Blood-drenched Beard

His watch says ten o’clock in the morning. He gets dressed, leaves the hotel, walks down a few steep streets, and arrives at a large avenue with a wide planted area in the middle that forms an attractive, well-kept square. He doesn’t remember seeing such a clean, organized town before. The side streets are almost deserted, but the avenues are busy. The town center is full of modern buildings with more than ten stories, but the flower beds and gardens are like those of a country town. The air smells of carbon monoxide and wet earth. The women are at once both slender and strong. He withdraws some money at an ATM, stops at an Internet café to check his e-mails, and walks in the cold wind and midday sun until he is tired. He has a late lunch at an all-you-can-eat buffet and eats so much that he can barely walk. He drags himself back to the hotel, lies on the bed with the heating turned up as high as it can go and the TV on channel ninety-eight, and alternates between snoozing and anticlimactic sessions of self-stimulation. Late in the afternoon he goes out again, heads down to the avenue, and walks through the square a little until he finds a café with large windows and a supersize TV in the outside area. A few spectators are already gathering, some wearing Grêmio jerseys. He enters and asks if they are going to show the Grêmio game. A muscular waiter in a black apron and hat with the name of the establishment written on them says yes. He orders a coffee. The game begins, and in the next two hours he drinks a few draft beers and eats a serving of French fries. Atlético Paranaense beats Grêmio 3–0. His teeth are chattering, and the thermometer in the square says it is fifty-two degrees. He sets off walking through the town again, passing in front of bars full of university students, entire blocks without a soul in sight and gas stations frequented by young people on their way to parties and taxi drivers without customers. It is almost midnight when he returns to the hotel. He doesn’t even go up to his room. He asks the tall young man at reception to call him a cab. He shows him the address and asks if he knows the place. The receptionist presses his lips together and raises his eyebrows.

Hmm.

What?

Who told you to go there?

I have a business meeting with someone. He was the one who gave me the address.

Well, if he told you to go there… but be careful.

Why?

Mafia. The sort you don’t mess with. And the girls there are quick. Real quick. They make off with your money, and you don’t even know what happened. My dad used to say we should steer clear of three things in life: fast women, slow horses, and engineers. I’m giving you the same advice. Just the other day two guests came back early in the morning in a car with the bouncer of the place. With a gun to their heads. They’d spent eighteen hundred reais and didn’t have enough cash on them. They’d thought they were going to spend five hundred each, and the numbskulls weren’t carrying credit cards. They had to drive around with a gun in their ear until six in the morning to withdraw the rest at an ATM.

What a mess.

They’ll kill you if they have to. Mafia. Have a good think if you really want to go there.

I just need to talk to the guy. I don’t intend to hang around there.

The receptionist makes a face as if to say “I warned you,” holds up the palms of his hands, and returns the paper with the address on it. The taxi pulls up at the entrance to the hotel. Inside it smells of wool, and the windows are fogged up. The elderly man in a beret behind the steering wheel reacts as if he already knew his passenger’s destination.

It’s one of the best places around. I can pick you up if you need me to. Here’s my card. But be warned. Don’t spend what you haven’t got.

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