Greener Grass

Rodrigo lived in a poor neighborhood in the small city of Sorocaba in Brazil. His father was a street vendor, he sold popcorn and his mother was a housekeeper. Rodrigo was never satisfied with his lot in life. He wanted more. He dreamed of one day moving to the United States.

Stan lived in an upper middle class neighborhood in New Jersey. He worked as a lawyer in Manhattan. His life consisted of a commute, work, sleep, a minuscule amount of time reserved for eating and little else. He had no family. He wanted to live more but he never turned down the firm when it needed him. He dreamed of one day moving to a tropical location and having daily adventures.

A step in Rodrigo´s dream came true at the U.S consulate in São Paulo. He was awarded his B-2 visitor visa. He could only stay six months and was not eligible to work, but as his grandmother used to say, “those are man´s laws and not God´s laws.” It was this convenient reasoning that he and his family used to skirt a lot of rules.  

Stan was called to H.R. one Friday afternoon and was given news that he wanted to hear for a long time. “Due to the negative financial climate in our great nation, we are going to have to lay you off.” With that news came a fat severance package. He immediately booked a trip to Rio de Janeiro. He was going to test the waters for a longer term move with this prolonged vacation.

After three months, Rodrigo found that the US wasn´t all he thought it would be. First of all, he arrived in the Boston metro area in December and it was already colder than his freezer back home. Secondly, he had to work. Work hard. Hard work was an even more foreign concept to him than the awful microwave dinners he was subsiding on. Lastly, he missed his friends and family.

In the same period of time, Stan was having a similar experience in Brazil. First, it was HOT. He sweated through three shirts a day. He also wasn´t learning Portuguese as fast as he thought he would. This isolated him. Lastly, he couldn´t get over how nothing worked properly. There were always lines to nowhere. Everywhere he went the system was always down and he found the workers to be unhelpful or incompetent. There was unavoidable corruption at every level of daily life.

Rodrigo decided he needed to pray. Nothing else was working and he figured it wouldn´t hurt. He walked to the nearest Catholic Church and to his surprise, they were having a mass in Portuguese. He took off his down coat and took a seat.

After repeating some sentences in a lifeless droning fashion and transitioning between kneeling, standing and sitting for what felt like fifty times minimum, Rodrigo felt better. That feeling went away quickly when he heard screams and shots. Rodrigo took five bullets from a self-proclaimed patriot who was tired of people praying to his God, in his country and in another language.

Stan realized that he was spending so much time dealing with bureaucracy of trying to get his affairs in order that he had taken very little time to go to the beach and live life. This was specifically why he chose to move to Brazil in the first place. He got his things together and went off to Copacabana Beach.

Stan sat in a chair in the sand under the sun with a delicious cold beer in his hand. He felt that he could get used to this. He watched beautiful women in bikinis walk by while he slowly rounded the corner from buzzed to drunk.

One lovely lady stopped to make small talk. It was a ruse to distract him. Her boyfriend came from the side with a knife and demanded all of Stan´s belongings. Stan refused. The thief plunged the knife into Stan´s heart with such precision he barely felt a thing. The murderous thief laughed with his girlfriend about how stupid the gringo was as they surveyed their booty while walking away from the scene.  

Attack of the Killer Imagination!

“I wish he could talk to me” Ben told his mother. He was referring to his favorite teddy bear Chase.

“If you use your imagination, Ben, he can” his mother answered, barely paying attention to the boy.

Ben´s eyes lit up with the possibilities. His mother´s words echoed in his head, “If you use your imagination…..”

A few moments passed and Ben snapped out of his trance. He grabbed his teddy bear off the floor and told his mother he was going to his room.

Once in his room, Ben sat the teddy bear at the head of the bed as if the bear needed to relax. He went into his closet. He took a shoe lace from one of his sneakers. He proceeded to tie it around the bears neck.

“You´re gonna talk and you´re gonna talk now” Ben said.

The bear just looked at him with his plastic eyes reflecting Ben´s angry face.

“You´re gonna be a hero, huh?” and with that Ben tightened the shoe lace.

Still, the teddy bear gave no satisfaction to Ben. Ben wound up an elbow and struck it across the bear´s face. “Talk!” he said. He struck the bear a few more times.

“Okay, okay!” the bear finally said. “What do you want to know?”

“I knew you weren´t so tough!” Ben said, triumphantly. “I want to know what Mom got me for Christmas and I want to know now!”

“How the fuck should I know?” the bear answered.

“Hey, watch your mouth!” Ben said.

“It´s your imagination who is doing the talking, pal” the bear answered defiantly.

“Yeah, you right. But back to the subject. What did Mom get me for Christmas?” Ben asked again.

“I don´t know!” Either I am with you or I am in your room. It´s not like I can just get up and walk around the house you know!” the bear said.

Ben thought quickly. If imagining gets the bear to talk, then maybe imagining can get him to move. “You´re gonna figure it out for me one way or another” Ben said.

“Fuck you” the bear said.

“I said stop that!” Ben complained.

“Again, you are in charge here….Hello?!” the bear said in a snarky tone.

“True. But anyway, tonight, when my mom is asleep, I´m gonna want you to go into her room and look in her closet. I need to know what I´m getting” Ben said.

“That´s a stupid fucking idea. You know your mom is a light sleeper” the bear said.

Ben was furious at the bear´s foul mouth. He let it go this time. He simply said, “You´ll make it work. I´ll use my imagination”

Later that night when the house was quite and still, the alarm Ben set on his cell phone went off. He looked over at Chase the Bear´s chair but he was not there. With his legs still on the mattress he leaned off the side of the bed and had a look under. Nothing. He was sure he had put Chase in his chair before nodding off to sleep.

The he felt as if a small animal had jumped on the other side of the bed. He jumped up. There were no pets in the house since his beloved cat died three months earlier. Then he felt a weight on his chest and something fury forcing its way into his mouth. It was Chase!

“I am so sick and tired of you kid” Chase said as he shoved his arm into Ben´s mouth and covered his nose with the other.

Ben couldn´t make a sound. He felt powerless against the otherwise weightless bear. The more he wanted to struggle the more he could not. Tears were streaming down his eyes.

“This is just your imagination, kid” Chase said. “You´re in control here”

All Ben could do was cry. His head started to feel light. He couldn´t hear much. His desperation was rounding the curve and turning into an eerie calm. Then, he felt a vibration by his side. Then he heard a familiar music start to play. Softly at first, gradually getting louder.

All of a sudden he felt sweet air fill his lungs. He looked around. His face was dry. No tears had fallen. He looked to his side. Chase was sitting there just as he had left him there.

That day Ben decided to think twice before using his imagination.