Sao Paulo

Today is my last post before Christmas, but today's story is not holiday-themed. Sorry. It is, however, one fantastic piece and incredibly emotional on multiple levels. But, in keeping with the season, I'll post it in green.
 

The author, Shane Cohn, is a writer from Ventura, California. He is also another musician in what appears to be (completely coincidentally) a trilogy of musicians-turned-fiction-writers lately. Perhaps there is a connection to be made there...  Anyway, I hope you can find ways to relate to this story the way I did. Or at the very least, enjoy it.

And since I will be taking some time off to eat lots of food and be with my family the next few days, let me wish you all a very happy holiday! For me, it's not Christmas until I hear some vintage Bruce singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," so I leave you with this. Please watch after reading, and to all a good night.
 

São Paulo
By Shane Cohn

The Reading

I'm still disastrously awake, sitting at the desk in Marcelo’s apartment. He gave me his place for the weekend because he had to help his brother on the ranch. The lights are off, and I am writing in the dark.  I peer out the window. A few heads milling around the churrasquinho

I wipe the sweat off my brow and rub it into my hair.  Maybe one more beer? I turn to fish one from the ice in the sink. The ice has melted. So has Camila in the bed. Camila. Camila. I like to say the name. I say it aloud this time, "Camila!" She wakes up briefly, annoyed, “Que isso, cara?”

I met her this evening at a poetry reading in a café on Rua Fradique Coutinho in Vila Madalena. She approached me shortly after I read and told me that my poetry was vile and it disgusted her. I told her I agreed; it reviled me too. She asked who my favorite author was. I told her Hemingway, she gagged and said it all figured now. I ordered us a round, and then several more.

We got drunk and walked the crowded Vila Madalena and through the neighboring, ethereal streets. We found some trashed spray cans and did our best to contribute to the graffiti walls. It felt cathartic to scuff something up like that, like I was doing it to myself.  We continued along until we reached the stairs for the Metro, then descended.

I took a seat beneath the Linha Verde and I told her I was taking it to Consolação, near to where I was staying, and suggested she join me for some beers. She obliged, and our hands joined. I pulled her close, she resisted slightly and the metro tracks began to rattle. As it roared into the station we tore into each other.

Now she sleeps in the bed, wrapped up in my sheets, in our sweat, and she would likely become another one of those poems she reviled. But I can’t find the words right now. Somebody out there loves Camila. Somebody out there may have loved Joel, too, which is why I can’t sleep. I wake up to night terrors about the Columbia Gorge.

The Rain

The Paulista night suddenly cracks lighting and the rain quickly follows, rinsing the salted churrasco smell from the air. Camila breathes softly, but my heart speeds up. I’m afraid if the rain falls any harder my chest will open spilling out immediate longings for America, for Portland, Oregon, for NE Portland, for the Falcon Apartments on Albina Street. The rain has been doing such a thing to me lately. It stirs me up, makes my head crazy enough to think I can go back. It tells me that everyone is having a good time. They have barbecues and picnics and happy hours. It says the school will welcome me back to my teaching job with open arms, the memories will suddenly be erased and . . . Fuck. 

Fuck! I know not to think about this. I may be on the lam, but I am living in Brazil! I have enough money to get something going out here. I travel the exotic. Everything will be OK. I am OK. Joel is dead. I didn't kill him though. That's just the way it's supposed to be. I wasn't that high. He was drunk— four times over the limit—and driving the Columbia Gorge! Can't put that on me. . . Fuck those assholes. No one is moving on or is having a good time; they're all crawling like spiders trying to scratch it out from day to day and—Stop! The lightning, the rain. São Paulo, my chest is thumping.  

I get up and back carefully away from the desk, crawl into bed and protectively pull the sheets up to my neck. I can feel the warmth coming from Camila. I slip not into sleep, but into that pixelated reverie that exists in the in-between.

The Coffee Grounds
“Oi, Shane, bom dia. What are you doing? You alright, pertubado?” I snap back into waking life. Camila looks different in the morning light. Less crass and much more pleasant than I remember. “You were kicking, and mumbling and your eyes were kind of twitching. Tudo bem?”

“No, I am not tudo bem.”

“Porque não? Fala, Shane. Speak. I’m going to make coffee.” She wraps a sheet around herself, moves to the kitchen and looks back at me motioning for me to speak.

“I was just remembering something. My travels.”

“Yeah, why did you come to Brazil? Has it been awful? Because you seem miserable.”

“It’s none of your business, really.”

A kitchen cabinet slams shut.

My phone beeps and it’s a message from Marcelo. He says to be downstairs in thirty minutes. He wants to take me to his brother’s place. I met Marcelo in a nearby café and he has been keen to taking me on wild excursions and giving me a place to stay as long as we can practice English.

“Camila,” I shout towards the kitchen. She walks around the corner holding some filters, and a bag of coffee in one hand, while holding the bed sheet in place as it hangs loosely off her body. I notice a few of the grounds have spilled on the back of her hand, and she isn't smiling.

“Listen, I just got a message that I need to be somewhere in half an hour. I’m no good at being around people intimately right now. I’m all fucked up. It might be easier if you just leave while I’m in the shower. It won’t be awkward that way. Besides,” and in a smart-ass way I tell her “‘if two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.’” That was Hemingway. She hates Hemingway. I feel like an asshole.

The Blade
I'm on the back of Marcelo's Kawasaki, and we're speeding through favelas. Kids shooting marbles. Men with hollowed out eyes. A woman breast feeding. Trash fires in the street. It must be 100 degrees out.

We cut up a small hill and race across a field towards the country, and now we're nearing what resembles a ranch. Chickens everywhere. Marcelo says we're here.

The heat is unforgiving. We're in a shed now with who I think is his brother. He holds a knife, but a machete is on the wall. On the ground there is some hay, there is some blood, and I'm guessing a killing stump. His brother exits the shed.

Marcelo rubs his hands together, says I'm going to love this. His brother returns with a whale of a chicken. It's going nuts, and it's getting loud, really loud and I hate this. I hear the wings hoping they will finally fly and the brother's feet shuffling for position through the hay. Marcelo yells "Ya!" as his brother becomes too large to be human. I can't feel anything.

The brother looks at me and smiles. He's missing teeth, and he’s holding the blade. Then, an electrifying roar as he slices through the chicken's neck. Marcelo whacks me on the back and looks to see how I like it. I look at him like I've suddenly gone deaf. I look at the scene again. The blood, the body, the madness, the universe. I see Joel. I see myself, Marcelo, and his brother. I see Camila. I see São Paulo and Portland. I see it all living on the killing floor in this shed. I see Joel one more time amidst the wreckage, through the cracked windshield, slung over the wheel. He vanishes into the deafening madness of the shed. The moment's exclamation flushes quickly to my face the way a new bruise pulses pain. I laugh or cough, can't really tell, but I'm ecstatic. My throat clears and I'm howling now, tears streaming, whooping it up with Marcelo.

The Note
I’m lying down on the bed in Marcelo’s apartment while he gathers a few things to head back to the ranch. Camila’s scent is still adrift. Then Marcelo shouts from the kitchen, “Did you have girl here last night, safado?”

“What?”

“There was note on top of the coffee machine.” I snatch it from his hand.

“Dear Shane,” the note begins. “Forget your personal tragedy. We’re all bitched from the start. . . Beijos, Camila.” Her phone number followed. I trembled.

I pull out my cell, dial the number and my heart thumps. She answers.

“Hi,” then a brief, heavy silence. “That was Hemingway, wasn’t it?” I ask her.

She replies calmly. “Yes, just don’t go blowing your brains out, querido. How was your day? What took you so long?”

I linger over that last question for a moment. “I want to tell you all about it.”