Altered States (23 page)

It’s like there is some kind of social fashion sense – granted, not spread even, but there all the same. Someone should look into that one day. Might be important.

But I’m blathering. For now it’s enough to understand that fashion is massively emotive and therefore important to a lot of people. And so, you’ve guessed it, there is money to be made. Though you may not realise quite how much. Allow me to enlighten you.

You would probably expect that the revenue of the big-brand clothing manufacturers to be many millions of dollars. And you’d be right. But what might blow you away is that that word ‘millions’ is not nearly man enough for the job. Put down any hot beverages and read this slowly: the annual revenue of the largest sportswear company in America is ... twenty
billion
dollars. Seriously. As with everything I tell you, look it up. Okay, so now we are getting to the point. How much does this same company spend in endorsements to sports teams and individuals? How much do they pay people to wear their stuff? Right, move well away from that hot beverage and if possible lie down. That single aforementioned company spends somewhere in the order of four billion dollars in endorsements alone. That doesn’t even include ‘normal’ advertising.

Now, I don’t just happen to know all these figures. I’m not some savant with a penchant for fashion industry facts and stats. And it is not a domain I have any interest in; or
had
any interest in. Not until I met Karla.

So where does she fit in?

Well the industry big boys are very aware how important it is for cool – preferably famous – people to be seen wearing their gear. That’s why they pay them so much to do so. But they are also aware that an awful lot of famous people wear their stuff without having to pay them a penny. And when such an occurrence is captured by the media the executives almost wee themselves with excitement. Be it an official function on the red carpet or a charity bash; or snapped by the pap falling out of a nightclub; or just strolling down Mulholland Drive in sweats. It all adds up to dollars in the pocket for the fashion moguls.

A place like BlueJay in a town like New Meadows plays host to a large number of influential and famous people, just visiting or as guests to private functions. And this is where Karla comes in. She works – covertly – for Igneous Clothing Inc., which as you may be aware is the fastest growing clothing and sportswear company on the planet. They have struck hush-hush deals with a number of establishments like BlueJay, which enables them to tout Karla or one of her peers as just another guest. She schmoozes a little, hones in on a particular person, chats to them, entertains them, makes them feel good about themselves. And then...

‘Oh you would look so good in that shirt.’

Or...

‘Oh, these sunglasses are just
so
cool.’

Now, when a very vain and wealthy guy is being flirted at by a pretty woman, and that woman says how good he would look in a particular item of apparel, there is only one way this is going to go. He will buy it. Then with any luck he may be snapped wearing it at some point in the future. This is the hope of Karla’s employers of course.

Sometimes Karla will suggest, ‘we should
so
go shopping tomorrow.’ She will of course only recommend items from a certain select set of brands, all of which are owned by the same parent company – unbeknown to the average punter.

Of course, the strategy is not one hundred percent successful – or anywhere near – but consider two points. One, you can pay an awful lot of Karlas from a slice of four billion bucks. Two, all she has to do is make a few sales, as it were, and she’s paid for herself anyway, regardless of whether the mark ever wears the stuff again. It’s win-win for the company.

The other benefit of this strategy over the standard model is being able to access the untouchables – the ones that are beyond the reach of multi-million-dollar endorsements because of their occupation or position in society. For sports, music and film stars it’s a standard part of their revenue stream. For politicians and high-profile business folk it’s not. You may not think that politicians are a desirable target, but they all garner their share of column-inches in the newspapers and that’s all that counts.

As an extreme example, when the last president came to power he was the most popular man on the planet and known for his love of the gym and the basketball court. When he was photographed wearing a particular brand of baseball cap, the shareholders could almost feel their wallets getting thicker over night.

Okay, so the likes of the president are not going to be swanning around BlueJay, but senators might be and young trendy CEOs of successful start-ups jetting in from Silicon Valley for a spot of gaming. Unknown to them, they are all fair game – all targets for a surreptitious make-over.

Is it underhand? Yes. Is it devious? Sure. Do I give a crap? Not one bit. I actually quite admire the audacity and subtlety of the strategy. It’s a fickle industry messing in the fickle world of celebrity, and they are welcome to each other.

So, that was Karla’s world.

At least, that was Karla’s world now. I knew her past would harbour darker tales. She was Colombian. And it was impossible to be of that nation and not be touched by suffering and tragedy. It was just a matter of to what degree. Colombia’s darker elements are stained deep into the fabric of the country – as well as myself – and just like Lady Macbeth’s damned spot, the stain won’t come out. I knew this better than most Westerners.

One night we went to see one of the umpteen theatrical extravaganzas New Meadows had to offer. It was some completely insane French Canadian circus thing, with people dressed as pieces of fruit and upside-down bowler hats. The subtlety was completely lost on me. I considered whether this was because I wasn’t under the influence of the designated narcotic for the show. Maybe there was some kind of inverse-hallucinogen going around town, which could make this totally crazy shit appear as a paragon of normality. I should have checked in the foyer.

To recover from this torturous ordeal we stopped off at a bar, mercifully bereft of walking headwear, and ordered a bottle of red wine.

I wasn’t unaware of the fact that I don’t drink red wine. Not unless it’s with a meal that is. I would never order it at a bar. Drinking strategy is one of those little things that changes when you spend time with someone. I knew what this meant. It meant I had allowed Karla to change me, or influence me at least. And, as it happened, it didn’t trouble me. I was actually okay with it.

‘That fact that it took you so long to ask. Says something about what you suspect the answer is, yeah? Maybe you think I was a glamour model? Lap-dancer? Hooker?’

‘No!’ I protested.

Okay, maybe.

‘Couldn’t be further from it.’ She took a long sip of her wine. ‘I was a full-on businesswoman. Dress suit, power heels, briefcase, the works.’

‘Really?’ It didn’t actually surprise me as much as she thought it did. She clearly had the capacity. You could cut your finger on her acumen.

‘I was a buyer. For one of the big clothes stores. Used to spend a lot of time flying out to the Far East, negotiating deals for clothing lines. I kinda got head-hunted by one of the Igneous high-flyers. It was completely out of the blue. All very clandestine. Someone just rang me up one day at home; wouldn’t say a great deal over the phone. The practise they wished to enlist me into was all quite hush-hush obviously. Anyway, to begin with I thought it was a ridiculous idea. But after I considered the prospect for a while it grew more appealing. I was starting to get tired of all the travelling and these guys basically wanted to pay me to go to swanky parties and rub shoulders with influential bigwigs. That was a couple of years back now, and the rest, as they say, is history.’ She formed a playful frown. ‘Which, thinking about it, is a silly thing to bother saying, because everything is history.’ She laughed at herself. She was a little tipsy. It was cute. Her edges had softened. Not that she was overly hard-edged, just kind of precise, you know.

‘No. It’s okay,’ she said flatly. ‘I’ll give you the précis.’ Her eyes drifted into the distance as she took a sip of her wine. ‘I’m one of four children. Three girls, one boy. We each have a story, each touched by our country’s darker culture in one way or another. It started with my elder sister. She met a guy when she was seventeen. He was a member of a local paramilitary group. Mom and dad were not overjoyed, but at the same time they believed the paras were doing the right thing, were just protecting us from the insurgents. Then, one night she went out with her boyfriend and never came back. We found out weeks later that they had both been executed by guerrillas.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. There was nothing else I could say. Karla shrugged in acceptance.

‘My brother took it pretty badly. He didn’t eat for weeks and hasn’t spoken a word since. My other sister reacted differently. She went off the rails. Mixed in with a bad crowd; started doing bad things. We tried to turn a blind eye, but it’s hard, you know.’

I nodded and listened patiently.

‘I couldn’t bear it any longer. Although I loved my family, I had to get away from that mess. The atmosphere reeked of violence. It was contagious and virulent. There was no safe future for me there. When I was eighteen I fled to the US, and I was lucky enough to land on my feet.’

She paused and I sensed that was the end of her story.

‘Are you still in touch with your family?’

‘My parents and brother, yeah. They are fine. I see them maybe a couple of times a year. But my sister ran away shortly after I left and we haven’t heard from her since.’

‘That’s a pretty bad introduction to the world.’

Karla shrugged. ‘Hey, as far as families go, ours is one of the more functional. Our poor neighbour lost all her children in the conflicts and then her husband killed himself. That’s Colombia.’

After leaving Gemma, when my nature grew darker, I decided I needed to learn more about bad people. So I went somewhere where there was a pretty high hit rate. I stood out like a sore white thumb of course, so I had no choice but to pose as a journalist. It was surprising how accommodating militia members can be. Members on all sides feel they are doing the right thing, fighting for a cause. And they all want their story to be told.

I spent some time living on a rebel camp learning how they ticked, what drove them. Then it was time to seek out their enemies, the paramilitaries.

It was on a long bus journey to the south that I met Maria, and it was for her that I would feel the most conflicting set of emotions I had ever experienced in my life. And it was
from
her that I would learn my greatest lesson about people.

She was friendly and accommodating and intensely fascinating. I told her I was here to learn about the paras and she offered to introduce me to some people. We spent a lot of time together after that. We spent a lot of time in my hotel room.

If I’m honest, I went off the rails for a bit with her – off into a hedonistic blur. I explored a different side of myself, discovered states I’d never experienced before. And it’s fair to say that I took a few risks, but I was only risking myself, and I think I got away with it. I knew I could trust Maria, as I did with everyone.

We had nothing in common, which was no less than thrilling. And she showed nothing but compassion, and indeed, passion toward me. And, I really liked her. But there was something else. A catch. One minor tarnish to her otherwise beautiful nature.

She was an assassin.

I know that sounds crazy but in reality it is not so uncommon in Colombia.

She operated within a private militia. She had killed over forty people. She had shot, decapitated, and disembowelled. She had been party to village-wide massacres. And, within her own mind, she justified it all; justified her actions as a legitimate part of a civil war, as protecting her people from the enemy. And that may have even been valid in the beginning, before I knew her. But not for a long time now. She had grown desensitised to the torture and the killing and in truth she was nothing but a freelance killer.

But here’s the ludicrous thing. She wasn’t a bad person. However often I say those words it still rings insane, but she was not bad. Not at the core. She wasn’t really a person at all anymore. She had been brainwashed. Not by an individual or an extremist group. She had been brainwashed by a culture; by a history. She was a product of her nation. This was just how things were in her world.

And the heartbreaking thing was that I couldn’t do anything about it. Her altered state was set too fast. The darkened pathways between her synapses were scored too deep. Even I was powerless to bring her back; to make her understand the meaning of morality and mortality once more; to return the innocence of her childhood.

So it had to end. I knew that. I knew that our worlds could never join.

I lay in a hotel room one morning, thick humid air and a raucous din drifting in from the streets below. I watched Maria in the shower through a gap in the door and was aware of her pistol lying inches from my face on the bedside table. My feelings for her, both loving and loathing were so heavy and conflicting as to make me dizzy and nauseous. And I knew it was time to find my own reality again, away from this madness.