Tell Me Something True (25 page)

Coke has never been her thing. It gets her strung out but somehow dampens her senses, like drinking coffee after twenty-four
hours without sleep.

Daniel/Antonio elegantly rolls up a ten thousand peso bill and almost daintily snorts the first line, then a second, before
offering the others a pass.

The girls go first, flipping their long, straight hair back as they lean over into the table, the rolled-up bill incongruous
in their perfect, surgically enhanced noses, all upturned tips.

When it’s her turn, Gabriella shakes her head no, smiling faintly.

“Come on, belleza,” urges Antonio, because by now, she’s decided that must be his name. “Don’t be such a party pooper!”

Everyone is looking at her expectantly, their expressions tainted with mild amusement and a touch of scorn. They haven’t been
altogether friendly to her, but she hasn’t exactly opened up to them, either, and through their eyes she can see what they’re
seeing now: a prissy gringa who won’t even do a little line to get on the good foot.

Gabriella takes Antonio’s rolled-up bill and places it against the last line on the plate, and sniffs hard and quickly.

When she lifts her head, she sees Angel looking at her steadily from across the table, his eyes perfectly blank as he takes
a cigarette up to his mouth and inhales, then finally smiles slightly, his half-crooked smile, only this time it’s very small.

She almost beckons to him, but he turns around and walks toward the side door beyond the elevator, the door she knows leads
to the bedrooms below.

Gabriella is left stupidly holding the rolled-up bill in her hand, the bitter taste of cocaine dripping into her throat.

“And Angel?” she asks Antonio, at a loss as to why he hasn’t joined in.

“Belleza,” he replies with a laugh and exaggerated wink. “You know what they say. You don’t get high on your own supply!”

“Oh,” she says quietly, as the implication sinks in. “Well. I’ll be right back,” she says amiably enough, feeling their eyes
on her as she makes her way after him.

She remembers how to get to the library. Their mutual room, she thinks clearly in the middle of her rising panic. If he wants
to see her, he’ll be there.

He’s sitting on the couch, his legs spread out before him, a newly lit cigarette in his hand, and for a few moments, she simply
stands at the foot of the stairwell, holding on to the balustrade, because she needs something to balance her thoughts on.

“Hi,” she finally says uncertainly, because he’s looking at her appraisingly and she can feel the touch of his disdain reaching
her from across the room.

“You know, I don’t do coke?” she says, ending her statement in a question mark—a habit she despises—and running her hand over
the books on the shelves. “I—I really hate it as a matter of fact,” she adds, laughing self-deprecatingly. “I always think
I’m going to sneeze, like in that Woody Allen movie?”

Angel inhales from his cigarette deeply, then exhales off the side of his mouth as he always does, so the smoke doesn’t touch
his face.

“If you hate it so much, why were you doing lines?” he asks in a lazy tone, devoid of emotion.

Gabriella shrugs helplessly. She preferred his outburst in the car, when he screamed at her, to this restrained anger that
she’s unwittingly provoked.

“They were your friends; they—they were really insistent,” she says. “It was your house. I was just trying to be nice. I couldn’t
find you anywhere!” She is babbling now, she knows, and part of her also knows that there is no reason to apologize, but the
mix of coke and alcohol always makes her a bit stupid.

She looks at him with mounting apprehension. She wills him to say something, to acknowledge that she’s there, that just a
few hours before she was important and precious and relevant.

“You know,” he says finally, stubbing his cigarette out. “I never thought you were the kind of woman who did what others thought
you should do. I thought you were a different sort of person.”

To her horror, Gabriella feels tears welling up in her eyes, feels her lower lip start to tremble. “But I am!” she says anxiously,
not yet fully believing the turn the conversation is taking.

“I just did it for you. I did it to please you! Because I thought it would make you happy!”

He stays seated, doesn’t even stand up to acknowledge her.

“You did it to make me happy?” he asks incredulously, looking up at her. “And why would you possibly think that would make
me happy?”

Gabriella opens her mouth to answer, then closes it quickly before she can say what she wants to say. He says it instead,
speaking the words she’s left unspoken for the past ten days.

“You think because my father is a drug dealer, I would want you to do drugs?” he asks her, very slowly.

“You’ve been inside my house. In my bed! What was it? Were there drugs lying around for you to use? To make me happy?”

Gabriella shakes her head miserably. In her mind she sees his scrupulously neat room, the flowers on the nightstand placed
just so, and changed every day.

In his medicine cabinet, all he has is aspirin and Alka-Seltzer.

“I’m running a business here, Gabriella. This isn’t
Scarface
we’re talking about,” says Angel, who still hasn’t moved an inch. “I need to move around with ten fucking bodyguards. I can’t
afford to be high. No one who works for me can. If you’re going to be the exception, I need to know right now.”

She shakes her head. She’s being given the opportunity to end things, to return to her grandmother and her father and the
girl she used to be, but it’s the last thing she wants to happen now. He has become indispensable to her, everything she’s
never had and she never knew she needed.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and kneels down between his legs and puts her arm around his calf and her head on his knee. “I’m sorry,”
she says it again. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t say anything to her. Doesn’t touch her, but doesn’t push her away either.

Gabriella presses her head against his legs, breathing in the smell of horses and sweat on his blue jeans.

“My mother did all kinds of things to make my father happy,” he says almost absentmindedly. “She changed her hair, and did
her boobs, and I don’t know how many other surgeries. I lost count of all the time she spent at the hospital and the beautician
and the beauty salon. And that was always her explanation: ‘I’m doing this to make your father happy.’ And you know what?
He was
never
happy. He despised her. That’s why he fucked everything that moved. Because he despised her insecurities. And I despise that,
too, Gabriella. I don’t need anyone to ‘make me happy.’ ” He mimics her words unkindly, his voice rising to match her little
plea.

“At least your mother had the guts to go beyond what was expected of her, have you ever thought of that, Gabriella? Maybe
she got tired of ‘making people happy,’ and I respect that. It takes balls to do that.”

Gabriella doesn’t say anything for a long time. Her ballsy mother. Even Angel admires her, after what he knows.

“It also takes balls to do the right thing, have you ever thought of that?” she finally answers, her voice muffled against
his thigh. “Simply gratifying yourself is not ballsy. It’s selfish. Maybe your mother’s problem wasn’t that she was too busy
trying to make your father happy, but that she was too busy to be a good mother to you.”

She looks up at Angel, and in his tightly shut mouth she can see the comment displeases him.

“Okay. Fine,” he says curtly, and surprises her by adding, “you could actually be right, but I don’t give a flying fuck. All
I care about at this point is, I don’t want anyone doing shit around me. It’s
not
my work. And it’s
not
a lifestyle.”

“Your friend said you didn’t get high on your own supply,” Gabriella says automatically.

Angel grunts; she’s not sure if it’s laughter or ire.

“It’s not his comment to make,” he says dryly, then leans over her, careful not to touch her, and picks up the walkie-talkie
he’s left on the table.

“Julio,” he calls.

“Copy,” she hears the crackled response.

“Get everybody out of here,” Angel says in his quiet command voice. “The party’s over.”

“Copy that,” Julio answers evenly. “Should I get the car ready?”

“No,” says Angel, finally looking down at her. “We’re staying awhile.”

Gabriella suddenly lifts her head.

“Angel, Nini will be waiting for me,” she says uncertainly. “You know she doesn’t like me to be out too late.”

Angel looks at her clinically, as if she were Greiskeli at an exhibit.

“If you need to go,” he says evenly, “I’ll arrange for someone to take you. It’s your choice.” He adds, spacing each word,
“And, believe me, it’s not about making me happy.”

Gabriella measures the space between them, one moment so close, one moment so far. She’s still not sure why certain things—things
she would have thought were inconsequential—make him explode, but his maddening extremes drive her, ever the conciliatory
one, to bridge the gaps. It confounds her that his largesse with her goes hand in hand with the unexpected wrath of his judgment.
He’s not prone to apologizing, she knows; his little concession of a few moments ago is a grand gesture for him.

Gabriella vacillates. She could leave and placate Nini. She could stay and placate him. Always placating. But she looks at
Angel, and underneath his stony exterior sees just the hint of expectation, of—could it be?—yearning.

She silently takes the cell phone out of the pocket of her jeans and dials her grandmother’s house.

“Nini, I’ll be in later, don’t wait up for me,” she says as gently as she can.

I
sometimes wonder what has made me feel whole again. If it is your absence, or his presence. Neither of the options is the
right option, I know.

It’s simply the result. Something I had forgotten I could feel.

Almost right away, Marcus knew something was wrong.

He didn’t notice it in my absence; I’m a good liar, always was, and distance made me better. I was supposed to be out, after
all. I was supposed to be working. I was even supposed to be distracted about my daughter, about my husband. I think he missed
all the early signs, the daily phone calls that began to come once every two, three, four days, the lack of reference to my
friends, my absences at night.

And then, I came back. He couldn’t put his finger on it, I could tell. He just knew I wasn’t the person I had been before
I left.

It was little things, in the beginning. Things that didn’t bother me suddenly started driving me nuts. Everything was so rigid.
The schedules, the ban on smoking, the stupid bank teller who refused to let me withdraw cash the day my ATM card didn’t work
because I had no picture ID with me, even though I’d been banking in the same branch for six years.

I tried to apply “the glass is always half full” theory, but I couldn’t. Nothing worked as it should.

“I was someone there!” I cried in frustration one evening over drinks in the kitchen, after a particularly unproductive day
of making my gallery rounds. “Here, I’m meaningless. I don’t know the right people, I don’t have the right accent, my photographs
are too ‘Colombian,’ they told me today.”

“Helena, you know me,” Marcus said reasonably. “I carry some clout in some places. Tell me who you’re targeting, maybe I can
help you with some of them. But you have to tell me!”

“Marcus,” I said, rubbing my eyes, because he just didn’t get it. Why didn’t he get it, after all this time? “I can’t use
your name forever. Everything I’ve done is tied to you. Do you have any idea how…
humiliating
it is to always be referred to as Marcus Richard’s wife?”

Marcus twirled the stem of his wineglass and sighed.

“No,” he said. “Frankly, I don’t see what’s ‘humiliating’ about it. My family name helped me get in the door here. And if
it weren’t for your family name, you wouldn’t have been asked to do this book of yours for the governor. It’s all in who you
know in our fields, and you know that.”

He stared at me, trying to read my mind.

“What are we really talking about here? What’s pissing you off? Because you’ve gotten work rejected before, and you’ve always
turned around and come up with something else. So what’s going on, Helena?”

What was I supposed to say. There’s someone else? I didn’t even know that anymore. Was there someone else?

I looked around me, my beautiful kitchen that I didn’t use, my beautiful garden that I hardly ever set foot in, the swimming
pool that was too cold most of the year. The one thing I truly, truly enjoyed was the red Mercedes-Benz convertible parked
in my driveway, my dream car and an indulgence, because getting Gabriella’s car seat in and out of that backseat was a nightmare.
I could drive it in peace here like I never would have in Colombia. Here, I wouldn’t be kidnapped or carjacked.

“I don’t know, Marcus,” I said defeated. “I was there almost two months photographing, and everything felt right. My work
was right, I was inspired. I took my best shots. My photographs were treated with respect.
I
was treated with respect.”