Exposure (29 page)

S
IX MONTHS LATER,
Paul Faustino was having lunch with a possible girlfriend at the Salamanca, where the food was almost as daring as its prices. She was speaking enthusiastically about hypnotism. In particular, she was being enthusiastic about the success of hypnotherapy in curing nicotine addiction. Faustino’s attention had wandered, and so had his gaze.

“Paul? Paul, am I being tiresome?”

“No, not at all. I’m sorry. I was distracted by a couple of people over there. No, please don’t look.”

It was a strong point in her favor that she didn’t.

He said, “Forgive me. I forgot that I was off duty.” He lit a cigarette. “What were you saying?”

For the next forty minutes he tried very hard to divide his attention fairly between his companion and the table where Diego Mendosa was lunching with a burly American with hair like rippled zinc. Faustino knew who the American was. Knew that he was a close friend of the governor of California, that he was unnecessarily wealthy, and that he owned a soccer team called the San Francisco Goldbugs. But Faustino was less interested in him than in Diego Mendosa. The man had recently endured almost unimaginable embarrassment. His most famous client had been ruined. He was the intimate friend of a man whose reputation lay wrecked and dismembered like the statue of an overthrown tyrant. He was party to a calamity. But look at the shine on him, the smile!

Faustino lingered over coffee until he was sure that Mendosa and the Yank had left. He paid the bill without the slightest flicker of incredulity, then gallantly helped his date into a cab, deferring promises.

He walked the fifteen-minute distance back to
La Nación.
He hated agents, on principle. Bloated leeches swarming on the body of the game. He could remember a time when they didn’t exist, when clubs had scouts who discovered great young players and . . .

He stopped himself. Scoffed at himself for harking back to a golden age that had never existed. When innocent genius boys were found in slums or in the outback. Nonsense. Soccer was a business like any other. Find a resource, use it, exploit it, charge the maximum you can get for it. It’s just business; yesterday’s trash and tomorrow is the next day’s trading. Assuming a very modest ten percent agent’s fee — it was almost certainly more than that — Diego Mendosa would’ve made five million out of Otello’s transfer to Rialto. And another couple of million — U.S. dollars — out of his sale to San Francisco. Plus his percentage on whatever it’d cost Rialto to break Otello’s five-year contract. So no wonder the man had looked pleased with himself. Something like nine, ten million for two years’ work? Not bad at all. Still, like it or not, one had to admit that Mendosa was good at what he did. And a great deal more civilized than most of his kind. For him, at least, some benefit — some considerable benefit, in fact — had come from the death of poor little Bianca Diaz.

A dark thought unfurled in the baser part of Faustino’s mind and brought him to a halt.
Mendosa?
Could he have . . . ? No. Absurd. Illogical. He shook his head like a man pestered by a fly and scuttled quickly through the gloomy pedestrian tunnel under San Cristóbal. Even in daylight the place gave him the jitters.

Diego tosses his jacket and tie onto the sofa on his way to the drinks cabinet. He pours a generous malt whiskey and proposes a little toast to himself. Then he carries his glass through to the main bedroom, making a soft
tcha-tcha-tcha
sound by clacking his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

“Well, my love, I would say that was a
most
satisfactory piece of business. Yes, indeed. Dreadful people one has to have dealings with, of course. Still, beggars can’t be choosers.” He laughs quietly and takes another sip. “And, I must say, a perfectly acceptable lunch.”

He turns to Emilia. “Speaking of which, I suspect you might be hungry. Yes? Good. Excellent! I was a little worried that you might be off your food.”

He sets his drink down on the bedside table and goes to the big glass tank that takes up most of the room’s shorter wall. Set in its base there are three shallow drawers. From the first he takes a pair of long stainless steel tweezers. Then he opens the second drawer, lifts its ventilated plastic lid, and uses the tweezers to seize a locust. The insect is about two inches long. Diego is quick; he has the creature pincered before it can unsheathe its wings. He closes the drawer, lifts the lid of the glass tank, and drops the locust onto a broad leaf, where it crouches. Emilia hardly moves. She merely lowers her body very slightly, adjusting her grip on the branch. Her eyes swivel and blink in opposite directions. They always thrill Diego, her eyes. They are, he thinks, black pearls set in cones of golden beads.

But now, perhaps in response to the presence of the locust in her tank, she changes color almost imperceptibly. The beautiful turquoise green of her throat takes on a yellowish blush. She moves forward along the branch with exquisite delicacy, her divided feet hesitating before they grasp. The long tail hangs far below her, a tight dappled coil. Diego wills her on, hardly daring to breathe. She’s such a big girl now: as long as his forearm. Her eyes are facing forward, locked on to her prey. The locust is a full yard away.

For an infinity of seconds she does nothing. Diego is in an agony of impatience. Then she unhinges her mouth. It is almost the full length of her triangular head. The fat bulbous tip of her tongue appears between her lips. It is reddish purple and glistens stickily. Diego’s own tongue emerges a little way; he cannot help himself. Emilia pauses, agape, teasing him, making him wait. Then she strikes. And, as always, Diego fails to stifle a cry, a small moan of shock, of pleasure. Emilia’s improbable tongue hurtles out of her, a wet fleshy rope. Its gluey bulb envelops the locust. In the time it takes to blink, the insect is reeled into her mouth. A wing and a limb protrude from her jaws. She shrinks her eyes, crunches, gulps, crunches again. The wing and the limb are gone. The scaly wattles of her gullet pulse.

Diego straightens and sighs. “
Bon appétit,
darling,” he murmurs.

He picks up his whiskey and goes out onto the balcony. As is usual on these occasions, he feels vaguely sad. It is the enviable simplicity of her needs, her appetites. An opportunity seized; a hunger appeased. None of this never-ending desire for more and more and more. He has done great and monstrous things. Yet there is the city below him still: unshaken, vertical, dumb. The dust has settled. The shock waves have dwindled into ripples. The prospect of having to begin all over again almost overwhelms him.

He drains the glass, puts fire into his belly. Checks his watch and goes inside. His call is answered on the fourth ring.

DIEGO:
Luis? Hi. This is Diego Mendosa. Is this a good time to talk? Are you alone?

MONTANO:
Uh, yeah, it’s fine.

DIEGO:
Good. Did you have a chance to consider my proposal?

MONTANO:
Yeah. It seems sound. The thing is, like I said, it’ll be difficult to get out of my present contract, you know? Things could get nasty.

DIEGO:
That’s not your problem. I handle all that. I can be pretty nasty myself, to be honest. When it’s in my client’s interests, of course.

MONTANO:
So I hear.
[
DIEGO
lets that pass.
]

MONTANO:
So, how confident are you that you can get me back to Rialto?

DIEGO:
Extremely confident. And I wouldn’t say that if I didn’t have good reason to.
[
A short pause.
]

MONTANO:
Okay. But all hell will break loose up here if we do it.
[
DIEGO
notes the use of “we.”
]

DIEGO:
Don’t worry about that. I’m quite good at managing hell. I’ve been through it recently.

MONTANO:
Yeah. Without getting burned, by all accounts.

DIEGO:
Absolutely. Couldn’t do this job unless I was fireproof. So . . .

MONTANO:
So, okay. Let’s go for it.

DIEGO:
You accept?

MONTANO:
Yeah. I do.

DIEGO:
Excellent! It’ll be an honor to represent you, Luis. We’ll do great things together, I promise you.

Faustino sat at his cluttered desk and used scissors to cut a two-page article out of the previous day’s edition of
La Nación.
The scissors were heavy and old-fashioned; he’d had them a long time. The article was one of his own.

A GIANT TOPPLED BY MIDGETS

On the eve of Otello’s ignominious departure for the U.S.,
Paul Faustino
reflects on a modern tragedy

He skimmed it again. In the three days it had taken him to write it, he had revised and reworked the piece several times, mostly toning it down. Yet it was still bitter, angry, accusatory. It lacked balance and gravity. It was almost unprofessionally sincere. Almost, God help us,
youthful.
Now, dulled by his rich lunch, he found himself wondering if all — or any — of this passion was genuine. And even if it was, was it . . .
appropriate
? Heroes come and go; sand castles are swept away by the tide: you might as well hurl your childish rage at the deep indifference of the sea. The only grown-up emotion is disappointment.

He folded the article and slid it into a clear plastic wallet. At the doorway into his library he paused and surveyed the windowless storeroom stuffed with files, scrapbooks, photo albums, yearbooks, and whatever else his life consisted of. Library. Archive. Museum. Mausoleum. Catacomb.

He opened a big box file labeled
OTELLO
and dropped the wallet in.

O
N A CLEAR DAY
, the deck of the Café Catalina in San Francisco, California, provides an almost uninterrupted view of the Golden Gate Bridge. This afternoon, however, a copper-colored haze has settled on the bay. In it, the bridge looks insubstantial, the shadow of a fallen sword or crucifix. As is usual in the lull between lunch and cocktail hour, the Catalina is quiet. There is only one customer in Renata Parry’s section — a handsome, athletic-looking black man who’d come for lunch with another guy but had stayed on, alone. They’d both had the Chef’s Seafood Platter and shared two bottles of the very good Chablis, although the black guy had seen off most of the second one. After she’d cleared their places and gone to fetch their coffee, the lighter-skinned man had produced a nifty little voice recorder from his bag and set it on the table. So it had been an interview situation, and Renata had supposed therefore that the good-looking dude had to be Someone. They’d talked in Spanish — a language that Renata has inherited from her Mexican mother — but with an accent she hadn’t recognized. Their conversation had lasted an hour, maybe more.

Renata had been on her way over to their table to see if they’d needed anything else, when they’d both gotten to their feet. They’d shaken hands, but then the black guy’d wrapped his arms around the other one in a big hungry hug, which the other guy had looked kind of awkward with.

When the journalist or whatever he was had gone, Handsome had ordered a rum and Coke. He’d gone through a few more since then. Too many, maybe. She’d watched him out of the corner of her eye while she’d busied about, setting up her tables for dinner, putting out the evening menus. Most of the time he’d just sat expressionless, watching the bridge fade. But now and again she’d seen him shake his head slightly and move his lips as though having a murmured conversation with an invisible companion.

Now he catches her looking at him, so she smiles and goes over.

“How’re we doing, señor? Can I get you something else? Coffee, maybe?”

She speaks in Spanish, thinking he might be surprised. Pleased, even. But it’s like he doesn’t notice, or maybe just takes it for granted. For what must be the third time that afternoon he squints at the name badge on her tunic.

“Yeah, um, Renata. I’ll have another one of these.” Tapping the nail of his forefinger on the glass, which isn’t empty.

She hesitates very briefly, but he doesn’t notice that either.

Kim, the barman, puts the drink on her tray. “Same guy?”

“Yeah.”

Kim grimaces. “Watch him,” he says.

Renata sets the glass down on Handsome’s table and picks up the now empty one. “Shame about the weather,” she says. “You get a great view from here on good days. You been in the city long?”

“Yeah. Quite a while now.”

Then he looks up at her and smiles. It’s a beautiful smile, Renata thinks.

“You don’t know who I am, do you?”

“I’m sorry, señor,” she says sincerely. “I’m afraid I don’t.”

He nods, and smiles again. He picks up his drink.

“Nor do I.
Salud.
”

The garden of
NESTOR BRABANTA’S
house.
BRABANTA
is parked in the shade of a large umbrella.
DESMERELDA
sits in a deck chair watching
RAÚL
,
who is clumsily but intently taking toys out of a brightly colored plastic tub and putting them back again. Her phone rings. She checks the caller ID and answers.

DESMERELDA:
Paul, hi. You’re back?

FAUSTINO:
Yes. I got in about an hour ago. I’m at home. I just picked up your messages.

DESMERELDA:
How was he?

FAUSTINO:
Well, okay, I guess.

DESMERELDA:
Meaning what?

FAUSTINO:
Meaning, he looks fine. I would say he has definitely not been bingeing on burgers slumped in front of the TV, snorting coke, any of that stuff. He looks and sounds pretty much like his old self, most of the time.

DESMERELDA:
Drinking?

FAUSTINO:
Oh, I dunno. Some, maybe. He’s got a lot to deal with.

DESMERELDA:
Yeah, tell me about it.

FAUSTINO:
Sorry. But, for example, he knew, of course, that to the Yanks soccer is . . . well, that they don’t quite get it. A world religion they don’t belong to. But it still surprises him. He’s the most expensive player San Francisco Goldbugs have ever bought, but he can still walk down the street and almost no one knows who he is.

DESMERELDA:
That sounds kinda nice to me.

FAUSTINO:
Yeah, I suppose it would. So, uh, are you still at the villa?

DESMERELDA:
No, we came back last night. I’m at my father’s house.

FAUSTINO:
Ah.

DESMERELDA:
Raúl likes it here. [
She sounds slightly defensive,
FAUSTINO
thinks.
] I’m selling the penthouse — did you know that?

FAUSTINO:
Um, yeah. Otello said something about it. So, er, how were my kids?

DESMERELDA:
“My kids.” It cracks me up when you call them that.

FAUSTINO:
I use the phrase merely to indicate my sense of responsibility for them.

DESMERELDA:
Sure you do.

FAUSTINO:
So, are they behaving themselves?

DESMERELDA:
Paul, I keep telling you. They’re great. I’m happy, knowing they’re there. Give up on the idea that I’m doing you a favor, okay? You did me one. Bush is
crazily
conscientious. He knows how to look after the pool now. He does the gardens. The cars are
spotless.
Like, he never stops. And Felicia, well, she’s a really lovely girl, isn’t she?

FAUSTINO:
Yeah, I think she is.

DESMERELDA:
She’s
fantastic
with Raúl, when we’re down there. He loves her. He calls her Fisher. Hey, listen, he just heard me say her name. He’s looking around for her. Isn’t that
sweet
?

FAUSTINO:
Yeah. My eyes are brimming with tears.
[
DESMERELDA
laughs.
]

Raúl makes one of those sudden and incomprehensible decisions that small children make. The bright squeaky toys are no longer interesting; the shape in the shade of the umbrella is. He gets up onto his feet, finds his balance. The fat plastic diaper makes him walk astraddle, like a duck. He reaches his grandfather’s wheelchair and puts his plump brown hand on Brabanta’s frozen claw. Brabanta turns his asymmetrical face toward the child and weeps.

“It is entirely normal,” the stroke specialist had told Desmerelda, “for victims to respond to all kinds of emotional stimuli by crying. What we might call the brain’s emotion circuits will have been damaged. Confused. Tears do not necessarily indicate unhappiness. They might equally be a sign of pleasure, say, or gratitude.”

Felicia has long since lost her fear of the big white machines in the villa’s utility room. The washing machine delights her now; she likes the way it pauses in its slosh and tumble, ticking, as though making up its mind what to do next. Sometimes she opens the door of the tall freezer just to feel its cold and misty breath on her face and throat. And sometimes she goes to stand on the terrace beyond the pool and closes her eyes. She counts to ten, as slowly as she can bear it, and when she opens her eyes again it is all still there, still real. Not a trick.

Her feelings about La Señora remain complicated. Raúl’s mother, the Desmerelda Brabanta who now employs her, isn’t the Desmerelda Brabanta that Bianca enviously worshiped. She’s not the pretend whore-goddess whose pictures hung over Bianca’s head like a dream. She has, now, the gentleness that sad people have. But, all the same, it
is
her. Felicia finds herself thinking this, watching La Señora play with the child, watching her chatting to Bush. It
is
her. It is
her.
She is to blame. And she has saved us.

Erroll, the gardener, has taken to the boy, which he thought he would not do. The city kid with the crazy hair who knew the names of nothing, who’d never held a pruning knife, never even used a goddamn hose, in his life. But Bush — he has the name for the job, at least — is solemn and watchful and careful, which Erroll likes, being that way himself. And the boy does the heavy work, which Erroll is starting to feel a bit too old for.

Erroll is also teaching the boy to read, which is a slow and faltering process because the truth is that the gardener is only semiliterate himself. They use the book Bush has gotten from God knows where. Stole it, maybe, sometime in his previous life. Sure couldn’t have bought it, seeing as it cost more than a week’s wages.
The Wonders Under the Sea.
Together they clamber across the long words that jag like reefs through the text.

When Desmerelda is there and Felicia is busy with Raúl, Bush keeps Michael Cass company on his patrols. Cass has given Bush a pair of binoculars, and they sit together at the head of the path that leads down to the beach, under the tilted and rustling palms, studying the boats that still, after all this time, come too close. They see other things, too.

“Hey, what’re those? Dolphins, porpoises?”

“Porpoises,” Bush says.

Bush and Felicia live in the previously unused staff rooms above the big four-car garage. They occupy this miraculous space carefully, almost religiously. They are, as Desmerelda tells Faustino, as good as gold, as quiet as mice. Except that they have a vice, a secret sin. Bush worries about it, but it gives Felicia such pleasure, she has such a need for it, that he cannot bring himself to refuse her. So, just now and again, on nights when they are alone at the villa, they steal into the main house and lie together on Desmerelda’s white-sheeted bed, their limbs intertwined like the roots of adjacent trees.

Bush, despite himself, eventually falls asleep. Felicia, with her head on his shoulder, watches the ghosty shiftings of the curtains, grieves at the granting of her desires, and listens to the distant susurrations of the sea.