The air in the hills overlooking São Paulo didn’t just sit; it shimmered with the heat of a thousand cooking fires, the acrid bite of diesel exhaust drifting up from the Anhangabaú valley below, and the metallic tang of the nearby scrapyards where rusted car bodies were carved apart like carcasses. The sky was a bruised gray, heavy with the promise of rain that never quite arrived in these late-afternoon hours.
