The Girl on Paper (14 page)

My Walkman blasted out the dark lyrics of the latest REM album. Lots of rap as well. These were the glory days of West Coast hip hop: Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, the powerful anger of Tupac. I had a love-hate relationship with that kind of music. It’s true most of the lyrics weren’t exactly poetry: hymns to cannabis, insulting the police, explicit sex, celebrations of gun violence and fast cars. But they did give a voice to our experiences and the things we lived with every day: the streets, the ghetto, the despair, gang rivalry, police brutality and the girls who found themselves pregnant at fifteen, giving birth in the school johns. And, above all else, the thing that dominated both the songs and our everyday reality: drugs. Drugs were everywhere, the cause and the effect, the explanation at the root of everything: money, power, violence and death. Listening to the rappers, it felt like they knew what we were going through. They too had hung out around towering apartment blocks, exchanged gunshots with the cops, ended up in jail or in hospital. Some of them even died here, on the streets.

I caught sight of Carole walking toward me. She wore a light-coloured dress, which gave her a kind of ethereal,
fairy-like
air – not her usual look. Like most of the girls around here,
she tended to hide her femininity under hooded sweatshirts, XXL T-shirts and basketball shorts three sizes too big. Carrying a large sports bag, she walked past the guys on the court, ignoring their passing jibes and catcalls as she came over to join me on my little patch of grass.

‘Hey, Tom.’

‘Hey,’ I said, pulling out my headphones.

‘What you listening to?’

We’d known each other for ten years. Apart from Milo, she was my only friend. The only person (apart from Miss Miller) that I could have real conversations with. The bond we shared was unique, probably stronger than if Carole were actually my sister. We were closer than girlfriend and boyfriend. It was something else, something you couldn’t put a name to.

So we had known each other a long time, but four years before that summer everything had changed. It changed the day I discovered that hell on earth existed in the apartment next to mine, only feet away from my own bedroom. That something inside the girl I met every morning on the stairs was already dead. That she was treated like an object, a thing, suffering unspeakable horrors night after night. That, bit by bit, someone was sapping the life, the vitality, the youth, out of her.

I didn’t know how to help her. I was alone. I was sixteen, I had no money, no gang, no gun, no muscles. Just a brain and the desire to help, but that wasn’t much use against the reality she faced.

She asked me not to tell anyone, and I respected her wishes. I did the one thing I could, which was to write her a story. A never-ending story that followed the main character, Delilah – a teenager with more than a passing resemblance to Carole – and her guardian angel, Raphael, who had been watching over her since she was a child.

For two years I saw Carole almost every day, and every new day brought with it another instalment of my story. She used to say that the story was her shield against the blows life dealt her. That my characters and their adventures pulled her into a fantasy world, far away from her troubles.

I spent more and more time thinking up new adventures for Delilah, all the while wishing there was more I could do. Most of my free time was dedicated to creating a mysterious and romantic vision of Los Angeles in widescreen. I did extensive research, poring over ancient mythologies and histories of magic. I spent my nights bringing my characters to life, as they battled their own personal demons.

As the months passed, my story took shape, becoming more than just a supernatural fairy tale. It slowly grew from a coming-of-age story into an epic adventure, an odyssey. I put my heart and soul into it, never for a moment suspecting that it would one day bring me fame beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, and be read by millions of people all over the world.

And that’s the reason why I so rarely give interviews, why I am so reticent with journalists. The inspiration behind the
Angel Trilogy
is a secret I would never share, not at any price.

‘So, what are you listening to?’

Carole was then seventeen, and beautiful, especially when she smiled. She was full of energy, full of life and plans for the future. And I know she thinks that all this is thanks to me.

‘A Prince cover by Sinead O’Connor – you probably don’t know it.’

‘You’re kidding. Everyone knows “Nothing Compares 2 U”!’

She stood looking down at me, framed against the summer sky.

‘Want to go and see
Forrest Gump
at the Cinerama Dome? It came out yesterday. Everyone says it’s really good.’

‘Oh, I dunno,’ I said, without much enthusiasm.

‘Or we could rent
Groundhog Day
from the store, or watch some more
X-Files
?’

‘I can’t, Carole, I’m working this afternoon.’

‘OK, well, in that case—’

She interrupted herself to look mysteriously in her bag and pulled out a can of Coke, which she shook with a flourish as though it were a bottle of champagne.

‘We’ll just have to celebrate your birthday right now.’

Before I could protest, she opened the can and sprayed the contents all over me.

‘Stop it! What’s wrong with you?’

‘Oh, come on, it’s only Diet. It won’t leave a stain.’

‘Oh, really!’

I dried myself off, trying to look angry, but her smile and infectious happiness were irresistible.

‘Well, it’s not every day that you turn twenty. I wanted to do something special,’ she said, suddenly sounding serious.

She turned to her bag again and handed me a huge package. Just from looking at it I could tell it had been wrapped carefully and came from a ‘fancy’ store. As I took it from her, I could feel how heavy it was, and I was embarrassed. I knew Carole was as broke as I was. She worked several jobs, but most of her savings went straight into paying for her classes.

‘Open it, you idiot! Don’t just sit there looking at it!’

Inside the box, there was something I could never have hoped for. A kind of Holy Grail for scribblers like me. Better than Charles Dickens’s pen, better even than Hemingway’s Royal typewriter: it was a PowerBook 540c, the king of all laptops. For the past two months, every time I’d passed the window of Computer Club, I’d had to stop and look at it. I knew all of its functions by heart: the 33 Mhz processor, the 500 Mb hard drive, the LCD colour screen, the internal modem, the three-and-a-half-hour battery life. It was the first computer to have its own trackpad. Seven pounds of
unrivalled technology, which cost a grand total of $5,000.

‘I can’t accept this from you,’ I said.

‘Well, you’re going to have to.’

I was lost for words, and so was she. Her eyes shone, probably mine did too.

‘It’s not just a present, Tom. It’s a responsibility as well.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I want you to turn Delilah’s story and
In the Company of Angels
into a proper book. I want this story to help other people like it helped me.’

‘But I can write with a pen and paper!’

‘Maybe, but by accepting this gift you’re committing yourself. You’re committing yourself to me.’

I didn’t know what to say.

‘Where did you find the money to pay for it, Carole?’

‘Don’t worry about that, I found a way.’

Neither of us spoke for a few minutes. More than anything I wanted to take her in my arms and maybe kiss her, maybe tell her I loved her. But we were not ready for that. All I could do then was promise her that one day I would write the story.

To break the heavy silence, she pulled one last thing from her bag, an ancient Polaroid camera, which belonged to Black Mama. She put her arm round my waist, lifted the camera above our heads and posed.

‘Stop! Stop moving! Stay still, Tom! Cheeeeese!’

‘Wow, she’s some girl, your Carole,’ murmured Billie when I had finished telling my story.

Her eyes were tender and full of compassion, as though she were seeing me for the first time.

‘What does she do now?’

‘She’s a cop,’ I said, swallowing a mouthful of lukewarm coffee.

‘And the laptop?’

‘It’s at my house, in a safe. I used it to type up the first drafts of the
Angel Trilogy
. So I kept my promise.’

But she wasn’t going to let me off that easily.

‘You’ll have fulfilled your promise when you finish the third book. Some things are easy to start, but it’s only once you’ve completed them that they take on their true meaning.’

I was just about to ask her to stop the lecture, when there was a knock on the door.

I opened it without thinking, assuming it would be room service, or a chambermaid, but I was wrong.

We’ve all had a similar experience, when it seems as if some higher power has engineered invisible links so that we get exactly what we need, at the precise moment that we need it most.

‘Hello,’ said Carole.

‘Hi, buddy,’ Milo shot at me. ‘Good to see you again.’

‘Come on! Stop acting like a child!’ Billie ordered, tugging at my sleeve.

‘Why do you want me to go in there anyway?’

‘Because you need some new clothes!’

She gave me a shove and I found myself swallowed up by the revolving doors, before being spat out into the plush hotel store.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ I exclaimed, stumbling. ‘What about my ankle? Sometimes you act like a total airhead!’

She crossed her arms like an angry schoolteacher.

‘Listen, you look like you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards, you haven’t seen the sun in six months and, judging by your haircut, your hairdresser died last year.’

‘So?’

‘Well, you’re going to have to look a bit sharper if you want to get your woman back! So follow me.’

I limped grudgingly after her; a long shopping trip was the last thing in the world I felt like. The room was vast and airy,
covered by a glass dome, and was more reminiscent of the chic Art Nouveau stores I had visited in London, New York and Paris than anything I had come across in Mexico. Immense crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling and large black and white, vaguely artistic, photos adorned the walls, all of celebrities, such as Brad Pitt, Robbie Williams and Cristiano Ronaldo. The place was all about vanity and ostentation.

‘OK, we’ll start with skincare,’ Billie said firmly.

Skincare
… I groaned inwardly.

All of the impeccably turned-out make-up girls looked as though they had been cloned from the same model. They offered their help, but Billie, who seemed to know exactly what she was doing, declined.

‘The seven-day beard, caveman thing really doesn’t work for you,’ she announced.

I decided not to argue. It was certainly true that over the last few months I had let myself go a little.

She grabbed a basket and dropped the three tubes she had just picked up into it.

‘Cleanse, tone and moisturise,’ she chanted.

She moved on to the next shelf, continuing her running commentary.

‘I really like your friends. Your buddy, he’s a funny guy, isn’t he? He seemed so pleased to see you. It was really something.’

We had just spent the last two hours with Carole and Milo. Seeing them had done me good, and I felt I was getting back on my feet.

‘Do you think they believed our story?’

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘It’s a bit difficult to believe the unbelievable, isn’t it?’

The bar, with its straw roof, looked out onto the swimming pool and boasted a spectacular view of the sea and the golf course, whose eighteen holes ran along the edge of the beach.

‘So what do you think of this Billie girl?’ asked Carole.

‘Great legs,’ answered Milo, taking a sip of his cocktail, served in a coconut shell.

She looked up in irritation.

‘One day you’ll have to explain to me why you insist on making everything about sex.’

He shrugged dismissively, like a child who had just been told off. The barman shook his shaker vigorously, making a show of mixing the ‘Perfect After Eight’ that Carole had ordered.

Milo tried to carry on the conversation.

‘So what do you think of her? Don’t tell me you bought all that stuff about her being a character who’s fallen out of one of his novels?’

‘I know it seems crazy, but something about the story appeals to me,’ she said thoughtfully.

‘The resemblance between her and the character is uncanny, I’ll give you that. But I don’t believe in magic, or fairy stories.’

Carole thanked the waiter with a nod of her head. The pair left the bar to go and sit on two deckchairs overlooking the water.

‘Like it or not, there is something magical about the
Angel Trilogy
,’ she said, gazing at the ocean.

Feeling enthused, she shared her theory with Milo.

‘The trilogy isn’t like other bestsellers. Readers relate to the flaws of the characters, but it also helps people discover an
inner strength they never knew they had. The story changed my life all those years ago, and it changed the course of all of our lives for good. It got us out of MacArthur Park.’

‘Carole?’

‘What?’

‘This girl who’s claiming to be Billie, she’s just a gold-digger. Some chick trying to take advantage of Tom so she can bleed him dry.’

‘Bleed him dry?’ she cut in. ‘What’s left to take? Thanks to you, he’s stone broke!’

‘I wish you wouldn’t keep bringing that up! Don’t you think I feel bad enough about it already? I’ll never forgive myself for screwing up like that. I think about it constantly; for weeks I’ve been trying to come up with a way to make it right.’

She got up from her chair and looked down at him coldly.

‘For a guy consumed by guilt, I’ve got to say you’re looking pretty comfortable lying there with your feet up and your coconut cocktail!’

She turned her back on him and marched off in the direction of the beach.

‘That’s not fair!’

He jumped up from his deckchair and ran after her, trying to stop her getting away.

‘Wait for me!’

As he ran, he slipped on a wet tile and went flying.

Damn it
.

‘This is what you need: a moisturising soap with goat’s milk extracts. And then this gel to exfoliate with.’

Billie continued dropping items into her basket, firing
recommendations and beauty tips at me as she moved from aisle to aisle.

‘You should also start using anti-wrinkle cream. You’re at a crucial stage in your life in terms of skincare. Up until now, the surface of your skin has held up, but not for much longer. Your wrinkles are going to deepen. And don’t tell me that women find wrinkles attractive, because they don’t!’

Once she got going, there was no need to respond. She kept up both sides of the conversation and talked enough for the two of us.

‘And your eyelids are drooping. With those bags and dark circles, you look like you’ve been out on the town three nights running. You know you need at least eight hours’ sleep every night to flush out all your toxins?’

‘Well, for the last two nights, you haven’t let me get much sleep, have you?’

‘Oh, so it’s my fault, is it? Oh! And some collagen serum. And some self-tan lotion, just to give you a bit of colour. If I were you, I’d spend some time at the spa. They’ve got these really hi-tech machines that blast fat cells. No? Sure? How about a manicure? Your nails look pretty horrible.’

‘My nails? You’re finding fault with my nails now?’

Suddenly, as we turned into the perfume aisle, I found myself face to face with a life-size cut-out of Rafael Barros. Sporting a whiter-than-white smile, toned pecs, broad shoulders, smouldering eyes and James Blunt-style designer stubble, the Hispanic Apollo was the face of a luxury brand’s new fragrance, Unstoppable.

Billie gave me a moment to recover from the shock, then attempted to comfort me.

‘I’m sure that photo has been airbrushed to death,’ she reassured me gently.

But I wasn’t in the mood for her sympathy.

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

Refusing to let me wallow in self-pity, she dragged me along in her wake, determinedly pursuing her treasure hunt.

‘Look!’ she exclaimed, stopping in front of a display unit. ‘Our secret weapon to give your skin a bit of a lift – an avocado face mask!’

‘I am not slapping that all over my face, like some pansy!’

‘Well, don’t blame me for your dry, dull skin!’

And, just as I was starting to get really annoyed, she added fuel to the fire.

‘And as for your hair I give up completely – good luck dealing with that mop! We could always just buy some keratin shampoo, but I think it would be better to make you an appointment with Giorgio, the hotel hairdresser.’

Carried along by her enthusiasm, she moved toward the men’s fashion section.

‘Right, now for the serious stuff.’

Like a master chef carefully selecting ingredients for an elaborate dish, she plucked items from various shelves.

‘OK, we’ll try this… and this… and… that.’

As she pulled it off the shelf, I snatched a fuchsia shirt out of her hands before it could reach the basket, along with a mauve jacket and some satin trousers.

‘Um… are you sure these are for men?’

‘Oh please, you’re not going to have some kind of male identity crisis, are you? These days, real men care about what they wear. See this fitted shirt? I gave this to Jack as a present—’

She stopped herself mid-sentence, realising too late that this was the wrong thing to say.

She was right. I threw the shirt back at her and stormed out of the shop without saying another word.

Women
… I sighed to myself as I stepped into the revolving doors.

Women
… Milo sighed to himself.

He walked out of the hotel’s in-house clinic with a bloody wad of cotton in his nose and his head tilted backwards to slow the bleeding. Thanks to Carole, he had completely humiliated himself by the pool, falling flat on his face in front of ‘Orion and Cassiopeia’, smacking into the thighs of one girl and oafishly spilling his coconut cocktail all over the other.

I can’t do anything right lately
.

As he reached the forecourt of the shopping area, he slowed his pace; the floor was slippery and there were people everywhere.

Now would definitely be a bad time to go flying again
, he thought to himself, just as a man came shooting out of the revolving doors at top speed, crashing straight into him.

‘Hey! Look where you’re going!’ he grumbled, wiping dirt from his face.

‘Milo!’ I exclaimed, helping him up.

‘Tom!’

‘Are you hurt?’

‘No, it’s fine. I’ll explain what happened.’

‘Where’s Carole?’

‘She had a hissy fit; you know what she’s like.’

‘Wanna get a beer and a bite to eat?’

‘Do you even need to ask?’

The Window on the Sea was the hotel’s more informal restaurant. Spread over three levels, it provided a buffet with specialities from twelve different countries. The terracotta walls were decorated with paintings by local artists – still-lifes
and vividly coloured portraits reminiscent of María Izquierdo and Rufino Tamayo. Diners could choose to sit inside the
air-conditioned
dining room, or outside on the terrace. We sat outside at a table that gave us a stunning view of the
sun-drenched
swimming pool and the sea beyond it.

Milo was obviously in a good mood.

‘I’m so happy to see you again. You’re feeling a bit better, right? Well, anyway, you look better than you have done in ages. Is it to do with that girl?’

‘It was her that got me out of my depression,’ I admitted.

A host of waiters was hurrying from table to table, carrying trays of champagne, California rolls made with foie gras, and langoustines.

‘You shouldn’t just have taken off like that,’ he said reproachfully, stopping a waiter to grab two glasses of champagne and a plate of canapés.

‘But it’s this trip that saved me! Anyway, if I’d hung around, you would have had me committed!’

‘Maybe the sleep-therapy idea was a mistake,’ he conceded, looking ashamed. ‘But I was so desperate to do something, anything, to help you that I panicked and went straight to Sophia Schnabel.’

‘Let’s just forget it.’

We clinked glasses in a toast to our future, but I could see something was still bothering Milo.

‘Just to make sure…’ he said finally. ‘This woman, you don’t actually believe she’s the real Billie, right?’

‘As unbelievable as I know it sounds, I’m afraid I do.’

‘Maybe having you committed wouldn’t have been such a bad idea after all,’ he quipped, swallowing a mouthful of langoustine.

I was going to tell him where to go, when my phone vibrated with a text message.

Milo looked as though he’d been slapped in the face, and scanned the tables surrounding us.

‘She’s down there!’ he said, pointing to a table tucked away in a little alcove near the open-air buffet.

I looked over the balustrade. Aurore, in a pair of ballet pumps and a silk sarong, was having lunch with Rafael Barros, her eyes glued to her BlackBerry.

I wasn’t in the mood for her games. I switched off my phone and told Milo to calm down.

It took another two glasses of champagne for him to do so.

‘So, now that you’re feeling a bit better, what’s next for you?’ he asked, looking worried.