People here don't seem to trust each other enough to make it that easy for me.
I'll need to figure out another way to get something that blends in.
The girl is walking down a street that leads even further away from where I landed. While I trust her instincts when it comes to avoiding the police, I have no idea where we're going.
I got a pretty good look at the city while I was free falling and could probably make it on foot to the airport by the bay, but I doubt I'd get very far looking like I do right now. And I still have no idea where this stadium is supposed to be.
"Dónde está el estadio de fútbol?" I ask her in Spanish.
"Campo de futebol?"
"Sí," I reply.
She shakes her head and says, "Sim," correcting me.
"Sim?"
She nods her head.
I nod and repeat "Sim," again. Alright, now she's taught me how to say "Yes" in Portuguese.
"Campo de futebol," she explains to the others.
They break out into a brisk run and I chase after them, hoping it doesn't look like I'm trying to run down a group of children.
"Maracanã campo de futebol?" I ask as I catch up with her.
She answers in a flurry of Portuguese I can't follow. All I pick up is the word futebol.
We turn a corner and she points to the campo de futebol and smiles, proud that she's brought Homem de Ferro to his destination.
Only I'm pretty sure this isn't the Maracanã stadium. The campo de futebol technically isn't even a soccer field, at least not one by my American standards.
It's a fenced in cement court with two soccer goals on either end and a group of six boys kicking a red ball around. Concrete tables with tile chessboards surround the court. The closest thing to a parking lot is a bubble-shaped Volkswagen car — the kind you only see outside the US — parked on the sidewalk.
"Maracanã?" I ask the little girl.
She gives me the universal shrug for "I don't know."
These kids probably have no idea what's a mile away, let alone the other end of the city. For them, their neighborhood is the world.
Imagine what they would think if they could have seen what I saw just a few minutes ago when the earth was hundreds of miles below me?
Before I can find an adult, she runs to the fence and yells in a very loud voice, interrupting the boys playing their game. "Onde está o Maracanã?"
One of the boys points to the East. "É dessa forma." He then looks at me, "Você é um jogador de futebol?"
I think he's asking if I play soccer. It's better to lie than say I'm an astronaut.
"Sim," I reply, nodding my head.
"Quer jogar com a gente?"
I laugh off the question, not sure what the hell he just asked me.
I start to walk in that direction, then realize I have three little shadows. As helpful as they've been, I can't let them go any further.
"Wait," I say, holding out my hands, telling them to stop.
Luca raises his hands, imitating me — imitating Iron Man shooting his repulsor rays.
"No. Espera aquí." I tell them to wait in Spanish and point to a table.
That seems close enough to make them stop.
Maybe they could help me out with one more thing. "Dónde hay un hotel?"
The girl thinks for a moment then yells my question to the boys back in the court.
One of them points to the south. "Cinco blocos."
That seems pretty self-explanatory.
I leave my little helpers sitting at the table, their legs dangling from the concrete benches as they watch me walk away and wave.
I pray this isn't a thing where they wait forever for their spaceman friend to come back.
20
Invisible
So my brilliant plan to blend in with the local population and vanish from my pursuers is a complete failure before I even started.
I'd asked the kids about the location of the nearest hotel because I had this fantasy that I'd walk up to the valet drop-off, grab a bag and then shout something like, "Hey, you forgot your suitcase!" and chase after a taxi that was pulling away — making it look like I was a good samaritan, when in fact I was a thieving no-good samaritan.
The Hotel Saint Moritz is a fenced in enclosure with concrete walls and a steel door you have to talk to an intercom to get through.
In fact, just about everything in this part of Rio is like that. There's no wide open windows to the stores. Every entrance has either a guard or a grim-faced shopkeeper. Everything is either nailed down or behind a locked gate.
They've made it very hard for a guy like me to steal what I need to survive.
I don't know how much further I can go in my iCosmos suit before someone realizes who I am.
If the phone Capricorn had given me was still functional, I could at least try to buy something online. I'm sure I could Amazon Prime some Levis and sneakers to a location near me. I mean, this isn't the Dark Ages.
If I'd been expecting a pit stop before returning to Canaveral, I would have brought my wallet. Next time, David. Next time.
Every few blocks I spot a green bubble shaped payphone that says "Oi" on the side. I guess that's the Brazilian version of AT&T. I'm tempted to call somebody collect and have them wire me some money.
Of course, whoever is trying to stop me, the Russians, the Americans, the Illuminati, the Klingons or whatever, will probably be monitoring that kind of thing. So it's only a last resort.
I saw an old man sweeping his sidewalk in front of his house and briefly considered a home invasion, but I'm going to save that contingency for last resort.
What I need is — BAM!!! — something just hit me in the back of the head.
"Paneleiro!" shouts a teenager on the back of a moped as he and his friend fly past me down the street.
I don't have to know Portuguese to guess the context of the slur.
I touch the back of my head and feel where the rock hit me. There's blood.
In any other situation I'd avoid the conflict — especially given the kind of shit storm I'm in the middle of, but that little pecker may have just solved a problem for me.
He's looking back at me, grinning, at the end of the street while they wait to cross the intersection.
I grab a rock, hurl it and shout, "Big words for somebody riding bitch!"
The rock hits him in the arm as he raises his hands to protect himself. His partner guns the moped at the wrong moment, off-balancing him, and the rock thrower falls off the back of the bike.
I race towards him and kick him in the chest before he can get up. He falls back down and I put a foot so far into his balls he'll have to see an oral surgeon. "That's for being a homophobe."
His friend turns the moped around and drives it straight at me — which would be a great move if he was riding something with more horsepower than a riding lawnmower.
I grab the handle bars like they're steer horns and twist the bike to the side. He has to stick a leg outwards to keep himself from falling over.
I kick him in the knee, buckling his leg, and he falls down, with his moped landing hard on his inner thigh.
"Give me your pants!" I yell at him.
He looks up at me, terrified. I'm not sure if he understands English, but I can tell he knows the man his friend just called a homosexual is now demanding that he take off his clothes.
I'd be scared shitless too.
"Now!" I shout, shoving a foot into his chest.
He starts unbuckling his jeans and sliding them off.
"Your zappos too!" I demand.
His friend is holding his nuts and crying. I walk over and grab the hem of his soccer jersey and whip it over his head.
He raises his hands and wails, "Não mais!"
The driver starts to get up to make a run for it, but I throw an arm around his neck and slam him into the pavement before he can get three feet with his falling pants.