Heliopolis (16 page)

I smiled. ‘Isn’t that meant to be for kids?’

‘You think you’re grown-up, and you’ve never even ice-skated?’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll come. Where shall I meet you?’

‘I’ll be on the ice, pirouetting gracefully in the middle,’ she said. ‘I’ll be very conspicuous.’

I got home to find Melissa at the window. The forlorn princess, locked in her tower, gazing down at her kingdom of lights. I put down my shopping, and was about to ask her whether she’d heard of an Ice Party, and what she thought I should wear for it. Then I noticed that she had drunk one bottle of wine and opened another.

‘What’s wrong?’ I said.

‘Nothing,’ she replied, without turning round.

‘Tell me.’

‘I don’t know. I suppose it’s something pathetic to do with feeling lonely. Forget it.’

‘Where’s Ernesto?’

‘Working. It’s not his fault.’ She took a gulp of wine, and turned round so I could see the dark mascara deltas that held her face like fingers.

‘What’s really the matter?’ I poured her more wine, and a glass for myself.

‘I don’t know. I was thinking today about when I was kidnapped. For the first time in years. Strange.’

A cloud of red and blue light shot down the avenue below us: two police cars in pursuit.

‘I wasn’t around to protect you back then. But now I am,’ I said, looking down at her hands, and noticing the telltale rawness that came from when she had been obsessively washing them. ‘I used to hate myself for not being there to stop them taking you.’

‘You did protect me. You gave me a way out.’

I stared at her. ‘Me?’

‘You don’t remember? That performance you used to do? Your way of getting out of it when we were in a fight? The rolling eyes, the chattering teeth? It was you who gave me the idea.’ She smiled. ‘You tried it once again, much later on, when that creepy guy Oscar tried to chase you round the garden, remember?’

I remembered. Silvio’s stupid childhood routine. ‘
That’s
what you were doing when they threw you from the car? That was where the fit came from?’

‘It just came to me. You used to do it to get people to let you go, so I thought it would work for me. And it did. You see? Even though you weren’t there, you were the one who saved me.’

‘That makes me want to save you all over again.’ I embraced her. ‘What can I do to make you feel better?’

She sniffed, pulled back and wiped her eyes. ‘How about something to eat?’

There was some calf’s liver I’d bought on a whim. I got out my mother’s old, heavy frying pan and poured in a good slug of green olive oil. When it was shimmering and the warm smell had filled the air, I took a slice of the liver and draped it across the base of the pan, watching it crawl and shrink in the hot oil. I waited for it to char a little and then turned it over with a fork. I seasoned it, then lifted it from the pan and held the fork to Melissa’s lips. She took the morsel and chewed it, then she took a mouthful of wine, then she kissed me hard on the mouth, savoury and wet.

We worked our way through the liver, frying individual pieces and eating them straight from the pan, washed down with wine, and the locking of slippery lips. Oil, blood, saliva and wine were muddled together in my mouth. I wanted to press my fingertip on the metal of the pan to mark the moment, make it permanent. I thought of watching it sizzle as the hot oil erased my fingerprint and coloured the skin. What would it smell like? The burnt hair smell of a car wreck? Charred and succulent, like steak? Sweet and sickly, like plum sauce?

‘Bed,’ she said.

I am twenty. The moment has arrived. Those tanned, slender legs are around me at last.

It is not how I imagined. She should be helpless and moaning, soaking an ellipse into the mattress, not staring rigidly over my shoulder, looking as if she were trying to banish this experience from her head, prevent it at all costs from lodging in her memory.

She regrets this already, but she’s letting me persevere. Her mind is—God knows where. Perhaps she can’t avoid the kidnap. Perhaps she is desperately trying to take her mind off this aberrant behaviour. Or perhaps she’s nowhere I think she might be. Perhaps she is only thinking how good it was that she went for the most expensive spray-on tan today, so it won’t rub off on the sheets.

Which one of us will acknowledge the failure first? Who will pull away? It is obvious that this will never work.

To the best of my knowledge, Melissa’s sexual experiences before Ernesto came along were a couple of fumbles with Angel Park boys and an affair with her tennis coach—who by virtue of hailing from a gated community near the city centre, with no private army to defend it, was the closest Melissa got to rough trade.

Not that I knew this at the time. I thought her a sexual Olympian. I’d heard her at parties: her bravado, her vocal swagger. She liked nothing better than to be overheard saying something scandalously sexual. ‘A man has to have come at least twice before he’s of any real use.’ ‘I know everyone says that size doesn’t matter, but once you’ve had a big one, you can’t go back.’ Such utterances were of course no different from, or more genuine than, her manufactured persona at dinner with Ernesto’s parents, or any of the other personalities she submitted for the consideration of those around her—but they had given her, for me at least, the aura of an expert.

And as for me, being in bed with Melissa was the first time I had got that close to anyone, let alone someone as dauntingly perfect as her. By the time I saw her naked for the second time in my life, twelve years had passed, and the terrain had changed considerably. I had expected things to be different, of course, but not like this. The pornography I had seen had prepared me to be polite in the face of every permutation of the untamed black bush, but this was something different, something refined and defended, and all the more intimidating for being blonde. When she lifted herself casually off the bed to peel off her jeans I was stalled by what I saw—the stark, white Y at her trunk, the tan-line crisply delineated from the milky coffee of her thighs and topped off with the thin, vertical moustache into which her pubic hair had been cropped. The whole package was so groomed that it looked as if it should be twitching above a martini, not hiding down here, coconut-scented, haughtily inviting me to handle it if I was qualified.

Afterwards, when it had been silently acknowledged that this was a one-off, a write-off, she thanked me for the food, and the comfort, and went to sleep.

I sometimes thought of Anabel when I went back to the shopping mall and saw the deranged dolphin in its murky tank. I wondered how long she had waited, and whether she went skating regardless, pirouetting with abandon, looking out for me amid the flashing disco lights.

The next day I stormed off to the lunchtime special at a Por Kilo restaurant on the Marginal, where they weigh your plate after every sally to the buffet and charge you accordingly. I went in hard, not wasting time at the salad bar other than to pick up a couple of spoonfuls of quail’s eggs, some palm hearts, and two dollops of crabsticks in Marie Rose sauce. For hours I sat there, with the concentration of a gaucho at his
chá mate
, mechanically devouring steaks, sausages, chicken, pizza, beans, rice, sushi, pasta, trying to work out what had gone wrong the night before. The next day, as I pulverised myself in the university gymnasium, still trying to understand, I felt no better.

Helplessly, I graduated to full obsession. I lay awake thinking of her chest rising and falling in the next room, of the pulse in her neck, the blonde hairs on her thighs. I craved the hot grip of her cunt. I checked the drawer where they kept their contraceptives, and started to sift through the bathroom bin for evidence that she was menstruating so that I could know for sure when he wasn’t going to have her. I became a filthy bathroom scavenger, grubbing for clues as to the health of their sex life.

And thus began our habit of kissing to pass the time. The attempt at sex was not repeated, and never spoken of, but the adolescent petting and the bed sharing went on—when she wanted it. The one time I presumed to lean in myself, I was rebuffed, and called a ‘freak.’ I was a passenger, a blow-up doll, a practice model. While watching TV, chopping vegetables—though generally after she’d had plenty to drink and Ernesto had pissed her off somehow—it might happen. Thus we grew into each other, like twisted trees planted too close together. To separate us, one would have to be hacked to pieces. And only the finer specimen would be salvaged.

One evening, over a year after our doomed bed-venture, when I thought the two of us were alone, I found Zé standing with Melissa at the window. I’d been in my room, and somehow hadn’t even noticed the throbbing walls as he landed. I walked in just as he was enfolding her in an extended bear hug. He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, his daughter protectively clasped to him, then opened his eyes and affected to have only just seen me enter.

‘Ludo—how are you, my boy?’ He detached himself from Melissa, and strode across the room to shake my hand.

By the time I had come over from the kitchen island with a tray of drinks and canapés, Melissa and her father were deep in conversation, and made no effort to include me. This wasn’t unusual, so I retreated and got to work on a risotto. It was obvious that tense remarks had been exchanged, and as their conversation got more heated they made less of an effort to disguise the topic under discussion.

‘You have to get in the corporate game, like I did, before you can have any clout in the political one,’ Zé was saying. His voice dropped to a more conciliatory tone. ‘I’m not asking you to betray your beliefs. I’m asking you to cherish them—to safeguard them until you can act on them.’

‘You mean bury them,’ said Melissa, in a flat voice. ‘You mean forget them.’

‘I have done something wonderful for you,’ said Zé. ‘Don’t you see?’

‘I don’t want what you have done for me. However kind it is.’

‘Do you know how valuable a place at this school is? It’s one of the best business schools in the United States. And that means in the world. Do you know what it would do for you to go there?’

‘I don’t want it, Pai.’

‘But it’s the opportunity of a lifetime.’

‘So give it to him instead,’ she said, pointing over at me.

Zé turned round so that now they were both looking straight in my direction. It was as if the characters in a
telenovela
had suddenly turned in my direction and started referring to me. My wide-eyed stare showed that I’d been eavesdropping on every word they said. I dropped my head back down towards the risotto pot and began stirring intently.

‘I mean, I’m sure he would appreciate your offer,’ Melissa went on, trying to smile.

Zé turned back to Melissa without a word to me. She might as well have been gesticulating at a piece of furniture.

‘Why does it take Ludo to understand how lucky you are?’ he said. ‘Why will he appreciate my offer when you will not?’

‘Maybe because Ludo is better suited to this life you want me to lead.’

‘No, Meli, that’s the wrong answer. The reason why Ludo would jump at the chance to take up this offer is because Ludo hasn’t always had the luck you’ve had. He wasn’t born in a golden cradle like you. He knows that it’s every man for himself in this world, and that not to take the opportunities you’re given is insane. These people you want to help—these people Ernesto is devoting his life to—you think they would have your attitude if you gave them the opportunities you’ve had?’

‘Even if that were true, does that mean they shouldn’t be helped?’

Zé’s voice dropped. ‘Don’t just stay here with Ernesto. You’re so young.’

‘This is about Ernesto more than me, isn’t it? Let me tell you: Ernesto is worth it. He’s doing something worthwhile. The sort of thing you talk about but never actually do.’

‘He’s naïve. I want to change things for the better too. But you have to
be
somewhere to do that.’

‘It doesn’t work like that any more. You know that.’

Zé stood up, and whirled to face the window. ‘Bullshit, Melissa. That’s bullshit. Take it from me. Take it from Ludo. You think he’d be attending university now if we hadn’t taken him in? You think he’d be doing so well? Of course he wouldn’t. He’d be living in the gutter and holding up gas stations. Ask him yourself.’

‘I’m sorry about this,’ said Melissa to me. This doesn’t have to involve you.’

I said nothing, and kept stirring. Building a risotto is an exercise in patience. The butter, the fat, the stock—eventually all are absorbed by those initially recalcitrant little grains, which look as if they will never soften, but ultimately, after the right amount of persuasion, become fondant and loaded with flavour. I had been thinking of Melissa as I stirred, reasoning that if I took things slowly but insistently, I could soften her in the same way.

But the discussion was not over, and Zé was in pursuit. ‘Why won’t you do this, Melissa?’

‘Because I want to stay here with Ernesto. Give this opportunity to Ludo. He is your son, you know.’

‘Very well. Since you are so stubborn. Ludo, stop cooking. Come here.’

‘The risotto will burn.’

‘So turn down the heat.’

I did as he suggested, crossed the room and sat down.

‘Ludo, I would like to offer you the chance to study business in the United States. I have spent a lot of money to secure this place. It should be easy enough to change the arrangement so that they are expecting a son instead of a daughter.’

‘I don’t know what to say,’ I said.

‘There’s no need to say anything. Just be grateful. Something of which your sister seems incapable.’

‘What about my university course here?’

‘You can finish it later.’

For one thing, I didn’t want to study business; I was enjoying my degree at the university, and I was doing well at it. For another, the idea of leaving Melissa was unthinkable. But turning down this chance would be a far more complicated undertaking for me than it had been for her. As with every opportunity the family provided, refusal was not an option. It felt like yet another wall of the prison that had been rising up to contain me since I was born.