JS came home from the thrift store the other day in good spirits, with a small bag. I asked him what he'd bought.
"Authentic Brazilian jeans," he announced, "a hundred bucks," pulling out a slim, sleek bundle, which he then began to unroll. My head swam in a familiar way. The jeans spoke to me of a deep history, as objects sometimes do, owing to my peculiar disposition. Their deep indigo threw me into daydreams.
The most patrician Tropicalist there ever was, pupils blossoming, scaled a tree that grew from warm, wet ground... in these same impossible jeans! He reached the top, straddled the trunk, and the sweet woodwinds seemed to ring out just as he shouted in triumph: "Quero ver Irene dar sua risada!"
"How remarkable. Those truly are Brazilian jeans. Are they the size 29 that you require?"
"28," he replied, as he ran upstairs to try them on. My consciousness exploded with imagery from the legends with regard to Brazilian jeans. Miraculous control over a soccer ball in a man who'd never laced a cleat. Leonine chocolate manes sprouted from a gray, stubbled head after just two weeks. What blessing might be conferred upon my old friend by the bountiful character of Brazil that bolsters those seams?
Five minutes later, he'd yet to return. My stomach wrenched with guilt as I charged up the stairs. I'd left him alone far too long.
Before I could even ram his door, and my face twisted as though I were the stricken Priam. Through the door, plain as day, came the shriek of that old nightmare, the one I thought I'd heard for the last time. I burst in, ears covered, but still heard it plainly:
"CHARLIE, HOW YOUR ANGELS GET DOWN LIKE THAT!"
That obscurant shade, the queenly succubus, had perched again by the bed of my oldest friend. Her otherworldly shout tripled impossibly into harmony with itself. A shitty R&B beat looped like a camouflaged midnight adder beneath JS's feet, which struck the floor on beat with nightmarish precision. The single pulsed sickly under the needle of his turntable, and on his laptop screen danced the Queen herself, in Yellow, clutching the scolloped scraps of her vestments in a way meant to excite the obsessive feral appetite.
He pumped his fists in empathy as she howled, in three distinct and chilling tones:
"CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW LIKE VERIZON! OHH! AND THAT'S THE WAY IT IS YEAH!"
"JS! I squashed the power switch on the receiver and swatted away the hand that shot out by reflex. He looked up at me with dull eyes, and mumbled "... exciting.... anth...anthemic chorus... and hard druh.. umbeats."
I fled the house in tears of grief. There would be no bringing him back this time. The song was nearly over. It had done its Stygian worst.
What happened on that day? I've always thought that the impetuous courage endowed upon him by the Brazilian jeans was to blame. As indestructible as he felt, it is no wonder he decided that he could stand for just one last look at the visage of the Black Madonna herself, the stupefying siren. And he must have found his fix, maybe some B-side I'd never discovered, never taken any precaution...
No mortal man can stand to be entangled with the mad Queen in her tattered mantle. I had reminded him just three hours before.
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