recommended listening: all along the watchtower, by dave matthews band
The rules are different here. For instance, walk as close to oncoming traffic as possible during rush hour. Walking too close to apartment buildings between four and six o’clock in the evening is a good way to get tea leaves, egg shells, carrot gratings, and other dinner preparation items dumped on your head from upper-floor windows.
Joey’s giving a tour of his new Internet café’s neighborhood and explaining the secrets of small business success.
“I’m wondering why a neighborhood with fifty percent unemployment needs a 24-hour Internet café.” I step over a three-foot-deep hole in the sidewalk.
“The same reason anyone needs it. Americans don’t work at two in the morning either, do they? It’s for porn.”
“So all these Internet café’s that were started with U.S. grant money in the last few years…?”
“Oh, people do email and research and things. But 99% of that’s in normal day hours. It’s funny, isn’t it? We got millions of dollars of educational and business development grants in the last ten years, and the only thing that got easier is seeing naked people.”
We pass the gypsies with their buckets of smoldering herbs. For about a nickel, they’ll chant to ward off the evil eye while you inhale the herbs. For another dime, they’ll let you sniff enough glue to forget about curses. As usual, they’re surrounded by street children.
“Once I had my niche, I started visiting other cafes and offering to share software or help them with their networks. That way I got to know their systems and find ways to get past whatever protection they were using. I wasn’t planning to attack, but you need to be able to defend yourself. Like when those people,” he pointed at an empty graffiti-covered storefront with a dangling sign advertising Internet services, “sent me a virus, I could remove it because I’d worked on their systems and knew what viruses they had access to. And I knew what protection they had.”
“How do you get them?”
Several of the street children stroll by quickly.
“Sellers know when you’re serious. They come to you. Most of the normal viruses are probably twenty to fifty dollars. The funny thing is I wasn’t really that serious about closing these people down. I only sent them a five-dollar virus. That’s just a bug. Too bad it took them four days to remove it. In that time, I ran a sale, and their customers switched to me.”
A police car coasts up behind us, driving on the sidewalk.
“Do you have it?” the driver asks Joey in a conversational tone.
“Now?” Joey asks. “I’m with a friend.”
The driver’s eyes dart toward me. I look away.
“He’s American.”
“Does he understand?”
“Enough.”
“OK. Later.”
The car passes. The street children re-emerge from an alley and stumble back to the gypsies.
Joey takes his cell-phone case off his belt and puts it in the plastic grocery bag he carries instead of a briefcase. “It was this. If they see it, they think you’re ready for business. That guy, he’s the main guy. A lot of people don’t want to pay what he asks, so they spend all their time paying off every thug who comes by. I pay more, but then I have time for other business. One-stop-shopping?”
Joey looks at me and shakes his head. “You look discouraged. The rules are just different here. You can’t change them.”
“Then I guess we have to change the game.”
He rolls his eyes. “Hey, they have great CD’s here. Look…do you like Bjork? You can get all of Bruce Springsteen on one disk!”
