by Mark Dawson
He showered and changed and then made his way out to the veranda, where Sophia was waiting for him.
“Sleep well?” she asked him.
“Yes,” Milton said. “Thanks.”
There was a tray with a jug of coffee, fresh bread, cheese and cold cuts and a bowl of fruit. Sophia poured him a cup of black coffee, and Milton took a hunk of bread and cheese and ate it.
“Where’s Drake?”
“Something to do with work,” she said. “He got a phone call this morning. I think one of the men who works for him has a problem. It’s nothing. He’ll be back soon.”
They stayed out on the veranda together for half an hour, and then Milton helped Sophia clear away the breakfast things. She said that she had to run an errand, but that she would be back at eleven so that they could make their way to the festival site. Milton waited until he heard her leave, then collected his Big Book from his pack and took it back out to the veranda. He hadn’t been to a meeting for a month, and he was feeling a little more vulnerable than he would have liked. He opened the book and read.
“When I am willing to do the right thing, I am rewarded with an inner peace no amount of liquor could ever provide. When I am unwilling to do the right thing, I become restless, irritable, and discontent. It is always my choice.”
It was exactly what Milton needed to hear. Alcohol had been the solution to his problems for as long as he could remember. Recovery had taught him that it did not provide all the things that it promised. The beauty of recovery was that Milton had learned that inner peace did not come from external sources, but that it came from within. The way that he could find it was by doing the right thing, which was always his choice. He had chosen to help others and, in so doing, atone for the things that he had done in his life. He could not make recompense to many of the men and women that he had sinned against, because, often, those sins had led to their deaths.
He put the book down and closed his eyes, enjoying the warmth of the sunshine on his face. The book reminded him that he was fortunate to be in recovery, with the luxury of choices to be made. He would undoubtedly have been dead without it. Reading the book was no substitute for a meeting, but it was a solace to remind himself that he wasn’t alone, that the way he felt wasn’t unusual, and that there was a solution that worked for him.
13
Sophia and Milton took a taxi to the staging post where buses to the festival were picking up passengers. Drake met them there, waving three tickets in his hand.
“Everything okay?” Milton asked him.
Drake waved a hand dismissively. “Work shit,” he said. “I’ll deal with it later. You ready?”
Milton grinned. “I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.”
Drake had spared no expense. He had bought three first-class tickets, and that meant that they were able to ride an air-conditioned executive coach out to the festival site at Cidade do Rock. They were deposited at an arrival terminal with a series of bars and several stages where local bands were playing. Fans, mostly clad in classic band tees, burst through the gates in a stampede of excitement, shoulder-barging performers dressed as Marvel comic-book heroes on their way in. Some of them stopped to kiss the ground before streaming inside. Milton found their enthusiasm contagious and noticed that he had goosebumps on his arms and down his back. The majority of the band tees were for Guns N’ Roses, and Milton ascribed most of the excitement to the prospect of seeing them play. The band had been back together on an on-again, off-again basis, but the reviews of the warm-up shows prior to their headlining slot tonight were so ecstatic that even the fans most jaded to Axl Rose’s unpredictability had seemingly allowed themselves to be swept up in the promise of what the night might bring.
Drake diverted toward the first bar.
“What are you having?” he said.
“I’ll have a beer,” Sophia said.
“John?”
“Just a water for me,” Milton said.
“What?” Drake said with mock outrage. “You’ll have a vodka with me.”
Milton felt a flicker of temptation and then the usual response to that: panic. “No,” he said. “Water is fine.”
“What are you on about?”
“There’s something I have to tell you,” Milton said. “I don’t drink.”
“Bullshit,” Drake said.
Milton spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I don’t.”
Drake was about to say something else and then stopped; he must have noticed the way that Milton was holding his eye, his straight face, the lack of any suggestion that this might be a joke. “Seriously?”
“I had a problem with it,” Milton explained. “I was drinking too much, and it was getting me into trouble. In the end, I couldn’t do it anymore. So I stopped.”
Drake looked dumbfounded. “When?”
“I haven’t touched it for months.”
“You might have told me,” he said. “Half the fun of coming here is getting smashed.”
“I don’t need to drink to have a good time, Drake.”
Drake was about to retort, but Sophia silenced him by laying her hand on his. Milton was grateful. He wasn’t ashamed of his alcoholism and had learned to treat it as an illness like any other. He had no control over his compulsion, nor did he bear any blame for it. Not everyone understood what it meant, and, although Milton had explained it enough times, he found that he was grateful that he didn’t have to do that now. He didn’t doubt that Drake would bring it up later, but at least it wouldn’t spoil the rest of the day.
Drake went to the bar.
“Good for you,” Sophia said when Drake was out of earshot. “My father had a problem with drink, but he didn’t know how to stop. He died. His liver.”
“I’m sorry,” Milton said.
“It was a long time ago,” she said. “I think Shawn drinks too much sometimes. But you try to tell him that…” She let the sentence fade out.
Drake returned with two vodkas, two pints of lager and a plastic bottle of iced water in a cardboard carrier. He gave a vodka and a pint to Sophia and the water to Milton. He held up the vodka and touched the plastic beaker to Sophia’s.
“Cheers,” he said, rolling his eyes with mock disdain as he touched his beaker to Milton’s pint of water.
14
Marcos had brought the car back to the garage last night, and it had already been moved over one of the inspection pits by the time that Paulo arrived for work. He had known that the car was finished, but that fact was made even clearer in the grim light of day. It would have been possible to repair it, but it would have been a big job. The hood was buckled, the fender was crushed, and the windshield had a big crack right down the middle. The suspension looked as if it was shot, two wheels were buckled, and the brakes would need to be repaired. That was just what he could see without getting underneath. But Paulo had no appetite for doing that; what would be the point? He didn’t have the money for new parts nor any way of getting it.
“Hey,” Marcos said, taking a cigarette out of his mouth, squeezing the tip between wet fingers and sliding it behind his ear. He nodded at the car. “What you think?”
Paulo shrugged. “Fucked.”
“No way you can fix her up?”
“Just looking at what needs to be replaced? That’s five or six thousand right there. And that’s without looking properly. You got five or six lying around that I could have?”
It was a bitter joke, and Marcos rewarded it with a sour chuckle. “I’m sorry, Paulo.”
He sighed. “Forget it.”
“What you want me to do with it?”
Paulo couldn’t ask Marcos to keep it in the garage; there was no space for it. And there didn’t seem to be much point in paying for it to be stored somewhere else if there was no prospect of getting it fixed.
“How much you reckon it’ll get for scrap?”
“I know a guy in Vidigal. Normally, you’d pay him to come and take it away. Maybe
I can get a free pickup. I don’t think you’ll get cash—not from him or anyone else.”
Paulo sighed again. What was the point of struggling against the inevitable? He knew that Marcos was right. The car had been his best hope of making money for his daughter; now the best outcome was not to be charged for having it taken away.
“Could you give him a call?” he said.
Marcos nodded, put his cigarette back into his mouth again and lit it. “We’ve got a busy day,” he said, pointing to a blue Renault Megane that was waiting outside. “Got a new exhaust to fit. You want to get it inside?”
Paulo nodded and went to the office to find the keys. It was going to be a long day with nothing to look forward to at the end of it.
15
Milton found that he was having the most enjoyable day that he could remember for months. To his surprise and relief, Drake had not tried to persuade him to take a drink. Milton suspected that Sophia had spoken to him while Milton was queuing for the toilets, because, save the occasional eye roll as Milton returned from the bar with another bottle of water, nothing else was said.
The atmosphere between the three of them was pleasant, too. Milton found that he settled into Drake’s company more easily than he had expected, and was pleased to find that the conversation flowed naturally as they shared memories and anecdotes from their time in the Regiment. Sophia was good company, too. She was patient as they regaled each other with stories that had nothing to do with her, but, when they were finished, she more than held her own in the banter that passed between them. Drake and Sophia drank regularly, but not excessively, despite the former’s bragging about how much he was going to put away, and, even though they grew steadily drunker as the afternoon went on, they were convivial drinkers and not argumentative. Milton was relieved.
The festival, too, was everything that Milton had hoped it would be. The crowd was vast, with two hundred thousand people slated to attend each day, but the infrastructure of the Olympic Park was excellent, and it was easier to move between the stages than the muddy bogs that had blighted the Glastonbury festival on the occasions that Milton had visited. They made their way between the various stages and enjoyed sets by Alice Cooper, The Kills, and Sepultura, and, as dusk descended, they watched Tears for Fears play their backlist on the Palco Mundo stage. They followed the crowd toward the main stage, stopping for thirty minutes to enjoy the dance-rock of CSS, the Paulistanos ending their set with a joyful rendition of ‘Let’s Make Love’ that ended with a forest of upraised arms saluting them as they took their bows.
They were sitting down near one of the speaker stacks as they waited for Guns N’ Roses to come to the stage. There wasn’t much space, and Sophia was close enough that Milton brushed his knee against hers as he turned to watch a jet burning a trail across the sky on its final approach to the airport. She looked at him and held his gaze; Milton felt a buzz in his gut. She was pretty, certainly, but there was something else that was extraordinarily attractive about her: confidence, perhaps, an insouciance born of the effect that she had on other people.
Drake had been talking on his phone for the last five minutes. Milton couldn’t make out the conversation over the excited babble of the crowd, but he could tell that Drake was frustrated and then angry.
“Is he okay?” Milton mouthed to Sophia.
“The problem from earlier,” she replied quietly, with a shake of her head. “He’s having some trouble.”
“What is it?”
“He told me earlier,” she said. “He’s got a job tomorrow afternoon, but one of the guys has let him down. I don’t know the details. Shawn can tell you about it.”
Milton turned his attention back to the stage. One of the attractions that the organisers had arranged was a zip line that ran right over the top of it. Intrepid festival-goers could climb a tower to the right of the stage, attach themselves to a harness, and then slide over the heads of the crowd. Milton and Sophia watched as a man raced across the wire, his arms raised high above his head.
Drake put his phone away and came back to them.
“Everything okay?” Sophia asked him.
He said that it was, the words followed by a thin smile that Milton could see had been forced.
“It’s been a great day,” Milton said in an attempt to brighten his mood. “Thank you.”
“The best is yet to come,” Sophia said.
Their distraction appeared to have served its purpose, and when Drake smiled again, it was much more natural. “You seen them before?” Drake asked.
“A long, long time ago,” Milton said. “Monsters of Rock. 1988, I think.”
“You are old,” Sophia said with a grin. Milton realised that he didn’t know how old she was; she was in her mid-twenties, he guessed, but certainly much younger than Drake. He wondered again how he had managed to land a girl like her.
“Where did you two meet?” he asked them.
“Clubbing,” Drake said.
“You go to clubs?”
“Just because you’ve given up doesn’t mean we all have to,” Drake retorted. “I’m not ready for slippers and a pipe.”
Milton ignored the jibe and turned back to the young woman. There was something about her that he couldn’t quite wrap his head around. She didn’t come across as a gold-digger, and although Drake was good looking, he was much older than her. Perhaps she genuinely liked Drake; Milton knew that he was looking at things with his own world-weary preconceptions, but he still wanted to know more.
“What do you do?” he asked her.
“I’m training to be a lawyer. I take the national bar examination next year. If I pass that, then I can start work—I’m an intern at a firm in the city, and they said that they have a job for me if I can pass.”
“She’s amazing,” Drake said with obvious pride. “She was brought up in Rocinha.”
He paused, as if waiting for Milton to react.
“Rocinha?” Milton said.
“One of the favelas.”
“Shawn,” Sophia chided mildly, “where I was born doesn’t mean a thing. I’m nothing special.”
“Doesn’t mean that I can’t be proud of you.”
She looked at Milton with a half-smile on her lips. “You think he’s patronising me?”
“No,” Milton replied. “I doubt he’d dare.”
Drake roared with laughter and raised his half-empty bottle of Sol. “Correct,” he said. “I would not.”
Sophia laughed too, and the moment—if, indeed, it had even been a moment—passed. She held up her own bottle so that they could all share a toast.
“To old friends,” Drake said.
“And new,” added Sophia, smiling at Milton as she did so.
Milton touched his plastic bottle against theirs, feeling the same usual twinge of discomfort that his contained water and not alcohol.
16
Paulo worked late, replacing the chipped windscreen on a Peugeot that had been brought in five minutes before they were due to shut up shop for the night. The owner had a fleet of taxis and was one of Marcos’s best customers, and it was important that he was kept happy. Marcos said that he had to go out, but Paulo had offered to do it in exchange for a couple of hours of extra overtime. The windscreen was more difficult to remove than he had expected and, when he was checking the car over, he discovered that two of the tyres were so worn that they had to be replaced, too.
By the time Paulo was finally finished, it was nine o’clock, and he had missed the chance to see Eloá before she went to sleep. He switched off the lights, pulled down the roller door, and locked up. He turned just as a man stepped out of the shadows ahead of him and moved across to block his way ahead. He was wearing shorts and flip-flops, and his face was obscured by the cap that he wore low down on his head. Paulo took a sidestep to his right; the man matched it. Paulo apologised and took a sidestep to the left; the man matched it again. Paulo’s stomach fell. This had to be a joke. He was going to get mugged, tonight, after e
verything that had already happened? It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.
“I haven’t got anything,” he said. “I’m broke. You’re wasting your time.”
“It’s not about that,” the man said.
Paulo didn’t see the two men who stepped out of the alley behind him, but he heard their footsteps as they closed in. He spun around; the man to the right of the pair was big and fat, with a gold tooth that glittered as it caught the glow of a light that shone through a nearby window. Paulo recognised him at once.
Palito.
“What do you want?” he said, taking a step back.
“You didn’t come back after the race,” Palito said.
“I crashed. Someone cut my brakes.”
“Shame,” Palito said. “Doesn’t change anything. I want what’s mine. The car?”
“I told you,” Paulo said. “I crashed. It’s a wreck. You can have it if you want.”
“I want my money.”
“I don’t have it,” he said.
He repeated it slowly, loading each word with menace: “I… want… my… money.”
“I’m broke.”
Palito stepped closer, and Paulo stepped back. This time, though, his retreat was blocked. The man with the cap had closed right up tight behind him and, as Paulo tried to move away, he bumped into him. The man grabbed Paulo, wrapping his arms around him so that Paulo’s arms were pinned against his torso.
Palito stepped right up, bunched his right fist, and jabbed Paulo in the face. Paulo’s head cracked back, and he tasted blood in his mouth. Palito drew back his fist again and drilled Paulo a second time and then a third. Paulo tried to bring his arms up to defend himself, but the man with the cap held him steady. Palito swung a left hook that jammed into the side of Paulo’s head, and then followed it up with another volley of quick right-handed jabs. The three men were laughing; Paulo heard their gleeful cackling over the ringing that filled his head. His vision swam, each fresh blow detonating explosions of pain.
