James and I got to the bar and met Dan and Julia in line. Both bar tended at a place down the street and knew pretty much everyone in the neighborhood. I stood around awkwardly while they chatted up a steady stream of people wandering by to say hello. Moments like that are what cigarettes were invented for.

We eventually made our way to the front of the line and climbed up a narrow, hidden staircase up to the second floor. From the front, the building looked pretty much abandoned, with blacked out windows, but inside the place looked like an expensive caricature of a speakeasy, with lots of unnecessary swooping fabric on the walls and giant fake plants. Everything was lit in red. The bartenders wore ties.

A blues band was set to play, a rare occurrence in Brasil, and the house was packed with an excited crowd. Dan led us over to a group of friends at a large table in the corner of the room. A girl in a dress more appropriate for a wedding than a dingy lounge sat on one side with a couple that was older by anyone else in the room by at least a couple decades. On the other side sat three girls, two relatively nondescript but friendly looking and the other wearing glasses, baggy clothes and those extreme sandals collegiate hippies wear.

The overly-dressed girl was German and celebrating her birthday. Her parents, the distinguished folks next to her, had flown in for the occasion. The sheer cost of such an undertaking, combined with the prom dress, could only suggest that we were in the presence of a princess, and she didn’t disappoint. Anna spoke English well, and ended up chatting with her a bit. She was nice and kept rambling on about herself, which I didn’t mind because it took the small-talk pressure off myself. Still, there’s a limit to everything, and when she started bitching that the waiter was slow – the guy was pretty sprightly in my opinion – I politely excused myself to the bathroom and resolved to avoid her for the rest of my life. When I returned, the whole group was gone sans Julia, who snagged me and led me through the back to meet the rest on the roof of the building.

Being on a roof always gets people excited. I’m not sure if it’s some leftover natural instinct, feeling confident being high up above your prey, or if it’s just the fact that smoking squint-eyed on a rooftop overlooking a lit-up city feels like a penthouse playboy in some movie. Either way, we walked up to people either yelling and partying wildly or standing around looking cool, both far cries from the restrained chattering back inside the bar.

Julia and I chatted for awhile. She was a pretty good shit talker, which is always a positive, and we traded attacks on those around us. Dan found us and brought us over to where his cousin and friends were arguing wildly about god knows what. His cousin was a wild haired small guy in college that spoke really fast. I talked to him a bit about standard collegiate topics. He had big ideas for revolution and reform in Brasil. I was interested in what he had to say, at least for an insight into the country’s politics if nothing else, but he was too twitchy for me to handle.