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Today Narcisa came down from the favela looking just like one of those Raggedy Anne dolls I used to see when I was a kid. As a little boy I always thought they looked sexy. I’ve been a sick bastard for a very long time.

She climbed on back of the bike and I took off down the hill with the motor cut off, coasting down the familiar cobble road and she clung onto me as tender as an angel’s kiss and I liked it, I always like it and that’s why I like to coast downhill with the motor cut like that, no hurry, cause now she’s got her drugs and now she feels good and she embraces me tenderly and talks to me, and I can hear her better when she talks to me without the noisy motor and that’s about the only time she ever talks to me and embraces me tenderly like that, when were on the motorcycle riding through the night. So… I like to take my time so as to prolong it and those rare tender moments as long as I possibly can.

“They calling me ‘Emilia’ now up in the boca, Cigano,” she said.

“Who, princesa?” I said, already knowing she was referring to the skinny machine gun-toting teenage bandidos who run the boca, the drug spot up in the favela.

“Os garotos da boca,” she confirmed. “Like the doll, you know because I wearing one clothes over another one…” Referring to the Brazilian version of my long-legged beloved skinny Raggedy Anne doll. Maybe that’s why I love Narcisa so much. I remember the night I first met her years ago, she had been wearing a knee high skirt over two pairs of jeans and two sets of underwear over a bathing suit. When she came home with me, it was like unwrapping an elaborate Christmas present or something. Raggedy Anne. Narcisa.

THE FAVELA

Santa, originally uploaded by Scab Vendor.

“Emilia! Que bonitinha” I said affectionately.

“They were making fun of me…” She said sadly.

“Let them, princesa. I’m not making fun of you. You are my doll, baby. You’re all ragged and torn up and worn out, but you’re the doll God gave me to love and I do love you so.”

She was silent, but the warm squeeze she gave me spoke volumes to my heart. As we got to the corner where we make the turn up to the Casa Verde, the abandoned squatter’s shack where she holes up to smoke crack in the dark with her tribe of other bug-eyed bums and murderers and lost souls, I fired up the bike and accelerated till I stopped in front of that dreary open portal to hell. Then she lept off the back of the bike and disappeared like a big white rat into a hole in the wall and was gone again. I took off back down the hill the way we came, this time gunning the motor hard, vaguely wondering if tonight would be the night of her death.

 Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008. All Rights Reserved.NOTIFIÇAO: Os eventos neste site são contos de ficção - registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor, Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são interamente ficticios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa vivo ou morta se trata de pura coincidência.As vários fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.