The Girl on Paper

  ‘Whatever! You saw yourself as the writer’s wife, didn’t you? Getting a mention on the back cover. Wait, here it is: “Tom Boyd lives in Boston, Massachusetts, with his wife Carole, their two children and their Labrador.” That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’

  ‘You need your head looked at. Maybe cut out the wacky baccy.’

  ‘And you won’t tell the truth. You’re like a goddamn Wonderbra.’

  ‘Does everything have to come back to sex? You sure got a problem there.’

  ‘It’s you who has a problem with it!’ he retorted. ‘Why don’t you ever wear dresses or skirts? How come you never put on a bathing suit? Why d’you come up in a rash if someone brushes against your arm? You like girls or what?’

  Before Milo could finish his sentence, she slapped his face, hard, with the force of a punch. He grabbed Carole’s wrist just in time to stop another one.

  ‘Get off me!’

  ‘Not until you calm down!’

  She was thrashing around like a madwoman, tugging with all her might until she threw her opponent off balance. Eventually she tumbled backwards onto the sand, bringing Milo with her, his weight landing squarely on top of her. He was about to lift himself off when he found the barrel of a pistol pressed to his head.

  ‘Get off!’ she ordered, cocking her gun. She had managed to get it out of her bag. She might sometimes forget to pack a change of clothes, but Carole never forgot her weapon.

  ‘Right away,’ Milo said quietly.

  Bewildered, he slowly got up and watched with sadness as his friend ran away from him, both her hands gripping the butt of the pistol.

  He stood, dazed, in the little lagoon surrounded by white sand and turquoise sea, long after she had disappeared.

  That afternoon, the shadow of the MacArthur Park projects stretched all the way to the very tip of Mexico.

  24

  La cucaracha

  Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away

  Dorothy Parker

  La Hija de la Luna restaurant

  9 p.m.

  Perched on the cliff top, the high-class restaurant overlooked both the swimming pool and the Sea of Cortés. The landscape was as impressive by night as it was in daylight, gaining in romance and mystery what it lost in clarity. Brass lanterns hung from the trailing vines, and candles in coloured holders bathed each table in a warm glow. Wearing a silver sequined dress, Billie walked ahead of me toward the entrance area. We were greeted cheerfully and shown to the table where Milo was waiting for us. It was clear he’d been drinking, and he couldn’t explain why Carole wasn’t there. A few tables away, sitting in the middle of the terrace like jewels in a crown, Aurore and Rafael Barros were displaying their new-found love.

  The atmosphere at dinner was gloomy. Even the usually bubbly Billie seemed to have gone flat. She looked tired and pale, and was feeling sorry for herself. Earlier that evening I had found her huddled up in bed in our room, having slept all afternoon. ‘The journey must have caught up with me,’ she guessed. Whatever the reason, I had a hard time convincing her to come out from under the covers.

  ‘What’s happened to Carole?’ she asked Milo.

  Judging by his bloodshot eyes and deflated expression, it looked as though my friend might be about to fall under the table. Just as he began to mutter a few words of explanation, the peace of the restaurant was shattered by the strains of a tenor voice.

  La cucaracha, la cucaracha,

  Ya no puede caminar

  A group of mariachis had rushed up to our table to serenade us. With two violins, two trumpets, a guitar, a guitarròn and a vihuela, the band made an impressive amount of noise.

  Porque no tiene, porque le falta

  Marijuana que fumar

  Their outfits were a sight to behold: black trousers with embroidered seams, short jackets with silver buttons, smartly knotted ties, belts with eagle-shaped buckles, shiny boots, and, of course, sombreros the size of flying saucers.

  After the mournful wail of the soloist came the rest of the band singing with a rather forced jollity, as though it were a duty rather than a pleasure.

  ‘Pretty tacky, huh?’

  ‘You have to be kidding!’ exclaimed Billie. ‘These guys are pure class.’

  I looked at her doubtfully. Clearly we meant very different things by the word ‘class’.

  ‘Gentlemen, look and learn!’ she said, turning to Milo and me. ‘What you’re seeing here is the ultimate expression of masculinity.’

  The lead singer smoothed his moustache and treated his adoring audience to another number, with accompanying dance moves.

  Para bailar la bamba,

  Se necesita una poca de gracia.

  Una poca de gracia pa mi pa ti.

  Arriba y arriba

  The concert continued along the same lines for a good part of the evening. Moving from table to table, the mariachis churned out their repertoire of folk songs on the themes of love, courage, beautiful ladies and arid landscapes. To me it was an old-fashioned, irritating spectacle; to Billie, the embodiment of the proud spirit of a people.

  As the show neared its end, a far-off hum could be heard. All the diners turned to look at the sea in unison. A light appeared on the horizon. The whirring noise became more and more deafening and an old seaplane could be seen silhouetted against the sky. Flying low, the metal bird swooped over the restaurant to drop flowers onto the terrace. Within seconds, hundreds of roses of every colour came raining down, carpeting the shiny wooden floor. This unexpected floral shower was met with rapturous applause. Then the seaplane reappeared above our heads before launching into a chaotic choreographed display. Luminous plumes of smoke came together to form an unconvincing heart shape which quickly blew off into the Mexican night.

  The crowd roared once again when all the lights were turned out and the maître d’ walked toward the table where Aurore and Rafael Barros were sitting. He was carrying a diamond ring on a silver tray. Then Rafael got down on one knee, while a waiter stood to one side, ready to uncork the champagne when Aurore said yes. Everything was perfect, planned down to the tiniest detail – just as long as you liked your romance piled on thick and appreciated off-the-shelf, mail-order moments.

  But wasn’t this exactly the kind of thing Aurore couldn’t stand?

  *

  I was sitting too far away to hear her response, but close enough to read her lips.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, though whether these words were meant for herself, the audience or Rafael Barros, I wasn’t sure.

  How come guys didn’t put a bit more thought into it before popping the question like this?

  There followed an unbearably heavy silence in which it seemed that the entire restaurant was sharing the embarrassment of this fallen demigod, who was now nothing but a sad case kneeling on the floor, a pillar of salt frozen in shame and shock. I’d been there too, some time before him, and at that moment I felt more sorry for him than gleeful at getting even.

  Well, that was before he got up, strode across the room oozing wounded pride, and out of nowhere threw me a right hook worthy of Mike Tyson.

  *

  ‘And so the bastard came up and smacked you right on the nose,’ summed up Dr Mortimer Philipson.

  Hotel clinic

  Three-quarters of an hour later

  ‘That’s pretty much it in a nutshell,’ I agreed, while the doctor cleaned up the wound.

  ‘You’re lucky. It’s bled a lot, but your nose isn’t broken.’

  ‘Well, that’s something.’

  ‘Having said that, your face looks like it’s taken a bit of a battering. Been in any scraps lately?’

  ‘I had a disagreement with a guy named Jesus and his followers in a bar,’ I replied vaguely.

  ‘You also have a cracked rib, as well as a nasty sprained ankle. It’s badly swollen. I’ll put some ointment on it, but you’d better come back tomorrow morning so I can put a comp
ress on it. How did you wind up with that?’

  ‘I fell onto the roof of a car,’ I replied, as though it was the most normal thing in the world.

  ‘Hmm … you live dangerously.’

  ‘For the last few days, you could say that.’

  The hotel’s health centre was no small-time clinic, but a modern complex with state-of-the-art equipment.

  ‘We treat the biggest stars on the planet in here,’ the doctor responded when I pointed this out.

  Mortimer Philipson was approaching retirement. His languid air didn’t seem to match his tanned, strong-featured face and his bright laughing eyes. He had the look of Peter O’Toole playing a somewhat older incarnation of Lawrence of Arabia.

  He finished rubbing my ankle and asked a nurse to bring me a pair of crutches.

  ‘I’d advise you not to put any weight on that foot for a few days,’ he warned as he handed me his card, with my appointment for the next day written on it.

  I thanked him for his help and, using my sticks, dragged myself slowly back to my suite.

  *

  The bedroom was filled with a gentle light. Pale flames flickered in the fireplace in the middle of the room, casting a glow over the walls and ceiling. I looked for Billie, but she wasn’t in the living room or the bathroom. I could hear the chorus of a Nina Simone song coming faintly from somewhere.

  I pulled back the shutters that looked onto the balcony and found her lying, eyes closed, in the overflowing Jacuzzi. The curved sides of the pool were covered in blue mosaic tiles, and it was fed by a cascade of water pouring from a large swan’s beak, illuminated in all the colours of the rainbow by an advanced lighting system.

  ‘Coming in?’ she challenged me, keeping her eyes closed.

  I moved closer to the hot tub. It was surrounded by twenty or so little candles, forming a wall of tiny flames. The surface of the water shimmered like champagne, with golden bubbles floating up from the bottom.

  I put down my crutches, unbuttoned my shirt and pulled off my jeans, and slipped into the water. It was very hot, almost unbearably so. Thirty-odd jets distributed around the inside of the tub massaged you in a way more invigorating than relaxing, while seductive music played out from waterproof speakers in each corner. Billie opened her eyes and reached over to stroke the plaster that Philipson had just stuck on my nose. Lit up from below, her face appeared translucent, while her hair seemed to have turned white.

  ‘Does the returning soldier need a little light relief?’ she teased, snuggling up to me.

  I tried to brush off her advances. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea to repeat the kissing episode.’

  ‘Look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t enjoy it.’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘It worked though, didn’t it? Just a few hours later, your beloved Aurore was back on the market in spectacular style.’

  ‘Maybe. Aurore’s not in the Jacuzzi with us now though, is she?’

  ‘How do you know she’s not watching us?’ she asked, slipping into my arms. ‘All the rooms have telescopes on the balconies and everyone spends all day checking each other out. Haven’t you noticed?’

  Her face was now only a few inches away from mine. Her eyes were pale blue, the pores of her skin had opened up in the steam and beads of sweat were forming on her forehead.

  ‘Maybe she’s looking at us right now,’ she carried on. ‘Don’t pretend that doesn’t turn you on just a little bit.’

  I couldn’t stand this game; it was so unlike me. And yet, spurred on by the thought of our previous kiss, I couldn’t stop myself placing one hand on her hip and the other behind her neck.

  She gently pressed her lips against mine and then my tongue reached for hers. It was just as magical as before, but it lasted only a few seconds before something overwhelmingly bitter forced me to stop.

  There was a strong, sharp taste in my mouth that caught the back of my throat and made me pull away suddenly. Billie looked stunned. It was then that I noticed her lips had gone black, her tongue tinged purple. Her eyes had lit up but her skin was becoming paler and paler. She was shivering, her teeth were chattering and she bit her lips. I scrambled out of the Jacuzzi, helped her out and rubbed her down with a towel. I could feel her legs wobbling, on the verge of folding beneath her. Racked by a violent coughing fit, she pushed me away so she could bend over, suddenly overcome by the urge to vomit. With visible discomfort, she brought up a thick, sticky paste before falling to the floor.

  But what I was looking at wasn’t vomit. It looked like ink.

  25

  The danger of losing you

  With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels

  From the film Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk

  Hotel clinic

  1 a.m.

  ‘You her husband?’ asked Dr Philipson, closing the door of the room where Billie was now sleeping.

  ‘Um, no, it’s not like that,’ I replied.

  ‘We’re her cousins,’ claimed Milo. ‘We’re the only family she’s got.’

  ‘Often take baths with your “cousin”, do you?’ the doctor asked, looking at me with irony.

  An hour and a half earlier, just as he was preparing to make a difficult putt, he’d had to throw a white coat on over his golf clothes and rush to Billie’s bedside. He immediately saw that the situation was serious and put all his effort into reviving her, getting her admitted to the clinic and carrying out first aid.

  Since his question didn’t require a response, we followed him silently into his office. It was a corridor-like room which looked out over a sunny lawn, as smooth as a putting green, with a little flag flying in the middle. As you got closer to the window, you could make out a golf ball eight or nine yards from the hole.

  ‘I’m not going to lie to you,’ he began, gesturing to us to sit down. ‘I have absolutely no idea what’s wrong with your friend, nor what brought on the attack.’

  He took off his coat and hung it up, before settling down in front of us to list her symptoms.

  ‘She has a very high temperature, her body is abnormally stiff and she’s brought up the entire contents of her stomach. She’s also suffering from headaches, she’s having trouble breathing and she can’t stand upright.’

  ‘Which means what?’ I pressed him, anxious to hear some kind of diagnosis.

  Philipson opened the top drawer of his desk and took out a cigar, still in its metal tube.

  ‘She’s showing clear signs of anaemia,’ he added, ‘but what I’m really concerned about is this black substance she’s regurgitated in some quantity.’

  ‘It looks like ink, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Could be…’

  He took the Cohiba cigar out of its tube and stroked it, as if hoping that contact with the tobacco would offer some revelation.

  ‘I’ve requested a blood test, as well as an analysis of the black paste and one of her hairs which, you say, suddenly turned white.’

  ‘It happens, doesn’t it? They say that when you’ve suffered some kind of trauma your hair can go white overnight. It happened to Marie Antoinette the night before her execution.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ the doctor scoffed. ‘The only way to take all the pigment out of the hair that fast is by pouring bleach on it.’

  ‘Do you really have the facilities to investigate all this?’ Milo asked.

  The doctor cut the tip off his Havana cigar. ‘As you’ll have seen, our equipment is cutting edge. Five years ago, the eldest son of an oil baron sheikh was staying at the hotel when he had a jet-ski accident. He crashed into a speedboat and was in a coma for several days. His father promised to make a substantial donation to the hospital if we managed to get him out of danger. More by chance than anything, he pulled through without any lasting damage. The sheikh kept his word, and that’s why we’re so well set up.’

  As Mortimer Philipson stood up to usher us out, I asked if I could spend the night by Billie’s bedside.

  ‘No
point,’ he said abruptly. ‘We’ve got a nurse on call and two medical students who’ll be working all night. Your “cousin” is our only patient. She’ll be monitored 24-7.’

  ‘Really, Doctor, I insist.’

  Philipson shrugged and returned to his office, muttering, ‘If you want to break your back sleeping in a chair, that’s your funeral, but don’t come running to me tomorrow morning when that sprained ankle and cracked rib of yours are giving you hell.’

  Milo left me outside Billie’s room. I could tell he was on edge.

  ‘I’m worried about Carole. I’ve left dozens of messages on her voicemail, but I still haven’t heard anything. I’ve got to find her.’

  ‘OK, good luck, bro.’

  ‘G’night, Tom.’

  I watched him walk off down the corridor, but after a few yards he stopped in his tracks and turned back toward me.

  ‘You know, I wanted to say… to say I’m sorry,’ he admitted, looking me right in the eye.

  His eyes were red and shining, his face haggard, but he had an air of determination about him.

  ‘I really screwed up, taking risks with my investments,’ he went on. ‘I thought I was smarter than the rest. I let you down and now you’ve lost everything. I don’t know if you’ll ever be able to forgive—’

  His voice cracked. He screwed up his eyes and a tear ran down his cheek. Seeing him cry for the first time in my life made me uncomfortable. I didn’t know how to react.

  ‘It’s just so dumb,’ he added, rubbing his eyes. ‘You know, I thought we’d done the hard part, but I was wrong. The hardest thing isn’t getting what you want; it’s keeping hold of it once you have it.’

  ‘Milo, I don’t give a shit about the money. It never filled a void; it never solved anything. You know that.’

  ‘We’ll get out of this mess, the same way we’ve always done, you’ll see,’ he promised, trying to pump himself up again. ‘Our luck won’t run out now.’