by Solace Ames
Nothing between us changed. I spent the mornings surfing, the afternoons reading, the evenings entertaining or being entertained. I found a good rhythm. I’d read a horror novel to forget about real life for a while—the more monster-chomping, the better—then follow it up with something philosophical and improving. I’d never gone to college, but I wasn’t going to let that hold me back. Emanuel’s family had grown up in houses made out of sticks and thatched with palm, and a lot of them were obviously smarter than me.
I couldn’t get far with Bataille, though. He gave me a headache.
When I mentioned my insecurities to Emanuel, in a vague and general way, he reminded me I wasn’t seeing the relatives who were dead or in prison or addicted to chemically adulterated cocaine byproducts on the streets of Bogotá. It was a horror story from a different side.
Emanuel and I talked a lot, always with a distance between us. We talked about the present, leaving the past and future alone. The movements of the ocean. Politics. The music business. Movies and books. The conversations got less intimidating for me, but they still left me exhausted afterward, full of worries about whether I came off as too stupid or too pretentious or too anything, really. For every ten minutes we talked, I needed an hour to process what he said, and then another hour to calm myself down.
Miles didn’t seem to mind. We’d found our own rhythm. During the day, when he was charged with a boundless energy that seemed to torture him from the inside, on breaks from studio time he’d beckon me upstairs and fuck me hard and fast. No kisses, no endearments, no concern for my pleasure. I liked it because it felt like working, except that he was actually interesting and attractive, not just some random schmuck with a big dick, loose morals and a freakish talent for keeping an erection under camera lights. It felt like the easiest job I’d ever had. Sometimes I closed my eyes and imagined more. Feelings I couldn’t even name.
Then, at night, we’d switch. The nights took a lot more mental effort on my part, but I enjoyed the challenge. Miles would go passive and blank, and I’d take him down where he wanted. Sometimes I left marks, but I was always careful, always in control. I never messed with his mouth again. He needed to sing, after all.
I managed to get a hold of my mom a few times. She told me she was praying for me. Even though I didn’t believe in a Catholic God, it was her way of showing me love, and I thanked her for it. I didn’t talk much about my own life, for obvious reasons. I asked her about Manila. I asked her about what she cooked every night and how my sisters were doing, the ones who didn’t speak to me.
They’d run across a three-minute clip of mine loose on the web, not long after I started in the business. My oldest sister had thrown up afterward. It was less painful for them to pretend I didn’t exist anymore.
A few weeks into my new life and I wasn’t home free yet, but I was healing. I could breathe here. Some tense and terrifying struggle was happening between Emanuel and me, like a tug of war over a pit, but he wasn’t my enemy and it wasn’t war and it felt more like dancing, so maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I fell...
And then Xiomara came.
She drove in on a Vespa scooter, bass strapped precariously in back. She had close-cropped hair dyed indigo to match her lipstick, and she was astonishingly beautiful. She reminded me of a young Naomi Campbell, but less wispy-ethereal, more solid and tall. When she took off her sunglasses I saw the resemblance to Emanuel and Fausto in the arc of her eyes, the same starkness that made their faces look cruel and tender at the same time.
She parked her scooter, walked up to the door, embraced Emanuel, then Fausto, then me.
“I’ve heard about you, Amy,” she said. Her voice was low and musical, her accent American. “Good things. Don’t worry. Please, don’t worry.”
“Okay.” I gave her an awed, tentative smile. “I’ll try not to. It’s very nice to meet you.”
“I think we’re going to be friends,” she said. “I don’t have any claim on Miles. I’m here to work.”
I’d watched the interchange between Xiomara and Emanuel closely. I saw some stiffness and pain, a lot of love. But nothing sexual. That was the one thing that would’ve made me run screaming. I was so relieved it wasn’t there, I wanted to hug her all over again.
“I don’t think Miles is ready to leave his room tonight,” I warned her. “But he says he’ll be okay for tomorrow.”
He’d been tied down to the bed, actually. I’d loosened his bonds and massaged his wrists and ankles, then I’d gone downstairs to greet Xiomara. Safety first. You’re never supposed to leave a bound person unattended. I think he would have preferred me to, though. When I looked back before closing the door, he still lay there as if bound, staring at the ceiling, completely gone.
“He’s very seriously mentally ill,” Xiomara said frankly. “It’s not just the drugs. I hope he’s on meds.” She sighed and shook her head. “Here I go, still acting like his shit is still my business. Slap me if I keep doing that, okay, Amy?”
I made a jokey slapping motion in the air between us.
“Thanks.”
She laughed. I laughed. Even Emanuel smiled. He always seemed to smile just the right amount in any given moment, as if emotions were an atmosphere and you could set the temperature by him. He regulated. And right now the mood was set to a guardedly happy homecoming.
This was the best I could hope from him: to be as welcomed and trusted as Xiomara. It wasn’t what I wanted, but maybe one day I’d come to appreciate it, and enjoy the warmth without wanting to stick my hands in the fire until they burned down to the bone.
We led Xiomara to Juan Carlos’s old room and helped move her in. We showed her Gabriel, who purred and preened like a harmless pussycat, and we explained that he was an agent of chaos.
Later that night, Emanuel played for me. We sat in the outdoor kitchen, looking out toward the ocean, and he picked up his guitar and stroked a series of complicated notes that sounded like a bird cry.
“Cumbia.” Fausto clapped and stomped a rhythm. It sounded African to my ears, something held safe through the generations.
Xiomara sang softly, in Spanish. Her voice reminded me of the absent Miles’s, in register and richness. Emanuel sang too. He had the kind of voice that was powerful in speech but not in song. It was like he was talking when he sang, talking to only one person. I could have listened to him forever.
The song sounded like exile, bittersweet and yearning.
I couldn’t stay long. Duty called. I took some dinner up to Miles, who hadn’t moved this whole time. After I sat by his side and stroked his hair for a while, he stirred and came to.
“I can hear them,” he said. “I’ll be all right tomorrow. I can join them tomorrow.”
“It’s a transition. You can handle it. We’ll go to one of your support meetings in the morning. You’ll be fine, Miles.” I decided, in that moment, never to call him baby again.
She had his heart, it was clear as day. I felt sorry for both of them.
Chapter Eight
I woke up the next morning to an empty bed.
Panic hit me. Miles had always been a constant presence. He just wasn’t a morning person. But before I raised the alarm, I took a deep breath and decided to be rational about this. Professional. I threw on a tunic dress, took a few seconds to brush the tangles out of my hair, and walked downstairs to look for him.
He was sitting at the dining room table across from Xiomara, smiling and sipping from a cup of no-doubt-blow-your-mind Colombian coffee. Dressed in nothing but boxer shorts, he seemed totally at ease.
Xiomara was the one who looked nervous, who tapped her fingers against the table to a complicated rhythm as she stared at a point in space somewhere to the left of Miles Morrison’s slinky tattooed body. She was still very beautiful without the bold indigo lipstick, her lips lush and full but gently curve
d toward sadness.
“We were talking about old times,” Miles said to me. “The good and the bad. They’re never going to come around again, though, not unless we build a fucking time machine, so here’s to the future.” He raised his cup and grinned, full of life and edgy good spirits.
“The future,” Xiomara echoed. “I’ll be leaving when Juan Carlos gets better. And when I walk out it’ll be with my head held high, and no one’s knife in my goddamn back. But yeah, here’s to the future.”
Drama tsunami warning sirens went off in my mind, whoop whoop whoop. “I need coffee for this,” I groaned, and rubbed at my puffy eyes.
“I’ll make you some more, honey,” Xiomara said.
I went back upstairs, washed my face and got dressed. When I went back down, Xiomara had a whole thermos ready for me, instantly earning my loyalty. Little things like that win people over, strike a lasting connection.
“I’m taking Miles to a meeting,” I said. “I usually have breakfast while I’m waiting. Want to come with us?”
She nodded.
Miles didn’t seem to react.
He took the back of my car and Xiomara rode shotgun, chatting with me all the way.
“I was working part-time in a scooter shop,” Xiomara said. “Playing with friends on the weekend. Marking time. I applied to some graduate schools in computer science, and I’m waiting to see if I can afford to go out of state.”
“So it’s a transition time for you,” I said. She laughed and shook her head, confusing me with her response. Miles let out a strangled noise from the backseat.
Xiomara turned her head to glare at him, her good humor vanished. “Got something to say?”
“Who the fuck do you think I am, Perez Hilton? Gossip is way down my list of sins.”
“We’re here,” I said, and pulled up in front of the rundown church—rundown for Malibu, which meant the cross wasn’t blinding white and the bougainvillea shrubs were a touch weedy. “Miles, you can go talk about your list of sins. I’ll take Xiomara for breakfast.”
“Gossip about me all you want, ladies,” Miles said, and hopped out gracefully. He stalked into the church like a fox raiding a chicken coop, not a single glance behind him.
“He really goes to the meetings? Does the steps?” Xiomara asked incredulously.
“I don’t know if he does the steps. But at least he goes, and he doesn’t bitch about it too much.”
We set up at a café across from the church and ordered breakfast crepes. “So you know about me, right?” I asked. “Did Emanuel tell you I’m a semi-retired porn model?”
“He didn’t put it that way. He said you had experience in the sex industry.”
“That’s nice and neutral.” I couldn’t help smiling at Emanuel’s turn of phrase, so formal. “I won’t ask what Miles told you about me. I’m sure you two have a lot of history.” History was a nice formal word too.
“I looked up a list of your movies.” Her lips tightened, but the rest of her body language didn’t close off against me. I hated noticing that moment when people cross their arms or angle their bodies away, like I’m crawling with contamination. “You’ve done all kinds of stuff. Fetish. Transgender.”
“Yeah, I have. Is there something you want to ask me? I’m cool with most questions. I don’t have anything to hide.”
“It’s more what I want to tell you. I felt like it in the car, when you talked about a transition time. I had my last surgery—Jesus, I hope it’s my last—about six months ago.”
I put the clues together.
Why hadn’t Emanuel told me? Or Miles?
Because it was hers to tell, I reminded myself, and I needed to respect that.
“I have to be honest with you,” I said. “I don’t know any women like you outside the business, so if I say something nasty, please tell me, and I won’t do it again. You can...” I made the same slapping motion in the air between us, and she laughed. She laughed easily, the kind of laugh that made me feel brighter and happier. “I mean, I know not to use the word. I’m sure you know which word. But I’ve done titles with it, and I guess you saw those.”
She nodded. “You’re a sweetheart, like Emanuel said.” Had he really used that word? The heat rose in my cheeks. “Well, I’ll be honest with you. I’ve never been in the business but I came this close.” She raised her thumb and forefinger in the air. She had guitarist’s fingers, plain and callused, and her palms were much lighter than the backs of her hands. I’d read that black people could still get skin cancer, especially on their lighter areas, and that’s how Bob Marley had died, from cancer on his foot. I was thinking of everything except what Xiomara was trying to tell me, so I forced myself to look her in the eyes and really connect with her as a human being.
“Why?” I asked. “The money? I mean, that’s really the only good reason.”
“Yes. The money. Emanuel got me over here, sent me to live with Isabel’s family, but he doesn’t have unlimited funds. You know a lot of his money comes from lawsuits?”
“No.” I cupped my chin in my hands. Hell, yes, I was up for the gossip. When men do the same it’s called talking business, but I didn’t care anymore. I just wanted answers.
“He’s written a lot of songs he’s uncredited for under his legal name. Someone ripped him off when he started out in L.A. so he learned real fast, and got a lawyer, and the next time someone in the music business tried it, he sued them back. He’s got lawsuits going back decades. Half the people in this industry won’t touch him with a ten-foot pole, the other half are dying to work with him.” She reeled off a few hit songs he’d had a hand in, and even though I don’t listen to pop music, I knew them by osmosis. “Anyway, his cash flow situation is bizarre. And I really needed my GRS, my surgery—” she pointed discreetly down to her lap, “—like I literally could not imagine moving on in my life without it. So I started researching what I had to do.”
“Porn?”
“I didn’t think I could do porn. I tried wrapping my mind around it. Even on the physical level, you know, what I had didn’t work anymore because of the hormones, so I would have had to go off them and—I just couldn’t face that. But I thought about it. Put myself through scenarios. Watched videos. Looked into escorting and all this other stuff...” She drew in a shaky breath. Her lips trembled. I didn’t want to see her like this. It reminded me too much of what my sisters might have gone through.
“It’s scary from the outside. I went through the same process, except it was easier, I guess. I was only a little scared. I figured, in for a penny, in for a pound, and your reputation is just as fucked if you do one film or fifty, and the hard-core stuff pays the most, and I’d go in hard and aim for the top and make a shitload of money in the four years I was in my prime.”
“So it worked out for you?”
“Mostly. The beginning was kind of rough. But things picked up once I made some friends and proved I was serious.” I pointed down to my lap, just like she had. “Labiaplasty.”
It turned out the waitress was right behind me, and when she clattered the plates onto our table the damn crepes almost flopped into my lap. “Sorry,” she gasped, and fled.
We both laughed. God, what a weird thing to bond over. Freaking people out with genital surgery, and not even on purpose. The crepes were delicious, and I resolved to leave the waitress a huge tip.
Xiomara kept pace with her own crepes. Good to know I hadn’t destroyed her appetite.
“So you got your trees trimmed.”
“Yeah. They weren’t even super long, but they get bashed around with the kind of athletic sex we do. And there’s a porn aesthetic that guys expect. I felt uncomfortable about it until I read an article about people who run ultramarathons, twenty miles through the desert, and their little toes get bashed up so much, the nails fall off after a run, so someti
mes they get the little toenails surgically removed, like down to the bone. I figured my inner labia were kind of like that. A liability, more than anything.”
“That’s kind of fucked up.” Xiomara grimaced apologetically. “I mean, it’s really fucked up, but I’m not judging you for it—it’s just too bad there’s so much pressure.”
I shrugged. “The other two surgeries I got recommended were my eyes and my tits. But I like surfing and running too much and I love not having to worry about bras while I’m doing it.” I pointed at her chest, then looked nervously around to see if the waitress was—no, we were okay. “I guess you had the same philosophy?”
“Mmm-hmm. No implants. I’ve got cheap-ass sports bras and an A-to-B push-up, and that’s it. Itty-bitty titty committee for life, honey.”
We high-fived.
“And the eyes...I just couldn’t go there. They told me I’d look less emotionless and robotic if they cut away bits of my eyelids and gave me a crease. That it helped other Asian girls in the business advance. I mean, even television broadcasters do it. But I have my mother’s eyes.”
Xiomara’s eyes were huge and dark, with lots of room for expression. And they were welling with emotion right now. She dabbed at the corners with her napkin and drew in a shaky breath. “I’m so sorry, Amy.”
“Don’t be. Please. I’m fine. I got the money I needed and—” I was suddenly desperate to distract her. “So how’d you get your money?”
“Oh. That.” She dropped the napkin and struggled to smile. “Emanuel had a lawsuit come in. He paid for half of it and I borrowed the rest. We had some bad blood between us over Miles, but I’ll always owe him everything. He’s something else, isn’t he?”
“So he’s like your...” I wanted her to fill in the blank.
She did. “Uncle. Godfather. More. He used to be with my mother’s twin sister, back in Colombia. Our family got evicted from the island. An oil company took it over. Paramilitaries burned down our village and killed the people who fought back. Anyone who was left ran away to a shantytown next to a trash heap in the south of Bogotá. I don’t remember much from that time, even though that’s where I was born, tripping over dead dogs and shit. But Emanuel was with my aunt—I think they were second cousins too, but when you grow up like we did, way out in the country, that was okay—and she was pregnant with his baby when she died. And then I was born. So he said he always felt a connection to me.”
