ANGOLA IS A PARTY

The evening they returned to Topanga Canyon, they found the house completely lit up, thirty cars parked out the front, a gigantic pine tree erected on the edge of the swimming pool. Jessie, bare-chested, white beard and red boxer shorts, was greeting guests and handing out little bowls full of some sort of snow in which adorable dwarf pines were planted. The dwarf pines were made out of chocolate and the powder snow was intended for snorting. It took a few moments to decipher Alma’s outfit: a bra made out of grey fur, Playboy Bunny hotpants, Nubuck leather Timberland boots, and a leather muzzle with reins that Jessie cracked on her naked back, for fun. Perhaps the most disturbing thing was the strange headdress tied to her head: gold antlers, a Spike TV trophy for the prize she had just received: ‘Most Promising Sexy TV Star—Men’s Choice.’

‘She’s wearing a reindeer costume,’ Jessie explained, as if it was obvious. He pretended to straddle her. ‘Father Christmas is going down your chimney, my darling. He has a big present for you.’

They fled upstairs. Fortunately no one was hanging out in the loft, but the music from below was too loud. And it was freezing up there: so that he could have a roaring fire in the fireplace, Jessie had turned the air conditioning on full bore all over the house.

They headed back to her place. Kouhouesso was silent, as he was every time he was annoyed by reality. She tried to stay quiet too, but she couldn’t. They had to face facts: when Jessie was there, it was tricky living together. The practical solution was for Kouhouesso to move in with her for good.

In the meantime, she placed two plane tickets for Paris under their Christmas tree. She had bought two more tickets, full-price business. They wouldn’t get there until the 26th. But now that her son was older, Christmas Day itself didn’t matter as much.

He gave her a peck on the lips. But he wasn’t sure: he really had to find time, before the shoot, to go and see his children.

In Luanda.

In Angola.

She had assumed he was born in Cameroon.

Twins. Who lived with their mother. Their stepfather was from Rio.

She made a quick adjustment to the world-map app in her head, skipping from one latitude to the next, leaving a large, blurry area over Angola. She pictured child soldiers, wearing dirty, oversized T-shirts, children from shanty towns, glue-sniffers, and prostitutes.

Hollywood–Angola, Los Angeles–Luanda, LAX–LAD: there was a plane every day. Direct. British Airways.

But, now that he thought of it, the twins would be in Lisbon for New Year. Their mother was Portuguese. And Lisbon was right next to Paris.

Paris–Lisbon!

No distance at all, she enthused, championing Europe’s modest size, extolling the speed of the TGV, the quality of the freeways, the Maastricht Treaty and budget airfares. Whereas Luanda was so far away.

And so expensive, added Kouhouesso. There was nowhere under four hundred dollars a night. Compared with Rio, which was half the price, and half the distance.

She wanted to say that he wouldn’t be in a hotel in Paris, but everything was moving too fast to get hung up on the geography.

The mother divided her time between Rio, Luanda and Lisbon, the three ports in Lusitanian waters. As for the twins, they lived in the Miami, one of the nightclubs frequented by the Luanda jetset, on a peninsula, right on the water.

A girl and a boy on a Facebook page, out-of-this-world good-looking, illuminated in red, green, blue, silver, spangled by glitter balls, fireworks and fairy lights—they seemed to be in their habitat. Spin the globe as fast as you can: that’s the colour of the future. Luanda is a party. Rio is finished. Lisbon is dead. The twins both fell in love for the first time in Luanda: that’s the problem with adolescents, according to Kouhouesso: they get settled, much more than their parents do.

With all these images piling up inside her skull, she couldn’t think of anything else to say, other than how beautiful his children were. There’s no such thing as mixed race: she knew what happened with sentences like that, sentences he uttered. They led to another image, a baby who might have been theirs, Kouhouesso and Solange, Solange and Kouhouesso.

She really should tell him about her son. But she still had two more days.