Riviera, Brazil.
She ignored me again. “Oh, and you guys should be from San Diego. That explains it. I met you when I was in San Diego!”
Ignoring the ludicrous odds, and the fact that meeting some dudes from San Diego was equally, if not more, sketchy as meeting some dudes in Riviera, I couldn’t help but wonder aloud why we would need such a convoluted story.
She finally answered me, even if she didn’t mean to. “My dad would be so mad at us if he knew me met you at your barbeque! We have to have met at Pucci. And you’re from San Diego. Oh, and you can’t speak Portuguese!”
Sam questioned the sense of the final stipulation, and I wondered how going to a club with a date-rape name like Pucci could be safer than a barbeque, but we agreed to stick to the plan.
Arriving at her house, with a herd of yappy little trophy wives’ dogs biting our ankles, we played the dumb Americans as she introduced us to her father. He was wearing a skin-tight shirt, loafers without socks and a multitude of gold chains, and looked pretty pissed off. The other girls kindly herded us away to hang out while they got their stuff together.
As we walked outside, Sam whispered to me.
“We’ve got to get the fuck away from these girls. Her dad didn’t think I could understand what he was saying. He told his daughter that if her and her friends went over to our apartment, he’d beat them all in the head.”
“Damn, that’s pretty intense. But that doesn’t affect us.”
“I’m not finished. He also said that if they went, he’d grab one of the guns he expressly said he keeps upstairs and he’d hunt us down.”
The girls came over again that night to drink again that night, but left early. I asked one of them why.
“Well, I don’t know what’s going on with you guys. Last night you were all so talkative. Tonight, it’s almost as if you’re frightened of hanging out with us!”
I left it at that.
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Japa was about to yell again when someone grabbed him and whispered in his ear. He nodded and then answered.
“I’M RIGHT HERE! CALL ME! THREE ELEVEN NINE FIFTEEN TWENTY-THREE!” The girl, a few buildings down the street, just shrugged.
“Help me yell!” Japa said to the rest of the group, who immediately pressed up against the railing.
“THREE! ELEVEN! NINE! FIFTEEN! TWENTY-THREE!” They kept yelling until the girl gave thumbs up.
“Oh shit, she’s calling! Shut up! Shut up!” Japa said. He answered with a phrase I didn’t understand but had everyone else laughing their asses off and invited her over for a barbeque. We had already finished eating everything we had for the night, but we still had plenty of drinks, and I was assured that’s all we needed.
They kept yelling the phone number; a pair of girls waving from a balcony on the fourth floor across the street to the left; a single girl across to the right, another two watching TV on our far right. The latter weren’t amused to have their show interrupted, but oh well.
