Chapter 4
“Have you read my script yet?”
I awoke to find Bean peering from a bunk above me, his head upside down, like a gargoyle relieved of its earthly trappings.
“What script?”
“Come on, Phillips. Remember how last night I was talking about the script I’m working on, about how corporate America fucks you in the ass.”
“Oh, right.”
It came back to me, the walk back from the subway around 4 A.M., and Bean discussing how he was going to turn his script into a movie and live off the proceedings in Brazil. In the harsh haze of a morning hangover, this idea seemed even more ridiculous. “Where are we, by the way?”
“Dude, you blackout easily.” Bean says this more out of wonder than in judgment. “This is where I’m crashing until we head off to Brazil in three weeks.”
Bean jumped from the upper bunk, almost crashing into the wall behind him. “Not much space, but all I need it for is writing.”
Bean disappeared behind the lower bunk I was crashed on. “Here check this out.”
It still felt really early in the morning, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to read a script. A few moments later, Bean came back with a long cylindrical cardboard container.
“I had these done in Barra Tijuaca. That’s where I was living with Bobby in the Jui-jitsu house. It’s right next to Rio.”
Bean unfurled a long glossy sheet upon which he had been transformed. Gone were of his cauliflower ears, blotchy skin and unplucked eyebrows. With his chin resting on his hand, he stared out in front of him, his cheeks puckered, his gaze aiming for seductive but landing somewhere between constipated and threatening.
“I know this guy who works on one of the Rio soaps, who is looking for some extras. When you get there, for three-hundred dollars you can have an entire portfolio done.”
“Wow.”
“Phillips, we’re going to take over.”
At one time in my life, I’d taken acting classes on a lark. And though Bean’s idea of landing in Rio with a spot on some day-time soap seemed as outlandish as Hollywood producers coming knocking at his door to turn his script into a movie, I felt myself easily lured. Who knows, I thought, maybe foreigners, or Yankee Seducers, were uncommon enough in Rio, that Bean and I actually had shots as extras.
“Yeah, that would be great.”
Bean removed another large print of himself. “What do you think?”
In this photo, Bean wore an open vest, and had his cheeks sucked into bulimic proportions. With his deep tan, he looked vaguely, at least to my mind, Brazilian. “By the way, what is your ethnic background?”
“My mother is Jewish, my father is Italian,” Bean honked a little laugh. “I know, that explains a lot, right?”
“Hey, man, no judgments.” I pulled myself off the floor. “Yo, I got to get back. I’ve been in New York all weekend and I’ve hardly seen my cousin. I don’t even know if he’s still alive.”
“Yeah, no problem. Brazil, three weeks right?”
Without fresh beer in my system, the prospect of traveling with Bean to Brazil was no longer bathed in a rosy light. “Yeah…”
“Phillips, the hottest girls in the world waiting for us. I mean, you don’t have to come, I just thought you were on the same wavelength.”
“I’m thinking that maybe I’ll do a little traveling on my own. Maybe go through Mexico and work my way down. And then fly to Brazil from Panama…”
“The girls are hot down there…” Bean suddenly froze, his eyes fixating on the wall behind me. “…in Panama. Costa Rica, too.”
Bean didn’t say anything for a few moments. “You know I have a G4 Titanium Mac.”
I wasn’t sure what this mine-is-bigger-than-yours sounding confession meant. “Cool.”
“We could cause outrage. Absolute outrage.”
Bean’s canned lines were losing their zing, and I stood up to leave. “Yeah, we’ll see when I get to Brazil. At least that will be my destination.”
“Both of our destinations!” Bean jumped off the couch, his arms akimbo, his grin spreading across his face like wildfire. “Don’t you see?”
I shrugged and waited for some further explanation.
“We’re going to start in Mexico. Work our way down, seducing women. I’ve got a video camera capability on my new Sony 3-megapixel. We’ll just upload the images to my Mac, send them back home to everyone here. We’ll be famous!”
“Famous?”
“Don’t you see? It’ll start off as an Internet sensation. Then it’ll totally blow up. By the time we get to Brazil we’ll already be famous here.”
In some oblique sense, the logic was there. The likelihood of us becoming Internet sensations, however, seemed as though it had already gone south before either of us had.
“Okay.”
“Phillips.” Bean again walked to the corner of the room. This time he came back with two open beers. “We are going to get the hell out of here. It will be amazing.”
By the third beer, I could already see our smiling faces, beautiful women of varying nationalities pouting appreciatively, on a steroidal version of The Rules of Engagement Site. By the fourth beer, or maybe it was the fifth, we descended upon a Barnes and Nobles, Bean in full-throttle, describing how we’d announce our arrival to local newspapers beforehand, how the press would be following us before we even got to Panama. As we walked up to the counter, Bean cradling a flurry of maps, arched eyebrows and agape mouths let us know they were hardly crazy about our travel plans.
“We start in Mexico.” Bean unfolded a map of Mexico and Central America across a worn wooden table of a bar somewhere near the Port Authority Bus Station. The cushions had ripped from the seating and if I didn’t sit upright I could feel myself sinking into the seat’s foamy maw. The bar was nearly empty, save for two burly men draped over their respective drinks. The Rolling Stone’s Sympathy for the Devil roared from a jukebox, framing our plans with its sonic impishness.
“Tijuana!” Bean rested his finger on the thin red line between San Diego and my version of Hell. “We can meet in San Diego.”
“No, not Tijuana. Anything but Tijuana. Think knife fights and fraternity brothers gone wild.”
“Okay, good feedback Phillips. That’s why this is a joint effort. For our trip it’s all about girls gone wild.”
“What about meeting in Mexico City?”
“That’s where the hottest girls in Mexico are from. We should be able to pull a couple of nines, maybe some nine point fives. Remember, the better looking the girl, the more famous we’ll be.”
Bean fixated on a random spot on the wall, making mental calculations out loud. “But we can’t forget New Year’s. We got to make sure we are there for New Year’s, which will give us about a week to get there, if we start around Christmas.”
We poured over the map, smudging proposed routes with our grubby fingers. We came to the conclusion that the quickest way through Mexico was down through the Gulf and on to Guatemala.
“Well, can we just fly into Veracruz?” Bean asked, placing his finger on top of the first black dot that lay half-way down the gulf of Mexico.
“It’ll probably be expensive. Why not just meet in America. Kind of like a last good-bye. Somewhere halfway between New York and California?
“Texas?”
“Yeah, it’s the closest. We just cross over the border, from…” my finger rested on Houston, the major city closest to the border. “Houston, one-way ticket should cost us less than 200 each.”
“Okay, and then just take a bus all the way down. All the way. Bus to Brazil. That’s it, that’ll be the name we’ll put on the site. The Yankee Seducers, Bus to Brazil. Houston to Rio, the whole way only bus.”
From their respective stupor, two men looked up from the bar, as Bean and I slapped a flurry of high-fives.
“Bus to Brazil. No planes, no matter what.” I bellowed.
“We’ll take girls to ride with us from city to city.”
“We’ll travel all the way to Brazil by land.”
“No, we’ll have to leave them as soon as we get to a new city.”
“That means we can take cars and motorbikes too.”
“This is going to be the biggest trip ever!” Bean jumped out of his chair, his muscles all swollen in celebration. “Mais um choppe, gatinha!”
“What the hell did he say?” I muttered to myself.
“In Portuguese that means, One more beer, beautiful girl.” Bean looked at me as though the answer had been self-evident. “Phillips you got to learn to speak Portuguese as soon as possible.”
An angry looking waiter, who was neither beautiful, nor who apparently spoke Portuguese, eyed Bean suspiciously from the bar.
“Two more beers,” Bean clarified, and Bean settled back into his chair.
“So it’s locked?”
“What’s locked?”
Bean extended his hand. “The trip. It’s locked?”
“Yeah,” I said, extended my hand for Bean to crush in affirmation around mine.
All the reservations I had before, which sounded like an adult’s chiding, vanished. Bean was on to something, I thought, looking at the map and each of those little dots that represented cities. In my mind’s eye, they turned into around-the-clock fiestas, where Bean and I were the special guests.
“Yeah, it’s locked.”
At that point, I should have probably made one final toast and headed back to Troy’s. But with the enthusiasm at a high point, Bean and I continued to drink through the afternoon.
Starting to drink in the morning was never a good idea. Eventually the alcohol would catch up with me and I either fall asleep, thereby missing the night’s festivities, or make a fool of myself in front of a group of strangers. But that morning cum afternoon with Bean was different—we were on a bender.
Salvador and I had officially—amongst the two of us, that is—defined a bender as the following: Drinking the morning after a heavy night’s drinking and continuing on indefinitely.
The effect of a bender on behavior, at least for me, was different from simply getting drunk. With the first drink of the morning, I’d get a sudden feeling of euphoria. Gone were the hangover, or at least the dread of an impending hangover. New vistas of possibilities of where my life is going would open up. I’d feel in control and even wax philosophical. And that was only after the first drink.
After a few more drinks, instead of starting to blackout, I would typical become very lucid and more extroverted than usual, initiating conversations with everyone around me. Intimate details of my life were spilled. If someone were kind enough to get me water, I’d usually end the night there. If I kept drinking, I’d eventually hit a wall and devolve into a reckless mess of zero inhibitions. Motor coordination would give out and I’d wake up in a strange place.
The hangover was even worse—Brazil’s national soccer team using my head to practice penalty kicks, a gnawing regret that in my life, were all washed down with a double shot of nausea. On my most recent bender, I’d tried to rest the entire next day but whenever I was just about to nod off, my body would spasm, keeping me from the restorative embrace of sleep. I’d only been on three benders, and with each one I’d sworn it would be my last. Somewhere in the limitless possibilities that lay south of the border and the maniacal gleam of Bean’s eye, that resolution was quickly forgotten.
“Where we going?” It was overcast but still light outside, though it could have been noon or 4’oclock
“A great place in the village. I can’t take these dive bars. The best you ever see is a 6.5,” Bean replied.
I thought that was the whole point of a dive bar, but I didn’t say anything.
Half an hour later we were surrounded by the raucous prattle of a Sunday brunch bar in the West Village. Groups of girls double fisted martinis, guys lined up for pitchers of beers. Apparently we weren’t the only twenty-somethings who indulged in benders.
I mentioned the concept of a bender to Bean, but he shrugged it off saying that he’d gotten drunk 30 days in a row his first time in Rio, starting on New Year’s and going through till the last day of January. Even though I explained all the ill consequences of a bender, I drank more, drunk on the idea of a bender, and I felt a surge of liberation as I both smote and embraced my demon.
Before I could even finish my bender stories, Bean had sidled up to a group of three girls who’d been standing next to us. “Hey what’s up ladies?”
Six cold shoulders turned to us.
“What, you guys afraid of something?”
The girls now raised their voices louder.
Bean also raised his.
“Do you see why I want to go back to Brazil? You have a bunch of 5.8s act like they’re 8.5s. If this was Rio, these girls would be groveling at my feet. You hear that Phillips.”
If I only had a few drinks in me, I would have felt awkward at Bean’s theatrics. If I’d simply been drinking since the morning, I would probably just continued watching. But I was on a bender, and I’d left any semblance of myself about ten drinks ago in the red velvet booth of a dive bar.
“Are you sure they’re 5.8s? I would peg them a little lower.”
“Hey, why the fuck are you guys being a bunch of assholes?” The tallest of the three turned to us are mouth wide open, her teeth razor sharp.
“Yeah, we don’t want to talk to you.” The smallest of the three tossed us a cursory look over her shoulder.
“That’s the whole point, Phillips.” Bean leaned closer to me, but kept his voice at the same level and affected a professor’s lecturing tone. “Females here just don’t want to talk to us. They have these attitudes, these fronts that lead to altercations. A simple hello would of course diffuse any such tension.”
I thought back to San Tana, where men usually outnumbered women in bars. The scene was a pack of hungry wolves on sheep. The sheep banded together, put up a front to deal with incessant advances. Totally understandable. New York wasn’t too much different. But the bender squelched the rationalization as soon as it popped up.
“We’re so much better looking than these girls. It’s ridiculous. Hey Bean, flex your biceps for them.”
That Bean would actually do this surprised everyone. That I would mouth back to the girl, “Not quite as big as your arms,” also surprised me.
“What’s that?!?” The tallest girl had turned to me fully, bearing her teeth.
“You look like a Sasquatch.” I started walking up and down between the girls doing my best imitation of a large, lumbering hairy thing.
With her teeth still bared, the tall girl broke into a rough approximation of a smile. “Hey Aaron, this punk right here thinks I’m ugly.”
Aaron wore a baseball cap turned backwards, had a pug nose and stood at a good 6’2. He came from the bar, where he’d been ordering a beer all along.
“Yeah, little pussy have a problem?”
Aaron walked up to within a few inches of my face. “I don’t want to have to hurt you, but you and your buddy are being absolute assholes. Just don’t give me another excuse.”
I could feel my mouth twitching at the side, ready to dispense plenty of excuses.
Bean intervened. “Look, it was me. I was the asshole. I started this.”
Aaron didn’t budge, but continued staring at me. “Is that right? Are you going to rat your friend out?”
“I…”
Aaron lowered his voice. “You don’t shit talk my girlfriend…”
Bean’s voiced rose above Aaron’s menacing whisper. He’d taken off his shirt and now stood in a tank top three feet from Aaron. In a low, but steady voice Bean addressed him.
“For the last six months I’ve trained under Royce Gracie, one of the world’s leading ju-jitsu experts. I’d hate to have to use it, but it’ll basically allow me to snap your arm in two places with one single movement.”
Aaron’s face broke into a grin and he turned from me to look at Bean. All types of veined-up muscles swelled from Bean’s frame as Bean stretched his hand out and smiled. I sensed many heads turned towards us and I knew the bouncers were waiting in the flanks ready to pounce as soon as the first punch was thrown, or in Bean’s case, the first bone broken.
“Everything cool?” Bean said slowly.
Aaron paused for a few moments. “I ain’t shaking your hand. But I’d advise you and your buddy to get out of here before my boys come.”
“Hey, no problem. It’s cool.” Bean let his arm fall back down by his side. “We’re paying the tab and getting out of here.”
“I don’t want to see you guys here in five minutes,” Aaron threatened, trying to wrest back the control that Bean had taken from him.
“It’s cool.” Bean said.
I stepped back out of Aaron’s flailing range and waited as Bean took care of the tab.
In less than five minutes we were back outside. The air was chilly and the sun had already set. “How you feeling?” Bean looked over at me.
“Fine. Shit, that sobered me up pretty quick.” I could feel a vein the size of a tree branch throbbing in my neck.
“That’s why we got to go to Brazil, Phillips. I wish Joe could see that. He’s not happy to himself. None of these people are happy here. They just lie to themselves each day. You’ll see how it is in Brazil.”
“Yeah?”
“You know we were pretty close to a big fight. I hate fights you know. But basically if that guy had taken my hand and tried to pull anything funny I would have…”
Bean exploded into a series of ju-jitsu moves. “And then boom, he’d have a broken arm.”
I didn’t ask what would have happened to me.
“Well, I’m going to head back to my place. We got lots of research to do. And I’ve also got to work on my script. You know how to get back?”
“Yeah, Troy lives in Union Square. It’s not too far from here.”
“Cool, man. Hey, I’m happy this happened. It shows us just how much we need to get out of here.”
“Man, I hope you say Brazil is just half as good as you say.”
“Right now, I’m just thinking of Central America. So Houston it is. End of the month. Christmas day. I hear there is hardly anyone traveling that day. So it should be low-key. You don’t have any religious conflict.?
“Actually it would have been more of a family conflict. This year my parents have some time share and I’m definitely not going to my sister’s.”
“Sounds good.”
He stuck out his hand, and I grabbed it, knowing that he wouldn’t break it, but wondering exactly what would happen to us if we actually traveled together all the way overland to Brazil, if Bean would end up breaking any bones, if I would end up doing something I regretted.
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This is a nice piece of writing. The mixture of narrative and dialog was well done. The characters were personable and I wanted to know more about what happens to them. Here are some humble observations:
This is good: “…like a gargoyle relieved of its earthly trappings.”
Where contractions are used, they work well. But the dialog still has a lot of places where contractions would read better.
Good: “The scene was a pack of hungry wolves on sheep.”
I really dislike this line: “For the last six months I’ve trained under Royce Gracie,…” No tough guy on the planet would back down from a line like that. It would be an instant fight starter. It helps that you described Bean’s imposing physique but that doesn’t save the line. A better approach is to have Bean say something quick and macho like, “I’ll break your arm in two places,” and then use narrative to describe his intimidating presence and explain his history with martial arts.
I hope that helps.
It’s moving right along. The pace of the work is quick, largely because it is carried in dialogue for the msot part, and that’s nice. I read some of the earlier chapters a couple of weeks ago and it seems, though I am not sure, that this chapter is recovering ground which has been covered in previous chapters. Bean is still as an engaging character as he ever was but longer passages of his gushing re: Brazil may be a bit redundant at this point, don’t you think? Anyway, some of his enthusiasm can be encapsulated in narrative passages. A point regarding “blackouts”. Blackouts are incidences of drug-induced amnesia. ”Passing out”, on the other hand, refers to incidences of drug-induced coma. I wasn’t sure how you meant it in the context of your story.
On page seven, the sentence, “The hangover was even worse—Brazil’s national soccer team using my head to practice penalty kicks, a gnawing regret that in my life, were all washed down with a double shot of nausea.” just doesn’t make sense to me.
Overall, though, a good read and you are a good writer.
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