The Girl on Paper (12 page)

‘Honestly, what is it that’s so special about your pianist?’

‘What’s so special?’

‘OK, so she’s pretty. Well, if you’re into the “perfect woman with the body of a supermodel” thing. But, apart from that, what do you see in her?’

‘Please… You’re in love with a total scumbag. You’re not in a position to give me any lectures.’

‘Is it because she’s so sophisticated?’

‘Yes, Aurore is sophisticated, and cultured. And I don’t give a damn if you think that’s pretentious. I was brought up in a really bad area. It never stopped: everywhere you went, screams, insults, threats, gunshots. The closest thing to a book was
TV Guide
and I had never heard of Chopin or Beethoven. So, yeah, I liked that I was with a Parisienne who talked to me about Schopenhauer and Mozart rather than pussy, dope, rap, tattoos or false nails!’

Billie rolled her eyes. ‘That’s very nice, but you also liked Aurore for her looks. If she’d been 100 pounds heavier, I’m not so sure you would have been quite so obsessed with her, even with all that Mozart and Chopin stuff.’

‘You’ve made your point, OK? Just drive!’

‘And where should I go exactly? This pile of junk isn’t going to survive a head-on collision with a sheep.’

She took a drag of her Dunhill before continuing to have a go at me.

‘So your deep and meaningful conversations about Schopenhauer, was that before or after you screwed?’

I looked at her, stung by this last comment. ‘If I were saying
these things to you, you’d have slapped my face by now.’

‘Come on, I was only joking. I like how you blush when you’re embarrassed.’

And to think I created you myself
.

As she did every week, Tereza Rodriguez arrived at Tom’s house to do the cleaning. For the last few weeks the author had not wished to be disturbed and so had taped a note to his front door telling her to go home again, but he always attached an envelope with her pay. Today there was no note on the door.

Finally
.

The old lady hated being paid to do nothing, but, more than that, she was worried about the boy she had watched grow up in MacArthur Park.

Back then, Tereza’s apartment had been on the same floor as Tom’s mother’s place, and directly next door to Carole Alvarez’s family. Because she had been living alone since the death of her husband, the young boy and his friend would come and do their homework at her place after school. It had to be said that the atmosphere there was a lot less volatile than in their respective homes: on one side of the landing a flighty and neurotic mother who ricocheted from lover to lover, breaking up homes as she went, and on the other a tyrannical stepfather who delighted in taking out his rage on his tribe.

Tereza opened the door with her set of keys, and stared in horror at the bombsite that greeted her. Then she pulled herself together and started to attack the mess. She put on the dishwasher, mopped then vacuumed the floor, did a load
of laundry and cleaned up the remains of the tsunami that had devastated the terrace.

She left the house three hours later, after sorting and putting out the trash.

It was just after 5 p.m. when the truck came to empty the garbage cans in Malibu Colony.

As he loaded the contents of one of the dumpsters into the truck, John Brady – one of the workers on duty that evening – caught sight of a new-looking copy of the second volume of the
Angel Trilogy
. He rescued it, and at the end of his shift took a closer look at it.

Whoa! And it looks like some kind of special edition! Nice watercolour illustrations and Gothic lettering and all that
.

His wife had read the first book and was impatiently waiting for the sequel to appear in paperback. This would make her so happy.

When he got home, Janet was indeed overjoyed with the present. She started to read it in the kitchen, whipping through the pages with feverish excitement, so absorbed in it that she forgot to take her macaroni and cheese out of the oven. She was still devouring chapter after chapter when she got into bed and John realised that he was not going to get any action and would be sleeping at the Cold Shoulder Hotel that night. Grudgingly he resigned himself to sleep, furious at having shot himself in the foot by bringing that damned book home, ruining both his dinner and his plans for the rest of the evening. He nodded off, comforted by a dream in which the Dodgers, his team, won the World Series by thrashing the Yankees. So Brady was in a very happy place when suddenly he was woken up by a shriek.

‘John!’

He opened his eyes, filled with panic. Sitting up in bed next to him, his wife seemed deeply upset.

‘You can’t do this to me!’

‘Do what?’

‘The book stops right in the middle of page 266!’ she said reproachfully. ‘The rest is nothing but blank pages!’

‘How is that my fault?’

‘I know you did this on purpose.’

‘Of course I didn’t! What makes you say that?’

‘I want to know what happens next!’

Brady put on his glasses and looked at the alarm clock.

‘But, baby, it’s two in the morning! Where do you expect me to find the rest of the story?’

‘The 24 Market is open all night. Please, John, go and buy me a new copy. The second one is even better than the first.’

John Brady sighed. He had married Janet thirty years ago, for better or for worse. This evening it was definitely for worse, but he put up with it. He wasn’t so easy to live with himself, after all.

He dragged his old bones out of bed, still half asleep, and pulled on a pair of jeans and a jumper, before going down to get his car out of the garage. When he reached the 24 Market on Purple Street, he threw the faulty copy into a nearby trash can.

Stupid damned book!

We were almost there. If the road signs were to be believed, we were less than 100 miles from Cabo San Lucas.

‘We’re down to our last tank,’ remarked Billie, pulling up at a service station.

She hadn’t even switched off the engine when Pablo – according to the name badge on his T-shirt – rushed over to fill our tank and clean our windshield.

It was getting dark. Billie squinted, trying to read a wooden sign in the shape of a cactus that listed the specialties of the station restaurant.

‘I’m starving. Do you want to grab something to eat? I’m sure they have some amazing junk food in there.’

‘You’re going to give yourself indigestion with all this eating, you know.’

‘It’s fine – I’ve got you to take care of me. I’m sure you’d make a very sexy doctor.’

‘You’re sick in the head, that’s what you are!’

‘And whose fault is that? Seriously, Tom, you have to learn to let go. Worry a bit less. Let life be good to you, instead of always being afraid it might hurt you.’

Look who thinks they’re Paulo Coelho all of a sudden
.

She got out of the car and I watched her walk up the wooden steps that led into the restaurant. With her
spray-on
jeans, fitted leather jacket and silver vanity case, she was working a cowgirl look that blended in well with the general decor of the place. I paid Pablo for the gas and followed Billie up the steps.

‘Give me the keys so I can lock it.’

‘It’s fine, Tom! Relax. Stop looking for danger everywhere. Forget the car for a second; right now you’re buying me tortillas and stuffed peppers and then you’re going to describe them for me!’

I gave in and walked into the saloon-style restaurant, where I guessed we would be spending some time. But that was without taking into account the bad luck which had plagued us along every step of this surreal journey.

‘The… the car…’ stammered Billie, just as we sat down at a table outside, about to tuck into our corn tortillas.

‘What about it?’

‘It’s not there any more,’ she said, a note of panic creeping into her voice, and pointed at the parking spaces opposite us.

I stormed out of the greasy spoon, leaving my food untouched on the plate.

‘Stop looking for danger everywhere, huh? Relax? Great advice you give! I knew that something like this was going to happen. We even filled up the tank for the bastards!’

She looked ashamed for about half a second before her usual sarcasm came to her rescue.

‘Well, if you were so sure we were going to get robbed, why didn’t you lock the door? Everyone has to take responsibility for their actions, you know.’

Yet again, I had to keep myself from trying to strangle her. This time, we had no car and no luggage. It was now pitch dark and it was getting cold.

‘Wait, Sergeant Alvarez is with you?’

‘Yeah, and?’ said Milo, handing the officer his driver’s licence and the insurance papers for the Bugatti.

Looking a little shifty, the sheriff rephrased his question, gesturing towards Carole, who was filling out some paperwork with the secretary on the other side of a glass partition.

‘Your friend, Carole, is she your girlfriend, or just a friend who’s a girl?’

‘Why, you planning on asking her to dinner?’

‘If she’s available, I wouldn’t mind, I’ll admit it. She’s so…’

He stopped for a moment, searching for the right word, careful not to say anything stupid, but then thought better of it and left the description unfinished.

‘Go for it, buddy,’ said Milo. ‘Try it, then see whether I punch your lights out or not.’

Looking as though he had just received an electric shock, the sheriff’s officer checked the vehicle documents before handing the keys over to Milo.

‘You can pick it up now. Everything should be in order, but try not to go lending your car to just anybody from now on.’

‘I didn’t lend it to just anybody – I lent it to my best friend.’

‘Well, then maybe you should pick your friends more carefully.’

Milo was about to respond in kind when Carole came back into the office.

‘When you stopped them, Sheriff, are you absolutely sure it was a woman who was driving? Absolutely one hundred per cent sure?’

‘Trust me, Sergeant, I know a woman when I see one.’

‘And the guy in the passenger seat was definitely him?’ she asked, holding up a book with Tom’s picture on the back.

‘To be honest, I didn’t really get that good a look at him. I mainly spoke to the blonde chick. A real pain in the ass, she was.’

Milo saw they were wasting their time and asked for his documents.

The sheriff handed them over, before asking a question he’d been dying to ask ever since he’d laid eyes on Milo.

‘The tattoos on your arms, they’re from the Mara Salvatrucha, aren’t they? I’ve read about them on the internet. I didn’t think it was possible to get out of gangs like that.’

‘You shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet,’ said Milo, turning to leave.

In the parking lot, he inspected every inch of the Bugatti. The car seemed fine. There was gas in the tank, and some luggage in the trunk, a sign of the previous occupants’ hasty departure. He opened the bags to find they were stuffed with women’s clothes and toiletries. In the glove compartment he discovered a road map and a gossip magazine.

‘What is it?’ asked Carole. ‘Have you found something?’

‘Maybe,’ he answered, showing her the route that had been marked out on the map. ‘So did that jerk ask you out to dinner then?’

‘He asked for my number, and if I wanted to go out sometime soon. Why, does that bother you?’

‘Not at all. He’s no Einstein though, is he?’

She was on the point of telling him where to stick it when something suddenly occurred to her.

‘Have you seen this?’ she exclaimed, showing him the photos of Aurore and Rafael Barros in their little corner of paradise.

Milo pointed at a small cross on the map and made a suggestion to his childhood friend.

‘What would you say to a weekend in a luxury hotel on the Mexican coast?’

Billie seductively caressed the silky fabric of a short nightdress, edged with Chantilly lace.

‘If you give her this, your girlfriend will do things to you she’s never done before. Things you haven’t even heard about, they’re so dirty.’

Pablo’s eyes widened. For the last ten minutes Billie
had been trying to swap her vanity case for the gas-pump attendant’s scooter.

‘And this really is the latest thing,’ she carried on, producing a crystal bottle with a stopper that sparkled like a diamond.

She opened it and looked at him mysteriously, like a magician about to perform her most impressive trick.

‘Smell that,’ she said, waving the bottle under his nose. ‘It’s an enchanting scent, isn’t it? It’s so seductive, so alluring. Just let the violet, pomegranate, pink peppercorns and jasmine take over your senses.’

‘Stop trying to seduce the poor boy!’ I said. ‘You’re going to get us into even more trouble!’

But Pablo seemed only too happy to be hypnotised by Billie, smiling as she opened her mouth to continue her spiel.

‘Experience the intoxicating top notes of musk, freesia and ylang-ylang.’

I looked at the scooter doubtfully. It was ancient, a knock-off Italian Vespa that a local manufacturer must have introduced to Mexico in the 1970s. It looked as though it had seen more than a few paint jobs, and was covered in vintage-looking stickers that had started to blend in with the paintwork. One of them read: World Cup, Mexico 1986.

Behind me Billie’s monologue continued.

‘Trust me, Pablito, when a woman wears this perfume, she enters a magical secret garden, overflowing with sensual scents which turn her into a wild tiger, desperate to—’

‘All right, show’s over!’ I cut in. ‘Anyway, the two of us will never fit on that scooter together.’

‘It’ll be fine, I’m not exactly obese, you know!’ she shot back, completely forgetting Pablo and the essence of feminine charm, apparently contained in Aurore’s vanity case.

‘And it’s too dangerous. It’s dark and the roads around here are in such bad condition, full of pot holes and humps.’