No! Not the backpack!

Last night Ramon was frantically trying to get a hold of me. I decided to wait until after class to call him back since usually, when he calls repeatedly like that, it’s to ask if I’ll give class at 10 p.m.... in a bad neighbourhood... for someone who doesn’t know a lick of English. So you can see why I waited to call him back.

I got out of my class at 7:45 and tried calling him. I got a recording saying that “this type of call is not allowed on this phone.” What the? So I tried again. Same message. So I tried calling someone else. Same message. Hmm, something must be wrong with my phone. As if the bill hadn’t been paid (which it had.)

Across the street from the Bank is Brazil’s national petroleum company, Petrobras. (And caddy corner from the Bank, across from Petrobras, is the cathedral, forming what is locally referred to as “The Bermuda Triangle”: money goes in, but it doesn’t come out.)

Petrobras and the National Development Bank are connected by a pedestrian footbridge. So I found a payphone in front of Petrobras. It took me a while to remember how to work one of those things. I got a hold of Ramon and told him about my problem, and he said, “That’s why I was trying to call you! To tell you that you might have a problem with your phone.” (D’oh!)

Ramon loves to chat. Business that could be taken care of in five minutes if you’re intentional takes him a good half hour, because he likes to repeat things over and over, almost like it comforts him.

About 15 minutes into the call I pulled the receiver away from my ear and it stuck to my hair. Ew. So I just adjusted my hair and continued comforting Ramon. Another five minutes later I realised that the receiver was indeed stuck to my hair. Some asshat put gum on the earpiece which had dried, but was still sticky. D’oh!

So I said to Ramon, “Let me go. Let’s talk about this tomorrow when my cell phone is working again.” He agreed, and then I walked away picking gum out of my hair.

I turned the corner between Petrobras and the cathedral. I passed by a group of six guys, early twenties, shorts and t-shirts, and thought, “Am I going to have trouble with these guys?” Over the past six years I’ve learned who is going to mug you, and who might mug you. But these guys were talking amongst themselves, laughing, and I sighed in relief. We passed each other by, and I continued walking down the street.

As soon as you pass the Petrobras building, the street becomes oddly dark and dangerous, and just for one block. And what makes it even weirder is that at the corner is a military police batallion.

Out of habit, that’s exactly the point where I cross the street, because there’s a shade more light on the other side. But as soon as I passed by the group of guys, I saw a break in the traffic and decided to cross a few yards sooner.

Still picking gum out of my hair, I didn’t think twice about the two young guys on bicycles who rode past me slowly. They went down half a block, stopped, conferred, and then one of them rode back in my direction. He passed me by, and I still wasn’t registering anything wrong.

The boy set his bike down and started to walk behind me. What the? And it wasn’t until the other boy, a tall, thin black guy, reached from under his t-shirt and withdrew a revolver that I realised I was walking into an ambush.

I was cornered, and the other boy, a punky short guy who was trying to grow a moustache to hide the fact that he was probably 12, said in a voice full of hatred, “Give me your cellular!”

I froze. I even said, “Huh?” He repeated, more angrily, “Give me your cellular!”

I still hesitated, looking down the barrel of the gun pointed at me from 10 yards away, and found it quite odd that the boy holding the gun said absolutely nothing. He didn’t even appear nervous or angry, he just pointed the gun steadily at me.

The next thought I had was that the gun just didn’t look real. It looked plastic. I even considered, for a split second, to challenge the guy.

Still reeling from the last time I got mugged, I’d been planning my strategy for the next time. The last time I was threatened with a shard of glass (which was probably just plexiglass) as three other boys jumped me. I fought them off and was able to run away. The next time someone tries to mug me, I’ve been thinking to myself, I’m going to just start kicking and pounding.

I hadn’t figured a pistol into the equation. So reluctantly, I handed over my nonfunctioning cell phone, and was expecting to go on my merry way when the mustachioed punk barked, “And your backpack, too!”

“No,” I reasoned calmly with both of them, “there isn’t anything of value in here, just my books. I need my books!”

That angered the young man even more, and started to grab at my backpack. Taking quick mental inventory of what was in my pack I decided that it all was replaceable, except for the exercises I was carrying to make photocopies for my next class. So, no exercises in the next class. As I handed the pack over to the boy with the gun, he wasn’t expecting it to be so heavy, and it fell to the ground. Now, the pack was zipped up, I know that for a fact, because I can’t have the pack open without it opening up all the way and all the contents spilling onto the ground. But for some odd reason, a book popped out from the pack.

“See?!” I shouted. “It’s just full of books!”

So I scooped up the book and stood there, waiting to be shot in the gut, when the boys jumped back on their bikes and rode away. They didn’t even ask me for my wallet, which coincidentally had three hundred bucks in it because I had just cashed a check.

Even though my legs were turning into spaghetti, I was able to continue walking down to the next block where the police are stationed twenty-four hours a day, because that neighbourhood is too dangerous. Granted, crime has virtually disappeared on that block. I made it to the police van and reported what had happened. Another punk kid appeared and said he saw everything, and helped me describe what the boys looked like. One of the three policemen got on the radio and dispatched the report, and now I just had to wait and see if any police in the area have spotted them.

He asked, “Where did it happen?”

“On the next block!” I shouted.

“Where? Where that bus is?”

No. Where the bus was sitting idle was completely illuminated. “No, not there! Across from the military police batallion!” I added that as a dig but didn’t want to push my luck any further than that.

“Oh yeah,” the officer said, “that street is very dangerous.”

I wanted to go all First World on him, but decided to keep my unconstructive comments to myself. See, this is one of the primary differences between America, and Latin America. In America, if something is wrong, fix it! In Latin America, if something is wrong, leave it alone, ignore it, know that it is there and avoid it. I mean, crime has disappeared in Lapa Square because the police finally listened to the neighbourhood and have stationed a patrol in the square, so why not station a bloody military policeman in front of the batallion?! It’s the fucking Army for Christ’s sake!

The policeman had asked me where I teach. If I had said the name of the school, he wouldn’t know what that was. So I gave my standard answer: “It’s an English school that teaches English to businessmen,” and left it at that.

Five minutes later, he asked me again, “So, where do you teach?”

I gave him the benefit of the doubt and explained it again, still not mentioning the name of the school nor the fact that I give class at the National Development Bank.

Finally he said, “Well, no one has radioed back, so the only thing you could do is go to the police station and report the assault.”

I pictured the scene: I’d have to walk to the other side of Lapa. Once you leave the well lighted square, Lapa becomes dark and dangerous again. I still had three hundred bucks in my pocket, so I decided not to get mugged again. I decided just to walk home and forget about it.

On the walk home, I thought to myself, Why was I walking in the first place? Why didn’t I take the subway?

Then my mind became flooded with what-ifs. Everything about that night was off. My routine was off because I had called Ramon and talked for twenty minutes. I crossed the street at exactly the point where I shouldn’t have. If my cell phone had been working, I would have tried to call Leo to see if our tentative plans were on or not. And if my cell phone had been working, I would have been walking and talking to Ramon, twenty minutes before the muggers arrived.

Obviously I tossed and turned all night, and without my cell phone, my only “alarm” was the timer on my television. I turned the volume up and set it to go off at 6. I know I didn’t fall asleep before 3.

I gotta get the fuck out of here. I’m too old for this.