Exposure

  At the time, Faustino hadn’t graced the idiot with a reply. But now he was wondering whether he should. In print. Forcefully express the view that Otello was not playing against eleven men, but against twenty-one — ten of whom were wearing the same colors as himself. That would stir things up, get a lot of attention. Win Faustino some brownie points with Carmen d’Andrade. Would it do Otello any good, though? Probably not. More likely to make things worse.

  Faustino stubbed his cigarette out and got to his feet. He’d hold fire for now. Rialto would have to get over themselves sooner rather than later and start playing with Otello rather than against him. There was simply too much at stake for them not to.

  PAUL FAUSTINO MAY believe that Otello’s colleagues are sabotaging his game, but Ramón Tresor, the Rialto coach, knows it.

  Late evening. The staff and players’ parking lot at the Rialto stadium. A dozen or so vehicles are still there, sweating raindrops. They gleam in the light from the high lamps that illuminate the fenced-in compound.

  RODERIGO emerges from the unmarked door through which players and officials enter and exit the stadium. He is wearing a light-blue linen shirt beneath an expensive leather jacket and is smiling at the text message displayed on his phone. He walks toward his car — one of his cars — a bronze Lexus coupe. As he passes a big four-wheel drive, its window slides down to reveal the face of TRESOR.

  RODERIGO: Boss?

  TRESOR: Get in the car.

  RODERIGO: What?

  TRESOR: Get in the car. You and me are gonna have a private chat.

  RODERIGO [holding his phone up as if it has the power to ward off evil forces]: Um, yeah, but . . . Does it have to be now? Like, I’ve —

  TRESOR: Yeah, it does have to be now. Get in the damn car.

  [RODERIGO gets into the car. He and TRESOR look at the rivulets on the windshield, not at each other.]

  TRESOR: Actually, I shouldn’t have gotten you into the car. I should’ve made you go down on your knees in the rain and beg like a dog for your job.

  RODERIGO: What? What the hell is this?

  TRESOR: Don’t “what” me. You know exactly what this is. What in the name of Christ did you think you were doing out there today?

  RODERIGO: Er, winning? Like, two—nothing? Against the division favorites?

  [Now TRESOR does look at his captain, and his eyes are like fire inside black ice. RODERIGO tries not to flinch, but he does.]

  TRESOR: And who did the business for us? Who stole the first goal and made the second? The one player out there today who worked his ass off while the rest of his team behaved like moody schoolgirls. Wanna tell me who that was?

  [RODERIGO doesn’t answer. Instead he leans back in the four-by-four’s big seat and stretches his legs out.]

  RODERIGO: Oh, right. I get it. Someone upstairs had a word with you, Ramón. That right? What is it, a change of policy? How’s that work? Brabanta come to terms with Otello sleeping with his daughter all of a sudden? Vice President Lazar realize having a black superstar on his team gets him a fat slice of the liberal vote? Like, “Hey, we’re not right wing or racist; look how we spent fifty million on a black socialist from the North.”

  TRESOR: What is all this crap? I’m running a soccer team. Politics’s got nothing to do with it.

  RODERIGO: Really. Listen, I know you’re from Spain, Ramón, but Jesus. Wise up. Soccer is politics in this country, man.

  [TRESOR puts his hands on the padded steering wheel and braces his arms as though he has brought the machine to an emergency halt on a wet mountain road. He lets out his breath.]

  TRESOR: All right. But it’s time to stop. You’ve made your protest. Okay. But today, today, the way you sold Otello short was just embarrassing, man. And he won us the game. So, enough. It stops right now. We’re six games in, and that’s enough.

  RODERIGO [after a longish pause]: Fifty million, less, could’ve got us Saja and maybe Pozner. Best two defenders in the country. Both itching for a transfer. And we’d still’ve had Montano. You know, it pisses us all off, the way these things are done.

  TRESOR: Oh, c’mon, get over it, Jaco, for Chrissake. You’ve got maybe the best striker in South America playing in front of you. Any team in the world would give their eyeteeth for him. And you’re not giving him anything because you’re sulking about Luis Montano. Who is a great kid. I liked him. But for God’s sake, there’s no comparison.

  RODERIGO: You’re dead right there, boss. Absolutely right. There’s no comparison. Luis was one of us. Comes up from the youth academy, signs for Rialto at the age of thirteen or something, his whole damn neighborhood turns out to watch him play for the Juniors. He’s out there selling programs when he’s not picked, comes to every practice on offer, makes his first team appearance age seventeen, scores in his first cup game. Name straight on the team sheet for two seasons, and then, hey! Sold up the river to the Deep North. In part exchange. How the hell d’you think he feels about that, man?

  TRESOR: Christ, Jaco, listen to yourself. I’m running a soccer team, not some kinda charity. No one’s indispensable. Not even you.

  RODERIGO: And what the hell is that supposed to mean?

  TRESOR: I’ll tell you exactly what that’s supposed to mean. When we signed Otello, we put the best striker in the business together with the best provider in the business. That being you. The combination that won the Copa América, right? And is it working? No, it damn well isn’t. Because you’re making sure it’s not. And you think you’re being so smart, don’t you? Huh? Making it look like Otello is a pace behind the game, all of that. And yeah, certain lunkheads like that Campos guy are buying it, putting it in their papers and so forth. But you’re gonna have to wake up, Jaco, because sooner or later certain people, people who matter, are gonna start asking how come Roderigo’s game has gone off, that he can’t distribute the ball like he used to. How come Otello has to steal goals out of nothing, not getting any service from you? Right? And when that starts to happen, I might just park your sorry ass on the bench. Or maybe even leave you at home, watching the game on TV.

  RODERIGO: Oh, yeah?

  TRESOR: Yeah.

  RODERIGO: You can’t drop me, and you know it.

  TRESOR: I don’t know any such damn thing. Like I said, no one’s indispensable. And my job’s on the line every game we play. So you and the other guys stop this game right now, okay? If you don’t, I might just have to go to the board and say, “Jaco Roderigo’s not doing the business. Let’s sell the son of a bitch and buy someone who can.” Someone like Beckham, who can play the ball. And he knows at least seven words of Spanish. Those being, “Here’s the ball. Go score a goal.”

  RODERIGO: Screw you, Ramón.

  TRESOR: Jaco, you ever say that to me again, your career is finished.

  RODERIGO: I’m getting out of the car now.

  TRESOR: Okay. Go ahead. I’m kinda tired myself. But before you go, one last thing. I won’t be at the training ground on Tuesday. And what you’re gonna do is have a quiet word with the other guys and tell them it’s over, right? That you play with Otello or you don’t play at all. I think it would be nicer coming from you rather than me, don’t you?

  Two weeks later, Paul Faustino writes:

  One–nothing against Porto may not seem a resounding victory, but yesterday Rialto at last looked like a coherent team. Much of the credit for this must go to Jaco Roderigo, who seems to have shaken off his post-cup indolence and woken up to the possibilities presented to his side by having Otello leading the attack.

  The move that led to the goal was without doubt one of the most elegant I have ever seen. It began, inauspiciously, with a forced back pass to the Rialto keeper, Gabriel. Instead of hoofing the ball clear, Gabriel, with two attackers bearing down on him, played a calm pass out to Airto. The back, finding space yawning in front of him, made twenty-five yards before laying the ball off to Roderigo. Two weeks ago, the Rialto captain would have held the ball or played a square pass, but on this occasion h
e turned beautifully away from one challenge, beat off another, and then fed the ball out to Enrique, who had run wide to the right.

  Otello, making an expertly timed run (as always) seemed surprised that Roderigo had moved up to support him, and when Enrique’s cross came in, Otello took it superbly on his chest, dummied his marker, and rolled the ball to his captain. Roderigo, twenty yards out, had every right to make a shot, and the Porto defense expected it. As they rushed to close him down, Roderigo lifted the ball with the outside of his left foot — his weaker foot, as we all know — into the only vacant spot inside the Porto penalty area. Given that Otello has hardly received a decent pass from Roderigo this season, it seems unlikely that he could have been expecting such a ball, yet he moved onto it with extraordinary speed.

  Most strikers would have gone for a full-blooded volley to the near post. That is certainly what the Porto keeper expected, and so he was left helpless when Otello’s almost gentle side-footed shot curved past him into the bottom left corner of the net. Nonpartisan lovers of the game will want to see this incisive attack as a promise of things to come and hope that Rialto has at last recognized the enormous potential that their new signing has brought to the club.

  There are certain things that Faustino chooses not to mention. Such as, when Otello turned away after scoring the goal, the first of his teammates to embrace him was the only other black Rialto player, Airto. Such as, there was a significant hesitation before Roderigo and others joined in the congratulations, and Roderigo’s way of doing so was to ruffle Otello’s hair briefly in the way that old ladies touch the heads of small children. Nor does Faustino record the fact that immediately after the goal, he looked up at the directors’ box (from which Nestor Brabanta was again conspicuously absent) and saw, as he expected, Desmerelda doing her arms-high celebration samba to the obvious pleasure of the men surrounding her. But two rows below Desmerelda, Diego Mendosa sat with his arms folded, his face like a grim idol carved from stone. And that was interesting.

  “AW, DIEGO, C’MON, man. This is not what I do — you know that.”

  “I know it’s what you have so far refused to do, Capitano, which is not quite the same thing.”

  Otello goes to the big window of the penthouse and gazes down at the boats that are packed densely into the marina. He wishes Desmerelda were home.

  “Yeah, well, maybe the things we don’t do are more important than the things we do.”

  Diego, seated on the sofa, seems to consider this. “That’s deeply philosophical,” he says eventually. “And as your friend, I wouldn’t mind passing the afternoon debating it. But as your agent, I need to concern myself with money. Elegante has agreed to a fee of six hundred thousand. Which is far more than they had in mind before I took them to lunch.”

  Down at the quayside a couple of skinny boys are lugging a basket from one pontoon to the next. A security guard is watching them from just inside the gate of the compound. Otello cannot see what it is that the kids are trying to sell, but he knows they will have scant luck. On weekdays the place is a graveyard, the sleek white yachts and cruisers aligned like magnificent sepulchers.

  “And it’s for a woman’s razor, right?”

  “Elegante does grooming products. It’s a huge market, and they have a big chunk of it.”

  “A razor.”

  “Yeah, okay, a razor. But we might well be looking at other stuff. A long-term brand relationship, you know?”

  “So what would I have to do?”

  Diego gets a folder out of his briefcase, although he doesn’t need to. “Okay. Two days filming, max. Stills for posters and so forth to be done at the same time. By a very good agency; I’ve checked them out. Dates to suit you, so long as they’re in the next two months. And if — you have the final say in this, of course — we go on to do other things with them, we negotiate from scratch. Which means, naturally, a bigger fee.”

  Otello lets out his breath slowly and turns away from the view. “I dunno, Diego. It’s not like I need the money.” He raises his hand, because his agent is about to speak. “Okay, okay, I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say, as usual, that I’ve got maybe five, six more years playing at this level. That after I quit I’ll have, God willing, fifty years left to me, and if I don’t want to end up as an old bum on the street, we need to — what’s your expression? — ‘broaden my career base.’”

  Diego’s smile is rueful. “I didn’t realize I’d become such a bore. I apologize. But yes, I do see it as part of my job to get you maximum exposure. Because, let’s be honest, the fate of most ex-players is obscurity. And a lot of them end up broke or a joke. Am I wrong?”

  “No. I guess not.”

  “No. But in fact I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to point out that half of this fee would finance your drop-in center for homeless kids up in Espirito for at least a year. And because it’s a legit charity, that makes a nice reduction on your taxes. And I’m assuming that not paying taxes to your father-in-law’s nasty government is something that would appeal to you. Am I right?”

  The TV commercial is an instant, scandalous, enormous success. It is condemned by no fewer than nine bishops; it is banned by BVTV, the Catholic channel, and it outrages the Committee for Public Decency. In response to public demand, Elegante puts it on their website so that it can be downloaded onto iPods and cell phones. You’d think no one had ever seen a black man shaving a white woman’s body before. Elegante’s sales — not only of the Ladyshave Silk, but of the company’s entire range — increase by forty percent. But it’s the poster — that poster — that lingers in the popular consciousness. The morning it appears on the huge electronic billboard in the Plaza de la Independencia, drivers are so utterly transfixed by it that they fail to notice that the traffic lights are sometimes green, and as a result half of downtown is gridlocked within twenty minutes. One of the inconvenienced travelers is Nestor Brabanta. He sits fuming in the back of his chauffeur-driven limousine for almost three quarters of an hour. When the car eventually reaches Independencia, he looks up at the billboard, and the blood drains from his face.

  Although the woman on the poster has her head turned away from the viewer, her light skin, the soft cataract of honey-and-tobacco-colored curls, and the tiny hummingbird tattoo on her exposed shoulder all suggest very strongly that she is Desmerelda Brabanta. (She is not, of course. She is a model, the hair is a wig, and the tattoo will be easily erased by a dab of Elegante cleanser.) Her right arm and hand cover her breasts. Her left arm is raised and bent so that the forearm rests on her golden head; the hand is clenched into a fist. Thus the viewer’s eyes are drawn to her exposed armpit, the armpit that Otello (standing slightly behind her, leaning down and forward) is, with rapt attention, de-stubbling with a turquoise plastic razor. Both he and the model are wearing only sarongs. Sarongs! Hers is black; his is white.

  On the seventh floor of La Nación, Paul Faustino is struggling with the hot drinks machine when Edgar Lima arrives and helps him with the buttons. Lima is the photo editor for the weekend color supplement. He looks about seventeen years old, has his hair in a gelled tsunami, and in the top of his right ear wears a clip fashioned from an antique silver coffee spoon. Naturally they begin to talk about the burning issues of the day.

  “It’s absolutely brilliant,” Edgar says. “One of those images that are instantly iconic.”

  “Yeah?”

  “God, yes. I spend my days praying that one of our guys will come up with something like that.”

  “What, a soccer player shaving a woman’s armpit? I don’t want milk with that, by the way.”

  “Okay, there you go. Actually, it’s not really about shaving armpits. Well, it is, but hey, Paul, c’mon. Deconstruct it a bit, and what do you get?”

  “You tell me. I know you’re dying to.”

  “All right. It’s wonderfully complicated, but the first thing is, of course, it’s about Otello and La Brabanta.”

  “It’s not her, thoug
h. Is it?”

  “I very much doubt it. But we want to believe that it is, right? We want to believe that we’re seeing an intimate moment — albeit a slightly grotesque intimate moment — from the private life of the country’s most celebrated couple. Like they’ve just got out of the shower or something, and she says, ‘Darling, would you mind shaving my armpits?’”

  Lima sips his tea. “No, it’s more than that. What we secretly want to believe is that she says, ‘Darling, would you please shave my armpits because you know how much it turns me on.’ That’s why she’s hiding her face. She doesn’t want us to see how turned on she is. Which signals to the viewer that she is very turned on indeed. That’s why she’s holding herself the way she is, right? And the intent expression on Otello’s face tells us that he knows it. The armpit itself is a metaphor, of course.”