Exposure (12 page)

Scuzo gets up onto one knee with both hands on his gun, pure textbook, and fires three shots at the vehicle’s tires. They all miss. A white Toyota revs ferociously and heads off after the van, tires screaming. Scuzo thinks about spending a couple of rounds on that as well, but by then his sergeant is bending over the girl on the ground and she’s in his line of fire. So he stands up and lets his breath out. Then something makes him turn around, and he sees a guy wearing a brown leather jacket holding the blue glow of a cell phone in one hand and a big automatic in the other.

“Don’t shoot!” the man yells, but Scuzo is so wired that he can’t help himself. His first shot misses, but the second makes a sizable hole in Enrico’s thigh. A little while later, the moaning starts to blend with the incoming sirens.

A week passes, during which time Nestor Brabanta pulls strings. He doesn’t need to tug very hard. His daughter’s name, his name, does not feature in any of the brief stories about a “failed holdup” that appear in the newspapers. He ensures that Enrico and the driver no longer have a future in the security business, regretting bitterly that it is far less easy to dispose of an unwanted son-in-law.

D
IEGO ARRIVES AT
the marina penthouse just before eight thirty.

“How is she?”

Otello turns away from the complicated chrome coffee machine and folds his arms. “Fine. Back at work.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Nope. She was pretty freaked out for a couple of days, then she gets up early, takes a shower, brings me coffee in bed, and says, ‘Well, we’ve only got the studio for another week, I’ve got thirty people hanging around not knowing what to do, so I’m going back to work.’”

“I’m impressed,” Diego says. “She’s a great girl.”

“She’s amazing. Really strong.”

There’s something slightly challenging, as well as ridiculous, in the way Otello says this. So Diego nods his head like a man receiving wisdom. The coffee machine emits a high-pitched gargle, and Otello busies himself with cups.

“So who’s with her?”

“For now, Michael. But I’m thinking about making that a permanent arrangement. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“You’re thinking of switching Michael to Dezi?”

“Yeah. D’you have a problem with that?”

There is nothing in Diego’s manner to suggest that the night-black interior of his head is suddenly lit up brighter than an autopsy. He sips coffee, considering the possibilities. At last he says, “Well, the obvious question is, if Michael watches Dezi, who watches you?”

“When we’re out together, Michael is with us anyway, right? And when I’m with Rialto, well, the club security is pretty sound.”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“I mean, Diego, think about what went down at that gas station, okay? You think if Michael had been in the car, any of that would’ve happened? No way, man.”

“Yeah, maybe. Okay, you’re right. Let’s do it.”

“You don’t sound too happy about it. What’s the problem?”

“No. It’s fine. I think you’re right. Honestly.”

“No,” Otello says, quietly insistent. “What’s the problem?”

Diego puts his cup down carefully. “Okay, then, two things. First, I think he’s too fond of her.”

Otello blinks. “What?”

“Well, he doesn’t exactly try to hide the fact that he adores her, does he?”

“Yeah, but hey . . . What are you saying here?”

Diego drinks more coffee before replying. “I’m saying that despite him being built like a tank, Dezi could twist Michael around her little finger. And that’s not the ideal bodyguard-client relationship. Look, you say that what happened last week wouldn’t have happened if he’d been in the car. But think about it: Dezi puts her hand on his and says, ‘Michael, sweetheart, can we pull into this place just ahead and pick up some coffee?’ Or they’re somewhere else and she says, ‘Michael, let’s make a little detour and watch the sun set over the river.’ You think he’d say no to her? D’you think Michael could say no to
anything
Desmerelda wants?”

Otello is staring as though a second nose has sprouted from Diego’s face.

“It’s about discipline, Capitano. Or
self
-discipline, I should say. That’s what security is all about.”

Otello shakes his head very slightly, like a man coming out of a trance. “Uh . . . okay. I take your point. But I think you underestimate Michael. You always have. He’s tough up here”— Otello taps the side of his head —“as well as everywhere else. I don’t think there’ll be a problem with his self-discipline.”

Diego nods. “Okay. You know him better than I do.”

“Yeah, I do. What’s the second thing? You said there were two things.”

Diego hesitates. He shrugs and sticks his lower lip out. If you didn’t know him well, you’d think he was slightly embarrassed.

“What?” Otello says, and there’s a rough edge to his voice now.

“I’m just being straight with you here, Capitano.”

“So, what?”

“Okay. The booze.”

Otello sits back in the chair and goes slack like a supporter whose team has just, predictably, conceded a goal.

Diego holds his hands up in an apologetic gesture. “I know, I know,” he says.

“Michael hasn’t touched a drink for three years,” Otello says flatly. “And I know that for a fact.”

“He still goes to Alcoholics Anonymous.”

“Yeah, he does. But that’s like, you know . . .”

“For the support. The discipline. Of course.”

Otello says nothing for several heavy seconds, so Diego does his manual apology again. “Okay, fine. End of subject. I’m done. If you’re happy to put Michael on Dezi, that’s fine with me. I’m sure she’ll be very pleased with the arrangement.”

On the way back to his car, Diego smiles. It’s like walking on eggshells, talking to Otello about drinking. Diego likes the way the shells crunch beneath his feet.

O
TELLO LOUNGES ON
the bed watching Desmerelda put on her makeup. It is a ritual that fascinates him, absorbs him; he finds himself making the same slightly comical faces that she makes, applying the eyeshadow, the lipstick. On occasion she has caught him at it in the mirror, and rewarded him with that dirtily artless laugh of hers, which delights him. The intimacy of such moments is softly shocking; he thinks,
We are married. Married.

It is the first time in three days that they have been in the penthouse together. On Sunday he arrived back from an away game two hours after she had flown down to the delta for a photo shoot. And tonight they are guests of honor at a party for the U.S. executives of Desmerelda’s record company. Soon he will have to put on his gray silk suit. Desmerelda likes him in gray.

If he were honest with himself, he would perhaps admit that he does not want to go. More than that, he might admit that just lately he has started to feel, well, a sort of resentment. Impatience, perhaps. That his life, their marriage, is managed by Diego and Shakespeare and people whom he barely knows. Stitched into a glittering patchwork of events at which, usually, he feels like an exhibit. He has started, before games, to find it more difficult to get clean, to focus. To concentrate on the spaces that need to be made, the routes to the goal, to find the deep disregard for pain. (And avoiding injury has become more important; it would inconvenience too many people.)

Of course, he cannot confess any of this. He cannot tell her that he would like to come home from work to his wife. He cannot admit to the idiotic simplicity of his needs. She’d told him from the outset that they could never be ordinary. On that astonishing night at the hotel on Cypress, she looked down at him and said, very seriously, “We can never be members of the public.” She’d said it with capitals: Members of the Public. And then, smiling, “But hey, who wants to be?”

At another level entirely, none of this matters. Because he, and he alone, is married to Desmerelda Brabanta. And he is the only man on the planet watching her as she puts on her makeup dressed in a couple of scraps of white lace.

He says, “How’s it going with Michael?”

She leans closer to the mirror, checking the symmetry of her eyes. “Michael? Michael’s great. Really solid.”

“Yeah? So you’re happy with the arrangement?”

“Baby,” she says, “if he’s good enough for you, he’s got to be good enough for me.” She studies her eyelashes. “Lord, he’s strict, though, isn’t he? It’s like everywhere I am, someone comes in the door, he’s on them, taking their names, checking them over and everything. And if there’s any change to the schedule, he’s like a new world war might break out.”

“That’s good. It’s what we pay him for.”

She tilts her head in another direction. “He’s cute, too. The plane back, it was one of those little ones, you know? Thirty seats or something, and Michael had to sit next to me, which is not what he likes to do. He prefers to sit two rows back on the opposite side, on the aisle. Anyway, I was really wiped out, and pretty much as soon as we took off, I was dead to the world. Didn’t wake up until the plane was coming in. And I realize that I’ve been asleep on his shoulder the whole time and that I’ve drooled on this nice white shirt he’s wearing, and because I’d been chewing fruit gum to stop my ears from popping, the drool is pink. I was so embarrassed. I said, ‘Michael, I’m so sorry; we’ll get that cleaned.’ And he said, ‘No, sign your name to authenticate the drool and I’ll get it framed.’ Sweet, huh?”

She turns away from the mirror and does a
ta-da!
gesture. “How do I look?”

With very little difficulty, Otello smiles. “Like the most beautiful woman in the world.”

She raises a perfect eyebrow. “Only
like
the most beautiful woman in the world?”

They return to the penthouse a little after two in the morning. Otello goes to their bedroom, throws his jacket on the couch, and flips on the TV, which has recorded the UEFA game between Arsenal and Barcelona. Three of his international colleagues are involved.

In the bathroom, Desmerelda watches herself in the mirror carefully cleansing away the makeup. The evening has been beautiful. The dinner, the elaborate courtesy of the
americanos,
the politeness of the photographers, the smoothness of the security arrangements, Michael’s funny filthy stories on the way home. But.

She turns on the taps, adds a measure of aromatherapy oil, and goes back to the bedroom. “I’m going to take a bath. You going to come and scrub my back?”

“Try and stop me,” he says. His speech is blurry; he has drunk more than usual.

The oil forms shifting archipelagos on the surface of the water. Below them, mottled by their shadows, her body seems remote, unfamiliar.

Things are going wrong.

No, things are
changing.

She is slightly shocked that the word
wrong
entered her head. It means
unhappy.

She is not unhappy. But.

Her new single, “The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars,” is not getting the airplay they had expected. After the launch week, press coverage had dropped away sharply. The singles chart is completely rigged, of course, but all the same, it is disappointing that the new song by that tart Carmina Flor has beaten hers to the number-one spot. The video for “The Darker the Night” is not the most requested item on TVQ, the twenty-four-hour music channel. Tonight, discussing the proposed mini-tour of the U.S. with the
americanos,
their eyes had dimmed slightly, as though they had suddenly found the need for lightly frosted contact lenses.

She considers these things calmly. She sees them for what they are: the beginning of the end of this part of her life. Which is, therefore, the beginning of the next part. The difficulty is that she does not know what this next part will be. She does know what is bringing about this shift, this key change, sea change. To be the wild rich rock chick is one thing; to be the
married
wild rich rock chick is quite another. It does not, in fact, work. It is one word too many. That’s why she won’t be top of the singles chart again. Because she’s not single anymore. Ha!

She stirs the hot water, breaking up the little islands of oil, sending them swirling. She sinks lower and closes her eyes. He has not come to wash her back, then slip into the bath with her. She thinks about calling to him but decides not to.

It is slightly embarrassing that she has not foreseen all this. Did not foresee it when she drove to Puerto Río and cajoled those two wide-eyed rich boys into ignoring all good sense and taking her over to Cypress on their playboy boat. Did not predict it when she descended onto his beautiful body and asked him to marry her.

Or maybe she did. Yes, perhaps she did. Reliving the moment, she remembers feeling that she was standing in the doorway of a room. A dark room full of brilliant possibilities. Now it connects with another memory. On the evening of her thirteenth birthday, her father blindfolded her and guided her to the doorway of the dining room. She stood with his hand on her shoulder for several seconds, listening to a silence that could barely contain itself. Then her father had removed the blindfold and there, ranged behind the laden party table, were her family and friends, smiling, holding gifts, beneath a cloud of gold and silver balloons. But it is those moments when she was still blind that she now re-experiences: standing there, knowing that something amazing was waiting for her. Feeling a thrill that was almost fearful. Almost sexual.

Soon, very soon, she will no longer be Desmerelda Brabanta. She will no longer own, much less control, her own celebrity. She will cease to be a star because she has stopped being dangerous, outrageous. She has married; she has become safe. She has become one half, maybe less, of a fixed constellation called Otello-Dezi.

She has always known that one day something like this would happen, that the party would come to an end, the table cleared, the cake and balloons shared out among the other children. And she has told herself that she would not care. She is not, after all, needy. But in the warm soothing water, in a warm room lined with Italian marble, she allows herself a minute or two to grieve.

She will not confess her thoughts to him. It would hurt him to do so; it would be stupid. At the heart of a true marriage is a shared silence, as her divorced mother used to say.

She calls to him now, but there is no reply. When she goes through to the bedroom wrapped in a towel, she finds him asleep. He has taken off some of his clothes and rolled onto his side. She turns the TV off, then stands marveling at him, astonished all over again that he is there, that he is what has happened to her.

When she has maneuvered him between the sheets and switched off the lights, she remembers that she has forgotten to take her contraceptive pill. But because he has fitted himself to her body and she doesn’t want to disturb him, she does not get out of the bed to go to the bathroom cabinet. She will take the damn thing in the morning.

But she forgets. She somehow forgets the following night, too. And the nights that follow, one after another.