A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism (36 page)

"She was the only guest so far to check out today, and she checked out an hour ago," he said. "She got into a taxi with her bags."

"Maybe you've got the wrong person," Gabriel said, irritation giving way to nervousness. Had he flubbed the time? Had she? In either case, why no note? Why no call?

"No, I dealt with her myself"—this from the manager—"a Chilena woman..."

"Yes, but she's here from California."

The man looked at the piece of paper. "Yes, Claremont, California."

Gabriel could see her upside-down signature.

"She went to the airport already," the man said.

"Well—" Gabriel lingered for a moment, not sure what to do.

He walked away and tried calling her cell phone, but it went straight through to voice mail. He returned to the desk. "If she comes back, can you tell her I came by as planned, and she should call me?"

Gabriel wrote his phone number down and walked outside quickly. Standing there and looking at a line of taxis, he pondered the situation. He knew that his mother was one of the only people to whom Lenka could speak about him without seriously compromising herself. Still, it would be dangerous for Lenka, because Gabriel's mother might write about it, or it might infuriate Gabriel enough that he'd lash out at Lenka. Anyway, surely Lenka wasn't
that
bent on getting even. But no other plausible explanations for his mother's sudden, premature absconding presented themselves.

***

There was no call, text, or e-mail from her that day. He tried calling again, but no luck.

He showered and shaved and put on a well-starched shirt, its collar sharp as a cleaver. He wore a rich purple and gold tie, a pressed charcoal suit, and his freshly shined Hugo Boss shoes. He checked himself in the mirror behind his desk—dapper, apart from the wounds. The cuts had scabbed over and the bruises were beginning to dim, slightly. Some new bruises had surfaced though, in paler yellows and greens; it was as if, in waning, the bruises needed to spread out. With his new bruises, he looked like a commando who'd unsuccessfully tried to wipe off his camouflage makeup. Regarding himself in the mirror, dressed so sharply, he decided he wouldn't wear the bandages that night. It'd be better to brandish the wounds. They might provide a kind of armor for him at the party. More to the point, they might create a humanizing, if not outright pitiable, distraction.

Twenty minutes later, he knocked on Fiona's door. She answered, barefoot, in an elegant aubergine dress. "Whoa," she said upon seeing the exposed wounds on his face. "Sexy."

"Should I cover them?"

"Nah, you're fine." She turned around and stomped over to her laptop on the desk in front of the window. The back of her dress was unzipped, revealing a V-shaped swath of pale skin intersected by the strap of her lacy violet bra. She sat in front of the computer and arched her back, stretching, as she examined a message.

"You zip me up?" she said and started typing.

Standing over her, he could smell her hair. She used a distinctive shampoo, an expensive one, no doubt. It was a wonderfully botanical smell, like something that might waft from the open door of a small florist in late spring. The smell summoned physical memories of her on top of him, hair draped over his face. He was sure they would never have sex again. "We have time for a cocktail," he said.

She sent her e-mail and then turned and grabbed a pair of shoes, slipped them on.

Upstairs, they sat at a table far away from the rest. Severo wasn't there and the pisco sours weren't any good. The ice separated from the liquid and floated on top in a bland and crunchy buffer.

"You might have to give another tutorial," Gabriel said.

She shook her head. He offered her a cigarette and she accepted, he took one himself. She lit them both with a single match, exhaled smoke out of the side of her mouth. Her eye contact was unusually precise that night. "How's your mother?"

"Gone."

"Oh, that's too bad. I thought I'd have a chance to meet her tonight."

He shook his head.

"And your girlfriend?"

"Ex."

"Well, that's not too surprising. She's told everyone about you."

He had a drag and it scorched his lungs. "I was afraid she might be doing that."

"For what it's worth, people are scandalized to hear that you've been a double agent."

He appreciated that she was trying to make light of it. "In a good way?"

"Well, they're talking, anyway. And it's not embarrassing. What will Priya say?"

"Nothing. That thing is not an issue anymore. I'm done here. And she likes me now, apparently. I passed some test. I'll be in Colombia next, and there'll be nothing very secretive about my purpose there. I think she just wanted my identity under wraps in case I made an ass of myself."

"I figured as much. You sure you want to go to this party? Won't Lenka be there?"

"That's why I'm going."

"A dozen roses?"

He smiled, had a sip of his pisco sour, chewed on the ice pebbles. "No. A million roses wouldn't cut it. I just want to see her one more time."

He turned and glanced again out the window facing east. A view he'd often enjoyed at dusk, when the setting sun lit up the mountains gently, in warm light. He wondered if he'd ever come back to La Paz. If so, he hoped it would be under different circumstances. Once he'd summited his current professional climb, he could maybe return under more favorable auspices—a humanitarian mission or something. What would Lenka say then? This fiasco could eventually become a wonderful anecdote for them to tell. The rift would begin to seem small in time, and they'd become friends again...

Gabriel didn't think about it too hard. It wasn't the kind of fantasy that was well served by serious consideration.

Fiona held his arm lightly as they walked along the sidewalks leading toward Plaza Murillo. The party was at the national museum, a block south of the Palacio Quemado. Gabriel had never been. He hadn't been to any tourist destinations, actually. On the walk over, he suggested that it might not be wise for him to use his real name at the door. She agreed.

At the entrance, Fiona introduced herself to a woman with a list. She said that she had brought a date, "Oscar Velazquez." The woman asked them for identification, and Gabriel patted his jacket pocket and then, in his best bad-American-accent Spanish, said that he had forgotten his passport at the hotel. The woman hesitated, and then, maybe pitying him (what with all of his exposed wounds), let him pass.

The interior was confusing. Almost like some architectural metaphor for Bolivia itself, it was quite large, square-footage-wise, but had no large rooms, so the guests had to disperse throughout the warren of chambers. Half of the museum was the centuries-old Mediterranean-style villa of a former colonial official, that portion was built in a figure eight around two small courtyards. Each courtyard was surrounded by rooms full of colonial and precolonial art. An adjacent, newly refurbished building was fully modern: white walls and pale hardwood underfoot, contemporary Bolivian art on the walls. The art was pleasant, from what Gabriel could tell, which wasn't much.

A couple hundred people browsed the many rooms, taking in the art and chatting. Gabriel and Fiona snatched up some tiny
humitas
from the buffet and then meandered off in search of drinks. They located a bar in one room, but it was too packed, so they moved on. The next room, also off one of the courtyards, was less crowded, so they got their wine there.

They wandered for a while and then returned to the courtyards for cigarettes.

In their reconnaissance, Gabriel and Fiona had discovered that the main event—Evo's thanking of that former vice president of the World Bank who had resigned over an argument about Bolivia with a representative of the United States—would take place in a long narrow room near one of the buffet tables. Though the largest room in the building, it wasn't be large enough to accommodate everyone. Guests had to have a special pass in order to make it into the main hall. The rest of them would listen from the atrium. The obvious irony was that Evo's people—Lenka herself, no doubt—had had to stratify guests by their
importance.

They were smoking again when Gabriel noticed Catacora. "Finance-minister-to-be at ten o'clock," he muttered.

"Mine or yours?"

"Uh," Gabriel said, seeing that Catacora was approaching. He looked mightily amused, which Gabriel knew meant that Lenka had talked to him as well as everyone else.

"Gabriel." Catacora extended his teensy hand.

Gabriel shook the hand firmly, gave him a full blast of confident eye contact, even winked. "You look happy, Mr. Catacora," he said. "This is my friend Fiona Musgrave, of the
Wall Street Journal.
"

Catacora kissed her on the cheek, told her it was a pleasure.

Then Catacora returned his giddy expression to Gabriel. He had all of the subtlety one might expect from a person who spent much of his day either crunching numbers or lecturing people about those numbers. "It's funny," he said.

"You're talking about me?" Gabriel said.

"Yes. Funny that you have been pretending all this time!"

"Right." Gabriel wondered whether Lenka had owned up to the fact that she herself had been the one to tell Gabriel about Catacora's appointment. He presumed not. "What did she tell you about me?" he said.

"Just that you work for the Calloway Group."

"Did she say how she found out?"

He shrugged, as if it were beside the point. "Only that you interviewed her many times as well. I should have known when you were in my office so often with such strange questions. But Lenka"—he chuckled—"she figured you out."

Gabriel smiled. "Well, she's awfully sharp."

Catacora laughed and looked around. "They haven't kicked you out of here yet?"

"No, not yet," Gabriel said and scratched his face. "I keep moving around, so I think they can't get a bead on me. In fact, if you'll excuse me, I need to go put more wine in this glass."

He left Catacora and Fiona to talk between themselves, fetched another glass of Bolivian merlot from one of the bars, and then wandered awhile alone, looking for Lenka. He couldn't yet believe that she hated him enough to risk herself in betraying him. He needed to see her to test this idea.

The fact that neither of her schemes had worked out as she'd planned—that one had actually boosted Gabriel's position—only made the whole thing sadder. She was a lousy schemer and he loved that too. She flailed energetically, but landed no punches.

Gabriel dawdled in the modern atrium along with a few dozen others who were also waiting for the speeches to start. The atrium looked like it had been papered with oversize confetti. On closer inspection, he saw that the entire colorful history of Bolivian currency had been put on display. Bills were pressed between quarter-inch slabs of Lucite and mounted on the walls. Six crystalline slabs full of money hung from the ceiling too. Each bill was labeled with the year of its production and the name of the leader who had held office. The currency came in every imaginable hue and varied from tiny sheets of what looked like Monopoly money to clownishly huge bills that would have fit only in a wallet the size of a coffee table.

While Gabriel couldn't imagine a better place for the former vice president of the World Bank and the future president of Bolivia to talk to each other, he could see how the display might prove distracting to members of the press and others not inclined to appreciate the irony. So he and the rest of the unanointed would have to linger outside the hall in this spacious atrium decked with the hard evidence of the country's catastrophically botched monetary policy.

The crowd swelled and a familiar dull roar filled his ears. Gabriel lingered by the back of the room until he saw D'Orsi, the former World Banker—he recognized his face from recent articles—enter with Lenka, who was resplendent in a lemongrass-colored suit, her hair pinned up, her mouth glossy with lipstick the color of blood. She looked dazzling. He'd never seen her dressed up before and it felt alienating to watch her like that, so steely and formidable, outfitted for battle.

A few minutes later the first of three speeches began.

The director of the national museum, whose voice was radio-ready, spoke briefly about Evo and the art on display, about the country's rich history of rebellion. He mentioned the exhibition of money too—"A display that was developed with the help of the World Bank and IMF"—at which the crowd laughed so raucously that it was hard not to sense some ruefulness. They laughed with a kind of fuck-it-all gusto. Then the director introduced Evo with some full-throated verbal genuflecting, going so far as to say he was "the most important and exciting leader this country has had since its independence."

Evo, for his part, kept his remarks brief. His phrases were shorter and more direct, and, listening, Gabriel understood why Lenka and the others had decided that their candidate would opt out of the debates. He had left school when he was fourteen, and it showed. Still, he had an undeniable passion, and it was clear he had the charisma necessary to turn a straightforward statement into a swelling speech. People applauded after almost everything he said. What he actually said, in the end, was beside the point. The point was the context, the solidarity, the pride of the moment when a native person finally wrested control of the country from the intruders.

As he listened, Gabriel thought he recognized a few rhetorical tics as Lenka's handiwork. Evo used the Spanish word
estupendo
—"stupendous"—twice, a word that she'd said to Gabriel several times. Then again, maybe she had picked up the word from Evo.

Evo concluded by thanking D'Orsi for "championing this little country. For too long we have been food for the globalization animal." He praised his forfeiting his own career for the well-being of Bolivians and added that if more people at organizations like the World Bank were so selfless, the world would be a better place. Then he beckoned the man to the stage.

In broken Spanish, so heavily colored by his Italian accent that the words might as well have been Italian, the man said, "Thank you, President-elect Morales, for inviting me to Bolivia. I have been only twice before, and I have always found this country very beautiful; the people are some of the most lovely people I know. Modest and proud—nothing like us Italians." He paused for the audience's obligatory chuckle.