew the favelas better than his pursuers. But even that didn’t bring in enough cash. Sometimes the militia beat him when he couldn’t pay their “fines.”
He could feel himself wearing away.
* * *
One of the things Tiago learned was the locations of the bocas where the playboys from the asfalto came to buy drugs. He liked to hang around nearby—but not too close—because the rich young men, stupid and stoned, tended to lose track of their expensive phones, watches, and even, sometimes, sneakers. He could get in, grab the goods, get out, and turn the items into cash before the playboy had even left the favela.
Late one night he was lurking near a boca—hiding in a trash pile, looking just like the other discards—when he saw a whole gang of sharp-dressed playboys laughing and lurching their way along the street. They were clearly stoned out of their minds.
Then the lead playboy in the pack stopped to light a cigarette, and as he took the lighter from his pocket, a huge roll of bills came halfway out with it. The playboy didn’t even notice as he paused, puffing his smoke alight.
Tiago just about salivated at the sight. That was enough money to get him a good hot dinner and a room for the night. A couple of nights. Maybe even a week. But the man was too far away and surrounded by his friends.
Gritting his teeth in frustration, Tiago reached out for the money—a greedy, useless, symbolic gesture.
And the wad of cash whipped from the playboy’s pocket and flew across the street into Tiago’s extended hand, where it stuck.
With wonder Tiago tugged at the roll with his other hand, but it seemed firmly attached. It was as though it had somehow become part of him. He could feel every bill, all wrapped and nestled around one another like a warm pile of puppies.
How could this be?
The playboy noticed the motion, slapped his pocket, looked around, and saw Tiago sitting astonished and staring at the roll of banknotes wedded to his hand. “Hey!” the playboy shouted, breaking the spell, and gave chase. His companions followed.
But Tiago’s reactions were faster than the drug-soaked playboys’, and with his head start and his knowledge of the favela’s twisted streets he soon gave them the slip.
* * *
Later that night, warm and dry and wrapped in a towel after a long hot hote
l bath, Tiago sat on the bed and watched in incredulous awe as some of his remaining bills flew up from the coverlet to his outstretched hand, wrapping around it like a glove of multicolored paper. All he had to do was want it to happen, and it happened.
He made a fist, opened it, turned the hand over. The paper crinkled but remained firmly attached. Then he relaxed, and the bills simply fell away, leaving both money and skin unharmed.
The power, whatever it was, could pull bills all the way across the room, at least, though the farther it got the more he had to concentrate to make it happen.
It worked on bills, but not coins. It worked on note pads and towels and pillows, but not the television or the glass ashtray or the iron bedstead. It worked on the lampshade, but not the rest of the lamp, and he had to scramble to catch it before the whole thing toppled to the floor and broke. Paper, wood, fabric, and plastic, yes; glass, metal, stone, and water, no. He wasn’t sure, but thought that maybe the power worked only on things made from plants and animals.
It could pull, but not push. The only direction he could move anything was toward himself.
He tried the carpet and the mattress and the wooden desk. He could feel the tug—when he really tried to pull the desk, his feet slid along the carpet—but he wasn’t strong enough to move any of them.
Maybe if he practiced he would get stronger. There was no telling; the wild card virus was unpredictable. Sometimes it created hideous curingas, sometimes it created aces—people with supernatural powers, like the lady with wings on the Peregrine Toothpaste billboards or the contestants on the TV show Heróis Brazil. Apparently this time it had done both at once.
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