The Girl on Paper (9 page)

‘You’re driving way too fast!’

We had been travelling for about three hours.

For the first sixty miles or so we had followed the seafront, passing Newport Beach, Laguna Beach and San Clemente, but the coast road was so busy that we’d turned onto California Route 78 after Oceanside, cutting through Escondido.

‘You’re going way too fast!’ I repeated, having got no reaction the first time.

‘Are you joking?’ replied Billie. ‘We’re barely doing
seventy-five!
’

‘But the limit here is fifty!’

‘So? This thing works fine, doesn’t it?’ she said, pointing to the radar detector that Milo had installed.

I opened my mouth to protest, but suddenly a red warning light started to flash on the dashboard. An alarming rattling noise came from the engine, which then gave out completely. The vehicle ground to a halt a few yards down the road, giving me the opportunity to vent the anger that had been building up inside me since we had started driving.

‘I knew it was a ridiculous idea to go chasing after Aurore!
We’ll never get to Mexico – we have no plan, no money and now no car!’

‘It’s OK, there’s no need to get wound up; we might be able to fix this ourselves,’ she said, getting out of the car.

‘What do you mean, fix it? It’s a Bugatti, not a bicycle!’

Unruffled, Billie opened the hood and started to rummage around in the engine. I followed her, continuing my tirade.

‘These things are all electronic now; you need twelve engineers just to work out what the problem is in the first place. I’ve had enough: I’ll hitch a ride back to Malibu.’

‘Well, if you thought the car breaking down was going to let you off the hook, you can think again,’ she retorted, closing the hood.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘I fixed it.’

‘What? Seriously?’

She turned the key in the ignition and the car started up immediately.

‘There wasn’t really anything wrong with it; one of the radiators in the cooling system got disconnected, which automatically cut off the fourth turbo compressor and turned on the warning light for the central hydraulic system.’

‘Right,’ I replied, nonplussed. ‘Nothing wrong with it at all, really.’

When we were back on the highway, I had to ask: ‘Where did you learn to do stuff like that?’

‘You of all people should know that!’

I had to think back over the details of my various characters to come up with the answer.

‘Your two brothers!’

‘Of course!’ she replied, accelerating. ‘You gave me mechanics for brothers and they passed on their passion to me.’

‘You’re driving way too fast!’

‘Oh, you’re not going to start that again, are you?’

‘Indicate! Normally people indicate before they suddenly pull into another lane!’

She stuck out her tongue impishly.

We had just passed Rancho Santa Fe and we were trying to get back onto State Route 15. The air was warm and the afternoon sun cast a soft light on the trees and brought out the red ochre tones of the hills. We were not far from the Mexican border.

‘And while you’re at it,’ I said, looking pointedly at the car radio, ‘would you turn off the crappy tunes you’ve been inflicting on me for hours?’

‘You have such a refined turn of phrase – it really shows how well read you are.’

‘Seriously, how can you listen to this stuff? Remixes of remixes, bad rap lyrics, plastic R & B singers that all look and sound exactly the same—’

‘It’s just like being in the car with my father.’

‘So what’s this trash playing now?’

She rolled her eyes dramatically. ‘Trash? It’s the Black Eyed Peas!’

‘Do you ever listen to real music?’

‘What do you class as “real music”?’

‘Bach, the Rolling Stones, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan—’

‘All right, well, why don’t you get your gramophone out for me sometime, Grandpa?’ she replied playfully, turning off the radio.

For three minutes she was completely silent – a feat worthy
of
The Guinness Book of World Records
as far as she was concerned – before piping up again.

‘How old are you?’

‘Thirty-six,’ I answered, frowning.

‘Ten years older than me,’ she pointed out.

‘Yes, and?’

‘And nothing,’ she said, whistling to herself.

‘Look, if you’re going to start going on about generation gaps, you can stop right there, honey.’

‘That’s what my grandfather used to call me.’

I turned the radio back on and started hunting for a station that played jazz.

‘Still, don’t you think it’s quite strange that you only listen to music that was recorded before you were born?’

‘Tell me, lover-boy Jack, how old is he again?’

‘Forty-two,’ she conceded, ‘but he’s a bit more on it than you are.’

‘What are you talking about? Every morning he does his Frank Sinatra in the bathroom, belting out “My Way” in front of the mirror! He uses his hair dryer as a microphone!’

She looked at me with big, round eyes.

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Author’s privilege. I know all your secrets, even the ones you don’t like to admit to yourself. Joking aside though, what do you see in the guy?’

She just shrugged. ‘He got under my skin. I can’t explain it.’

‘Try.’

She looked at me earnestly.

‘From the first time our eyes met, there was something between us, something instinctive, like animal attraction. We recognised each other. As if we had been together before we even met.’

What a load of crap
. A string of banalities that I was unfortunately responsible for.

‘But this guy couldn’t care less about you. When you first met, he hid his wedding ring. He waited six months before he told you he was married!’

She blanched, clearly stung by the painful memory.

‘And, between you and me, Jack was never planning on leaving his wife.’

‘That’s exactly what I’m relying on you to change!’

‘Time and time again he humiliates you, and instead of telling him where to stick it you hero-worship him!’

This time, she didn’t even try to excuse him and concentrated on driving, which made us speed up again.

‘Do you remember last winter? He promised you, swore to you, that you would spend New Year’s Eve together. I know it meant a lot to you, symbolically, to start the year with him. So you took care of everything. You booked a beautiful little bungalow in Hawaii and paid for the whole thing yourself. And what happened? The night before, he told you he wouldn’t be able to leave his family. Always the same story – his wife and kids first. And do you remember what happened next?’

As I waited for an answer that I knew wasn’t coming, I studied the dashboard, which showed we were going at over 100 mph.

‘You really are driving too fast.’

She took one hand off the steering wheel to give me the finger, at the precise moment a speed camera flashed, photographing us going faster than we had gone all day.

She slammed on the brakes, but the damage was done.

The classic trap: a speed camera just at the edge of some godforsaken hole in the middle of nowhere, at least half a mile from the nearest house.

We heard the screech of a siren, accompanied by flashing lights.

Tucked out of sight behind a thicket, the local sheriff’s Ford
Crown had just come out of its hiding place. I turned round to see the blue and red lights of the vehicle that was now giving chase.

‘I told you about ten times you were going too fast!’

‘Well, if you weren’t so annoying—’

‘Oh, it’s so easy to blame other people, isn’t it?’

‘Shall I try to lose them?’

‘Stop messing around and pull over.’

Billie flicked on her indicator and reluctantly did as I asked, while I kept on at her.

‘Now we really are in trouble: you don’t have a licence, you’re driving a stolen car and you’ve definitely set a record for the worst case of speeding in the history of San Diego County!’

‘OK, OK, are you done yet? I’ve had enough of your
self-righteous
preaching! No wonder your girl ran off!’

I glared at her, furious. ‘There really are no words to describe you! You’re the ten plagues of Egypt all by yourself!’

I didn’t even wait for a response; all I could think about was what being pulled over might mean. The sheriff’s officer would seize the Bugatti, call for reinforcements, take us to the station and inform Milo that his vehicle had been found. Things would only get worse when they discovered that Billie didn’t have a driver’s licence. Not to mention the fact that I was still a celebrity on bail, which wasn’t going to help matters.

The patrol car had pulled over several yards behind us. Billie had switched off the ignition and was fidgeting nervously in her seat like a child.

‘Don’t try to be smart. Just stay still and keep your hands on the steering wheel.’

She innocently undid a button of her shirt to better expose her chest, which was the final straw.

‘As if that’s going to make any difference! You don’t realise what you’re doing, do you? You just broke the speed limit by 50 mph! You’ll most likely have to make a court appearance and spend the next month in prison!’

She paled visibly and turned round, watching the police officer anxiously.

Even though his lights were still flashing, and it was broad daylight, the officer shone a harsh flashlight on us.

‘What’s he playing at?’ she asked, sounding worried.

‘He just put the licence plate number into his database and he’s waiting for the results.’

‘We’re probably not going to get to Mexico now, are we?’

‘You could say that.’

I waited a few seconds before deciding to twist the knife further.

‘And you’re probably never going to get Jack back now either.’

There was a deathly silence as we waited for the officer to deign to get out of his sedan.

In the rear-view mirror I saw him come toward us like a calm predator, stalking a prey that he already knew was his, and a feeling of despair crashed over me.

So this is how it all ends
.

My insides felt hollow. I was overwhelmed by a sudden feeling of emptiness. It was probably to be expected that I felt strange: I had after all just lived through the most inexplicably bizarre day of my life so far. In less than twenty-four hours I had lost all my money, the most maddening of all my heroines had landed naked in my living room, I had thrown myself through a window to avoid being committed, fallen two storeys onto the roof of a Dodge, confidently sold for $1,000 a watch that was worth $20,000 and signed a
harebrained
contract written out on a tablecloth, just after being
sent flying by a slap around the face.

But I was feeling much better now, fresher and more optimistic than I had felt in a while.

I looked at Billie as if we were about to part for good, as if this were the last time we would ever be alone together. As if the spell were about to be broken. For the first time, her eyes looked sad and full of despair.

‘I’m sorry I hit you,’ she apologised. ‘I got a bit carried away.’

‘Oh, that’s OK.’

‘And you couldn’t possibly have known about the watch.’

‘Apology accepted.’

‘And I should never have said that thing about Aurore—’

‘OK, OK! No need to overdo it.’

The police officer was circling the car as if he were a potential buyer trying to decide whether he wanted it or not, then he double-checked the licence plate, taking his time, clearly enjoying himself.

‘We’re not going to give up that easily though,’ I said, thinking aloud.

I was beginning to suspect that characters from novels were not really meant to function in the real world. I knew Billie; I knew all her flaws, the things in her life that made her unhappy, her candour, her vulnerability. In a way I felt responsible for what happened to her, and I didn’t want her to experience the trauma of prison. She looked up at me and I saw a flicker of hope in her eyes. It was us two against the world.

The officer rapped on the window, indicating that we should open it.

Billie obeyed meekly.

He was the cowboy type, a macho man in the Jeff Bridges mould, with a suntanned face, aviator sunglasses and a gold
chain that hung down over his hairy chest.

Clearly delighted to find himself with a pretty young girl in his clutches, he seemed not even to have noticed I was in the car.

‘Afternoon, ma’am.’

‘Afternoon, Officer.’

‘Know how fast you were going?’

‘Kind of. Pretty near a hundred, right?’

‘Any particular reason for going so fast?’

‘I’m in a hurry.’

‘A real beauty you’ve got here.’

‘Yeah, not like your shitheap,’ she said, looking back at his car. ‘That thing probably can’t do much more than seventy.’

The cop’s face darkened and he realised it was probably better just to go through the whole procedure by the book.

‘Licence and vehicle documents.’

‘Good luck…’ she said, calmly turning on the ignition.

His hand went straight to his holster.

‘Please switch off the engine immediately—’

‘… because you’re going to find it pretty hard to catch us in that old thing.’ 

‘We need to get rid of the car!’

The Bugatti was tearing along a narrow road lined by eucalyptus trees. The sheriff had made no attempt to follow us, but we were sure he would have called for back-up. Even if he couldn’t get anyone to help him, the marine base camp a few miles away meant this area was under constant surveillance. Basically, we were trapped.

Suddenly, a dull whine that seemed to be coming from the sky above us added to our troubles.

‘Is it us they’re after?’

I rolled down the window and, craning my neck, looked up to see a police helicopter hovering above the forest.

‘I have a horrible feeling it is.’

Record-breaking speed on a public highway, insulting a law enforcement officer, fleeing arrest; if the sheriff had decided to pull out all the stops, we were risking everything.

Billie swerved sharply down the first forest path we came
to, and drove the Bugatti as far into the undergrowth as she could to camouflage us.

‘We’re only twenty-five miles from the border,’ I said. ‘We could try and get hold of another car in San Diego.’

She opened the trunk, which was crammed with luggage.

‘That’s for you to take; I put some of your things in there,’ she said, chucking an old hard-sided Samsonite at me, almost knocking me to the ground.

She, on the other hand, hesitated in front of the mountain of suitcases full of clothes and shoes that she had swiped from Aurore’s wardrobe.

‘We probably won’t be going to any balls in Mexico,’ I said, to hurry her up.

She grabbed a large monogrammed canvas bag and a silver vanity case. As I turned to leave, she held me back.

‘Wait, there’s a present for you on the back seat.’

I raised an eyebrow, expecting another cheap trick, but nevertheless looked in the back of the car to find the Chagall canvas, covered by a beach towel.

‘I figured it probably means a lot to you.’

I looked gratefully back at her. I could have kissed her.

Lying across the back seat, the Lovers in Blue looked as though they were passionately embracing, like two schoolkids on a first date at the drive-in.

As always, just looking at the picture did me good, lifting my spirits and filling me with calm. The lovers were there, as they always had been, anchored to one another, and the strength of their connection was like a soothing balm on my wounds.

‘That’s the first time I’ve seen you smile,’ Billie observed.

I put the painting under my arm and we started to make our way through the trees.

In our efforts to escape the helicopter we scrambled over endless banks, weighed down like mules, sweating and out of breath – well, especially me. We had obviously not yet been picked up by their radar, but every now and again we could hear the ominous drone of the helicoper overhead.

‘I have to stop,’ I said, panting like a dog. ‘What did you put in this suitcase? I feel like I’m dragging a safe behind me!’

‘So sports aren’t really your thing either?’ she asked, turning to face me.

‘I might have let myself go a bit these past few months,’ I admitted, ‘but maybe if like me you’d fallen out of a
second-floor
window you’d be a little more sympathetic.’

Barefoot, Billie weaved gracefully in and out of the trees, with her shoes slung over her shoulder.

We walked down a small slope and came to a road. It wasn’t a freeway, but was wide enough to allow cars to go in both directions.

‘Which way do you think?’ she asked.

I gratefully put my suitcase down and placed both hands on my knees, trying to get my breath back.

‘No idea. I’m not Google Maps.’

‘We could try hitching a ride,’ she suggested, choosing to ignore my remark.

‘Not with all this stuff – no one will want to take us.’

She crouched down and started to rummage around in her bag, pulling out a new outfit. Unselfconsciously she undid her jeans, replacing them with a pair of white hot pants, and swapped her jacket for a pale-blue fitted Balmain number with dramatic pointy shoulders.

‘We’ll be in a car within the next ten minutes,’ she promised, readjusting her sunglasses and adopting a more seductive pose.

I found myself once again taken aback by the apparent duality of her nature. She could go from a playful and candid young girl to an arrogant and alluring femme fatale in the blink of an eye.

‘Looks like Pretty Woman has cleaned out the boutiques on Rodeo Drive,’ I called after her as I followed her down the road.

‘Pretty Woman has had just about enough of you.’

We had been waiting for a few minutes. Only about twenty cars had driven past. None of them had stopped. We’d passed a sign that told us we were in the vicinity of San Dieguito Park, and then a second sign at the junction for Interstate 5. We were on the right road, but going in the wrong direction.

‘We should cross the road and try to get a lift from the other side,’ she said.

‘I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but your seduction routine isn’t getting us very far, is it?’

‘In five minutes you’ll be sitting comfortably on a leather seat. Want to bet on it?’

‘Sure, why not?’

‘How much money do you have left?’

‘Just over $700.’

‘OK, five minutes. Are you timing us? Oh, wait, I forgot, you don’t have a watch any more.’

‘What about me? What do I get if I win?’

She didn’t reply, her expression suddenly turning serious.

‘Tom, we’re going to have to sell the painting.’

‘No. Out of the question.’

‘How else do you expect to be able to get hold of a car and pay for somewhere to sleep?’

‘We’re in the middle of nowhere! A painting like this should be sold in an auction room, not in the first gas station we come across!’

She frowned and seemed to be thinking hard.

‘Fine, maybe we don’t have to sell it, but we should at least pawn it.’

‘
Pawn it?
This is a masterpiece, not my grandmother’s wedding ring!’

She shrugged, just as a rusty old pick-up truck slowed down near us.

‘Get ready to pay up,’ she said, grinning.

In the truck were two Mexicans, who worked as gardeners in the park during the day and drove back to Playas de Rosarito every evening. They offered to take us as far as San Diego. One looked like an older, fatter version of Benicio del Toro while the younger one, Esteban…

‘He looks just like that gardener from
Desperate Housewives
!’ whispered Billie excitedly. He was obviously her type.

‘
Señora, usted puede usar el asiento, pero el señor viajará en la cajuela
.’

‘What did he say?’ I asked, sensing bad news.

‘He said that I can sit in the front if I want, but you’ll have to go in the back,’ she translated, taking pleasure in delivering the news to me.

‘But you promised me a leather seat!’ I protested, climbing into the back to sit amongst the tools and bags of dry grass.

I’ve got a Black Magic Woman

The rich, full sound of Carlos Santana’s guitar streamed out
of the open window of the pick-up. It was a real boneshaker an old 1950s Chevrolet that looked as though it had been repainted dozens of times, and clearly had a few miles on the clock.

Perched on a bale of straw, I brushed off the dust that had accumulated on the painting and addressed the
Lovers in Blue
directly.

‘I’m sorry about this, but it looks like we’re going to have to go our separate ways for a while.’

I had been thinking about what Billie had said and an idea had come to me. The year before,
Vanity Fair
had asked me to write a short story for their Christmas issue. The idea was to ‘rework’ a well-known classic – some called this heresy – and I had decided to rewrite a truncated version of my favourite Balzac novel. In the first lines the reader followed the fortunes of a young heiress, who, having frittered away her inheritance, is lured in by a pawnbroker, who gives her a talisman with the power to fulfil its owner’s every desire. I was prepared to admit that even though it had gone down well with readers, it was not the best thing I had ever written, but in the course of my research I had come across the colourful figure of Yochida Mitsuko, the most influential pawnbroker in California.

Much like Sophia Schnabel’s clinic, Mitsuko’s little shop was one of the must-have addresses that circulated amongst the beautiful people in the Golden Triangle in Los Angeles. Just like everywhere else, the need for ready cash pushed even the wealthiest stars to offload some of their more extravagant purchases and, out of the twenty or so pawnbrokers in Beverly Hills, Yochida Mitsuko was the favourite among those in the know. With the help of
Vanity Fair
I had been granted a private interview with him at his workshop near Rodeo Drive. He proudly described himself as ‘pawnbroker to the stars’ and
had plastered his walls with photos of himself standing next to various celebrities, who all looked rather embarrassed to have been captured on camera at a time when their financial fortunes had so obviously taken a turn for the worse.

His warehouse was a real Aladdin’s cave, overflowing with an assortment of treasures. I remember seeing the baby grand piano that belonged to a famous jazz singer, the captain of the Dodgers’ lucky bat, a magnum of ’96 Dom Pérignon, a Magritte painting, a customised Rolls-Royce belonging to a rapper, the Harley of a well-known crooner, several cases of ’46 Mouton Rothschild and, despite the Academy’s strict rules, the gold statuette of a legendary actor who shall remain nameless.

I looked at my phone. I was still barred from making calls, but I could access my address book and I quickly located Mitsuko’s number.

I leaned forward to whisper in Billie’s ear, ‘Could you ask your boyfriend if I could possibly use his phone?’

She seemed to negotiate with the gardener for a few minutes, and then, ‘Esteban says that’s OK, but it will cost you $50.’

I didn’t want to waste time haggling, so I handed him a bill in exchange for an old nineties Nokia. A wave of nostalgia washed over me as I held it in my hand: it was ugly, heavy and dull, no camera and no Wi-Fi. But it worked.

Mitsuko picked up after the first ring.

‘It’s Tom Boyd here.’

‘What can I do for you, my friend?’

I wasn’t sure why, but he had always seemed to like me, even though in my story I had not painted him in a particularly flattering light. Far from being offended, this ‘artistic’ portrayal had given him a certain cachet, for which he was extremely grateful, and he had thanked me by sending me a signed first edition of
In Cold Blood
.

I asked politely how he was getting on, and he confessed that since the recession and the credit crunch his business had flourished like never before: he had already opened a second store in San Francisco and had plans for a third in Santa Barbara.

‘Every day, doctors, dentists and lawyers come into my shop to pawn their Lexus, their golf clubs or their wives’ mink stoles because it’s the only way they can afford to pay their bills. But you must have a reason for calling. Do you have something interesting for me to look at?’

I started to describe my Chagall, but it was immediately obvious he was only listening to me out of politeness.

‘The art market hasn’t recovered from the financial crisis yet, but come and see me tomorrow and I’ll see what I can do for you.’

I explained that I couldn’t wait until tomorrow, that I was in San Diego and I needed cash in the next two hours.

‘I suppose your phone has been cut off as well,’ he guessed. ‘I didn’t recognise the number you called me on, and you know how it is: with the number of gossip whores in this town, word gets around fast.’

‘What are they saying?’

‘That you’re done for, and that these days you prefer swallowing pills to writing novels.’

My silence was all the response he needed. Still, at the other end of the line I could hear he was typing something into his laptop, and I guessed he was looking up the current value of Chagall paintings and what kind of bids they were attracting at auction.

‘I can get your phone working again in the next hour,’ he said. ‘You’re with TTA, aren’t you? It’ll cost you $2,000.’

Before I had even given my consent, I could hear him sending a message on his computer. If Sophia used people’s
secrets against them, Mitsuko used their wallets.

‘As for the painting, I’ll give you $30,000 for it.’

‘I hope you’re joking. It’s worth about twenty times that amount!’

‘About forty times, in my opinion. Give it two or three years, at somewhere like Sotheby’s in New York, when the
new-money
Russians feel like spending again. But if you need cash by tonight, and you factor in the huge commission I’m going to have to give to my colleague in San Diego, $28,000 is all I can offer you.’

‘You just said thirty grand!’

‘Minus the 2,000 to get your network coverage back. And all this providing you carefully follow the instructions I’m about to give you.’

Did I have any choice at this point? I reassured myself that I had four months to pay him back – plus 5 per cent interest – and be reunited with my most prized possession. I wasn’t sure I could do it, but it was a risk I had to take.

‘I’ll text you my instructions,’ concluded Mitsuko. ‘Oh, and by the way, tell your friend Milo that he’s only got a few days left to pick up his sax.’

I hung up and gave Esteban back his phone, just as we cruised into the city centre. The sun was setting. San Diego was beautiful, bathed in a pink and orange glow that put me in mind of nearby Mexico. At a red light, Billie clambered into the back with me.

‘Man, it’s freezing in here!’ she said, hugging her knees to her chest.