Her head shot round.
He was relaxed again. He laughed. ‘I’m not lying. Whatever I may do to you, Susan, I’ll never lie to you. There’s no point.’
She sat on the bed. ‘What happened?’
He shrugged. ‘I told you. Nothing dramatic. It just didn’t make me happy so I got rid of it.’
‘You make it sound like an abortion.’
‘Of a sort.’ Pope drained his Virgin Mary. ‘Anyway, I can’t sit here talking politics and pipe dreams all day, I’ve got a meeting at the Banco de Brasil. If you can be dressed in ten minutes, you can get a lift uptown in my car. Longer than ten minutes, though, and you can find your own way. Never forget, my dear; I am not here for your convenience – you are here for mine.’
She walked up the Avenida Presidente Vargas and cased the clothes-shop windows. There were lots of copies of Chanel and Vuitton, lots of acrylic and plastic, lots of bad seams and leather as over-tanned as the forty-year-olds on Copacabana beach. Rio seemed to specialize in what were politely known as ‘fun clothes’ and ‘sports clothes’; only somewhere along the line fun and sports had become euphemisms for cheap and nasty. Even the familiar merchandise at Benetton and Fiorucci looked strange as though concocted by some cack-handed Martian with only a vague and grainy approximation on some distant TV screen to work from.
Still she bought, almost reflexively: I shop therefore I am. A tiger’s-eye necklace at Sidi, silver earrings with green citrine centres at Prata Moderna and a gold ring set with a beautiful black tourmaline that screamed ‘BULGARI!’ but actually came from Balulac. A couple of pieces of basic black and white at the mercilessly monochrome Tutto Bianco, a backless and beaded red cocktail dress from Cenario & Figurino, a shiny black bikini from Cantao and a dark green leather envelope briefcase from Victor Hugo, and she was done.
The people in the street looked easily as harassed as any other big-city lunch-hour shoppers, and she considered how silly it was that if a country had exceptionally clement weather its inhabitants were automatically described as ‘vibrant’, ‘vivid’ and ‘vivacious’. Looking at the faces on the humid streets of uptown Rio, she could have shown any travelogue maker that living in a glorified sauna made you feel anything but.
In fact, if you took away the sun and substituted rain, Brazil wouldn’t really be anything worth writing home about, she thought. With its flamboyant poverty and jerry-built skyscrapers, it was quite like Tower Hamlets with suntans. Not that she’d ever been to Tower Hamlets. She had never found poverty, either domestic or exotic, vicariously thrilling. It was too close for comfort.
Her disappointment mingled with and was finally swamped by her relief. Pope had slept in a different suite last night – not even adjoining; he said that would look ‘tacky’ – and read the business press all through breakfast. At four in the morning the phone had rung and she had waded thigh-high through sleep to answer it, fearful that it was the call to his room.
‘Hello?’
‘Still up at this hour? Can’t sleep? Why not try masturbating?’ Pope had suggested jovially before slamming his receiver down. It had taken her one and a half hours to get back to sleep. Otherwise he had behaved with the decorum of a duenna.
Glimpsing the window displays, feeling vaguely fractious and fretful, Susan Street suddenly became aware that she was being followed. In the same way that one can be in the same room as a sleeping person and know suddenly that they are awake although they don’t move so much as an eyelash, she suddenly knew that she was being followed, halfway between a sapataria and a supermercado. A minute later she turned into a dark boutique and cannoned into a rail of cotton print dresses.
‘Deseja alguma coisa?’ said a short girl whose expression said her feet were killing her.
‘Just looking, thanks.’ She backed into the rear of the shop. Thirty seconds later he was framed in the doorway, a thin man of medium height in a dark suit, peering into the perennial dusk of the boutique. A minute later he was examining a rack of bikini briefs minutely, obviously too bent on his task to care about looking like a pervert. She slid out of the shop and into the pastelaria next door.
‘Ola, senhora!’ said a young man with beautiful teeth and bad breath. ‘Bola de Berlin, pastel de nata, queque, bolo de coco, petit fours?’
‘That one, please.’ She pointed to a meringue.
‘Ah, suspiro!’
She fumbled with the unfamiliar centavos. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t really . . .’
Laughing, he took some coins from her hand. By the quality of his laugher she guessed he was taking a little more than was absolutely necessary for his troubles. Brandishing a bloated paper bag at her, he grinned. ‘Um suspiro!’
Looking up through the window, she saw the man in the dark suit doing a bad job of inspecting of the cake display. Their eyes locked for a second before, both embarrassed, they looked away.
He didn’t seem like your average kidnapper AWOL from the local goon squad; his suit was too expensive and shabby, his expression too worried and thoughtful. Was he an employee of Pope’s, perhaps? Was Pope, for some crazy reason of his own, having her followed? She imagined how ridiculous her movements would look on a report: ‘Suspect then purchased meringue.’ No, ‘Suspect then purchased suspiro.’ It was ludicrous.
She stood in the doorway of the pastelaria looking at him challengingly. He stared grimly at the cakes as though they were long-lost cousins he was desperately trying to put a name to. But as she brushed past him, he turned. She could see that it was he who was the scared one.
‘Wait. Please. You think I hurt you?’ He spoke good English – better than Pope’s she thought disloyally.
‘Excuse me, please. You’ve got the wrong girl.’ She walked.
He followed at her side. ‘No, no. He hurt you. That Tobias Pope. You scared already – I see it in your eyes.’
She stumbled into a café.
He followed her. ‘Please, miss. My card?’
A maniac with a calling card? Unlikely, to say the least. She took it wordlessly. Luis Montes, SEVERO A MENDES, an address in the business quarter and a phone number. ‘My firm. Lawyers.’
She sat down and looked at him. ‘For a lawyer, you’re behaving very suspiciously, Senhor Montes. Did you want something?’
‘Yes. Yes, I did.’ He sat down awkwardly opposite her. ‘Dois chas com leite,’ he said to the waitress with some authority. Turning back to Susan, his manner became desperate again. ‘Please, yes. I would like to tell you about a girl I know. Knew. I want to tell you you remind me of her.’
‘That’s nice for you.’
Montes winced. ‘No, it’s not. It’s not nice. No. You paler, a little thinner, a little older. But you have that same look as she had.’ He hesitated for effect, a real lawyer. ‘That look like someone has bought you.’
Enough was enough. She jumped up. ‘Really? How very interesting. I think I’ll go now, if you’ve finished. Have me followed and I’ll have you arrested. You see, I’m a tourist, and therefore more important than you. Goodbye.’
‘Wait!’ He thrust a small snapshot at her. She saw a big, beautiful Latinate girl in a yellow sundress laughing over one bare shoulder. ‘That’s before she got the look. And before she died of course. A minha filha. My daughter. Your friend killed her. Your Pope.’
‘I don’t believe you.’ But she sat back down.
‘It’s true.’ With one quick movement he leaned across the table and brushed the hair from her forehead. She jumped back and he recoiled with a loud hissing sound. ‘You, too!’
The idea of being one of many girls scattered across several continents with SOLD tattooed on their faces did not appeal to Susan one little bit. Especially if some of them were dead.
‘What happened?’ she asked weakly.
‘She was seventeen when she met Tobias Pope. Maybe you don’t understand how it is for Latin American girl. No, you Inglesa, you probably understand these days. So near and yet so far. So rich and big, Estados Unidos. So mu
ch promises big fun. United States take and United States give. They God now.’
‘That’s a bit overwrought.’
‘They are. You know what they can give. You young, pretty girl . . .’ He laughed rudely. ‘You no want Pope’s beautiful young body.’
She couldn’t deny that. ‘Do you want to tell me about your daughter?’
‘It’s a short story. Short and sad. He gave her cocaine one carnival. Such a casual thing. Then away, back to work, other girls. But Cristina wanted more. She started to stay out at night. Clever girl, beautiful, studying history. She became girl of cocaine politico, though – we have a big cocaine problem here now, stops over from Bolivia and Colombia. She died when gangs had a shootout.’ He shrugged. ‘Studying history, OK. But what use history against half an hour of ecstasy?’
‘I’m very sorry.’
‘Thank you. But I’m not sorry. Not any more. Just angry now.’ He stood up, threw a handful of centavos on the table. ‘One day I kill him. Not here, too easy to trace me. But in Europe, or Estados, I kill him and fade away.’ He smiled like a real assassin. ‘There, I’m just another wetback. Catch me if you can.’ He put his palms flat on the flimsy table, which trembled under his hatred as he spoke pleasantly into her face. ‘And maybe you’ll call me and help me get up close, when he dumps you like he dumped my daughter, and you hate him. Maybe you already do. But you will soon. If he doesn’t kill you first. Adeus.’
The soft evening breeze of Rio, almost as thick and sweet as the whipped cream which oozed from the melted meringue abandoned in Susan Street’s suite, blew from the Atlantic Ocean across the beaches of Leme and Leblon, over the patio and through the French windows of Tobias Pope’s bedroom on the Avenida Atlantica, taking with it like trailing bridesmaids the sound of the sea lapping at Copacabana and the distant hum from the samba contest in the stadium on Rua Maquis Sapucai marking the start of the carnival.
Pope sat with his back to the windows in a big leather armchair and looked up from the copy of Fortune in which he was reading about himself. He looked at Susan Street, who was lying on the bed in a knitted pale green two-piece by Rifat Ozbek which left her pale stomach and shoulders bare, reading a Kathy Acker novel.
‘Lies, all lies,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Think nothing of it. So you weren’t impressed with Rio?’
‘Not what I saw of it, no.’
‘Maybe you’ll be impressed by the carnival?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Or maybe it takes more than the futility rites of the poor dressed up for the leering Polaroids of the American-speaking world to impress you.’
‘Might do.’ She carefully noted the page number and closed the book. She felt the muscles in the soles of her feet cramp, a sure sign of wariness.
‘How about a posse of pussy and a yard of cock?’
She turned over and sat up slowly. ‘Sorry?’
‘You heard.’
There was a knock on the door. Pope grinned broadly at her. ‘Ah, good. The floorshow.’
He opened the door, and six young people, three boys, three girls, filed in. None of them was over twenty and none of them was over the moon. They leaned placidly against a wall in a row and looked calmly from Pope to Susan. One of the boys whispered something to another, who looked at her and nodded.
Tobias Pope stood in the middle of the room and clapped his hands. ‘Your attention, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you. Now, what I wish is this. That, one by one, you will each step forward and explain in no more than three – that’s three, tres – sentences who you are and why you are a whore. WHORE. I don’t want to hear any lily-livered euphemisms like good-time girl, gigolo or poor deprived victim of exploitative economic system.’ He clapped his hands again. ‘Ladies first.’
A small girl in a white bikini stepped forward. ‘My name is Maria. I am a whore because I have no education.’ She looked at him uncertainly.
‘A common tale of woe but a convincing one. Let this be a lesson to you. Next.’
A tall girl in a white beach dress stepped forward. ‘My name is Rosana and I am a . . . whore because I have a sick mother and many small brothers and sisters.’
Tobias Pope blew a loud, lewd raspberry.
The third girl stepped forward. She wore black heels, black pedal-pushers, a black off-the-shoulder T-shirt and a black look. ‘My name is my own business and I am a whore because it pays well. Just like every one of these chickenshits that’s too scared to say so in case you send for a replacement.’
Pope threw back his head and laughed appreciatively. ‘Brava, senhorita! That’s the spirit. I happen to know from your good supplier that you are popularly known as Thalia, but we’ll let the pass.’
Thalia scowled.
He gestured at the three boys who lounged against the wall, grinning at Thalia’s performance. ‘You, you’re all men and therefore anonymous. I will call you One, Two and Three. And I certainly don’t want you to tell me why you’re whores. You’re whores because you’re lazy and stupid, like all your compadres.’
They sniggered and nudged each other.
Susan looked at Thalia. If she had had the bad luck to be born poor and Brazilian, she might have been this girl. Thalia was slightly larger than life but only in all the right places, her sullen face full of a bitter intelligence. The girl, who had been glancing around the room sizing up various portable objects – lamps, radios, vases – suddenly caught Susan’s eyes, and her stare was like three short sharp plunges of a knife in the face, breasts, groin. Susan blushed. Thalia looked again into her face and sneered.
‘This is my friend Susan. She wishes to be fucked. By each of you, one at a time, and then uma tortilla as a grand finale. Queue up, please, no shoving.’
The Brazilians slouched into line. She could tell as a people they were unused to queuing as they grinned and pushed foolishly at each other. The boys at the front, impatient and eager, the girls at the back, Maria and Rosana examining each other’s cheap costume jewellery and fingernails, comparing prices and varnish. They could have been waiting for a bus.
Thalia stood at the back, immobile, silent, still sneering. Looking at her, Susan felt suddenly frightened.
Pope walked along the line, handing condoms to the boys. ‘Once only offer, never repeated. Next week you’ll be back servicing sixty-year-old widows from Florida, so make the most of this. On the other hand, don’t make too much of a meal of it if you can help it. There’s no hidden camera here – no maquina – so no movie director is going to spot your hidden talent.’ He looked at his Patek Phillipe. ‘It’s just turned seven now and I want dinner at eight. I am an old man and need my sleep.’ He sat down in the leather armchair and looked again at his watch ‘Ready, steady – GO!’
The first boy came towards her, unzipping his jeans. Her numbness became relief on two counts: he was both small and erect. The idea of either stimulating one of these strangers or trying to take a party-size penis filled her with dread. He was handsome, but not in a way that she liked; too smooth, too young.
He climbed on to the bed and kissed her, kneeling on all fours. Their teeth clinked and she turned her head in embarrassment, looking straight into the smiling face of Pope who had left his chair and was standing by the side of the bed with his arms folded. ‘No sloppy stuff!’ he called fussily, like an irked referee. ‘Uck! Most unhygienic!’
The boy was kneeling up now, slipping the condom over his cock. Susan lay back weakly on the pillows and closed her eyes. He parted her legs and climbed between them, put his hand up her skirt and pulled her underpants down and off. He pulled her Ozbek skirt up and she felt every occupant of the room lean towards her with a low communal murmur of curiosity: a cross between people examining a piece of merchandise and people examining a car crash.
There were seven people looking at her exposed vagina. The idea made her want to crawl under the bed with embarrassment. But it also made her want to fuck like a rabbit.
Th
e boy groped at her opening with his hand, positioned himself and pushed into her. Instinctively she tightened her muscles and he gasped with pleasure. A little intake of breath went up from the queue and she opened her eyes to look at them. Pope stood, his straight back to her, looking down between her legs. Maria had her hands on Rosana’s shoulders and was standing on tiptoe. The two boys were erect inside their Levis.
Thalia was tapping her stilettoed foot on the floor, sneering. Susan held the boy tight as he moved back and forth. He was very young and enthusiastic, he didn’t smell or crush her and he was as powerless as any girl in the face of the Yankee dollar; he might as well enjoy it. How easy it was to fuck someone you didn’t know; much easier than kissing them, and infinitely easier than talking to them. She was just starting to feel the first pulses of pleasure when the boy gasped, buckled and collapsed on her, breathing like a spent sprinter.
Tobias Pope blew another raspberry. ‘Pathetic! Next!’
Boy Two climbed on to the bed, rolling his friend off good-naturedly. He had fitted the condom as he walked to the bed and slipped into her like a well-oiled bolt. He was taller, a little older and a lot bigger; she was coming dangerously close to enjoying this and, in fact, dangerously close to coming. She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around his neck.
He laughed softly in her ear. ‘Ola! He began to thrust, the culmination of each movement feeling like a question mark made flesh.
‘BOR-ING!’ decided Pope loudly. She could have crowned him. ‘Do something, boy! Do something with her! Strangle her, bite her, whistle Dixie if you must – anything to break the monotony!’
The boy grabbed her ankles and hoisted them up on to his shoulders: she readjusted her body, wriggling up on to him and groaning at the deepness of the penetration. She felt as though she were a red velvet sofa into whose plush depths the boy was sinking, never to return. Her hands gripped his hips, her dark hair spilled across the Porthault pillow, her narrow body heaved up against his and her large soft mouth stretched in a shiny and silent scream across her teeth, smearing them with Lancôme Brun Majeur lipstick.
Ambition Page 6
