The Girl on Paper Page 15

  ‘You think you’re so witty.’

  ‘Look, Carole, you’re not my wife and you’re definitely not my mother. Anyway, how did you get into my room?’

  ‘I’m a cop, remember? A hotel-room door is no obstacle to me,’ she said, throwing a canvas bag down on one of the wicker chairs.

  ‘I call that breaking and entering!’

  ‘Call the police then.’

  ‘You think you’re pretty funny too, don’t you?’ He rolled his eyes, obviously irritated, and changed the subject. ‘Anyway, I asked at reception. Tom and his “girlfriend” have already checked in.’

  ‘I know, I asked too. Room 12, twin beds.’

  ‘Does that make you feel better? Twin beds?’

  She sighed. ‘You can be a real jerk when you put your mind to it.’

  ‘And Aurore? Did you ask about her as well?’

  ‘Of course!’ she said, walking over to the telescope to have a look for herself, turning it towards the shoreline. She studied the long stretch of fine white sand for a few seconds, watching the waves lap the shore. ‘And if I’ve got my facts straight, Aurore should be right… there.’

  She focused the lens for Milo to have a look.

  Near the water’s edge, in a sexy one-piece, the very lovely Aurore was climbing onto a jet-ski with Rafael Barros.

  ‘He’s not bad at all, is he?’ remarked Carole, looking into the telescope.

  ‘Really? Him?’

  ‘You’d have to be pretty picky not to find him attractive! Look at those broad shoulders, and those abs. The guy has the face of a Hollywood star and the body of a Greek god!’

  ‘Are you done?’ growled Milo, nudging Carole out of the way so he could look into the lens again. ‘I thought you said this was for Orion and Cassiopeia.’

  She smiled to herself, while he looked for a new object to spy on.

  ‘The brunette over there, the one who looks totally wasted, with the breast implants and all that hair, is that—’

  ‘Yes, that’s her!’ Carole cut him off. ‘When you’re done having fun with that thing, you can work out how we’re going to pay for this room.’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ admitted Milo dejectedly.

  He looked up from his new toy and lifted the sports bag so he could sit down opposite Carole.

  ‘This thing weighs a ton – what’s in it?’

  ‘Something I brought for Tom.’

  He frowned, waiting for an explanation.

  ‘I went to his place yesterday morning before I came to see you. I wanted to check the house for other clues. I went into the bedroom and guess what? The Chagall’s gone!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you know there was a safe behind it?’

  ‘No.’

  Milo suddenly saw a glimmer of hope. Maybe Tom had some hidden savings that would help them pay off some of their debts.

  ‘I was curious, and I tried out a few combinations.’

  ‘And you managed to guess it,’ he finished for her.

  ‘Yes, by entering 07071994.’

  ‘Did that just come to you? Divine inspiration, was it?’

  She chose to ignore the sarcasm.

  ‘It’s just the date of his twentieth birthday: July 7, 1994.’

  At the mention of this date, Milo’s face darkened and he muttered, ‘I wasn’t with you guys then, was I?’

  ‘No, you were in prison.’

  Milo felt arrows of remorse pierce his heart. His demons still lurked in the background, ready to resurface the moment he let his guard down. His head was filled with clashing images: the luxury hotel around him and the walls of a prison cell, the wealthy paradise and hellish poverty.

  Sixteen years ago, he had spent nine months in a penitentiary in Chino. It had been a dark time in his life, but the painful purging process had nevertheless marked the end of the bad years. Ever since, he had felt as though he were teetering on the edge of a precipice, that despite all he had done to put his life back together, he might at any moment go over the edge. His past was a ticking time bomb that was constantly threatening to explode and shatter everything he had worked so hard to rebuild.

  He blinked several times to banish the memories that were trying to pull him under again.

  ‘So what was in the safe then?’ he asked, trying to keep his tone neutral.

  ‘The present I gave him for his twentieth birthday.’

  ‘Can I see?’

  She nodded.

  Milo picked up the bag and put it on the table to open it up.

  *

  Suite 12

  ‘Are you going through my stuff?’ I said angrily, snatching my wallet out of Billie’s hands.

  ‘No need to stress out.’

  Still half asleep, I was finding it difficult to emerge from my comatose state. My mouth was dry and my body ached all over. My ankle was still agony, and I felt as though I had spent the night in a tumble dryer.

  ‘I hate people that snoop around! You really do have all the character flaws under the sun, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, and whose fault is that?’

  ‘People have a right to privacy, you know! I know you’ve never opened a book in your life, but, if you ever do, have a look at Solzhenitsyn. He once said, “Our liberty is based on what others do not know about us.” Have a think about that.’

  ‘Well, I was just trying to even things up a bit,’ she said in her defence.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know everything about my life, so surely it’s normal for me to want to know a bit more about yours?’

  ‘No, it’s not normal! Nothing about this is normal! You should have stayed in the pages of my book, and I should never have agreed to come here with you.’

  ‘Well, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning!’

  You’ve got to be kidding me – now she’s the one getting annoyed with me!

  ‘Look, you might normally be able to charm your way out of arguments, but it won’t work with me.’

  ‘Who’s the girl?’ she asked, pointing at the Polaroid.

  ‘The Pope’s sister – are you happy now?’

  ‘Come on, surely you can come up with something better than that. Even in your books you’d make more of an effort.’

  She’s got some nerve…

  ‘That’s Carole. We’ve been friends since we were kids.’

  ‘And why do you keep a photo of her in your wallet like a relic or something?’

  I gave her a black, scornful look.

  ‘Fine! Fine!’ she shouted, storming back inside. ‘I don’t give a shit about your precious Carole anyway!’

  I looked down at the yellowing photo in my hand. I had sewn it into my wallet years ago, and hadn’t looked at it since.

  Memories started to drift up to the surface. My thoughts became confused, taking me back sixteen years, to Carole tugging impatiently at my arm.

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

  Click. I could hear the whirr of the instant camera as it spat out the photograph.

  I saw myself grabbing the photo as it came out, while Carole protested.

  ‘Be careful! You’ll get fingerprints all over it; it’s still drying!’

  I remembered her chasing after me as I shook the Polaroid to get it to dry faster.

  ‘Let me see! Let me see!’

  Then the magic of the next three minutes as she leaned against my shoulder, waiting for the image to slowly emerge, laughing hysterically at the final result.

  *

  Billie set the breakfast tray down on the teak table.

  ‘OK,’ she admitted, ‘I shouldn’t have gone nosing around in your stuff. I agree with your Solzy-thingybob. Everyone has the right to keep a few secrets.’

  We had both calmed down a little. She poured me a cup of coffee while I buttered her a slice of bread.

  ‘What happened that day?’ she persisted, after a moment’s silence.

  But there was no longer
any desire to pry or unhealthy fascination in her voice. Perhaps she could sense that, despite appearances, I wanted to confide in her about that part of my life.

  ‘It was my birthday,’ I began. ‘My twentieth birthday.’

  *

  Los Angeles

  MacArthur Park

  7 July 1994

  That summer, the heat was unbearable. It was overwhelming, turning the streets into furnaces. On the basketball court, the sun had warped the surface, but that hadn’t stopped a group of bare-chested guys who thought they were Magic Johnson from slamming the ball through the hoop time after time.

  ‘Hey, freak! Wanna show us what you’ve got?’

  I didn’t even look up. I didn’t even really hear them. I’d turned my Walkman up to full volume. Loud enough that the pulse of the bass and the pounding beat drowned out the taunts. I walked along the wire-mesh fence until I reached the parking lot where a lone tree with a few sad leaves offered a patch of shade. It was not exactly an air-conditioned library, but it was fine for reading. I sat down on the dry grass, leaning back against the trunk of the tree.

  Protected by my wall of sound, I was in my own world. I looked at my watch: one o’clock. I had another half-hour before I had to catch the bus to Venice Beach where I sold ice creams on the boardwalk. Enough time to get through a few pages of one of the eclectic selection of books recommended to me by Miss Miller, a young and rather brilliant teacher at my college who had a soft spot for me. In my bag, King Lear, The Plague by Albert Camus, and Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano nestled beside the thousand or so pages of James Ellroy’s four-volume LA Quartet.

  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!’

  *

  La Puerta del Paraíso Hotel

  Suite 12

  ‘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.