Brasyl (3 page)

She did wish she could stop crying every time she went to Heitor's.
Genre heads, commissioners, execs, and line producers. The Black
Plumed Bird in shades and headscarf as if she'd just stepped
windswept and sun-kissed off the back of a Moto Guzzi. Rosa the
scheduler put the overnights up on the projector. Minimalist leather
sofas creaked as bodies sagged into them. Rede Globo's new telenovela
Nu Brasil
had averaged 40 percent audience share over its four
sampling periods, critically 44 percent in the
eighteen-to-thirty-four grouping. Canal Quatro's
Ninja School
in the same timeslot had taken 8.5, skewing heavily toward the
intended male audience, but a full point and a half behind SBT's
Beauty School Drop-Outs
and equal to the peak segment for
Globo Sport. And Adriano Russo was coming in now for a quick word.

Canal Quatro's director of programming took care to look as if he had
just parked his surfboard at reception, but he still had his own
reserved chair at the end of the runway of glass tables, and nicely
manicured hands busy busy with folders and Blackberries.

"First of all, IMHO, in this room are the most creative,
imaginative, hardworking, and hard-playing people I have ever met.
NQA." The etiquette was to nod along with Adriano's
chat-room-speak, even when he used Engglish acronyms or, as was
commonly believed, made them up. "We've had a bad night; okay,
let's not have a bad season." He straightened the folder on the
glass table. "NTK senior production and genre heads only. I've
come into information about Rede Globo's winter schedule." Even
the Black Plumed Bird was jolted. "PDFs have been e-mailed to
you, but the linchpin of the season is a new telenovela. Before you
begin groaning about boring unimaginative programming, I'll give you
a couple of details. It's called
A World Somewhere
, it's
written by Alejandro and Cosquim, but USP: it marks the return of Ana
Paula Arósio. She's playing against Rodrigo Santoro. They've
got them both back in Brazil, and on television. The whole thing was
shot on a secret closed set in Brasilia, which is why no one heard a
word about it. The big press launch is next Wednesday. The first ep
TXs on June fifteenth; we need something big, noisy, look-at-me.
Water-cooler TV, rude and edgy, 'How dare those Canal Quatro
bastards' the usual sort of thing. We want the television reviewers'
EPOOTH."

Eyes Popping Our of Their Heads, Marcelina surmised through the thud
thud of too much morning. This was not a show to play against the
telenovela. Anything that tried to take on Ana Paulo Arósio
and Rodrigo Santoro would go down with ten bullets in its head. But
Globo was calculating that
A World Somewhere
would generate a
huge inheritance audience inert in front of the television and ripe
for whatever came after, almost certainly, in Marcelina's experience,
a cheap and cheerful " ...
Revealed
" puff-doc with
lots of behind-the-scenes and actor interviews, teasers but no actual
plot spoilers. That was the audience Adriano Russo wanted to steal.
For the first time in months arousal flickered at the base of
Marcelina Hoffman's heart. Her hangover evaporated in a puff of
adrenaline. Blond ambition. Blond promotion. The commissioning
merry-go-round between the main networks was spinnning again. Factual
entertainment would prance round again. Her own little glass cubicle.
People would have to knock to come in. Her own PA. She could drops
hints for things like Blackberries or pink Razrs and they would
appear on her desk in the morning through the tech-fairy. The first
thing a new commissioning editor does is decommission all her
enemies' shows. She fantasized shooting down all Lisandra's proposals
at the Friday Blue Sky sessions. She could get that apartment in
Leblon, maybe even a beach view. That would please her mother. She
could cease temporizing with her lunchtime shots of Botox and declare
full plastic assault on those thirty-something anxiety lines. Thank
you, Our Lady of Production.

"We have six weeks to turn it round. Pitches to genre heads on
Blue Sky Friday." Adriano Russo squared his papers and stood up.
"Thank you all."

Bye Adriano thanks Adriano see you Friday Adriano hugs Adriano.

"BTW," he flicked back from the boardroom door. "Even
though we haven't. IMBWR it's World Cup year."

Thanks Adriano legal Adriano we'll remember that Adriano.

Boba Fett still held Marcelina menacingly under his gun, but Yoda
seemed to be smiling.

The ball hangs motionless at the top of its arc. It frames Cidade de
Luz, fifty hillside streets, its head adorned with the thorny crown
of the favela, at its knees the rodovia heat-crazy with windows and
wing mirrors. Beyond the highway the gated enclaves begin:
red-roofed, blue-pooled, green-shaded. Through the sun-shiver the
endless towers of São Paulo recede into half-believed spirits
of architecture, their summits orbited by advertisements. Helicopters
itch and fidget between rooftop landing pads; there are people up
there who have never touched the ground. But higher still are the
Angels of Perpetual Surveillance. On any clear-sky day you may catch
them, a flicker on the very edge of vision, like stray cells floating
in the jelly of the eye, as they turn in their orbits and their vast,
gossamer wings catch the light. Sixteen sky-drones, frail as prayers,
circle constantly on the borders of the tropoosphere. Like angels,
the robot planes fly endlessly; they need, and can, never touch the
ground again; like angels, they see into the hearts and intentions of
man. They monitor and track the two billion arfids—radio
frequency idenntity chips—seeded through the cars, clothes,
consumer electronics, cash, and cards of the City of Saint Paul's
twenty-two million inhabitants. Twenty kilometers above the Angels of
Perpetual Surveillance, balloons the size of city blocks maneuver in
the tropopause, holding position over their ground datatransfer
stations. Exabits of information chatter between them, the seamless
weave of communication that clothes not just Brasil but the planet.
Higher still, beyond all sense and thought, and global positioning
satellites tumble along their prescribed orbits, tracking movements
down to a single footstep, logging every transaction, every real and
centavo. Highest of all, God on his stool, looking on Brasil and its
three hundred million souls, nostalgic for the days when his was the
only omniscience.

All for an instant, frozen by the parabola of a World Cup 2030 soccer
ball. And the ball falls. It drops onto the right foot of a girl in a
tight little pair of spandex shorts with her name across her ass:
Milena
, yellow on green. She holds the ball on the flat upper
surface of her Nike Raptor, then flips it up into the air again. The
girl spins round to volley the ball from her left foot, spins under
it and traps it on her chest. She wears her name there too, blue on
the sun-gold of the belly-cropped furebol shirt.
Castro
. Blue
and green and gold.

"She could be a bit bigger up top," Edson Jesus Oliveira de
Freitas says, sucking morning through his teeth. "But at least
she's blonde. I mean, she is blonde?"

"What are you saying? This is my cousin." Two-Fags is a
scraggy enxofradawith no style and less jeito, and if that girl out
there turning pirouettes under the looping ball in her hot pants and
belly-top is his cousin, then Edson is not the sixth son of a sixth
son. They sit on folding military sling chairs at the edge of the
futsal court, a dog-turd-infested concrete bunker in the overlooked
space behind the Assembly of God. Milena Castro, Keepie-Uppie Queen
of Cidade de Luz, heads the ball now one two three four five six
seven. All good girls they go to heaven. Especially back of the
Assembly of God. The ball makes a fine plasticy thwack against her
upturned forehead. Seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty. Like the rich
and the angels, the ball never touches the ground.

"How long can she keep it up for?"

"As long as you like."

Heading and smiling. A grin and wink in Edson's direction and Milena
volleys the ball from knee to knee. She wears knee socks, in
patriotic colors. Knee socks work for Edson.

"I'll take her on." Edson almost sees the reis tumble in
Two-Fags' eyes, like something from the cartoon channel. "Come
round my office; we'll talk." It's a shotgun shack at the side
of Dona Hortense's house that smells of dog piss and mold, but it's
where De Freitas Global Talent does its business. Milena Keepie-Uppie
Queen spins, strikes a pose, and the ball drops right sweet into the
crook of her arm. "I'm impressed with what I see." Her lily
skin isn't even moist with sweat. "I think you have talent.
Unfortunately, talent isn't enough these days. This is where I can
help. You need a USE You know what that is? Unique Selling Point. So,
the pants are cute, but they have to go."

"Ey! This is my cousin you're talking about," shouts
Two-Fags. Edson ignores him. Local kids' are arriving by threes and
fours at the futsal court, bouncing their small, heavy ball
impatiently.

"Futebol is a thong thing. At some point you will need a boob
job as well. It doesn't affect the act, anything like that?"

The Keepie-Uppie Queen shakes her head. The futsal boys are staring
at her.
Get used to it
, Edson thinks. It will be forty
thousand of them watching you at halftime at the Parque São
Jorge keeping it up up up.

"Good good good. Now, what I will do is try you on one of the
Serie C teams first. Atletico Sorocaba, Rio Branco, something like
that. Build you up, get you a rep. Then we move on. But first of all,
you have to come round to my office and make it all official."

Marcelina nods matter-of-factly, slips on a silky Timão
blouson, and pulls up team color legwarmers. At least she understands
business, unlike TwooFags, who is so dense Edson wonders how he made
it to twenty-eight. But he is onto something with this one. De
Freitas Global Talent's first major signing—not counting the
women's foot-volley team and Petty Cash the pod-warrior, who were
just practice. Edson slaps the military chairs just so, and they
umbrella down into slender canes a man can sling across his back.
Clever stuff, this new smart plastic. Two-Fags has his arm around the
Keepie-Uppie Queen's bare waist in a way that is not seemly for any
blood relative. Pay him a finder's fee and slip him out the back
door.

"I'll be in after nine!" Edson shouts after Two-Fags and
Milena. The futsal kids push past, eager for their territory,
stringing up their net, slipping off their Havaianas.

An ugly face flashes in the middle of Edson's Chillibean I-shades:
Gerson, fifth son of a sixth son and less favored in every way than
Edson. Edson dabs a finger to the frame to take the call.

"Hey, unfortunate brother, I have to tell you, I just signed the
sweetest deal. ... "

Edson can name a thousand stupidities Gerson has committed, but today
he has excelled himself. The reason he's calling is because he has
forty minutes before Brooklin Bandeira's private seguranças
track him down and kill him.

A shower of cards coins keys tampons lippy makeup compact mag from an
upturned handbag. Coins and keys bounce on the pavement, tampons roll
and blow on the hot wind. The gossip mag—handbag-sized
edition—falls like a broken-backed bird. The compact hits the
concrete edge-on and explodes into clamshells, pressed powder, pad,
mirror. The mirror wheels a little way.

Gerson João Oliveira de Freitas jumped the girl blindside of
the enclave security systems. He picked her up outside Hugo Boss on
Avenida Paulista: tailed the taxi back to Mummy and Daddy's
lower-middle-class enclave of colonial-style pseudo-fazendas with
cool cool pools, tucked away behind the Vila Mariana Cemetery.
Take
her as she's fiddling with her bags.
He pulled the strip on the
one-shot plastic gun. She just needed one look. Gerson tipped out the
bag, threw away the gun—it began to decompose immediately—spun
the little mota on its back wheel. In and out before she could even
scream.

His back wheel shatters the mirror as he guns the engine. Bad luck
for someone. He pulls the bandana with which he had covered his face
down over his neck. Even a glimpse of one is a stop'n'search offense
these days. Antisocial clothing. Her I-shades, her watch, her shirt,
the taxi; some eye somewhere will have photographed him. He has the
moto's license plates in his backpack. When he gets to the chipperia,
they'll go back on. Twenty seconds with a screwdriver. The cards will
already be blank. The key codes change every eight hours. The
coin-tokens are worth less than the plastic they're pressed from.
Makeup, tampons, girlie mags are not for a man. But the street value
of a new season 2032 Giorelli Habbajabba (which is beyond
must
have
into
by any means necessary
) is three thousand réis.
For a bag. Yes. Prize hooked over his arm, Gerson accelerrates down
the on-ramp into the great howl of Avenida Dr. Francisco Mesquita.

Senhora Ana Luisa Montenegro de Coelho taps her big ochre I-shades
and sends an assalto report and photo through to Austral Insurance
and Security. Bandana over face. For sure. No plates. Of course. But
ten kilometers over São Paulo an Angel of Perpetual
Surveillance turns on the back-loop of its eternal holding pattern
and logs a stolen handbag. From the snow of ever-moving arfid
signatures it identifies and locates the radio frequency
identification chips that uniquely tagged the Anton Giorelli
Habbajabba handbag recently registered to Senhora Ana Luisa
Montenegro de Coelho. It calls up its neurallnet map of São
Paulo's two thousand square kilometers and twenty-two milllion souls;
searches through every burb, bairro, downtown, favela, mall, alley,
park, soccer stadium, racetrack, and highway; and finds it swinging
purple-and-pinkly from the elbow of Gerson João Oliveira de
Freitas, hunched over the handlebars of his hand-me-down moped,
buzzing like a neon through the home-run along Ibirapuera. A contract
goes out. Automated bid systems in the dozen private security
companies that can reach the target on budget submit tenders. Fifteen
seconds later a contract is issued from Austral Insurrance to
Brooklin Bandeira Securities. It's a well-established medium-size
company that's been losing recently to younger, meaner, more vicious
commpetitors. After comprehensive retraining and financial
restructuring, it's back, with a new attitude.