The Girl on Paper (11 page)

I looked suspiciously at the little scorpion at the bottom of the bottle, a sign of the local belief that the animal represented power and virility.

‘I’m fine,’ I said.

‘If you don’t want to drink, you can leave, buddy! You can
see the little lady is having a good time with us.’

Instead of doing as he said, I took another step toward the table and looked Jesus straight in the eye. For all that I was an avid reader of Jane Austen and Dorothy Parker, I had also been raised on the streets. I had thrown as many punches as I had taken, from guys with knives, from guys much more intimidating than the one I was looking at now.

‘You can shut the hell up.’

Then I turned to Billie again.

‘The last time you got drunk, it didn’t end well, remember?’

She looked back at me disdainfully.

‘You really know how to wound people with your words, don’t you? They always hit right where it hurts. You’ve got a real talent for that, you know?’

Just after Jack had cancelled their vacation to Hawaii at the last minute, she had made straight for the Red Piano, a bar near the Old State House. She was devastated, pretty much at rock bottom. To dull the pain, she had let a certain Paul Walker, who ran several local convenience stores, buy her a succession of vodka tonics. She didn’t say no, which he took to mean yes. In the taxi he had started to feel her up. She resisted, but perhaps not enough, because the guy clearly thought he was owed some kind of reward for all the drinks he had paid for. Her head was spinning so much that she didn’t even know what she wanted any more. Paul had followed her into her apartment block and invited himself up for another drink. Tired of the struggle, she had let him come up in the elevator with her, afraid he would wake the neighbours if she said no. After that point she had no recollection of what had happened. She had woken up the next morning on the sofa, her skirt up around her waist. She had spent the next three months in a permanent state of panic, taking endless pregnancy and HIV tests, but hadn’t
been able to bring herself to press charges, feeling partly responsible for what had happened to her.

I had brought this awful memory back to her and now she looked up at me with tears in her eyes.

‘Why do you make me go through these things in your books?’

The question hit home. I gave her the honest answer.

‘Probably because I gave you a lot of my personal demons to wrestle with. My darkest side, all the things I hate myself for, manifest themselves in you. The side that makes me lose all self-respect and self-esteem.’

Stunned into silence, she still didn’t seem to want to come with me.

‘I’ll take you back to the motel,’ I insisted, offering her my hand.

‘
Como chingas!
’ Jesus whistled between his teeth.

I ignored the provocation and kept my eyes on Billie.

‘The only way to get out of this is together. You’re my lifeline and I’m yours.’

She was about to answer when I heard Jesus call me
joto
, faggot, an insult I was familiar with because it was the favourite swearword of Tereza Rodriguez, the old lady from Honduras who worked as my cleaner and who had been my mother’s next-door neighbour in MacArthur Park.

The punch came out of nowhere. A proper right hook, straight from my teenage glory days, which knocked Jesus onto the next table, sending beer bottles and nachos flying. A great first blow, but sadly there were no more to come.

In less than a second the atmosphere in the room was electric. Delighted to see things hotting up, the punters joined in with cries of ‘Fight! Fight!’ From behind, two guys lifted me up off the ground, before a third made me regret ever having set foot in the bar. Blows came from all angles at terrifying
speed, striking me in the face, stomach and groin, but, in some perverse way, the vicious beating was doing me good. Not because I took any masochistic pleasure in it, but perhaps because this martyrdom was one small step on my road to redemption. Lying on the ground, my mouth was filled with the metallic taste of blood. Flashing images danced in front of my eyes, a mixture of things that were happening in the room and memories of other times, other places: Aurore looking lovingly at another man in the pages of a gossip magazine, Milo’s betrayal, Carole’s far-away look, the tattooed hip of Paloma, the Latina babe who had just turned up the music, and whom I could make out shaking her booty to the rhythm of the blows that were raining down on me. And Billie, I could see Billie moving toward me with the mescal bottle in her hand, ready to crack it over the head of one of my attackers.

All of a sudden everything calmed down. I understood, with intense relief, that the show was over. I felt myself being lifted up and carried through the crowd, before landing with a thud outside in the pouring rain, face down in a muddy puddle.

‘Milo, open the door!’

Dressed in uniform, Carole hammered at the door with the force and authority conferred on her by the law.

‘I’m warning you, I’m here as a cop, not as your friend. As a member of the LAPD, I demand that you let me in.’

‘The LAPD can go screw itself,’ groaned Milo, half opening his door.

‘Well, that’s exactly the kind of attitude we need!’ said Carole reproachfully, following him into the house.

He was in his boxer shorts and a Space Invaders T-shirt. He was pale, with dark circles under his eyes and hair that looked as though he’d stuck his fingers into an electric socket. The satanic symbols of the Mara Salvatrucha inked permanently onto his arms stood out harshly.

‘Can I just point out that it’s seven in the morning, I was
asleep and I’ve got someone here?’

On the glass coffee table, Carole could see an empty bottle of cheap vodka as well as a half-empty bag of weed.

‘I thought you’d given all that up,’ she said sadly.

‘No actually. In case you hadn’t noticed, my life is going down the drain, I ruined my best friend and I can’t even help him when he needs me, so yeah, I had a few drinks and smoked a couple of joints.’

‘And you found some company.’

‘Yeah, and that’s my business, OK?’

‘Who was it this time? Sabrina? Vicky?’

‘No. Two $50 whores I picked up on Creek Avenue. That good enough for you?’

Taken aback, she couldn’t work out whether he was telling the truth, or just trying to wind her up.

Milo switched on the Nespresso machine and inserted a capsule, yawning.

‘OK, so you must have a reason for coming to wake me up at the crack of dawn.’

Carole looked troubled for a moment, but soon pulled herself together.

‘Yesterday I left a description of the Bugatti at the police station, and I asked them to let me know if there was any news of it, and guess what? They’ve just found your car in a forest near San Diego.’

For the first time that morning, Milo looked pleased.

‘And Tom?’

‘No news yet. The Bugatti was pulled over for speeding, but the girl at the wheel just drove off again.’

‘The girl?’

‘According to the local sheriff, it wasn’t Tom driving the car, but a young woman. But the report does say there was a male passenger in the vehicle at the time.’

She listened to the sounds coming from the bathroom. A hair dryer blasted away while the shower was running. So two people really had stayed over.

‘Near San Diego, you said?’

Carole looked at the report.

‘Yep, some place near Rancho Santa Fe.’

Milo scratched his head, making his hair stick out even more.

‘I think I’ll go straight there in my rental car. If I hang around long enough, I might find a clue that will put me on Tom’s tracks.’

‘I’m coming with you,’ she decided.

‘Don’t bother.’

‘I’m not asking your opinion. I’m coming with you whether you like it or not.’

‘What about your job?’

‘I can’t remember the last time I took a day off. Plus we’ll find him more quickly with two of us on the case.’

‘I’m so worried he’s going to do something stupid,’ Milo suddenly confessed, staring into the distance.

‘Him? What about you? What about last night?’ she answered harshly.

The bathroom door opened, revealing two Latina girls chattering loudly as they left the room. One was half naked, with a towel around her head, the other was wrapped up in a bathrobe.

As she stared at them, Carole realised something that made her stomach flip: these two girls looked exactly like her! Maybe a little more common, a little more worn down, but one of them had light eyes just like hers, while the other was exactly her height and shared her distinctive dimples. They embodied what she might have become, had she not dragged herself out of MacArthur Park through sheer force of will.

She tried to disguise how uncomfortable she felt, but Milo had already noticed.

He tried to hide his shame, but she knew it was there.

‘I’m going to go back to the station and let them know I’m taking a few days off,’ she said, finally, to break the awkward silence. ‘You have a shower, drive your girlfriends home and meet me back at my place in an hour, OK?’

I opened one eye cautiously. The morning sunlight bounced off the wet road and rain-spattered windshield.

Huddled up in a blanket, with stiff, aching muscles and a blocked nose, I slowly came to and found that I was curled up on the passenger seat of the Fiat 500.

‘Nice nap, was it?’ Billie asked me.

I sat up, wincing at the crick in my neck.

‘Where are we?’

‘On a road between nowhere and somewhere else.’

‘Have you been driving all night?’

She nodded cheerfully, as I caught sight of my reflection in the rear-view mirror, and the ugly reminders of the blows I had taken last night.

‘It suits you,’ she said, quite seriously. ‘I didn’t like the look you were working before, all preppy and conservative. You looked like maybe you needed a slap.’

‘You’ve got a real talent for giving compliments, you know that?’ I looked out the window. The landscape had become wilder. The narrow, uneven road led through rocky desert terrain, where tufts of vegetation had sprouted here and there. I saw cacti, agaves with full, plump leaves, and thorny bushes.
The traffic was flowing freely, but the road was so tight that meeting a bus or truck was a life-threatening experience.

‘I’ll take over so you can get some sleep.’

‘We’ll stop at the next gas station.’

But service stations were thin on the ground and not many of them were open. Before we found one, we went through several abandoned villages that looked like ghost towns. It was while passing through one of these that we came across an orange Corvette that had stopped by the side of the road, its hazard lights flashing. A young hitchhiker – who wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Calvin Klein underwear advert – was leaning against the hood holding a small sign that said ‘out of gas’.

‘Shall we help him out?’ Billie suggested.

‘No, he’s obviously just pretending to have broken down so he can take advantage of some stupid tourist.’

‘Are you implying that all Mexicans are thieves?’

‘No. I’m implying that your desire to get involved with every good-looking guy we come across is going to get us into even more trouble.’

‘You weren’t complaining when it got us a ride!’

‘Look, it’s so frickin’ obvious this guy’s out to steal our money and our car. If that’s what you want, then please feel free to stop, but don’t ask for my blessing!’

Luckily she decided not to risk it, and we continued on our way.

When we had filled up on gas, we stopped off at a
family-run
grocer’s. There was a basic selection of fruit, vegetables, pastries and dairy products on display in the old-fashioned store window. We bought enough to make a small picnic for two and sat down at the foot of a nearby Joshua tree.

As I sipped my piping hot coffee, I watched Billie with a kind of fascination. Sitting on a rug, she devoured cinnamon
polvorones and churros covered in icing sugar with great
relish.

‘So good! Don’t you want any?’

‘There’s something I don’t understand,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘In my books you eat like a bird, but, since I’ve known you, you’ve wolfed down everything you can get your hands on.’

She seemed to think about this for a few moments, as if she too had just realised something, then she said, ‘It’s because of
real life
.’

‘Real life?’

‘I’m a character in a novel, Tom. I belong in the world of fiction and not in real life. I don’t belong here.’

‘What has that got to do with how much you eat?’

‘In real life, everything has more taste, more substance to it. And not just food. The air has more oxygen, the landscapes are filled with colours that take your breath away. Everything in fiction is so bland.’

‘Fiction, bland? I spend my life hearing the opposite. Most people read novels precisely to escape reality.’

She said seriously, ‘You might be very good at telling stories, creating emotions, pain, heartache, but you don’t know how to describe the spice of life, its flavours.’

‘Well, how nice of you to point that out to me,’ I said, realising that my skills as a writer were being put under the microscope. ‘What kind of flavours are you talking about, exactly?’

She looked around her, trying to find an example.

‘Take the taste of this fruit,’ she said, cutting off a piece of the mango we had just bought.

‘What about it?’

She looked up at the sky and closed her eyes, as though offering her pretty face to the early-morning breeze.

‘Or the feeling of the wind on your face.’

‘Yeah …’

I looked sceptical, but I knew she had a point. I was incapable of capturing the magic of an instant in words. It was impossible. I didn’t know how to pin it down. I didn’t know how to enjoy such moments either, and so was unable to properly share them with my readers.

‘Or,’ she said, opening her eyes and pointing into the distance, ‘that pink cloud that’s melting away behind that hill.’

She got up, and carried on, her enthusiasm growing.

‘In your books, you might write “Billie ate a mango”, but you would never take the time to describe the flavour of the mango.’

She carefully placed a piece of the fruit in my mouth. ‘So, what’s it like?’

Stung by her criticism, I threw myself wholeheartedly into the game and tried to describe the fruit as accurately as I could.

‘It’s fresh and perfectly ripe.’

‘You can do better than that.’

‘It has a sweet pulp that melts in the mouth, bursting with flavour, with a scent of—’

I saw her grinning. I carried on.

‘It’s golden, like a mouthful of sunlight.’

‘Don’t overdo it; you’re not making an advert!’

‘I can’t do anything right!’

She folded up the rug and started walking back to the car.

‘Now you know what I mean!’ she called back to me. ‘So try to remember this when you’re writing your next book. Put me in a world filled with colours and flavours, where fruit tastes like fruit and not cardboard!’

‘I’m freezing my balls off here. Can you shut the window?’

Carole and Milo had been driving for an hour. They were listening to a news station and were both pretending to be absorbed in a debate about local politics in order to avoid having to talk about what was really bothering them.

‘Well, since you asked so nicely,’ she retorted, winding up her window.

‘What, you’ve got a problem with the way I talk now?’

‘Yeah, actually. Why do you have to be so crude the whole time?’

‘Sorry, I’m not some sensitive writer type. I’ve never written a novel.’

She looked at him, stunned.

‘What do you mean by that?’

Milo scowled and turned up the radio as if he were just going to ignore the question, then, apparently changing his mind, blurted out, ‘Has there ever been anything between you and Tom?’

‘
What?
’

‘You’ve always been in love with him, haven’t you?’

Carole looked astonished. ‘Is that really what you think?’

‘I think that for years you’ve been waiting for one thing: for Tom to see you as a woman, instead of as a best friend.’

‘You’ve really got to stop drinking and smoking weed, Milo. When you come out with crap like that, it makes me want to—’

‘Makes you want to what?’

But she just shook her head. ‘I don’t know, to… to cut you up into little pieces, so you die a slow and painful death, then clone 10,000 copies of you so I can kill each and every one with my own hands, slowly—’

‘All right, all right, I think I get the picture.’

Despite the fact that our car refused to go at more than a snail’s pace, we were gradually racking up the miles. We had just passed San Ignacio and, against all odds, our little yoghurt pot was holding up just fine.

For the first time in a long while, I felt good. I liked the landscape, the smell of the road with its intoxicating scent of freedom, the shops without signs and the carcasses of abandoned cars, which gave me the sensation of cruising down Route 66.

The icing on the cake was that in one of the rare service stations we came to I had unearthed two cassette tapes knocked down to ninety-nine cents apiece. The first was a compilation of classic rock gems, from Elvis Presley to the Stones. The second was a pirate recording of three Mozart concertos by Martha Argerich. It was the perfect way to start Billie’s musical re-education.

Our progress was halted, however, in the early afternoon as we drove through some rather wild countryside with no fences or gates. A huge flock of sheep had decided they had nothing better to do than congregate in the middle of the road, with no intention of budging. We were in the vicinity of several farms and ranches, but no one seemed in a hurry to move the animals out of the road.

They weren’t going anywhere: long blasts of the horn and Billie’s agitated gestures could do nothing to shift them. Resigning herself to the wait, Billie lit a cigarette whilst I counted out the money we had left. A photo of Aurore fell out of my wallet and Billie grabbed it before I could do anything to stop her.

‘Give me that!’

‘Wait, let me have a look. Did you take this?’

It was a simple black and white shot, which had a certain innocence about it. In tiny little shorts and a man’s shirt, Aurore smiled at me from a Malibu beach, with a sparkle in her eyes that I had once mistaken for love.