We're lost, yet we're here

By Marcia Lima

BRAZILIAN MODERN TALES

A delivery boy fan of Balzac gets involved with a rookie hijacker, an employee of an illegal slaughterhouse gets beat up by his own consciousness, a depressed dealer, a teenage girl who uses literature as a way of extortion and much more. In common, the typical humor of those who don’t have much to lose and their ways through São Paulo city, from Santa Cecília to Parque Santo Antônio, from Paraíso to Morumbi.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Apr 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9781507107294

Book preview

(001) Switching Places

(002) Give me your Strength, Whiskey

(003) The Noise of the Deaf and the Silence of the Pigs

(004) If We Don’t Arrive

(005) Two Gaúchos During Winter

(006) Help Wanted

(007) Fridge on Sale

(008) Imperfect Future

(009) Emergency Exit

(010) Song and Lyrics

(011) Over the Bridge

(001) Switching Places

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If you must know, I ate the damn paper. Why? Because it had stupid instructions written in it. And I know you’ll suggest that I also eat the Bible, if I am really serious about this concept of eating stupid things. But you got to start somewhere, and this is where I chose to start, whether you like it or not, he said.

He said. So much inspiration. I really am a fucking great writer. My great contribution to the world will be this he said. And I can’t even complain about it. If it weren’t for my parents, I would still be staring at a blank page. But they are both lunatics, and I thank the gods of writing for that. Gods of Writing. Wow. This one will go straight to Granta.

Eight more lines, come on. Just a little bit more and all this senseless typing will be justified. Around the second page, I can rest my hands, stretch my arms and sigh like an enigmatic writer. These final moments assure my deposit at the end of the month. The louder the noise, the more they pay for new inspirational workshops. The same way they would pay for ballet lessons, target shooting or whatever kept me away from home for as long as possible. Yes, they deposit twice as much as the classes cost. No, they are not aware of the fact that half of it goes to things more important than fiction (aka: perfumes, Oscar Freire outfits and makeup. Actually, I have to order some new nail polishes as soon as I finish this).

The louder the noise, the more comfortable they get to stage a new low-level scene that my professor will classify as extremely real for a fifteen-year-old girl who has never dated and barely understands the adult world, especially when it comes to married people. Child prodigy, at least until one of her characters appears on the first page of some newspaper for a bizarre murder case.

And what fault do I have if you didn’t write down the crap you found interesting? Now it is all in my tummy. But we can go back to that in a few hours. Maybe this time you won’t complain about me taking so long in the bathroom, he says harshly.

Besides some useless adverb (and now, being redundant), my second contribution for the Brazilian Academy of Letters is bullshit. He doesn’t stop there. But my teacher says we must suppress any uninteresting details. And to be honest, I find this using alcoholics as literary resource a very uninteresting thing – no offense, Bukowski. So, I will just skip the part where he (and by he I mean my dad, not Bukowski) drags his tiger slippers to the minibar and fills up a glass with the cheapest cachaça ever – gift from our gardener. 

I wanted to mention the slippers at some point of my story, but then people would say that no man wears that, especially not a conflicted character watching his own marriage fall apart after eating the paper he found inside the fortune cookie. Because it read: "Don’t be negative. And, of course, because he was drunk. When I think about it, this eating the paper thing doesn’t seem to be real as well. And the worst of all is that I can’t even scream But it did happen, you skeptical bastards. I was there. I was the only one who saw that. No way. The only thing worse than absurd stories are autobiographies. "This is not a place for therapy", said my teacher during the first week, when I threw some difficult words in a High School story full of broken hearts. I mean, only one heart. Broken way too many times. I am fifteen, dude. Leave me alone! But ok, this isn’t therapy. So, no calling a spade a spade. Damn. Common ground. Cliché.

I don’t care. Thirty-five lines.

My mother looks everywhere. Goes to the upper cabinet in the kitchen, moves the salt away, takes two Prozac pills hidden inside a box of matches. OK for the box of matches. Not OK for the Prozac, Mom. So many antidepressants and you have to choose the least original of them all? Look at the stove and then, sigh. Touch a knife for longer than usual. Cry a little and then, smile like a mad person. Anything is better than going for Prozac. They have done this in 78 thousand different ways. It is all over the movies, the plays and the soap operas.

She grabs the phone:

Hey, sis? Sorry for the late call, but I need to talk to somebody. I am divorcing Alberto. There is no turning back now.

I try not to stop typing. I keep moving my head in order to justify