My Biggest Lie (15 page)

‘Really?' I asked.

‘Optimism, Liam, optimism.'

When we pulled up, the taxi driver asked for a fare three or four times the going rate. James surprised him
by doubling it and politely asking for a
recibo
. There was not a language in the world in which he did not know the word for a receipt.

We were standing outside a restaurant with windows that glowed with intense white light and made me think unpleasantly of an operating theatre. Lizzie and Arturo were standing in its doorway, lit up like angels taking a fag break. They looked at us and laughed.

‘There are two of you!' Arturo called, coming forward to hug and kiss me. ‘This will be fun!'

Over the last few weeks I had not thought much about our kiss in the alleyway. It belonged to a me I didn't really believe in. But seeing him there, black jeans, shirt and jacket, brown skin and dark hair, smarter than I'd ever seen him, autumn-eyed, clean-shaven, smirking with our shared secret – I had to turn away quickly to Lizzie.

Which did not reduce my desire. I wanted them both.

Chapter 18

D
aniel Requena was (still is) a woman.

As I entered the restaurant, I staggered at the sight of the severed heads of mythical beasts that lined the walls. Recovering, I concentrated on walking in a straight line and maintaining the calm facial expression of a reformed criminal. James, always more ambitious, accelerated towards a corner table where Allen Ginsberg circa 1947 was sitting with a woman friend beneath a unicorn's head.

‘
Hola, soy
James Cockburn!' James bellowed: the words we had practised earlier. The young man in horn-rimmed spectacles flinched. Some peas, or substance made wittily into the shape of peas, fled from his plate. I watched the peas-or-not-to-peas roll to the floor in slow motion. James shouted even louder: ‘
Encantado! ¿Eres Daniel Requena, no?
'

‘No!' said wide-eyed Ginsberg and his startled girlfriend. The maître d' strode towards James as if he was about to rugby tackle him. Two tables along, a young woman began to laugh and stood up.

‘James Cockburn!
Encantada! Soy
Dani Requena.'

As if his mistake had never happened, James strode towards her and bent to kiss her on each cheek. It was quite a bend because she was tiny, nearly two feet smaller than him, and he narrowly avoided headbutting her. She was maybe my age, with straight brown hair falling around her narrow shoulders and a slim face with neat features that made me think of girls from the home counties. She looked like a writer, or rather, she looked like a writing instrument, like a freshly sharpened pencil.

James gamely introduced Lizzie with the words she'd taught him earlier, ‘
Mi amiga y la intérprete
', before Lizzie took over in fluid Spanish and made her laugh immediately. I presumed they were laughing at James and me. After they'd embraced, Lizzie introduced Arturo, who had been waiting behind her, looking sideways at Dani through his fringe. Dani spent a couple of seconds taking him in before giving him the standard kiss hello. I was left to introduce myself. I gave her my name and when she continued to look at me expectantly I reached for words to describe my role that I didn't even possess in English. I settled on, ‘
Soy un editor muerto
.'

She raised her eyebrows, looked round at all of us, amused, and spoke to Lizzie.

Arturo translated before Lizzie had the chance. ‘She says we need a bigger table.' The maître d' had been hovering, trying to size up which of these strange characters to deal with first. Arturo spoke to him immediately, and it seconds he was arguing and laughing with him. His personality was quicker and brighter in his own language, inaccessible to me. I could tell Lizzie was annoyed at being usurped in her role by Arturo. She made an attempt to join in the conversation with the maître d'
but he continued to talk to Arturo and ignore her until we were led to a larger table at the back of the restaurant.

James took one head of the table and invited Dani and Lizzie to sit either side of him. Arturo chose to sit on the other side of Dani rather than next to Lizzie, leaving me to sit next to her, facing Arturo.

I began to think we might pull this off. The sudden change of company had shocked me from my introspection, and James' incredible self-belief was bulldozing its way through any of his own residual paranoia.

‘
Supones soy el hombre
,' Dani said to James and he caught the meaning before Lizzie could translate.

‘
Si
, I admit it,' he said. ‘Everyone kept calling you the
new
Bolaño, not the
female
Bolaño. And the pages I've read seemed so . . . precise and cold and spare.'

Lizzie, looking grumpy, finally got to do some interpreting, though when I looked at Dani tilting her tiny chin up at James I had the feeling she had understood each of his words.

‘Do you think only men are precise and cold and spare?' Lizzie asked James.

James and I looked at each other. We were the precise opposites: scattershot, febrile and superfluous.

‘No, of course,' apologised James. ‘There's probably no such thing as male or female style. But there is such a thing as male or female
nombres
and Daniel Requena is to me a
male
nombre
.'

‘Like George Eliot,' I suggested, glad to have something to contribute.

‘No, not like that,' said Dani in English and then she spoke some rapid Spanish we could tell was politely refuting our suggestions. Already it seemed the Englishmen abroad were destined to play the idiots in this exchange.

‘One,' translated Lizzie, ‘it is not like that really, because Dani or even Daniel Requena is my real name, short for Daniela Requena, so I have not misled you; rather, you have misled yourselves. Two,' she paused dramatically, ‘flattery will get you everywhere.'

We all laughed and Dani smiled at us tolerantly. She seemed to have some sympathy for comic characters, if that's what we were. It was a change from the role of the villain I had been getting used to. So I sat quietly and did my best to sober up. Sin, guilt and repentance: it was some sort of structure for a life. Instead of disappearing to the toilet, I watched James, Lizzie and Arturo fight for Dani's attention. Alejandro had not arrived and I felt like an interloper at a double-date. Whenever Arturo succeeded in distracting Dani from James, Lizzie and James took their revenge by flirting heartily with each other until Arturo was forced to bring them back into the conversation and revert to English. The spotlights shining on the mounted unicorn heads above us made them glow white as bone. I stared at them until eventually, exhausted, I slipped out for a cigarette on my own.

Dani arrived, just as I was stubbing mine out. ‘Hello,' she said, pulling a cigarette out of her bag.

‘
Señorita
,' I said. My anxiousness at speaking Spanish often led to this type of Tourette's.

She giggled.

‘I mean, hello,' I said, smiling back. ‘
Hablo solo un poquito Castellano
.'

‘
Tengo una confesion
.'

‘
¿Una? Tengo muchas confesiones
.'

‘Your accent is cute,' she said. ‘I appreciate the effort.'

‘Well, it certainly is effortful. Thank you.' For a moment
I felt very proud of how my Spanish was progressing until I realised we had switched to English.

‘Well, of course, I speak English,' she said.

‘Yes, I can see that now. Is that your
confesion
?'

‘I do not realise how good I can speak English until I hear your Spanish.'

‘
Gracias
. I'm glad I came in useful for something. So, why go through all that interpreting?'

‘Oh, I thought it might be interesting. To have distance. I was not sure I wanted to meet James. Being private is working well for me. I didn't want to ruin things.'

She'd understood perfectly how to intrigue a publisher like Cockburn. Agents are so keen to tell you about their authors' physical blessings, their advantageous networks and starring roles in incredible personal melodramas, that to be refused any information at all is suspense of the highest order. James was not such a sophisticated reader as to refuse the pleasure of seeking the great revelation, and I could see how he was now delighted with the current twist. The story of his meeting with her in itself was valuable for him even if he failed to buy the rights to her book.

Dani went on: ‘But in the end I became too curious. I wanted to meet this character James Cockburn my agent makes sound like Jim Morrison. My agent exaggerates. It is more easy to have a mystery through a translator, to have a distance. That is also why I wanted to meet the English first, because you
always
need a translator with the English. And perhaps I worried that
distinguished English publishers
would speak English so well I would be confused.'

‘¿
A que hora llegan los distinguido Ingléses publishers?
'

She looked at an imaginary watch. ‘They're supposed to be here now.'

‘I'm surprised you've managed to get away from one of them.'

‘Yes, I had to pretend I go to the toilet.'

I finished my second cigarette and stubbed it out. ‘You're interesting,' I said.

‘You're interesting too,' she said. ‘“
Editor muerto
”.'

‘That's only half of it. What's Castellano for “murderer”?'

‘
El asesino o la asesina
.'

‘
Soy el editor asesino
.'

‘You guys have read too much Bolaño. You need to lighten up.'

I laughed or I would have liked to. She picked a bad night to offer me this advice. The wind was beginning to pick up, there was a chill in the air, the coldest I'd felt since being in Buenos Aires. I shivered.

‘Don't you want to tell me who you murdered?' she asked.

‘If I have to. Do you know Craig Bennett?'

She nodded. ‘Of course.'

‘I was with him when he died, it was partly my fault. I murdered my career that night, whatever happened. I murdered myself. Now I'm stuck here in purgatory.'

‘I don't believe you're a murderer. And please, as if Bolaño wasn't enough, now you're going to do Dante?'

I felt suddenly as if I was choking on the dust of all the unread books I had left in boxes in my aunt's basement. ‘Oh, God, books, let's not talk about books, I'm so sick of books.'

‘What should we talk about?'

‘We could always try . . . not talking at
all
.'

My reflex attempt at flirtation surprised me, as much as it was in keeping with my normal behaviour, my mid-binge leaps for transcendence. I slowed my voice
and held eye-contact with her. She was about my age but her green eyes examined me from years away, and her laugh, when it arrived soon afterwards, was kind but not entirely unhurtful.

It was then that the taxi pulled up and Alejandro leapt out with a shout and came towards us. ‘My young friend, hello!'

He looked suave in a black suit and white shirt. He kissed my cheek and turned to Dani. He had never greeted me with such affection before. ‘
Buenos noches
,' he said, offering her his hand and looking to me for an introduction.

‘This is my new friend
Daniel
Requena, the novelist I mentioned who is about to set fire to the Argentine literary world. Dani, this is my friend Alejandro, friend of writers, muse, entertainer, bon vivant. We had asked him to join us to interpret for you before Lizzie accepted – and before you revealed to me just now that you can speak English very well.'

‘You are
not
the gorgeous young man?' Alejandro asked Dani.

‘I suspect I am. I understand why you thought I was a man,' she said, turning to me. ‘But how did you know I was gorgeous?'

‘A lucky guess,' I said, and then she began to talk too quickly to Alejandro for me to understand.

Back inside the restaurant it was time to order. I had gone without cocaine for two hours now but any preference for food was still purely abstract. What type of food
would
a food-eating human prefer? James seemed back to his perkiest but was mainly engaged with the wine list. It appeared Dionysius had already drunk the greatest share
of two bottles. There was talk around me of suckling pig, of octopus, rabbit in white wine, unicorn fillet served with figs and soaked in cognac, the thigh of a centaur, slow-roasted with lemon and thyme, salt and pepper gorgon hair, dragon tail and fennel risotto. In the end, with help from Alejandro – ‘What is the best small meal for a man recovering from a daytime cocaine binge?' ‘You look pale, my friend, you need some red meat in you.' – I ordered the only steak on the menu, bloody, expensive.

Alejandro was making a useful impact on the table, helping to diffuse the resentment brewing between Cockburn and Arturo, between Arturo and Lizzie. He poured water on Arturo's jealously by showing him a fascinated attention while simultaneously shunning Cockburn. Cockburn was trying to court Alejandro, perhaps thinking of the important role he could play to Bennett's biographer. His tactic to win Alejandro over was to talk without interruption about his, James Cockburn's, lead role in Craig Bennett's history, in long, excitable sentences which confirmed my suspicion that he would not be eating his dinner.

‘Liam,' Alejandro asked me, pretending not to hear another of Cockburn's questions, ‘why did you not bring Arturo to the bar when you came to annoy me? Then I would have been much happier to be annoyed by you.'

Arturo was not the sort to refuse flattery from man or woman. He sat back, amused, enjoying James' rejection and talking to Alejandro in quick bursts of Spanish which he would, with his instinctual good manners, alternate occasionally with slower English to keep me in the conversation.

I was grateful for that. As I receded from the conversation, I was happy just to watch his face. I could see no sign that he was the man who had kissed me in the alleyway,
and I found this an enormous relief. There was at least one other man at this table who played the roles he chose to, and he had done me the kindness of letting me, and perhaps me alone, see this. I smiled at him and watched him almost imperceptibly purse his lips at me before he resumed speaking to Dani, having spotted Lizzie laughing at one of Cockburn's jokes.

At the other side of the table Dani was contributing more and more in English but still seemed to enjoy having Lizzie translate to James for her. From the way they smirked at each other I suspected they were conducting a private conversation about James.

As the evening wore on, all of the flirting in which I was hardly involved made me feel alone. If I would only take my medicine I could happily impose myself on others and not notice I was unwelcome. But I was determined to eat some of my dinner and to look the waiter in the face when he came to collect my plate, determined for once to behave with some manners. Cockburn too had begun to flag and fall out of the conversation, and as he took time to breathe the conversation switched to Spanish between the rest of the table. Cockburn's eyes met mine and travelled to the other two men at the table. Alejandro had his hand on Arturo's arm and was leaning in to tell him a story close to his ear that was making Arturo laugh steadily, economically, as though to preserve his energy for what was to come. It wasn't just Arturo who was attractive: some girls would certainly have preferred Alejandro, who, though fifteen years older, with his well trimmed and silver flecked beard, presented a more classically masculine picture of beauty.