Tell Me Something True (13 page)

“You’re a guy,” she says simply. “All guys who are serious about movies have one of the
Godfathers
as their favorite. And
The Godfather: Part II
is the best one. Am I right?”

“Well, it’s on my top five.”

“Okay, so tell me something else,” she says. “Like, your favorite ice cream flavor.”

“Vanilla,” he says without hesitation.

“Oh, I don’t believe that. Vanilla is bland! You’re not bland.”

“
That
is not true,” he says. “Vanilla is subtle. It goes with everything. It’s adaptable.”

“But you don’t like everything,” Gabriella says, remembering. “You hardly like anything, in fact.”

“No,” he says calmly, shaking his head. “That’s not true, either. I like a lot of things. I just don’t like a lot of people.
And there’s nothing more delicious than vanilla ice cream with hot guava sauce on top. Or vanilla ice cream on a chocolate
soufflé.”

“Or vanilla ice cream on a hot apple pie,” she says slowly.

“Or plain vanilla ice cream, but the homemade kind, where you can taste the cream and the butter, and it’s so totally rich,
you don’t need any other flavor or topping because the purity of the vanilla is enough,” he says seriously, in a way that
makes her want to taste what he’s tasted.

Gabriella looks at him obliquely, trying not to stare as she attempts to divine this otherness he is supposed to have but
she can’t discern. In the stark light of day, she can see the hint of a beard stubble on his golden skin, the slightest of
lines around his eyes—not fine lines from squinting at the sun, but actual creases—though he can’t be much older than her,
and a very faint white scar that hooks from his jawline and into his face, like a thin, transparent half-moon.

She wonders yet again what it is about him that makes her want to be so physically close, makes her want to reach out and
trace the marks that break up his skin. She feels empowered suddenly. If she were to do just that—touch him—nobody would even
know. And if they did, how could it hardly matter. Look at her mother, at her sequence of actions, and not a single consequence
as a result.

She feels almost detached from herself, ethereal. It’s been so long since she’s done something, anything, without considering
what others will say; she’s forgotten how liberating it can feel to just—be.

“Can I see what music you have?” she asks, even as she leans forward and starts to flip through the iPod hooked to the stereo,
until she finds Jorge Celedón and Jimmy Zambrano’s “Qué Bonita Es Esta Vida,” a hymn to positive thoughts, she thinks, and
cranks up the volume.

She rolls down her window and leans back on her seat, feeling the air cool down the higher up they go. When his hand finally
reaches out for hers, she closes her eyes for just an instant at the impact of his touch, then remains perfectly still, her
eyes ever trained on the scenery below as he runs his fingers proprietarily over her knuckles, her wrist, the veins and tendons
that run the length of her hands.

He takes her to the house in the mountains. The house her mother photographed for her book. The house his mother bought.

She doesn’t know the destination until they get there, and she recognizes the home, nestled at the foot of a hill as they
approach from the road above. He must have thought the gesture over carefully, not anticipating it could be the wrong gesture
at the wrong time. She will know this house because her mother wrote about it in her journal, photographed it for her book.
But right now, the sight of it takes her breath away, leaves her slightly dizzy.

“Angel,” she says, holding him back as he steps out of the car, looking at the mountains that beckon around them. “Is it safe
to hike? Can we hike alone here?”

He looks at her, puzzled. No one hikes anymore for fear of running into stray guerrillas.

“If we stay within the perimeter, yes,” he says carefully. “But that means we can’t go too far. I had lunch prepared, though.”

“Can we take it?” she asks excitedly. “Let’s take a picnic. With a bottle of wine?”

He considers the proposal, and likes it.

“Okay. Okay,” he says, smiling his slow, lazy smile. “Let’s have a picnic.”

She waits for him outside, her back to the house, as he gives instructions to the cook, to the drivers, to the guards. He
goes to them, one by one, speaks quietly, in a tone of voice others can’t pick up. His demeanor is contrary to that of any
man in control she’s ever met, men who like to be seen and heard issuing orders, establishing their place.

He doesn’t need to shout to be heard, and momentarily, he reminds her of her father, so preternaturally cool. Except her father
doesn’t run the equivalent of a small army, and when she looks down as they climb into the hills, she can see his men, posted
around the house, near the road.

“We also have guards outside,” he tells her, noticing her slight apprehension. He’s walking ahead of her, their picnic packed
in a backpack, and as he hoists himself up onto a boulder, she sees the bulge of a gun tucked inside his sock.

“Can’t you go out without them?” she asks.

Angel continues to climb farther up to a small plateau before he finally answers.

“No.” He extends his hand to help her up the last step. “Not right now, anyway,” he adds.

They’re at a ledge on the side of the mountain. The air is chilly up here, and below them, the hills spread out in deep, green
rolls, peppered with villas of varying sizes, the weekend homes where city dwellers go to escape from the heat, their red-tiled
roofs shining between the foliage of the trees.

He lights a cigarette and inhales deeply.

“Man, I haven’t been up here in a long time.” He sighs.

“What do you do?” Gabriella asks him with no preamble. “I mean, do you have a job?”

Only after the words are out does she wonder if the question is extraordinarily naïve or extraordinarily stupid.

“Of course, I have a job,” he says with a snort. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Gabriella is momentarily chastised, then regains her nerve. She deserves to know these things, she thinks. And he needs to
know that; otherwise, what in the world is she doing up on this mountain with him?

“Well,” she says carefully, “people say your dad is very rich, and they say he’s in jail, and, I’m sorry, but I… I’d like
to know if you work for his business or if you even need to work.…” Gabriella’s voice trails off and is met with silence.
She thinks of her mother, pictures her maybe lying beside her father in bed, a trove of secrets between them as she pretended
to be someone she wasn’t any longer. And her father oblivious. Or perhaps, just pretending he didn’t see.

She takes a deep breath.

“I’d like to know who you are,” she finally says, quietly. “Everyone talks about your father. But hardly anyone talks about
you
.”

“I promote concerts,” he says, looking at her speculatively. “Not your kind of concerts,” he adds. “Not classical music. Big
pop shows. Dances during the fair.”

“Oh,” she says, surprised. Of all things, she hadn’t expected this. “Like, who are you bringing during the fair?”

“You know, Grupo Niche, salsa bands for Christmas, all kinds of music. Oscar D’León,” he adds with a smile, and she smiles
back in complicity, remembering their dance at his party. “I bring music people want to hear,” he says matter-of-factly. “I
need to sell tickets. But sometimes, I’ll just bring music I really like, groups that are a little obscure, a little off center,
and hope enough people will want to open their ears to something new.”

Angel stops himself. He’s reserved by habit, wary of being measured and used.

“I brought Youssou N’Dour last month to the theater, and it was pretty packed,” he says tentatively, testing her, hoping she’ll
say the right thing but still bracing himself for the inevitable “Who?” he’s fielded for weeks.

“I love Youssou N’Dour,” she says simply.

“I thought you would,” he answers, allowing his half smile to tug at the corner of his mouth.

“How did you know I played classical music?” she asks, suddenly registering his full words.

“People talk about your father, but they also talk about you,” he says shortly.

He doesn’t know what compels him to continue answering her. He’s checked her background—something he does with everyone he
gets remotely close to—and there’s nothing in her history to trigger any alarms. There is just her. A girl who plays the piano,
who is here only fleetingly, once a year. Whose mother died and whose father is known in the realm of film, but whose entire
life seems otherwise steeped in normalcy, in comfort, in a cocoon of family and affection utterly removed from the millions
of threads that complicate his existence.

Angel lies down on the blanket, legs stuck straight out, his face up to the sky, and slowly brings his cigarette to his mouth,
visibly relaxing as he blows the smoke into the clear air.

“I used to go skiing in Switzerland in the winters, and people used to say they have the bluest sky there,” he says pensively.
“But it’s nothing like this. Or, I don’t know. It never seemed to be so blue. Whenever I’m here, I feel like I’ve been inside
this gray place that’s suddenly dipped into a can of paint, you know? Like your
Wizard of Oz.
”

Gabriella lies down beside him, her face, too, turned to the sky, and she watches legions of clouds, forming and disintegrating,
their bodies plump and white against the shocking blue of the heavens. It’s one of those days of extraordinary contrasts.
The mountains are etched in sharp relief against the sky, every tree clearly delineated in its upward progress, all the way
to the point where their tops meet the permanent fog at the highest portion of the peak. If she looks deeply into the sky,
she can see a tiny moon, visible even in the early afternoon.

“Yeah, I know,” she says. “I think it’s something about the tropics. The colors are just brighter. Even the air smells different
here. Not that it’s—purer. It’s just more real. More raw. I’ve tried to explain it to people that haven’t been here, but I
don’t think they really understand.”

Angel laughs.

“You can’t explain the things that go on here to other people,” he says. “It’s too crazy.”

“Angel,” she says, still looking at the sky. “I know you need bodyguards, but why so many? Do they want to kidnap you, or
do they want to kill you?”

“I’m not sure,” he says, truthfully, carefully. “But they definitely want something,” he says, looking away from her again.

“Is it because of your dad or because of you?” she asks softly.

No one asks me these things, he wants to tell her. But when he turns around to look at her, all he sees is her profile, deliberately
avoiding his eyes as she stares at the sky. There’s something in her that makes him want to talk, to say at least some of
the things he can never say. To anyone.

Sometimes, he still thinks back to when he was a little boy, when he didn’t know he was any different from anyone else. They
lived in a smaller house then, and to the best of his knowledge, his father had a job, a job that required him to get up in
the mornings in time to see Angel off to school. He would walk down the stairs, smelling of fresh aftershave, his hair still
wet from the shower, his tie hanging undone around his neck, and he would kiss him as he ate his cereal at the kitchen table
and cuff him lightly on the side of his head. Angel had friends then and birthday parties, and one time he was even allowed
to go to a sleepover.

And then, the money started to seriously come in, inexorably transforming everything it touched, as if a flicker of fairy
dust had suddenly descended on his existence, making his world bigger, shinier, newer. It began with the cars—no longer the
staid, run-of-the-mill Mazdas, but a procession of SUVs and Mercedes-Benzes and a silver Jaguar for his mother that arrived
one morning, tied in a gigantic red bow. He stopped taking the bus to the elite British school he had gone to since kindergarten—a
luxury his father could barely afford—and was driven instead by a chauffeur in a black Bronco, followed by a jeep with two
armed guards.

The new furniture came next—bright and lacquered. Then they moved to the new house and things were never the same. He was
only twelve, but he immediately perceived the difference, surrounded by an opulence he had never seen—not even in movies,
and certainly, not in the homes of even his wealthiest classmates. They were, finally, the ones who told him one afternoon
when he invited a group of them to swim at his house after a heady game of soccer where he actually scored a goal.

They looked at each other, mildly uncomfortable, and Juan Luis, his best friend since the first grade, finally said it: “Man,
Angel, you know we’re not allowed to go to your house anymore.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, genuinely perplexed because he still hadn’t noticed the small fissures in their relationship,
hadn’t sensed the subtle changes in behavior, the slowdown in invitations, the little social niceties that mothers tune in
to first, but children seldom grasp.

“You know,” said Juan Luis, looking down, kicking softly at the worn grass with his soccer cleats. “Your dad.”

“What about my dad?” asked Angel, utterly at a loss.

Everyone looked at Juan Luis expectantly, waiting for him to fix the awkwardness of the moment.

“Well, you know, he’s a mafioso,” Juan Luis said, finally looking Angel in the eye.

“Liar!” said Angel angrily, instinctively pushing Juan Luis hard enough so he fell to the grass with a thud, hands quickly
coming down to break the fall.

“Come on, Angel,” someone else said. “Everybody knows. Your dad’s a drug dealer.”

It was an afternoon of liquid blue sky, like this one, and above the white netting of the goal, Angel could see what looked
like hawk—or maybe just a vulture—slowly circling the perimeter, the wings barely moving against the stillness of the air.

He looked down at Juan Luis, still on the ground, gazing up at him expectantly with a glimmer of defiance, but also a touch
of fear in his eyes. Angel wondered what he looked like; wondered if his eyes showed his sudden panic, the realization that
they could be right, that it all made sense. And then Juan Luis slowly, carefully, extended his hand, and Angel instinctively
leaned over and grasped it and helped him up.