From Cape Town with Love

by Blair Underwood

Free! I sang along at the top of my lungs, vowing never to change.

  The Twelve Apostles Hotel was sandwiched between the mountains and the endless rocky shoreline, almost an island unto itself. The only vehicle parked outside was the well-shined white van Rachel Wentz had mentioned. I expected to find paparazzi, but I didn’t see anyone lurking. Good for her. There are worse problems in life, but I feel bad for actors with swarms of paparazzi. Why would Sofia Maitlin want a circus in the middle of an adoption?

  I hate tabloid culture. I haven’t bought a tabloid since the nineties, and here’s why: I once had a costar who was one of my mentors, an older man I’ll call Raul Garcia. He played the assistant principal on my old series, Malibu High—a stern Edward James Olmos type. He was far from a household name, just a working character actor who’d been in the business for years, delivered his lines, showed up on time, and loved his work. He often brought his nephews to the set, and I used to shoot hoops with them. (I played a basketball coach.)

  Our series came and went, so we didn’t see each other for about a year. I called to have lunch with Raul and found out he was dying. Too far gone for visitors, his family said, but we spoke for ten minutes on the phone. His voice sounded awful, but he cracked me up with jokes, and the single most blasphemously filthy limerick I’ve ever heard. Buy me a drink sometime and ask me. I refuse to write it down.

  Raul was an immigrant, and his family was proud and protective. In his home country, his success in American television gave him a stature beyond the size of his roles. His family might have suspected he was gay, but he never told them—only a few select friends. It was nobody’s business. At his funeral, where his parents wept over his casket, no one acknowledged the lonely white-haired man I guessed to be his lover, and no one said the word AIDS aloud.

  A week after the funeral, I was walking down Wilshire when a tabloid on display at the newsstand stopped me: RAUL GARCIA AIDS SECRET, a giant headline read. The photo was worse: an emaciated Raul celebrating his sixty-third birthday only two weeks before he died. A private photo someone had stolen or sold. Apparently, grave robbing is alive and well.

  I refused to read the story inside, but a grainy image of the sad, white-haired man I’d seen at the funeral bore the caption RAUL’S SECRET GAY LOVER. And a large, boxed quote from an anonymous morgue employee confirmed that Raul died of AIDS from his toe tag. The toe tag was pictured beneath the quote—exhibit A.

  It was an assault, as if someone had dug Raul up out of the ground and violated him. Maybe his family shouldn’t have cared—and it’s too bad Raul felt he had to hide—but grief is hard enough. If that tabloid story had been about my father, I would have wanted to skin the reporter and roll him in salt.

  Thank God no reporters will be calling to ask me about April, I thought, the bright side of anonymity. Yeah, Ten—lucky you! You’re not an Oscar winner worth fifty million dollars.

  The parked white van was empty except for the wiry driver, who looked about fifty. He was so preoccupied with his cell phone, speaking Xhosa with clicks and dizzying speed, that he didn’t notice me standing by the passenger-side door. I scanned the license pinned to the visor—his face matched the photo. The van was owned by an agency called Children First Mission. The insignia, children’s hands clasped around a traditional shield, was on the door.

  Rachel Wentz had asked me to wait by the van, but I wanted to meet my client before we faced the public. I used to know the hotel security managers in Cape Town, but I had to wait at the desk while the skeptical concierge called up to the room. She was a matronly woman with blond hair in a severe bun. When she got the okay, her eyebrows shot up high with surprise.

  Not surprisingly, Sofia Maitlin was in the Presidential Suite—14,000 rand a night, or about $1,800. Loose change for members of the one-name club.

  The three staff people who met me in the hotel room looked like they were dressed for a safari, not a visit to a township. All three wore oversize beige camera vests and hiking boots. Someone had read way too much Hemingway.

  Rachel Wentz was about fifty and short, five feet tall, with a wide, jolly face that belied her phone manner. The other woman was Pilar, a tall Latina with merry hips who welcomed me with a bright smile. Pilar’s skin was two shades lighter than April’s, but she was about the same age, with a similar shape. My restless eyes lingered on Pilar’s mouth.

  The sole man was wiry, about thirty, and glued to his Bluetooth. He interrupted his conversation long enough to shake my hand and mumble his name—Tim—before his back was turned. He wouldn’t be any help in an emergency.

  The room was huge, about eighteen hundred square feet, with a décor in vibrant white and gold. The white dining-room table was a centerpiece, with six tall matching chairs. The glass sliding door in the rear was open, so the room was a bit muggy, but the ocean lay right beyond the balcony, and the water was the room’s best feature. The rooftop suite floated on the world.

  I liked the vibe already. No drama. Except for Tim’s constant chatter, they felt like a group of friends on vacation. South African pop music played from the bedroom.

  “Sophie’s on the deck,” Rachel said, beckoning me.

  It had been a long time since I’d been in the presence of a star as big as Sofia Maitlin. Trust me, we don’t get invited to the same parties—at least not anymore. If you don’t believe there’s any such thing as magic, you haven’t floated near the inner sanctum of the Hollywood A list. These actors are no longer individuals, they’re corporations with poreless skin. Movies fail or succeed on the basis of their allure, and their misadventures can kill box office or even a career. Ask Meg Ryan if Russell Crowe was worth it.

  According to those ugly tabloids, Sofia Maitlin had been enough of a party girl to frighten producers who kissed Lindsay Lohan’s butt. That was, until she had some kind of a spiritual breakthrough and found meditation or yoga or something. At that point, they only had to worry about her trips to Bali and Tibet, and not her screwing the offensive line of the New York Jets on YouTube. God is good.

  “Where’s her regular bodyguard?” I asked as we walked the length of the room.

  “Food poisoning,” Rachel said quietly. “Solid two hundred and ten pounds, Force Recon Marine, and a bad bowl of stew put him on his back. She’s saying, ‘We don’t need a bodyguard.’ Most times, I wouldn’t be too concerned, but today’s a special occasion, so we’re worried about a leak bringing out the weirdos. Maybe you can talk some sense into her.”

  “Hello . . . ? I can hear you,” a woman’s voice said ahead of us. She sounded playful.

  When I stood in the balcony doorway, I saw olive brown legs twined down the length of a rattan lounging chair. The calves were slender, sturdy, and athletic.

  And bare feet. Sofia Maitlin’s toenails were painted only with a light gloss, but she had magnificent feet. Long, lovely toes. Smooth, shiny heels. I’m a foot man, so she might as well have been lying on that lounger naked.

  “Tennyson Hardwick, this is Sofia Maitlin,” Rachel said.

  The wide brim of a white straw hat peeked from behind the lounger as Maitlin leaned around to look at me. Two pairs of gold-brown eyes found mine. When she smiled, I felt a primal part of my brain slowing down, refracting to one word: woman.

  Sofia Maitlin was a petite ball of pheromones, glowing at the center of her own force field. Raven hair coiled down her neck and shoulders in a loose ponytail. If her face had an imperfection, or if she was wearing makeup, I couldn’t see it. I saw very faint freckles across her cheeks that the camera missed, a humanizing detail that only made her more appealing.

  She had an ethnicity that was hard to place; skin dark enough, and light enough, to be from almost anywhere. She was wearing casual khaki shorts and a button-down frilly white blouse that hugged her bosom, open low enough to show subtle cleavage. Her all-natural chest is her hallmark; it was hard to forget the steamy waterfall scene in The Vintner that some critics believed was the sole reason Sofia Maitlin had won last year’s
Oscar.

  Reason enough, from what I could see.

  I was surprised when she stood up to greet me. She was only about five-two, shorter than April—typically, much smaller than I would have imagined. Her dancer’s body moved with fluidity as she gave me a firm, businesslike handshake.

  “May I assume the other man is in worse shape, Mr. Hardwick?”

  Damned bruises. I felt as self-conscious as a schoolboy, wishing I could hide my face.

  “Much,” I said, remembering the cloudy eyes in the swamp. “It all worked out fine.”

  “Yes it did.” Her eyes pulsed at me. Subtle, but I saw it.

  “I really enjoyed you in The Vintner,” I said, picturing the waterfall scene.

  Her eyes glimmered, knowing. “Did you? How sweet of you to say so. Have a seat.”

  When I glanced around, I realized that Rachel Wentz was gone—or suddenly invisible to me. Not sure which, but I never saw her leave. Below us, the mightily blue ocean massaged the shoreline with a gentle, private song. It felt like the deck of a private cruise ship. I sat on the dark gray rattan lounger beside Maitlin’s while she picked at the breakfast plate on her glass-top lounge table. She popped the last strawberry into her mouth and seemed to swallow it whole.

  “Are you familiar with Langa?” she said.

  “Yeah, and it can be a tough place,” I said. “It’s like any other poor section of town. There are houses, schools, stores. Some sections are better off than others. You definitely want to be aware, but you should be fine. There are regular tours through Langa. People invite you right into their homes.”

  “Then why do I need you?” she said, smiling.

  “Because you know life is full of surprises, Ms. Maitlin. Someone in your position, with your fame, must be prepared for any scenario.”

  I saw a veil lift from her eyes, deeper penetration. For an instant, she was Sophie Echevarria—half Greek, half Cuban, the girl who’d set out from meager roots in Miami to try to conquer Hollywood. Her father had come to the States on a raft, nearly drowning at sea. Both of her parents died in a car accident soon after her first major film role. During last year’s Oscar frenzy, her biography had been everywhere. She was Hollywood’s favorite Cinderella story.

  Even without reading the tabloids, I knew more about her than I was supposed to. Sofia Maitlin was a gossip magnet, the perfect combination of beauty, eccentricity, and vulnerability. Shooting The Vintner had been draining enough to send her on a six-month retreat in Mysore, India, to meditate and practice yoga with her master. Her off-again-off-again relationship with a Greek shipping billionaire only fanned the tabloid flames. She had famously dumped him when the Enquirer ran photos of him and a blonde playing naked Twister on the deck of his yacht.

  That might have been some of the most expensive tail in Hollywood history. The billionaire missed Maitlin so much after she dumped him and went to India that he offered to marry her with a quarter-billion-dollar prenup. And if she caught him with his pants down again, she’d make another $20 million just on the side action.

  That was either true love—or nice work if you could get it.

  Up close, I realized Sofia Maitlin might have pixie dust between her legs. It was possible. Her smooth skin crackled, even from a distance.

  And now, here we were.

  She stood up abruptly. “Come with me, Mr. Hardwick,” she said.

  She walked toward a different glass door—leading to her master bedroom. I fell behind her, stopping just inside the doorway to leave plenty of space between us. Lynda Jewell had told lies about me that cost me my job on my television series, so I was still in High Caution mode with women I didn’t know. For all I knew, Sofia Maitlin might still be looking for revenge sex after her billionaire humiliated her on TMZ.

  In Maitlin’s bedroom, there were framed photographs on the bureau, alongside stacks of books and magazines. Her iPod dock was playing Afro pop by Brenda Fassie, a late legend Alice and I once saw in concert.

  “You know South African music?” I said.

  She nodded. “We shot Vintner here a couple of years back, and I was out dancing every night. The Cubana in me, I guess. I breathe music, and the music here is exquisite.”

  “Maybe the best in the world,” I said. Alice and I had once agreed on that. The harmonies of Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the Soweto Gospel Choir are awe-inspiring.

  “Come in,” Sofia Maitlin said. “I want to show you something.”

  I hesitated, but I walked beside her since she was near a small table and chairs instead of the bed. I smelled lavender, maybe from her hair. Maitlin pulled up a bottle of wine chilling in mostly melted ice cubes in a silver bucket on the table. The bottle was from Stellenbosch, vintage 2006. She pulled out the well-used cork.

  “What do you think of Viognier-Roussanne blends?” Maitlin said.

  I looked at my watch: seven thirty in the morning. “I think it’s best to wait for breakfast to break out the wine.”

  She gave me a sarcastic smile. “Touché. Rachel and I didn’t quite finish this one off last night, and if you love Cape Town, then I assume you must love wine.”

  “Let’s say I do.” I still had Alice’s impressive wine collection at home.

  “It was great to win the Oscar, but the biggest perk for six weeks at a vineyard? A lifetime supply of the most delectable wine,” she said. “You’ll have to try this.”

  “I’d love a taste,” I said. But my eyes were on her, not the wine.

  Mailin smiled when she poured me half a glass. It was way too early for wine, even good wine, but I sampled the blend to be gracious. The white wine was so golden, it might have been glowing. The pear scent hit my nose as soon as I raised the glass. With a sip, I tasted apple, apricot, a touch of citrus. Floral notes. It had a strong, sweet flavor, with a hint of minerality. Memorable. I made a mental note to buy a bottle.

  “Very nice. Perfect for a spicy curry. The mineral taste . . . ?” I couldn’t help trying to impress her.

  Maitlin’s smile widened. “Cement barrels. It’s special, isn’t it?”

  I set my glass back down after a lone sip. “But I don’t drink on the job.”

  Maitlin nodded, pleased. I’d figured she was testing more than my knowledge of wine. Any bodyguard who would get buzzed at the interview wasn’t a good hire.

  “My guru has been saying for years that it’s time for me to be a mother,” Maitlin said, her voice quiet. “She says a strong family is the only way to safeguard against the negative vibrations in Hollywood, and I agree. That’s why I’m going to Langa.”

  Maitlin wasn’t the first person to expect a child to cure her life’s ills. But hell, maybe Maitlin’s guru was right. I wanted to tell Maitlin how I’d met a teenage prostitute while I was investigating a case, how I’d taken her into my house to keep her away from the streets. And how Chela was almost eighteen, and I was going to pay to send her to college. I wanted to tell her all about me.

  “Sounds like a good reason,” I said.

  Maitlin picked up a photo frame from her bureau, which she stared at for nearly thirty seconds before she gave it to me. The frame held a stylish black-and-white photo of a white-haired man and a woman with Maitlin’s nose, both in their sixties. I saw the pieces of them in Sofia Maitlin, jumbled and rearranged. The photograph had caught them laughing at something off to the side.

  “Mom and Papi,” she said. “They weren’t perfect—an artist and an activist trying to raise a kid?—but they gave me everything they had. Mom was always bugging me about having kids. I saw so many beautiful children the last time I was here, and I haven’t been able to get them out of my head. But the time wasn’t right. I’m ready now. Today, I want to see those children again. I want to bring a child home and give her everything I was blessed to have. More.”

  It was only my imagination, but in the photo I thought her mother’s eyes laughed.

  “Children First?” I said, remembering. “Are they reputable?”

  “They
’ve only done two transnational adoptions, but my lawyers said they check out. It’s a very small agency run by a private mission.”

  “Will you take the baby home today?” It didn’t seem likely; there were no toys or baby gear in sight. But the baby would change our scenario, so I had to ask.

  Maitlin sighed, gently removing the photo from my hands to return it to its place. “I wish! But it’s not possible. There are piles of bureaucracy ahead. It can take five years to get approved here, they told me. But a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

  I hoped it would work out for her. I didn’t want Sofia Maitlin to leave South Africa with my kind of disappointment.

  Maitlin looked up at my face, studying me.

  “Want to see the real reason I always book this room in Cape Town?” she said, and moved away, expecting me to follow. I did. She took me to the spacious bathroom’s doorway.

  There, in a corner by a large white soaking tub, were two huge picture windows that made the room feel like it was built entirely of glass. I could imagine her bathing with nothing but the sky above her and the ocean below. The view was breathtaking from the living room and balcony, too, but the bathtub made it a private peek show. Spectacular.

  There were no words for it. We stood in silence a moment, humbled by the vision of morning in Cape Town.

  “This doesn’t happen often, does it?” she said thoughtfully.

  “What doesn’t happen?”

  “An instant spark.”

  She was standing two feet from me, but suddenly the distance seemed much smaller.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “The spark between two strangers. It’s a rare, delightful thing.” Her voice was soft.

  I had two warring instincts: The first, and strongest, was to lock the door and pull her into that tub with me. My next instinct was to take two steps back, toward the doorway. Training overcame them both: I did neither. I didn’t move. This was a game, and I wanted it to play out.

  “And because it’s so rare,” she went on, “we’re supposed to think it means something. We’re two attractive people, two polite people, and we want to think that’s a license to act out the dirty pictures in our heads. I’m sure you could make a woman lose her mind for a while.”