Gabriella

They make love in his parents’ room, in a bed that, he says, hasn’t been slept in in over three years, the time his father has been in prison.

His father is due to be released in ten months, he tells her now. In ten months, he repeats, with awe at the proximity. They convicted him on money laundering—the drug charges never stuck—when Angel was barely twenty-two, fresh out of college in Paris. He came back after five years to find himself in the eye of an incomprehensible storm that featured his father on the cover of every newspaper, as the headline of every nightly newscast.

Gabriella remembers that time, but doesn’t say anything now; he has never spoken to her about these most intimate, yet most public of happenings, his family travails exposed daily with a level of detail that, back then, was risible and embarrassing.

The house, she now recalls, infamous for its architecture—a replica of the old-money Club Colombia, where her mother belonged, but where his father was denied membership due to his dubious background. He chose to build his own club instead, and proceeded to host the most scandalous and outlandish parties; parties where he would fly in on a private plane, for one night only, the top orchestras in the world; birthday celebrations where party favors were Piaget watches and Gucci ties.

In one particularly scandalous round of testimony, a famous pop musician relayed how he was asked to play the same hit song, over and over and over again, just for Luis Silva and his wife, from midnight until three in the morning. The musician got paid, $200,000 in laundered cash for his efforts, and avoided prosecution for himself by testifying. His words effectively killed his income, however. In an international private party circuit dominated by dubious funds, he became a rat, not to be trusted with discretion.

Gabriella racks her brain now, trying to bring up references to Angel during this time. She remembers the mother (“very elegant,” Nini had conceded one day, making reference to a steady supply of Chanel suits), but not the son.

“For the record, Antonio was wrong when he said I don’t get high on my own supply,” he tells her, out of the blue. “Mi papá, all the stuff he did… But from the beginning, he told me I couldn’t be like he was. He told me nothing of his business. That’s why I was sent to Switzerland to boarding school. It wasn’t a security problem. He just wanted me as far away as possible. And that’s why I don’t get high, on any supply,” he adds with a small, humorless laugh.

“He wanted to make sure I got the message,” he says dully. “So one night, when I was fifteen—when I didn’t want to leave Cali because I was hot shit here—he took me to see this friend of his, he said.

“Only they weren’t friends anymore. The guy—he’d worked for my father, doing odd stuff, you know? Collecting bills, making sure the properties were fine, that kind of crap.”

Angel stops to look at her, then pushes his hair back, a gesture she knows him to do only when something troubles him.

“And this guy.” He swallows. “He started doing heroin. He was one of these people, they start using, and they can’t handle it. They literally can’t stop. It just takes on a life of its own.”

Gabriella is listening intently now, because Angel’s measured voice has a touch of agitation she’s never heard in it before.

“So apparently, he’d been fucking up. You know, we’re driving over there with Julio, and my dad is saying this guy has been fucking up, he’s taking drugs instead of collecting my dad’s money, he’s become a liability.

“And you know, my father never spoke to me about any of his affairs. I knew, but I couldn’t know. It was a completely taboo subject with everyone around us. So I’m sitting in the car, and I’m thinking why the fuck am I here?”

He is talking to her almost like a teenager, and when he looks at her, she sees in his face the questions he had that night, almost ten years ago, his puzzlement, and his apprehension at being part of this unlikely scenario, all mixed up with the trust he had for his father and Julio.

“And we got to this guy’s house, in the middle of the night, and it was an okay house. I mean, it wasn’t like this, but it was a decent house in a decent little neighborhood. And he was up. He was up watching TV and drinking whiskey, and you could tell he was on something. And he was not happy to see my father. He was—” Angel shakes his head at the memory. “He was completely taken aback at seeing the three of us there.

“And my dad walks in and sits down on the couch in front of this guy, and he introduces me,” Angel nods now, puts out his hand in a silent handshake. “He introduces me, tells him I’m his son and how proud he is of me.

“And this sap is smiling, but I can tell he’s shitting his pants, he doesn’t know what’s going on. You see, I knew the power my father had over people, but I’d never seen it this close, this directly, at least not like this.”

Angel stops now and leans over to the bedside table to reach his pack of cigarettes. When he lights up, she sees his fingers trembling ever so slightly, and she doesn’t say a word, afraid to break the unexpected reverie, and waits silently until he inhales deeply and she feels his heart slow down again under his naked skin, under her hand sitting motionless over his chest.

“So anyway. My dad takes out this little plastic package of stuff, and he says that this is heroin. He looks at me and tells me that this is the best heroin that money can buy. That in the States, this tiny little packet, this packet that costs him fifty bucks, sells in the streets for a thousand. And then, he gives the package to this guy, and he tells him very nicely, very politely, because my dad could be very polite when he wanted to, ‘I want you to try this out for me, my friend.’ ” Angel picks up his pack of cigarettes and extends them toward his imaginary antihero.

“He tells him, ‘I want you to show my son what great stuff this is.’

“And the guy, he says no!” Angel says, surprise still tinting his voice at the thought of somebody refusing his father.

“He was terrified. He thought the shit was spiked or bad or who knows what. So my dad talks to him, swears it’s all clean, swears he just wants him to have a good time and to show me what a good time there is to be had.”

Angel licks his lips slowly.

“And he reminds him of how good this stuff is. The best in the world, he said. ‘Angel, it doesn’t get any better than this,’ he told me.

“So the guy finally takes it, because as scared as he is, he can’t resist it. That was part of the lesson, you see? And he’s drooling by now, he’s dying to get his hands on it, and it’s been taking him every ounce of self-control not to jump on it. So finally, he opens a drawer and takes out his little paraphernalia—the plastic tube, and the needle and the spoon—and he mixes the stuff up, warms it underneath a lighter, and he rolls up his sleeve and he shoots himself up.”

Angel grimaces at the thought.

“Have you ever seen anyone shoot up, princesa?” he asks pensively.

Gabriella shakes her head no, because she hasn’t, except in films, and her Hollywood life is starting to look really meaningless in this context.

“It’s really disgusting, to watch that needle penetrate the skin and—push stuff into you. Especially if you don’t like needles, which I don’t. But I watch, because my father is watching and making sure that I’m watching, and I don’t flinch and I don’t close my eyes and I try not to grimace because I don’t want him to slap me or something. I just stand there and watch this guy shoot up, and when he’s done, he completely relaxes, and he—you could just see the relief, the intense relief in his face. Like he’d just had the best orgasm of his life.

“And I’m thinking, okay, this wasn’t so bad, and now I get to go and watch some TV and forget this weird little evening.

“And the guy smiles very peacefully, and then my father tells him very softly, ‘Do it again.’ And the guy says, ‘No, thank you, Don Luis,’ like he had a choice.” Angel’s voice rises slightly.

“So my dad repeats what he just said: ‘Do it again,’ and he sounds pissed now, so the guy does his whole routine all over, and shoots up in his other arm, and this time, he doesn’t look so happy anymore. And then my dad says, ‘Do it again,’ and this guy, this grown man, he starts to cry.”

Angel stops for a moment, takes another drag from his cigarette.

“I think that was worse than the injecting,” says Angel. “It wasn’t just tears rolling down his face. He was bawling. It was the most pitiful thing. He was begging my father to let him stop, and I couldn’t understand what was going on. I started to go to him, because I wanted to make him stop, too, but Julio grabbed me and pushed me against the wall. And the guy, he did it all over again, but this time his hands were trembling really badly, he couldn’t mix it right, he couldn’t tie the damn tourniquet. He couldn’t find a vein in his arm, either. So my dad did it for him. He was really gentle, and really good at it. He found a vein in his foot, and he put the guy’s hand on the needle, and he said, ‘All you have to do is push it in.’

“And he did. He sat there looking at my father, and he pushed that shot of heroin into his foot—and he leaned back again and sat there very quietly, with the needle still in his foot—he didn’t even take it out.”

Angel crushes the cigarette and lies down with his head against the pillow, pulling her toward him.

“At first, he just licked his lips, and my father just sat there—we all waited—everybody was really quiet. All you could hear was the television. It was funny. They were showing Law & Order in Spanish.

“When the guy started convulsing, my father stood up and walked away. I tried to go toward the guy, and then I tried to turn away, because it was horrible, Gabriella. It was horrible. Even though he wasn’t screaming or struggling. But he was like a different person. Like he had already left himself.

“And my dad came and stood behind me and held my head and forced me to watch, I don’t know for how long. Maybe it was a few minutes, maybe it was an hour. I lost track of time. Finally, Julio went and took this guy’s pulse, to make sure he was dead, and then we left.”

In the silence of the room, Gabriella hears the soft thudding of Angel’s heart. She is horrified, and she knows she’s meant to be horrified. She wonders who she can tell a story like this.

“In the car, my father gave me a plastic bag so I could throw up.” Angel grunts ruefully. “He even planned that.

“And then he told me that’s what happened to junkies, and that if he ever heard I was one, I was on my own. He said, ‘It’s a business, not a lifestyle. And it’s my business.’ That’s what he said. It’s my business, not yours. And that was it. He sent me away to school, and he told me to think about what I was going to study after I graduated and what I was going to do with myself, because this wasn’t going to be it.”

Neither of them says anything for a long time. Gabriella, hazy still from alcohol and traces of cocaine, feels as though she’s stepped into a looking glass, a place that’s hers but not hers. She wants to take him out of here, once and for all, but the task suddenly feels gargantuan.

“Is this a shocking story for you, princesa?” he asks her, his voice even and in control again.

This time Gabriella lifts her head up, lifts her whole body up and kneels on the bed, looking into his eyes rather than up at him.

“Yes,” she says, not knowing what else she wants to say.

“Does it change what you feel for me?” he prods her, gently, and in his eyes she sees not concern, but the dark veil that he wears when he wants to be inscrutable; the veil he probably learned to borrow from his father after all these years.

Impulsively, Gabriella leans forward and runs her hands across his eyes.

“What are you doing?” he asks, laughing, and when he laughs, the veil lifts and she sees flecks of light underneath the crystal green of his eyes.

“No, it doesn’t change what I feel for you,” she says, not offering any explanation.

And now, his eyes are limpid and grateful and warm, and she holds his face between her hands and kisses them gently, then kisses his mouth, and he brings her close to him and lays her down over him so she covers him like the sheets they can’t seem to find, and in these times, at least, she feels he is completely hers, like no one really has ever been hers.

They make love quietly and urgently, as if there were parents listening in the rooms next door, private lovemaking although they’ve never known the boundaries of supervision.

Afterward, in the shower, he cleans her gently, shampooing the grit from the ride out of her hair, rubbing soap down her back, behind her ears, in the crevices behind her knees and between her toes and her fingers, careful not to touch the welts left behind when he pulled the reins from her hands.

He manipulates her body almost with clinical industriousness, enjoying the smooth feel of her soapy skin, the indentation of the muscles on her back—a strong back for a girl—the product of a lifetime of windsurfing and swimming. There are freckles on her shoulders and a gentle half-moon of a scar on her lower belly, the remnant of appendicitis; otherwise, her surfaces are clean and unspoiled.

In an hour, he will be working, supervising the hangar he rents for the Christmas season only, a broad space with high ceilings that’s allowed to fit seven thousand people. He permits nine thousand inside because no one dares tell him not to and because he makes more money and because he thinks it’s right, and that really is what dictates everything he does.

Tomorrow he will have Daddy Yankee and Oscar D’León and Grupo Niche there, and by the time 5 a.m. rolls around and the crowd starts to trickle out, his hair and his clothes and his being will be impregnated with foreign sweat and cigarette smoke and spilled aguardiente and purchased laughter and his hand will have been shaken by hundreds of strangers. They’re all eager to curry favor with him, to receive a tiny crumb of the money they say he has, money that—according to local lore—at one point Luis Silva kept stashed in suitcases under his bed, because he was so afraid of stepping inside a bank.

Angel was taught to be anonymous, a frank contrast with his father’s penchant for ostentation. Luis Silva learned too late that while Colombia’s ruling classes were willing to look the other way as long as he shared his bounty, flaunting it so brazenly was a no-no.

The day he was denied admission into Club Colombia, he pondered his miscalculation long and hard. Much to his surprise, some things truly could not be bought.

“My son,” he told his wife the next day, “will be a classy guy.”

Angel would be educated in Europe. What did he care that the United States wouldn’t give him a visa? Weren’t England and France and Switzerland better? Weren’t they old money? He would run a legitimate business. He would date nice girls, girls who went to the country club and had apartments in Miami. He would never be turned away because his last name wasn’t right.

And it all could have worked nicely, too. Angel Silva was sent to a private boarding school in Switzerland and to college near Paris. He was young, handsome, smart, and rich. Abroad, where all foreigners are judged by the cash they carry, their educational pedigree, and the color of their skin, the name, unknown across the Atlantic, was inconsequential.

Here, however, it placed him on ambivalent ground. He looked and sounded like the upper crust, but almost perversely, he allowed his father’s tarnish to touch upon so many things he did.

He touches her now, and sees an unsullied slate, a chance to get it right. Impulsively, he grabs her shoulders tightly and presses his open mouth against the nape of her neck, hard.

“What?” she says softly.

“Nothing.” He shakes his wet head against her. “I want to make you happy. That’s all.”

“Take me to dinner,” she says suddenly.

“Take you to dinner?” he repeats stupidly.

“Yes. Take me to dinner. That will make me happy.”

“I don’t know,” he says, laughing. “Wouldn’t a Hermès bag or something like that make you happier?”

Gabriella shakes her head emphatically, delighted at the break in his intensity. “A Hermès bag will make me happy. But a dinner date with you—a date where we can sit, just the two of us, in a beautiful restaurant and wear beautiful clothes and be served beautiful food by beautiful people—that will make me happier than anything else.”

Inside the shower, the steam and flow of the water make her words hazy, almost unreal. The simplicity of the request touches him, but the simple things have eluded him for a long time.

“I want to do all the things I do, but with you,” she says with a touch of wonderment, because she’s not sure when she shed her apprehension at being seen with him; perhaps it was today, just hours ago, when he kissed her while she was on her horse with the proprietary air of a man who is proud of what he owns, and she reveled in it.

“I don’t want to hide,” she continues urgently, because she needs to say this now, with her back to him, with his hands against her shoulders, and now against the small of her back and on her breasts and down to her stomach as her only gauge of a reaction, and the words pour out of her, the words she thought today, when a sea of people watched them but still didn’t see his hand on her thigh, grazing her with his thumb as he pulled her against him from his horse.

“I want people to see us and know that we’re together and know, from the way you put your hand around my waist, that we make love three times a day, and I can’t get enough of you and you can’t get enough of me. I want them to be jealous. To wonder what it is we do together. I want those stupid girls you’ve gone to bed with before me to look at us and know that I’m better than them. That I do things to you that they never dreamed of.”

She stops abruptly, shocked at herself because she’s never said things like this, much less done them. But he is hard behind her, and now his hands go up her neck and cup her face and turn her toward him and he pushes her against the shower wall and presses against her and whispers hoarsely into her ear: “I’ll take you anywhere you want go.”