Exposure (18 page)

He sat, saying not very much, while she lamented, predictably, the result of the election. His attention wandered.

Then she said, “And what about your friend Otello, Paul? Where was he?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that he comes on like a caring guy, concerned for the poor, for damaged kids, all of that. People listen to what he says, even if what he says is crass. Which it usually is. And although I hate to admit it, he could’ve made a difference.”

“What, to the election?”

“Of course. He’s got to be just about the most famous man in the country, right? He could have stood up. Declared himself. I mean, for God’s sake, if he believes in the things he says he believes in, he can’t be a supporter of the NCP, can he? Ah, but I forget. His daddy-in-law is that creature of darkness Nestor Brabanta. Is that why he stayed dumb, Paul? Or is it because he just
is
dumb?”

Faustino sighed heavily. He and Nola had locked horns over Otello before. “Nola, please. The guy is a
soccer player,
okay? He’s —”

Nola Levy lifted her hand in protest. “No, Paul. That won’t do. Yes, he’s an athlete. He’s also the name on a hundred thousand shirts you see on the streets. He commands the kind of publicity that politicians would die for. He breaks wind, there’s headlines. He’s worth millions. To my mind, there’s a certain responsibility comes with that.”

“Like the responsibility for deciding who forms the government? Come on, Nola. I’ll say it again: the man is a soccer player. No matter what else he does, that’s what we judge him on. His job. At which, as I’ve said several times in print, he is a genius. It’s terribly unfair, I think, to expect him to be something he can’t be. To do things he can’t do.”

Levy lit another cigarette and through smoke said, “Or
chooses
not to do. How do you feel about that, Paul? What about the idea that the things we don’t do might matter more than the things we do? You reckon that thought might have occurred to your Otello?”

“Probably not,” Faustino said. Then after a sad silence he put his left arm around Nola’s shoulders. She relaxed against him.

“Sorry.”

“For what?” he said.

Bush bounced up the steps on the far side of the patio, carrying a greasy bag of hot sandwiches in one hand and three clinking bottles of Pepsi in the other.

Nola said, “I doubt if he knows it, but today that boy’s future got a whole lot worse.”

Bush made his deliveries, then looked across and caught Faustino’s eye. He grinned hugely and blew on his fingertips, then shook his hand in the air. A gesture that meant
Phew! Hot babe, man.

Despite himself, Faustino laughed.

Diego drinks black coffee while studying the newspapers. Most of them, of course, are owned by right-wing proprietors and merely celebrate the NCP victory. He discards them and concentrates on
La Nación
and
El Guardián
and the other liberal papers. To his delight, they all have comment columns that ask more or less the same question: did Otello’s silence swing it for the NCP? He goes through to his office and checks the websites of the northern papers. They are blunter; brutal, even. The tabloid
El Norte
runs an editorial headed
WHERE WAS OTELLO WHEN WE NEEDED HIM?
The slightly more literate
Voz de San Juan
wants to know
WHY WAS OUR AMBASSADOR TO THE SOUTH SO SILENT?

He carries his happiness through to the bedroom and gently parts the curtains. Emilia stirs, opens her lovely eyes. He turns and smiles at her.

He says, “I admit that my faith in the cynicism of the common people has wavered from time to time. But I have the feeling that on this occasion they’ll come through. After all, they’ve been let down so many times before. ‘Hey,’ they’ll say, ‘maybe our hero
is
Brabanta’s stooge after all. Maybe we’ve been had.’ Because that’s the way they like to think, Emilia. In simple terms. In tabloid headlines. And once they start to doubt his integrity, they’ll start to doubt other things as well. Like his morality. And then, by God, I’ll give them something to sink their teeth into.”

He is silent for a moment or two, then rubs his hands together. “Speaking of which, I’m hungry. Are you, my love?”

P
AFF!
I
T HAS
taken a lot of research and several torrid meetings — plus two hundred thousand dollars — to arrive at these four letters and an exclamation mark. Which must remain a closely kept secret until the day the label is launched.

The actual logo design has not yet been decided. That’s what this meeting is for. Imagista has prepared several versions: in grungy capitals, like a tired stencil or rubber stamp; in crisp typefaces with the
f’
s reversed or inverted; scrawled, like a signature; in speech bubbles. There are still other key decisions to be made, such as whether the word will be different colors for boys’ wear and girls’ wear. But today Ricardo, the head of Imagista, has the task of selling the word itself.

“It’s like a sound, right? Maybe of a big fat raindrop landing on the ground. Hitting the dust. Nice image. Refreshment, freshness, rejuvenation, all of that. See what I mean?”

They do, yes.

“But what I love, what I absolutely
love,
is that it is also like a disrespectful noise that kids might make. Are you with me? Like, Daddy says, ‘What in God’s name is that you’re wearing?’ And the kid says,
‘Paff!’
Which is like, ‘What do
you
know?’ So it’s like a swear word, but not a swear word. Just a cool thing to say.”

Desmerelda and the others smile.

Isabel of Shakespeare says, straight-faced, “
Paff!
might also be construed as the sound of a fart. Was that something that had occurred to you, by any chance?”

Ricardo grins disarmingly. “I cannot deny it, señora. It is something that lurks within the word, yes.”

“And which adds to its youthful, disrespectful resonance.”

“Exactly, señora.”

On good days, Desmerelda is thrilled and energized by the speed of the project. On other days, she feels something like panic. The panic of a dreamer who cannot keep up with the frenzied narrative of her dreaming. During the vanished months since Diego pitched the idea to her, their fashion house has become a reality. There is an office, staff, a welter of contracts, papers that need signing. A website in development. An inrush of investment. Business plans. Accountants smoking cigarettes. All of it secret.

Diego himself has been wonderful, briefing her and Otello (often separately, because they are not together anything like as often as she needs them to be) on developments. It’s really rather touching. He — Diego — is so high on the idea. He so desperately wants it to work. It’s because he thought of it, of course; it’s his baby. All the same, it’s really nice to see him smiling so often, so childishly thrilled when things go right. It’s surprising. And deeply touching. She likes him more because of it. And he is there. He is with her.

At the same time, her pregnancy has made her prey to inappropriate but acute attacks of loneliness. Now that the new season has started, Otello is absent more and more of the time. He sleeps on planes, then steals into the apartment and undresses in the dark before sliding into bed and cupping his hand around her belly. Then — it seems to her — he is gone again, and she wakes to his ghost voice on the phone. And she aches, sometimes, remembering him bringing coffee to the bedroom on slow mornings. The coffee going cold while they made love. When she still liked coffee. And, for that matter, when they still made love.

But it is not simply her husband’s absences that conjure these spells of loneliness or fear. It is the sudden, irrational feeling that the world has shrunk into her, that she contains it and that she alone can sustain it. This sense of being the center of the universe is not new to her, of course. But now, for the first time, it comes burdened with responsibility, and it sometimes frightens her. Very occasionally it makes her angry. Angry with him. Angry with the quietly fierce man who put the baby in her. She knows this is also irrational, but the knowledge brings no comfort.

So it is good that she has Diego. And Michael, who drives as if she were a priceless Venetian glass full to the brim with rarest wine.

The hotly contested competition for the
Paff!
contract has been won by Dario Puig and his Japanese wife, Harumi. Under their trade name, Reki, they have designed for most of the national labels and several internationals. Their studio and exhibition space is the top floor of a refurbished 1930s warehouse in the old commercial quarter. On the morning of the unveiling of the designs, most of the key players are there: Desmerelda, Ramona, and Diego; a couple of Shakespeare people; the
Paff!
project manager and two of her staff; three anxious people (the woman in a smart suit, the two men looking like pirates or something) from the fabric design company; about half a dozen Reki employees who seem to be an average age of sixteen; and Ricardo with another young man from Imagista. Oh, and Michael Cass, who stands awkwardly against the back wall next to a life-size naked mannequin painted dark purple except for her lips and hair, which are gold. They make a nice couple, although it seems that of the two, she is the more likely to strike up a conversation.

Harumi has done the drawings. They are scattered, in careful abandon, over the surface of the table. The faces are asexual, drawn — predictably — manga-style, with huge tear-glossed eyes, like dolls that weep. It is not the right look at all; Desmerelda glances across the table at Diego, who widens his own eyes ironically.

The designs are good, though. Very good. For most of them — the lightweight parkas, the sweatshirts, the hoodies, the T-shirts, the beachwear — Dario and Harumi have combined a severely limited range of colors: black, three shades of gray, cream, white. In an entirely magical way, these anonymous colors draw attention to the cut, the style, the desirability, of the clothes.

Dario explains the guiding principles behind their work; helpfully, these are written with elegant carelessness on big sheets of paper taped to the wall. These sentences, he and Harumi believe, express the “core sentiments” of teenagers that have inspired their designs.

Don’t look at me. LOOK at me.
    I’m nothing: special.
                      Boredom is sexy.

Here’s where I am: in hiding.
              I’m just like you: unique.

 Safety is what frightens me.

Why did they name the nuclear family after a bomb?

Take care of me; leave me alone.

“There is a deep attractiveness in all forms of contradiction,” Harumi adds, by way of clarification.

In addition, Dario and Harumi have completely reinvented the soccer jersey. The designs are displayed on a second table. Dario removes the dust sheet that covers it like a matador whisking his cape from a whirling bull. These images are quite unlike the stylized drawings of the leisure clothes. They are glossy Photoshopped printouts, highlighted and arrowed with marker: works of art in themselves. The colors are outrageous, extravagant; they suggest how wonderful soccer might be if it were allowed to escape the limits of tradition and history. The only thing that connects these shirts is Otello’s number: 23. In many of the designs the numerals are frames for weirdly colored prints of Otello’s face. On a black shirt he smiles through the numerals in violet and green. On a magenta shirt he rejoices for a goal in yellow and indigo. On another the numbers are formed by tiny images of Otello like Andy Warhol’s multiple portraits of Marilyn Monroe. The only colors missing from the display are those of Rialto.

Looking directly at Desmerelda, Harumi says, “Our idea was to liberate your husband. To subvert the idea that he belongs to his club. That he could be owned. To assert that he belongs to all of us, to kids especially. That by wearing a shirt like one of these, you are saying, ‘This is
my
Otello; this is what he means to
me.
’ Do you see?”

With all eyes on her Desmerelda says, “Yes, I do.”

“And that is why we have done this to the fronts of the shirts also,” Harumi says, indicating.

They have replaced the heraldic Rialto badge with all sorts of things: a clenched fist, a rubbery gun with its barrel in a knot, Fidel Castro smoking a cigar, the Statue of Liberty, a lollipop, a condom in a pink foil wrapper, a madonna. The name of the Rialto sponsor, the electronics and armaments company ESP, has been replaced by words like
love, touch, ecstasy, desire, money, respect.
These words are not in Spanish. They are in Arabic, English, Chinese, French.

The Reki juniors bring in refreshments. There is discussion of schedules, budgets, photographers, production costs. Diego frequently takes the lead, interrupting the artistic twittering to focus on practicalities, to set dates and deadlines.

Later, in the car on the way to Desmerelda’s weekly appointment at the reassuringly expensive prenatal clinic, Cass says, “Diego’s really jazzed about this thing, isn’t he? Kinda surprising, don’t you think?”

She is experiencing a flattening swipe of tiredness, and she is still vaguely disturbed by all those innocently sinister eyes that had gazed out at her from Harumi’s drawings. She feels close to tears, which is ridiculous, so it is good that Michael has spoken.

“Yes,” she says, stirring herself. “I guess all this appeals to his more creative side. I think it’s sweet.”

“Uh-huh,” Cass says. “He took the cattle prod to those people, though, didn’t he? Like it’s a big rush.”

“Well, Diego’s thinking is that we need to do the launch before I have the baby. It makes sense. I guess I’m going to be sort of preoccupied afterward.”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

The phone plugged into the dashboard warbles.

“Don’t answer that,” Desmerelda says. “Unless it’s Otello.”

He squints at the display. “Nope.”

“What did you make of the stuff? The clothes.”

Cass shrugs his big shoulders. “Not my area. The jerseys were wacky, though. My guess is they’ll sell in cartloads. There’s nothing like them out there, that’s for sure.”

They hit the first set of lights on the Circular. Cass sets the handbrake, checks the mirrors, looks all around. He says, “So what d’you think the man himself will think of them? The shirts.”

Reki has provided Desmerelda with a handsome folder packed with designs. She will show them to Otello this evening. She has no idea, actually, what he will think. And it is awful, not knowing. She feels desolate, and also resentful. He could have been there, to be persuaded. It should not be up to her to persuade him, when she is busy with their child inside her.

“He’ll love them,” she says.

At the Rialto training complex, the team has finished watching the videos of the last two games played by their next opponents, Cruz Azul. Now they are out on the field for leisurely individual practice, or being worked on in the training rooms.

Otello is receiving balls from three members of the junior squad and driving shots at the reserve keeper, Mellor. He tries an overhead kick from an outswinging cross and blows it completely. The shot flies so wide that it narrowly misses the corner flag. He lies on his back with his arms spread, gazing at the white sky, while Mellor and the three kids crack up laughing. He does a backward roll and flips to his feet.

“Thanks, guys,” he says. “I guess that’s enough for me today.”

Alone in the shower cubicles, he leans against the cool white tiles and lets the water run down his body. Anyone can slice a kick. He’d once seen Ronaldinho actually hit the corner flag, screwing up a shot from fifteen yards out. But it isn’t that. He is losing his edge. He is still scoring, but every game now feels about ten minutes too long. He needs a rest. From everything. On the field, the squad works with him, feeds him, protects him. Off the field, some of that old coldness has returned. He does not know how to explain that he isn’t what they think he is, what the media has turned him into. That he has no control over it. It hurt when Roderigo, in an interview, had described him as “like Jesus, but better dressed.” What’s it going to be like when this fashion thing kicks off? Kids’ wear. No,
kidzwear.
God, they’ll crucify him.

He turns the water off and wraps himself in a towel. The clock on the locker-room wall tells him it is four fifteen. Dezi will be on her way to the clinic. There’s another thing: the baby. The obsession.

For a shameful moment, he allows himself to feel lonely and neglected. A famous, lonely, neglected man. He dries himself and dresses quickly. With any luck he’ll be home in time to have a couple of quiet drinks before she gets back.

The nurse rubs lubricant onto the snout of the ultrasound probe and takes it on a slow patrol of Desmerelda’s lower belly. Desmerelda has to force herself to watch the monitor. She is ashamed that this is so, but the shifting, granular images both puzzle and disturb her.

“The head,” the nurse says, pointing. “Here, see? Baby’s eye.”

But what Desmerelda sees might be the jerkily swirling pictures transmitted by a weather satellite: a deepening depression, an in-coiling hurricane. Something too huge, too unstable, to be inside her.