Exposure

SIX MONTHS LATER, Paul Faustino was having lunch with a possible girlfriend at the Salamanca, where the food was almost as daring as its prices. She was speaking enthusiastically about hypnotism. In particular, she was being enthusiastic about the success of hypnotherapy in curing nicotine addiction. Faustino’s attention had wandered, and so had his gaze.

“No, not at all. I’m sorry. I was distracted by a couple of people over there. No, please don’t look.”

He said, “Forgive me. I forgot that I was off duty.” He lit a cigarette. “What were you saying?”

For the next forty minutes he tried very hard to divide his attention fairly between his companion and the table where Diego Mendosa was lunching with a burly American with hair like rippled zinc. Faustino knew who the American was. Knew that he was a close friend of the governor of California, that he was unnecessarily wealthy, and that he owned a soccer team called the San Francisco Goldbugs. But Faustino was less interested in him than in Diego Mendosa. The man had recently endured almost unimaginable embarrassment. His most famous client had been ruined. He was the intimate friend of a man whose reputation lay wrecked and dismembered like the statue of an overthrown tyrant. He was party to a calamity. But look at the shine on him, the smile!

Faustino lingered over coffee until he was sure that Mendosa and the Yank had left. He paid the bill without the slightest flicker of incredulity, then gallantly helped his date into a cab, deferring promises.

He walked the fifteen-minute distance back to La Nación. He hated agents, on principle. Bloated leeches swarming on the body of the game. He could remember a time when they didn’t exist, when clubs had scouts who discovered great young players and . . .

He stopped himself. Scoffed at himself for harking back to a golden age that had never existed. When innocent genius boys were found in slums or in the outback. Nonsense. Soccer was a business like any other. Find a resource, use it, exploit it, charge the maximum you can get for it. It’s just business; yesterday’s trash and tomorrow is the next day’s trading. Assuming a very modest ten percent agent’s fee — it was almost certainly more than that — Diego Mendosa would’ve made five million out of Otello’s transfer to Rialto. And another couple of million — U.S. dollars — out of his sale to San Francisco. Plus his percentage on whatever it’d cost Rialto to break Otello’s five-year contract. So no wonder the man had looked pleased with himself. Something like nine, ten million for two years’ work? Not bad at all. Still, like it or not, one had to admit that Mendosa was good at what he did. And a great deal more civilized than most of his kind. For him, at least, some benefit — some considerable benefit, in fact — had come from the death of poor little Bianca Diaz.

A dark thought unfurled in the baser part of Faustino’s mind and brought him to a halt. Mendosa? Could he have . . . ? No. Absurd. Illogical. He shook his head like a man pestered by a fly and scuttled quickly through the gloomy pedestrian tunnel under San Cristóbal. Even in daylight the place gave him the jitters.

Diego tosses his jacket and tie onto the sofa on his way to the drinks cabinet. He pours a generous malt whiskey and proposes a little toast to himself. Then he carries his glass through to the main bedroom, making a soft tcha-tcha-tcha sound by clacking his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

“Well, my love, I would say that was a most satisfactory piece of business. Yes, indeed. Dreadful people one has to have dealings with, of course. Still, beggars can’t be choosers.” He laughs quietly and takes another sip. “And, I must say, a perfectly acceptable lunch.”

He turns to Emilia. “Speaking of which, I suspect you might be hungry. Yes? Good. Excellent! I was a little worried that you might be off your food.”

He sets his drink down on the bedside table and goes to the big glass tank that takes up most of the room’s shorter wall. Set in its base there are three shallow drawers. From the first he takes a pair of long stainless steel tweezers. Then he opens the second drawer, lifts its ventilated plastic lid, and uses the tweezers to seize a locust. The insect is about two inches long. Diego is quick; he has the creature pincered before it can unsheathe its wings. He closes the drawer, lifts the lid of the glass tank, and drops the locust onto a broad leaf, where it crouches. Emilia hardly moves. She merely lowers her body very slightly, adjusting her grip on the branch. Her eyes swivel and blink in opposite directions. They always thrill Diego, her eyes. They are, he thinks, black pearls set in cones of golden beads.

But now, perhaps in response to the presence of the locust in her tank, she changes color almost imperceptibly. The beautiful turquoise green of her throat takes on a yellowish blush. She moves forward along the branch with exquisite delicacy, her divided feet hesitating before they grasp. The long tail hangs far below her, a tight dappled coil. Diego wills her on, hardly daring to breathe. She’s such a big girl now: as long as his forearm. Her eyes are facing forward, locked on to her prey. The locust is a full yard away.

For an infinity of seconds she does nothing. Diego is in an agony of impatience. Then she unhinges her mouth. It is almost the full length of her triangular head. The fat bulbous tip of her tongue appears between her lips. It is reddish purple and glistens stickily. Diego’s own tongue emerges a little way; he cannot help himself. Emilia pauses, agape, teasing him, making him wait. Then she strikes. And, as always, Diego fails to stifle a cry, a small moan of shock, of pleasure. Emilia’s improbable tongue hurtles out of her, a wet fleshy rope. Its gluey bulb envelops the locust. In the time it takes to blink, the insect is reeled into her mouth. A wing and a limb protrude from her jaws. She shrinks her eyes, crunches, gulps, crunches again. The wing and the limb are gone. The scaly wattles of her gullet pulse.

He picks up his whiskey and goes out onto the balcony. As is usual on these occasions, he feels vaguely sad. It is the enviable simplicity of her needs, her appetites. An opportunity seized; a hunger appeased. None of this never-ending desire for more and more and more. He has done great and monstrous things. Yet there is the city below him still: unshaken, vertical, dumb. The dust has settled. The shock waves have dwindled into ripples. The prospect of having to begin all over again almost overwhelms him.

He drains the glass, puts fire into his belly. Checks his watch and goes inside. His call is answered on the fourth ring.

DIEGO: Luis? Hi. This is Diego Mendosa. Is this a good time to talk? Are you alone?

MONTANO: Uh, yeah, it’s fine.

DIEGO: Good. Did you have a chance to consider my proposal?

MONTANO: Yeah. It seems sound. The thing is, like I said, it’ll be difficult to get out of my present contract, you know? Things could get nasty.

DIEGO: That’s not your problem. I handle all that. I can be pretty nasty myself, to be honest. When it’s in my client’s interests, of course.

MONTANO: So I hear.
[DIEGO lets that pass.]

MONTANO: So, how confident are you that you can get me back to Rialto?

DIEGO: Extremely confident. And I wouldn’t say that if I didn’t have good reason to.
[A short pause.]

MONTANO: Okay. But all hell will break loose up here if we do it.
[DIEGO notes the use of “we.”]

DIEGO: Don’t worry about that. I’m quite good at managing hell. I’ve been through it recently.

MONTANO: Yeah. Without getting burned, by all accounts.

DIEGO: Absolutely. Couldn’t do this job unless I was fireproof. So . . .

MONTANO: So, okay. Let’s go for it.

DIEGO: You accept?

MONTANO: Yeah. I do.

DIEGO: Excellent! It’ll be an honor to represent you, Luis. We’ll do great things together, I promise you.

Faustino sat at his cluttered desk and used scissors to cut a two-page article out of the previous day’s edition of La Nación. The scissors were heavy and old-fashioned; he’d had them a long time. The article was one of his own.

He skimmed it again. In the three days it had taken him to write it, he had revised and reworked the piece several times, mostly toning it down. Yet it was still bitter, angry, accusatory. It lacked balance and gravity. It was almost unprofessionally sincere. Almost, God help us, youthful. Now, dulled by his rich lunch, he found himself wondering if all — or any — of this passion was genuine. And even if it was, was it . . . appropriate? Heroes come and go; sand castles are swept away by the tide: you might as well hurl your childish rage at the deep indifference of the sea. The only grown-up emotion is disappointment.

He folded the article and slid it into a clear plastic wallet. At the doorway into his library he paused and surveyed the windowless storeroom stuffed with files, scrapbooks, photo albums, yearbooks, and whatever else his life consisted of. Library. Archive. Museum. Mausoleum. Catacomb.