Pena Pena Penal! The word up and down the ladeiros, running down the serpentine main street of Cidade de Luz like sheet-water, rumored through the diners and supermarkets, the ball courts and the lamp standards where carpimpers hard-wired their arc-welders and spray-guns. Black cock tail-feathers stuck into the verge mud, poked through the wire mesh of a front gate, tucked under windscreen wipers. Stencil-cut roosters sprayed onto shop shutters, curbstones, into the corners of bigger, bolder swaths of street art; the cheeky, ballsy little black cock. His crow sounded across the hillside from the rodovia to the bus station, from the Assembly of God to the Man high over all: call the boys, the good old boys, the gang is back.

They met in the back office of Emerson’s gym among the broken exercise machines: Emerson himself; Big Steak — could do with patronizing his own gym; Turkey-Feet with his Q-blade; that fool Treats because if he had been left out he would have blown the whole thing; then the car boys Edimilson and Jack Chocolate from the garage; Waguinho and Furação the drivers; and, honorary Penas, Hamilcar and Mr. Smiles for stealth and security, looking simultaneously superior and scared.

“And me,” Fia had said. “You used my money, I want to see what you’re spending it on.”

“It wasn’t your money. Someone had to know how to place the bet. And some of the guys, they knew you from before.”

Edson had to admit, it was a brilliant little scam. Fia had come banging on his door in the wee wee hours, a look of wide-eyed astonishment on her face. Edson had been out of his bed in an instant, bare-ass naked, reaching for Mr. Peach’s gun thinking, Killers Sesmarias pistoleiros.

“I can’t believe it, you’ve got A World Somewhere!”

O Globo 12 ran twenty-four-hour telenovelas, and In the insomniac hours Fia had channel surfed onto a quantum marvel. (“Everything happens somewhere in the multiverse,” Mr. Peach had said at breakfast the next morning where they cracked the plan over the eggs and sausage.) Not just that Edson’s universe too had A World Somewhere , but that it was identical to the one to which Fia had been secretly addicted: cast, characters, and plot. With one significant, big-money-making difference: the telenovela in Edson’s universe was a week behind. Edson even remembered the cause:

Fia — the other Fia — had explained that it was a strike by the technicians. It had gone to the wire, but they had walked out all the same. It had seemed important to her at the time. In Fia’s universe, they had made the deal.

“The same, word for word?”

She nodded, dumbfounded. “Are you sure?”

Big big eyes.

“Information is power,” he had declared over breakfast eggs and sausage.

“How can we make money out of this?”

“That’s easy,” Fia said. “Boy-love.” Mr. Peach scrambled eggs, unperturbed. For two months now A World Somewhere had been working up to a culminating moment of passion and oral between Raimundo and Ronaldão. If Edson ever bothered to watch the television read mags follow the chat channels, he would have known that the most important question in Brasil was will they/won’t they? The bookies’ odds were dropping day by day as the Notorious Episode approached: it surely must happen: boy-love on prime time. As part of the buildup the writers had been holed up in a hotel under armed guard. Expectation was sky-high, advertising prices cosmological.

But Fia had already watched that ep.

It was a complicated bet; small amounts liquidated from antiques donated by Mr. Peach spread around backstreet bookies all over northern São Paulo, never enough to shift the odds, sufficiently far apart to break up a pattern. Edson, Fia, and Mr. Peach cruised the boulevards, swinging coolly into the back-alley rooms and slapping the reis down on the Formica table.

Edson was so engrossed sending the black feathers and the pichaçeiros with the cockerel stencils out into Cidade de Luz to summon the old team that he completely missed the Notorious Episode.

Old Gear summoned his safe out of the floor and fetched sufficient reis to bathe in.

“How did you know they’d chicken out at the last moment? Were you holding a scriptwriter’s mother hostage or something?”

“Or something,” Edson said.

And standing up in front of the old Penas in Emerson’s gym, sports-bags full of reis under the desk, Edson had watched the years scatter like startled birds. He was twelve again, and with the rolling back of hope and achievement came the bitter realization that for all his ambition he had never been able to fly fast enough to escape Cidade de Luz’s gravity. You end as just another malandro with a gun and a gang.

“Thank you all for coming. I have a plan, an operation. I can’t achieve it myself; I need your help. It’s not legal” — laughs here: As if, Edson — “and it’s not safe. That’s why I wouldn’t ask you as friends, even as old Penas. Don’t think I’m insulting anyone’s honor when I offer to pay you, and I’ll pay well. I had a bit of a windfall. A couple of bets came in. You know me; I will always be professional.” He takes a breath and the room holds its breath with him. “It’s a big ask, but this is what I want to do … ”

“I see no political objections to you planning an operation,” says The Man, leaning into the heat so that the sweat drips from his nipples. “Edson, I respect your businesslike attitude, so I’m offering you fifteen percent off the standard license fee.”

Edson realizes he’s been holding his breath. He lets it out so slowly, so imperceptibly, that the sweat-beads on his thin chest do not even shiver.

“It’s a generous offer, senhor, but at the moment, any monetary fee hits my cash flow hard.”

The Man laughs. Every part of him jigs in sympathy. “Let’s hear your payment plan, then.”

Edson nods at Milena, still keeping it up, still smiling at every bounce.

“You said she was impressive.”

“I said she needed surgery.”

“I’ve got her a try-out with Atletico Sorocaba.” It’s not quite a lie. He knows the first name of the man there; he’s left an appointment with the secretary.

“Not exactly São Paulo.”

“It’s building a following. I’ve a career development plan.”

“No one could ever accuse you of not being thorough,” The Man says. “But…”

“I’ll throw in my fut-volley crew.”

The Man scowls. The SurfTeam copies his expression, amplified by hard. “They’re girls.”

The Man rolls his head on his sloping, corrugated neck.

“They do it topless.”

“Deal,” says The Man, suddenly quivering with laughter, rocking back and forth, creasing his big hairy belly, slapping his thigh. “You kill me, you fucking cheeky ape. You have your license. Now, tell me, what do you want it for?”

“Very well, senhor, with your permission I am going to break into the military police vehicle pound at Guapira and steal four quantum computers.”