The pizza arrived, finally. We sat down at the table, but I didn’t even lay a cloth.
“Don’t you have a bottle of wine? No one can eat this, it’s horrible,” Roy protested.
He was right. It had gotten cold on the way over, the cheese was like chewing gum, and the pepperoni tasted like horsemeat. Even so, we ate it. I grudgingly opened a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.
When we had finished I poured two glasses of whiskey, this time with no water and no ice.
“Okay, Roy, what do you want to tell me?”
“We’ve sold our souls to these guys,” he said heavily.
“To the lawyers? No, not me, Roy. You sold your soul. In order to get where you wanted they offered a price, which you accepted. Better not to look back. All you can do now is go forward.”
“You think they’ll let us leave? Don’t be naïve.” Roy spoke as though he were relieved to have someone to share his worries with.
“They don’t care about me, I’m nothing but a pawn they can get rid of at any time. You are the one they helped make mayor, the one who sold them land at laughably low prices, the one who made it possible for a company they represent to drill holes all over the county. They can still get a lot out of you, Roy. These people like to have friends in Parliament, and they’ll support you if you want a seat. You’re one of them now. Me, not so much.”
“You know too much.” He was angry that I insisted on my freedom.
“Yes, I know too much, and that’s going to save me. I’m a son of a bitch, you know that, and so do they. And that’s why I’ve covered my back. If I have an accident…if anything happens to me…well, they’ll have a number of problems. But I don’t think it’ll happen, Roy. I’m not a major part of their organization. It’s convenient for all of us to work together, but I want to be independent. I’ve made mistakes as well. I should have followed my instincts and refused to work for them or for GCP. They gave me an office, allowed me to hire Maggie as my secretary, and Cooper and Evelyn as well, and keep working to save your ass. And I agreed to do other work as well. I was completely mistaken. And that’s why I want to go, because they have control now, Roy, and I don’t.”
“You can’t leave them, Thomas.”
“We’ll see.”
“And if you did go, what would happen between you and me?”
“I’d still keep working for you, Roy. You could still be my client. What I don’t want to do is get mixed up in things I can’t control. I don’t like the Spain business, there’s something strange going on there. Maybe Schmidt got me into it to get rid of me.”
“Schmidt hates you.”
“Yes, that’s crystal clear. I wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire either.”
“And what if they trick you?” he asked.
“Stop worrying. I’ll sign tomorrow and be free. I’ll fulfill my part of the bargain. I’ll go to Spain and do what I can without getting too involved. Period.”
“It’s what they want…Well, you’ll have to do it.”
“I’ll think of something.”
“You said that you were going to go back to New York. Why?”
“Hmm. I don’t really know why myself. I suppose it’s because I want to marry Esther. I won’t manage to do that from here. I don’t like London very much either, at least not enough for me to stay here for good. I’ll try to maintain a little organization here. Cooper and Evelyn will keep working for me, if we have any clients. You could be our main client, Roy. But I want to think about working in New York as well. I’m from there; it’s my city. You can’t understand, but when I arrive in New York it’s as if I’m wrapping myself in a blanket: everything is familiar there, the streets, the people, the way people behave…It all makes me feel secure and relaxed.”
“Did your father ask you to move back?”
“No, no, he didn’t, he wouldn’t dare. He’s too respectful to tell me what I have to do.”
“But you’re moving back for him, because he’s ill?”
“No, of course not! My family would be the very last reason for me to move back. I have to go back, and that’s it. I want to have control over my life and here I feel that I don’t. In fact, I lost control the very day I listened to you and signed up to work for your lawyer friends.”
“I don’t know if they’ll let me keep you on,” Roy whispered, as if he were talking to himself.
“That depends on you. Tell them I know where the bodies are buried and that it’s better if we stay on the same side.”
“You know what, Thomas? Ever since I met you I’ve asked myself what life has done to you to make you…like you are.”
“An evil bastard? You can say it, Roy, say it loud and say it proud, I’m an evil bastard. Well, Roy, it was a choice, my very own choice.”
“But so young…”
“Yes, I’m not yet thirty, but I’ll get there. It’s all a question of time.” I said all this with a chuckle, as I found his apparent shock amusing. He still didn’t understand my reasons.
“Anyway, being how you are…I’m surprised that you’re so obsessed with Esther. She’s a good kid, but she’s no beauty. She’s clever, yes, but at first sight there’s nothing so extraordinary about her that would make you so keen on marrying her.”
“But she is extraordinary, Roy, I swear she is.”
We agreed that we would go and have a final drink at Madame Agnès’s house. For some time I hadn’t allowed him to come with me. If I had been able to bring down Frank Wilson because of his brothel visits, then someone could do the same to Roy. But Madame Agnès’s house was one of the most exquisite and discreet brothels in London, and in my many lonely nights in the city I had become one of her best clients.
The girls changed frequently, but they were all beautiful, well-mannered, and discreet. They dressed elegantly. I liked the way the place looked above all, a house where men met to discuss business and politics. It wasn’t an odd sight to see people sitting in a corner discussing important issues without anyone bothering them. The place was a favorite of the Russian oligarchs, although Madame Agnès didn’t seem to like this kind of client all that much. “Too noisy,” she whispered to me one day. I suppose she thought that they did not know how to behave as properly as the stuck-up hypocrites who were her usual clients.
I liked to experiment, so I always chose a different girl; Roy, on the other hand, on the few occasions when he came along, always sought the company of a young redhead who reminded him of how Suzi had been twenty years before.
None of these women was in the slightest bit vulgar. They spoke about politics and economics. They knew how the market fluctuated and they were capable of talking about art. Once I asked Madame Agnès just how it was possible for these women to dedicate themselves to entertaining men like the ones who came to her house.
“All of my guests are gentlemen like you. And they are very generous. They appreciate beauty, delicacy, good conversation…and we appreciate your generosity, and gentlemanliness.”
That evening Roy was thwarted. The redhead was chatting with a politician and the rules of Madame Agnès’s house were strict. Nobody was to interrupt other people’s conversations. I decided on a young Anglo-Japanese girl. She was new. Another rule of the house was that we weren’t allowed to ask questions. The girls weren’t allowed to ask about the clients and the clients weren’t allowed to ask about the girls. Even so I broke the rules and asked her how she had ended up there.
Yoko (she said her name was Yoko) replied, quite naturally, that she was studying English at London University. But she wouldn’t let me ask anything else. She started telling me about a Rubens exhibition at the National Gallery, and enthusiastically advised me not to miss it.
I invited her to come with me, breaking another rule. Madame Agnès did not allow the girls to see clients outside the house: if they did, they could not come back to work there.
Yoko shook her head and smiled gently. I realized that this girl was affecting me and I hadn’t eve
n slept with her yet. I thought about Esther, believing that doing so would help me regain a sense of perspective. Yoko was a prostitute: high-class but a prostitute nonetheless. Roy would laugh at me if he saw how keen I was on her. I knew what he would say: no man should lose his head over any of these girls.
Despite the years that have gone by, I remember my first time with Yoko. It was a voyage of discovery into sensations I did not know existed. She became Esther’s alter ego. I needed Yoko’s body and Esther’s brain. I promised myself that I could have both, and regretted that it was impossible to combine that body and that brain into a single organism.
—
Roy called me the next day. He woke me up. I was in a good mood and suggested that we eat together. He begged off and apologized. He was going to eat with the Conservative chief whip.
I already knew that Roy was not the only puppet of those two lawyers. He was just one of many. Jones and Brown represented clients whose fortunes were as large as the GDP of certain countries. That was why they needed to buy politicians, journalists, and businessmen, and to blackmail anyone who got in the way of their clients’ interests. Behind their façade of good manners were two entirely unapologetic men. I was not certain if there was anything human left in them. Well, some people had found it difficult to discern humanity in me as well.
At five on the dot I was at the lawyers’ office, but it was Schmidt who was waiting for me.
“And the lawyers?” I asked disdainfully.
“They’re busy. We’ll sort this out ourselves.”
“I don’t think you want to sort this out,” I said bluntly.
Schmidt didn’t reply. He didn’t think that I was important enough for him to reply to my provocation.
“Here’s the document for you to sign. You will cease to be an employee of GCP, but you will continue to be bound by the confidentiality agreements relating to the work carried out for the firm. You also promise to work with us when needed, even as an independent contractor, at least for the next five years. For the time being, that is the only way in which you can continue working with Roy Parker. This means that even if you set up your own agency, you will have to do everything connected to Roy Parker through us. You can’t make decisions on your own. Ah, and you won’t be able to work for other agencies either.”
“That’s not what we agreed,” I protested, standing up and getting ready to leave.
“You can’t act on your whims. Either you accept this or we will activate the clause by which you have to compensate the firm for not fulfilling the terms of your contract. The sum would be two hundred thousand pounds.”
I still ask myself how I could have been so stupid to have signed that contract. I suppose that I can’t have been as intelligent or as mature as I thought I was back then. I was still a young kid who put on airs. I had gone into the lion’s den by myself. And the lion wasn’t ready to let me go without giving me a good bite on my way out.
Those were the cards I’d been dealt. I couldn’t leave the game. I would get some of my freedom back, but I would have to pay the price they demanded.
“What exactly do I have to do, Schmidt?”
“You know. Look for dirt about the people who oppose the drilling. Filter it to the press and that’s it. We’ll deal with the rest ourselves.”
“You know that I’m not the right person to do this work in Spain. I can do it in England, in the U.S., but not in Spain. There are other rules at work there, rules I don’t know. If something goes wrong you’ll pay the price,” I warned.
“If something goes wrong, it will be you who pays the price. This is the office of two well-respected lawyers who advise their clients on how to deal with certain crises. It has nothing to do with the work you carry out.”
“But they employ me to do it.”
“Do you have any proof?” he said with a twisted smile.
“I could have a hidden microphone.” This was a bluff.
“Mr. Spencer, although you do not know it, to get to this office you have had to pass through several X-ray machines. Shall I tell you the color of your underwear?”
I didn’t ask. He could have been bluffing as well, or maybe he was telling the truth.
I signed the document and when I handed it over he didn’t give any sign of satisfaction. He had never doubted that I would sign.
“I’ll do what I can but nothing more.”
He didn’t say goodbye. He merely called the secretary on the intercom and asked her to accompany me to the elevator.
I could have gone back to Spain that very night, but I didn’t. I was eager to get back to Madame Agnès’s house and see Yoko. I had spent the best night of my life with her and I wanted to repeat the experience.
It was early when I arrived at the house in South Kensington. There couldn’t have been more than three or four clients there, all peacefully having a drink. They were chatting among themselves and there was no sign of the girls. I asked Madame Agnès for Yoko. She looked at me in annoyance. She didn’t like clients getting too fixated on a particular girl. She said that this was just another source of problems.
“She won’t be here this evening. She only comes to see us occasionally. Would you like a glass of champagne, or maybe something a little stronger?” she asked impatiently.
I asked for whiskey, a double. I felt a nearly uncontrollable urge to destroy this room, which suddenly, without Yoko there, seemed exceedingly vulgar.
“When will she be back?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Spencer. Yoko is not one of the regulars, she calls when she wants to come in. And, from what I’ve heard, you were very generous last night. Not just to the house, but to Yoko herself. As you know very well, that is against the rules.”
I was disturbed that Yoko would tell Madame Agnès that I had left the thousand dollars I had on me in her room, as well as the pounds. It wasn’t permitted to pay the girls. The rule was to ask for a bill when you left. The bill included the champagne and the rest of the drinks, as well as a separate entry for “extras.” This was always the largest part, never less than four hundred pounds.
I apologized to Madame Agnès. I didn’t want to cease being welcome in her house. I had seen her telling clients to leave and never come back. And she must have been very persuasive, because they never did come back. Or maybe she had some way of stopping them?
“Please don’t worry. If I ask you about Yoko it is merely because she seemed a very agreeable young lady, but no more so than the others who…who accompany us.”
“As you know very well, my friends are all charming, none of them is better than the rest. I am sure that tonight you will find a charming companion to talk with and share a glass of champagne.”
She made a discreet signal to a girl who had just arrived. Tall, blonde, thin, dressed in a simple yet elegant black dress and with huge green eyes. She came over to us.
“My dear, I don’t know if you know my good friend Mr. Spencer. We were talking about the weather, about how it always rains in London at this time of year. I think we could do with a little food. I’ll ask the maid to serve some of the crepes the cook has been preparing.”
She left us alone, sure that we would continue talking. There was no reason why not: the girl was very attractive, and I would gladly have spent any other night with her, but I had come in search of Yoko.
I drank my whiskey too quickly and left before the night got too lively. Madame Agnès said goodbye with a disapproving look. She knew that I was leaving because Yoko was not there, and that this kind of behavior affected the smooth running of her business.
I went back to my apartment, ready to keep on drinking. I had three or four bottles of whiskey in the cupboard. There wasn’t even a carton of milk in the fridge. I wasn’t hungry. Along with the seafood crepes, I had had some smoked salmon. Enough not to have an empty stomach and to be able to drink for a while before the alcohol caught up with me.
I poured myself a glass up to the brim. I was in a bad mood. I
had promised myself a night with Yoko, and here I was, alone, in front of the television.
I called Esther. She picked up the phone, which I took as a good sign.
“Do you know what time it is in New York?” she asked.
“It’s eight o’clock here. It must be three there, right?”
“I’m working. We can’t talk now.”
“Call me when you get out of the agency,” I almost begged.
“I have to go to Paul’s academy. I’m teaching a class.”
“Call me when you get home, then.”
“It’ll be late for you.”
“It doesn’t matter. Wake me up. Will you do that?”
“I will. Are you all right?”
“More or less.”
“What happened?” she asked, mildly preoccupied.
“I think I’m nearly free. The lawyers are willing to cancel my contract if I do the work in Spain.”
“And if you don’t?”
“It’ll be sticky. And I’ll have to compensate them to the tune of two hundred thousand pounds.”
“Wow.”
“So I’m leaving for Madrid tomorrow. I’ll try to do the things they ask of me. I hope I don’t get my fingers caught and that I can forget about these people for good.”
“And Roy?”
“He’s a busted flush. Suzi won’t forgive him. As soon as his father-in-law dies or his children grow up she’ll leave him. She’s making him sleep in the guest bedroom.”
“He deserves it.”
“Well, she can’t play the innocent. She didn’t think it was a bad idea when we brought down Roy’s opponents.”
“But now it’s her father, about making him abandon his land, his business, his way of life.”
“Selfishness.”
“It’s only logical that she’s reacting like this. For Suzi, the family is a line in the sand.”
“Roy is her family, he’s married to her,” I replied, irritated not so much by what she said as by the fact that I was still thinking about Yoko.
“He’s her husband, but that’s not the same as being her family. Your family is your parents, your brothers and sisters, your children, but a husband…a husband or a wife is something else, you can always find another one. But your parents are your parents, it’s something you can never change even if you wanted to.”