Tell Me Something True (17 page)

“He has his own business, Edgar,” replies Gabriella curtly, prepared to cut the conversation short. But she can’t help herself.

“How did you know he’s Luis Silva’s son?” she finally asks.

“People talk,” says Edgar, looking straight ahead. “The other drivers in the building. The guards. I’m very sorry, Miss Gabriella.
They say he’s a decent guy, but I still had to tell your grandmother.”

“Oh, Edgar,” says Gabriella softly, understanding where yesterday’s scene came from, yet feeling strangely relieved. No matter
how furtive she and Angel have been, it was only a matter of time before the truth came out. At least now she no longer has
to scurry around in a sea of half lies, like her mother did, and the thought gives her fresh impetus as they pull up to the
health club.

Already, his three cars are parked outside, making an immediate statement, his bodyguards leaning nonchalantly against the
SUV doors, semiautomatics held loosely at their chests. They don’t look anything like the Armani-clad security detail they
show in films. They simply look dangerous and on edge.

For a fraction of a second, Gabriella hesitates, then walks in, coming face-to-face with an immaculate receptionist in tiny
white shorts and a midriff-baring halter top, who holds court at a chrome-and-white desk at the entrance. Her breasts are
huge, her biceps incredibly toned, and her very straight black hair is caught back in a tight ponytail, revealing a perfectly
made-up face of fine little features and manicured eyebrows that she now raises with a touch of insolence.

For a moment, Gabriella pictures Angel’s house. The blatant flashiness of it, the elevator, the long marble halls and winding
staircases, the lawn that stretches forever, and the cars, the endless line of cars. In all fairness, some of it could be
right at home back in Los Angeles, but here his reality assaults her senses.

Gabriella is much too sensitive to be rigid, but she’s always been righteous, like her father, her world an easily discernible
division of right and wrong, truth or lies. Everything is fuzzy now, she thinks, and then she sees him, walking toward her,
wearing baggy shorts and a loose mesh T-shirt, looking like any other guy would look in a gym.

“She’s with me,” he tells the receptionist quietly, authoritatively, and gives Gabriella his half smile, his eyes and his
hand reaching for hers. In that moment, all Gabriella’s thoughts come sharply into focus, and everything makes the clearest
of sense.

He assigns her a trainer, and in the beginning, he comes by her station occasionally, but it flusters her to have him see
her doing leg lifts and lunges.

“Go away!” she finally says, exasperated, swatting him with her towel. “I can’t concentrate when you’re looming over me.”

“Okay, okay,” he says, raising his arms in surrender. “Just be careful with her hands and wrists,” he admonishes the trainer.
“She can’t do heavy wrist work. She’s a pianist.”

“Please, Angel, you sound like my dad,” says Gabriella, acutely embarrassed, although she’s noticed from the onset that her
trainer—like everyone else here—is more interested in Angel than in her, tuned to her needs only as a function of Angel’s
wishes.

Gabriella smiles wryly to herself. She grew up on movie sets full of sycophants, fawning over the actors, the directors, her
father, even her. “Don’t believe any of them, Gabriella,” her father would tell her, sometimes laughing, sometimes dead serious.
“They’re about as real as what you see on the movie screen.”

She looks surreptitiously at Angel, watching the easy grace of his movements, appreciating the fact that he’s not one of those
obnoxious types that swaggers and shows off in the weight room. He’s focused, or perhaps deliberately aloof, studiously avoiding
eye contact with the few people that are here at this time of the morning. Gabriella wonders if Angel knows this isn’t real,
either; wonders if he knows how handsome he is, how alluring. Wonders if he wonders what it would have been like to be just
Angel, not Angel Silva, Luis Silva’s son.

“When do I get to meet your friends?” she asks him later, as they sit in the sauna.

“You already did. At the party,” he says lazily, eyes closed, head leaning back against the white tile.

“No, I didn’t,” she says with a laugh. “You didn’t introduce me to anyone at all!”

“I was busy dancing with this beautiful girl,” he answers smiling, eyes still closed.

“Angel, really,” she insists, because this is suddenly important to her. “Don’t you have any close friends you hang out with?”

Angel sighs, finally opens his eyes. He looks at her appraisingly for a moment, measuring what he’s going to say. “No,” he
finally says with a small shrug of his shoulders. “I don’t have any close friends right now. Quite honestly, I’m going through
a phase where I really am not close to anyone at all. And for the time being, I’d like to keep it that way.”

“What about me?” Gabriella asks.

“You’re different,” he answers, smiling gently. “You…” His voice trails off, then picks up again. “You don’t judge. You have
an open mind. No one here has an open mind.”

“Why did you throw that huge bash then?” she asks, perplexed.

Angel shrugs again, and for a fleeting moment, he doesn’t look like a self-assured, powerful man, but like a sullen, slightly
hurt little boy.

“They’re acquaintances,” he says slowly. “They all expect me to throw parties, so I do it from time to time. But no one there
was really my friend. Well, there’s a few people that I’ve known for a long time, but I don’t really have good friends here
anymore.”

“Why?” she prods.

“Why?” rejoins Angel, his voice edgy. “Now, why do you think?” he says sarcastically.

“Look,” says Gabriella firmly, emboldened by her relaxed state of mind and chafing at his patronizing tone. “Don’t get mad
at me, but you are intimidating, you know? Your house is intimidating. Your gun is intimidating. Everything about your dad
is intimidating. And that army you have out there doesn’t help, either.”

Angel looks frankly startled, his eyes completely open now. The people around him usually skirt this topic, or leave altogether.
He can’t remember a single time when he’s had this conversation with a girl he’s dated.

“Wow,” he finally says, running his fingers through his wet hair, then leaning toward her with his elbows on his knees. “You
think I don’t know that?” he asks seriously. “You think I don’t see it? It’d be nice if my father were a rich, I don’t know,
a rich banker! But I can’t change who I am or where I come from, Gabriella,” he says softly, looking at her earnestly.

“Couldn’t you go somewhere else?” she asks plaintively. “Sons of rich bankers go live in other places. You could go to your
Switzerland that you liked so much. No one knows you there, Angel. You wouldn’t have to explain yourself at every turn. Do
you realize how liberating that would be?” she presses urgently.

Angel smiles at her, a touch of regret in his eyes, and reaches up and strokes her cheek with the back of his hand.

“You can’t let it go, can you, princesa?” he asks ruefully. “Remember what I told you? I have to be here for my father. But
afterwards, maybe I’ll go. Maybe you’ll come with me,” he adds, and this time he smiles, really smiles, the smile she loves.

That afternoon, he’s the one who takes her back home.

M
any people live by the book. They grow up, study, get married, have children. They live happily ever after. Comfortable lives
of complacency.

We don’t all have to do that. Some of us follow our hearts. It’s not just a right. It’s a duty. Never live a life of quiet
acceptance. That’s what losers do. We aren’t losers.

In the beginning, when we began dating, Marcus loved the idea of Colombia.

He loved the idea of a Colombian girlfriend, the exoticness it awarded him in a city where the only Latinos his friends came
into contact with were busboys and gardeners.

I didn’t mean to be exotic, either. I simply was what I was.

But the moment it dawned on me that there was a race card I could play, I started to use it, subtly but decidedly.

I surprised him with a mariachi for his birthday, a quintet I picked up at Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights.

It stunned the hell out of his parents, who fidgeted nervously when I joined in the chorus of “El Rey,” belting it out with
my roommate Carolina, the only other Colombian I knew in Los Angeles.

I gave Marcus a leather-bound collection of Gabriel García Márquez’s works as a gift, with a dedication in each one of the
books. In the last one,
Love in the Time of Cholera
, I wrote: “Beyond countries, beyond time, some things are meant to be. Te adoro, Helena.” I meant it, too.

I never pretended to be anything I wasn’t.

I thought implicitly, from the photographs I showed him of my parents and my brother, from the education I had, and the English
I spoke, that he understood exactly where I came from.

One day, during a luncheon at Marcus’s parents’ house, I overheard his mother, Kitty—a thin, elegant-looking blonde with a
permanent tan—talking about me to her friends.

“She’s Latin American,” I heard her say. “From Colombia. She’s very exotic looking, don’t you think?” They were sitting at
a corner table on the balcony, and I could see only the tops of their heads from the open window in the studio.

“Colombia! Isn’t that where all the drugs come from?” asked a woman, slightly horrified.

“Well, yes, but of course, I’m certain the entire country isn’t dealing drugs, sweetie,” Kitty replied calmly. “At any rate,
I find Helena a very simple, down-to-earth girl. Marcus tells me she lives in a little apartment near USC. I can’t imagine
she’s involved in anything remotely like that.”

“She must be so grateful to Marcus,” said another of Kitty’s friends. “Imagine”—I saw only the suntanned hand, glistening
with gold rings, gesturing grandly toward the garden, the pool, the tennis court—“she’s probably never been to a house like
this in her life.”

“Of course, she’s grateful,” Kitty said with assurance. “I mean, Marcus says her family is very decent. Her father is a physician,
I believe. But she does come from a little country in South America! This must all be very exciting for her.”

I felt my cheeks grow warm. That someone would even question my place in life was just completely alien to me. But worse still
was the outright condescension. I had been dating Marcus now for five months and had felt comfortable in his parents’ company.
I had no inkling that I was regarded as an extension of the hired help. The lack of understanding, and more than that, my
failure in conveying who I was, infuriated me.

“Is Marcus very serious about her, Kitty?” asked the voice belonging to the woman with the gestures and the golden rings.
“She’s quite darling, actually, but I wouldn’t have thought she was his type.”

Kitty had laughed, the proud laugh of a mother who knows her son can get any girl he chooses to.

“Oh, you know Marcus,” she cooed. “He doesn’t like to stay anywhere for too long. But in the meantime, she’s a nice girl.
And to be quite honest with you, at least she’s not Hindu or Muslim or something like that. ”

Sometimes, you need a serious jolt to get started. I didn’t know for certain if I was just a pastime for Marcus. What I did
know was that he wasn’t a pastime for me. I made up my mind then. What Kitty never knew is that she lost her son to me that
day.

We’d been planning a spring break getaway. The next morning, I booked two plane tickets, and that evening, after we made love,
I placed them on his bare chest.

“This is your bonus birthday present, my gringuito,” I said. “We’re going to Colombia for a week.”

He couldn’t say no.

T
he length of the city is connected by La Quinta, a road anchored by huge, shady trees side to side and alive with commerce
and chaotic traffic—where each sector is defined by its storefronts. In the north it’s the tire dealerships and hardware stores.
In the south it’s cafeterias and nightclubs and bars and restaurants. Scores of them, each one distinctly different from the
one next door.