Buyout--A Love Story

by Dev Bentham

  This wasn’t helping. I kept walking. Lights went on in the windows of the wall of houses that lined the canals, turning the water golden in reflection. Families, lovers, and tourists all strolled along the sidewalks. Laughter came from cafés. I was surrounded by oppressive happiness.

  When I’d seen the Sabido family mortgage application in the computer system, I hadn’t dared open the file. Instead, I’d forwarded it to an associate with a note vouching for the family’s integrity. A stupid, sentimental gesture, and look what it had gotten me—the thankless task of destroying their lives. What would happen if I didn’t do it, if I just said no? Rex would fire me as casually as he ordered lunch. He might value my skills, but that wouldn’t matter. Loyalty. That’s what Rex valued most. I’d lose my job, and for what? The Sabido family hotel was doomed. If I refused, there’d be someone else on the next flight from Chicago.

  What would Martim look like now? Would he still smell of clove cigarettes and coffee? Cambridge, Massachusetts, is cold in the winter, but Martim’s skin was always warm.

  I turned back toward the hotel. I could stall for a few days, reading the file, preparing. Maybe by the end of the week I’d be ready to face him. Or he would crack my heart open again. I’d get over it. Bleeding always stops.

  Chapter TWO

  I ARRIVED in Lisbon on a cool, rainy morning, typical of spring in Portugal. The weather had nothing to do with my sweaty palms. I gave the taxi the hotel address, then sat back and told myself it was just another business meeting, like hundreds I’d done before. As I watched the wipers flop back and forth across the windshield, I didn’t even pretend to believe that.

  I dropped my hand to the seat beside me. It came away sticky. Just my luck. God knew what the gunk was. Maybe some kid had drooled ice cream or dropped candy. And those were among my best-case scenarios. With my clean hand, I rummaged in my briefcase for some wet wipes. Five minutes and a pack of wipes later, I felt safe enough to focus on the scenery outside.

  We left the main road and wound through town. The rain obscured my view of the neighborhood. Taking a cab from the airport, dressing like a businessman, arriving just in time for the meeting—this was about as far from my usual reconnaissance as I could get. But I couldn’t see the point in using stealth tactics to approach the Sabidos’ hotel. I could hardly expect to remain anonymous from a man I’d lived with for two years. And I wasn’t going to show up at his door looking shabby. Instead I wore a gray angora fitted suit with a dark blue tie that I’d been told matched my eyes.

  Maybe I wouldn’t see him. The appointment was with Isabella Sabido Pataca, Martim’s tia Bel. I knew, from studying the files, that Casa Sabido was a thirty-two-room, three-star hotel. Back when we were together, the only thing I’d known about the business end of the hotel was that Martim thought his father was a terrible manager. From the file, it looked like most of their bookings were tourists, but in the past six months, they had made inroads into the conference trade. Tia Bel was listed as the managing partner, and it was her signature on the loan that had gotten them into trouble. When I knew him, Martim had been passionate about the family business, but maybe he wasn’t interested anymore. If that was true, my job would be a lot easier.

  He’d brought me to visit the family just a few months before his father died. It was our last winter break together. We’d spent the holiday with our respective families, and then I’d flown to Lisbon to meet him. I could remember him picking me up at the airport in his old Peugeot. We’d driven these same streets into Lisbon, with the windows open, American hip-hop on the radio, and Martim grinning and gesturing as he pointed out the landmarks. As always, he’d been charming, effusive even. At the hotel, he’d introduced me around. He’d asked about a cleaner’s sick mother and about another’s sister’s new baby. The front desk clerk had gushed about how much her son had enjoyed the toy Martim had brought him from the States. Clearly, the staff loved him. I didn’t blame them. So did I.

  The memory depressed me as the cab pulled up at the familiar red-brick corner building with white concrete arches and a festive yellow-and-blue awning. I paid my fare and stepped out, taking in the surroundings. The hotel perched on the edge of the Alfama, one of the oldest sections of Lisbon. Tall and narrow, it capped a row of buildings, all roughly four stories and dotted with windows or balconies or both. Along one edge of the hotel, a steep set of steps climbed toward the castle. The concrete stairway walls were covered in Lisbon’s signature street art. The contrast of festive graffiti on old walls gave the place an attractively hip air. Tram lines ran down the middle of the road in front of the hotel, and on the other side of the street, modern Lisbon asserted itself in the form of shops selling cookware, clothing, and expensive shoes. It wasn’t an ideal spot for a hotel, but it wasn’t terrible either.

  Inside, the hotel looked different, cheerful and surprisingly modern. The renovations Tia Bel had borrowed money for had been tastefully done, with tile floors, dark furniture, and pale pink walls. Giant bouquets of lilies sat on every flat surface, and I wondered if they were a regular thing or purchased in my honor.

  Back when Martim and I had been there, his father had managed the hotel like a private kingdom. Martim had sworn that whenever he inherited it, he’d modernize everything and, most importantly, treat the staff with respect. Now the desk clerk looked up with a professional smile, but she didn’t have time to greet me before the click of heels on tile and the scent of lavender announced the arrival of Tia Bel. She swooped through the lobby, swathed in a bright floral dress and royal blue scarf that fluttered around her. I hadn’t seen her since my MBA graduation, when she’d flown in to support her nephew’s amante. Still beautiful and elegant in an over-the-top kind of way, she hadn’t changed. I had.

  We kissed cheeks. I felt like Judas.

  “Sean.” She added an extra syllable, rhyming my name with sauna. “I was glad to hear you were coming to help us with this.”

  I pulled away. “I hope you feel the same when we are done.”

  She cocked her head to one side and studied me. “You look different. Is it your hair?”

  I ran a hand through my hair, disturbing the expensive haircut that hid the cowlicks. “I just got older. It doesn’t look like you have.”

  “You always were a nice boy.” She put her hand on my arm. “Not a boy anymore, though. You’ve grown into a handsome man.”

  I smiled in spite of myself. She was a charmer. I patted the leather portfolio under my arm. “Shall we find somewhere to sit and get started?”

  “It can wait. You must be hungry and tired after your trip.” She snapped her fingers. A bellhop trotted over from where he’d been standing by the front door. Tia Bel spoke in rapid Portuguese. I caught the gist of it: my bags were to be taken to the room—at which point she glanced at the desk clerk, who stuttered out the room number—then Tia Bel turned back to the bellhop and told him to open the windows, put fresh flowers on the table. And something about a bottle of wine. The bellhop nodded throughout. When she’d finished speaking, he grabbed my bag and reached for my portfolio.

  I shook my head and muttered in my inadequate Portuguese that I was fine, obrigado.

  Tia Bel raised an eyebrow. “Are you afraid your papers will disappear?”

  “No.” I smiled down at her. “But old habits are hard to break.”

  A shadow crossed her face. Then she shook whatever it was off, like a dog shaking off water.

  “You must eat.” She beamed up at me.

  I glanced at my watch. Midmorning, far too early for lunch. But I wasn’t in any more of a hurry to get to the hard stuff than she was. I decided to let her stall for a few more hours. I might as well enjoy her company while I could.

  “I’m not hungry. A coffee would be nice, thank you.” And because I didn’t want to offend her, not yet, I added, “I’ve just come from Amsterdam this morning. Not a long flight.”

  “Good.” She gestured to a doorway. “That will allow me to show off our dinin
g room. It is very pleasant this time of day.”

  I followed in her wake, inhaling her lavender perfume and trying not to remember what it had felt like to have her embrace me as family. Back when I was one of the good guys.

  THE RAIN had stopped and afternoon light shone through the café windows. Coffee had turned into a rest, then a huge Portuguese lunch of pork shoulder and sheep cheese and rice. Not wanting to let my guard down, I’d turned down wine, which had brought out an odd smile in Tia Bel. Now, over another cup of coffee, it was time.

  “Tia Bel, putting off talking about it isn’t going to change anything.” If I let this go on too long, Martim could appear. I wasn’t sure whether that was something I was hoping for or dreading. Our parting over a decade ago hadn’t been exactly pleasant.

  My poker face must have been slipping, because Tia Bel contemplated me solemnly. “Martim hasn’t been very attentive to business lately.”

  “I would say that’s self-evident, given how overextended you are.” I could have been more diplomatic, but I was tired.

  She winced. “He doesn’t know. I am at fault.”

  I stared at her. Martim had always spoken of the hotel as his family legacy, a sacred trust. If Rex took the hotel now, I had no doubt that Martim would see it as robbery. And me as the thief.

  Tia Bel had the grace to look away.

  She hadn’t told him? “You must have known this would come out. You missed last year’s payment, I doubt you’ve enough saved for the one coming up, and your hotel doesn’t take in enough profit to make up the difference now.” I leaned forward, feeling like a cross between an adviser and an assassin.

  “There were expenses.” She fluttered her hand in a vague, all-encompassing gesture.

  “Expenses? You borrowed half a million euros at 7 percent interest to be repaid over ten years with an annual seventy-thousand-euro payment. Even in a good economy that would be rough to manage.”

  “We needed the money. It could not wait. I thought we could save for the payment, but….” She lifted one shoulder, acknowledging defeat.

  I looked around at the café. It did look smart and modern. And empty. “It wasn’t a good idea to start renovations at a time when the Portuguese economy was in the toilet.”

  She grimaced. “I just wanted it all to be nice for him, when he….” She stopped herself. “It doesn’t matter. You will help me with a payment plan, yes?”

  “A payment plan.” I wiped my palm across my eyes, suddenly not just tired, but very, very tired. “It’s too late for that. My boss wants your property.”

  “The hotel? He wants to take Martim’s hotel?” She paled. “That will kill him.”

  “I thought he wasn’t involved in the business anymore.”

  She looked out the window. “He wasn’t. But now again he is.”

  “You need to come up with €140,000 by the end of the month if you don’t want my company to foreclose.” Even as I said it, I realized that a payment of half that would keep them out of court. Disclosing that could get me fired. Rex would see it as disloyal. Of course keeping my mouth shut was just as disloyal. I couldn’t remember ever hating my job quite this much.

  She looked at me for a long time. “I had hoped you would have forgiven him after all this time.”

  “This has nothing to do with us.” It didn’t. Really.

  She frowned. “Losing this hotel has everything to do with Martim. And at one time, that was important to you.”

  “Times change.” I gathered up my papers. “You need to tell Martim what’s going on. I don’t want him thinking I stole his hotel.”

  “Were you this cold back then?” She cocked her head to one side. “Perhaps I am understanding why Martim did what he did.”

  “You think I want this? I’m just doing my job.” I stood up. My chair crashed to the ground behind me. “Talk to Martim. And, just to be clear, I’m not the one who borrowed money against the property—more money than it was physically possible to repay.”

  I walked out of the dining room, not looking back at her. I headed up to my room to dump my briefcase. The room felt claustrophobic, too small to contain all the turmoil I was feeling. I headed back downstairs, determined to walk it off. This wasn’t my fucking problem. I kept telling myself that. But as I stepped outside, instead of the streets of Lisbon, all I could see was Martim’s face reproaching me.

  Tia Bel was wrong. This wasn’t a way to get back at Martim for what he did to me. If it was, I would have felt at least a tinge of satisfaction at that thought. But all I felt was a sadness that saturated my being down to the bones. His youthful betrayal of me had been nothing compared to what I was about to do to him.

  I NEEDED to move—walk out the turmoil of emotions, past and present, that the conversation with Tia Bel had brought to the surface. I slammed out the door of the hotel and stepped onto the streets of Lisbon, hoping traffic and pigeons and the relentless commerce would wash away the grinding certainty in my gut that this time I was the bad guy. The paving stones were slick from the light rain. Dark-skinned men in worn jackets stood on street corners, hawking umbrellas. Pedestrians kept away from the curbs, avoiding getting splashed as cars passed by. I buried my hands in the pockets of my overcoat and let the rain fall on my uncovered head. It suited my mood.

  In all the years of now nameless men, no one had replaced Martim. I hadn’t been willing to let anyone get that close—not since the night I came home to Martim on his knees in our living room, sucking off his drug dealer when he’d promised me once and for all to go clean. In the years since, I’d learned that it was as easy to find addicts at Harvard as anywhere else, but at the time, Martim’s inability to stop shocked me even more than all the sordid things he was willing to do to stay high. By that night he’d already flunked out of his senior year and was weeks away from losing his student visa.

  I told myself later that kicking him out was the right thing to do—addicts needed tough love or some such crap. The truth that had gnawed at my guts for years was that by then I’d already given up on him. His downward spiral started with his father’s death. Martim’s father had been a difficult man, and after his mother died when he was a child, Martim’s relationship with his father had always been complex. The old man died the year everything fell apart. Martim dove into addiction, and I fell by the wayside. Or rather, I’d chosen to abandon him—just like his father had. I hadn’t known how to deal with his grief, and so I’d ignored it. Ignored him. And when he hit bottom, I got angry. In that moment I hadn’t given a flying fuck where he’d end up. It was only after the door slammed behind him that I’d started to regret and worry.

  And now, all these years later I was kicking him out again.

  The street was a dead end. I turned left, not really caring where I went, but vaguely thinking that the fewer turns I made, the less likely I was to get lost. Tourist souvenir shops lined this street. Blue-and-white tiles, cork purses, cans of sardines, and colorful rooster sculptures filled the windows. Within a few minutes, I found myself staring at a giant concrete square surrounded on three sides by palatial buildings and on the fourth by the Tagus river. The Praça do Comércio—the name surfaced from wherever I’d buried it along with all the other memories of visiting Martim’s family in Lisbon all those years ago. I walked into the square, along with dozens of tourists and all my memories. It had been sunny the last time I’d been in the square, and hundreds of people had milled around the statue of a long-dead king or sat at outside tables, sipping coffee. Martim and I had strolled among the tourists, and I’d been happy. Things change. The crowd was sparse, and in the rain the river looked cold and gray. As I hit the edge of the square, I stopped, visualizing the way it had been when I’d seen it before, with the sun lighting the yellow-and-white buildings that lined the square. Now everything looked washed out, the color drained.

  A concrete pathway ran along the waterfront. I stood staring out at the river while rain soaked through the shoulders of my coat. People walked b
y, their umbrellas like oddly colored flowers. Dogs trotted along beside them on leashes. It was a scene out of an Impressionist painting.

  I don’t know why I stayed there people watching in the rain until one of the runners caught my eye. The dark curls at the top of his head, the set of his shoulders, and the familiarity of his gait—it was enough. I knew. So many years later and I knew as if it was yesterday. Martim. The sight of his graceful stride and long, lean body washed away the years.

  I’d been fooling myself into thinking I could love anyone else.

  He was going to hate me forever after this week.

  The twin realizations rang through me like gunshots. And there wasn’t anything I could do about either.

  I watched until he passed the building at the end of the plaza and out of sight. Then I turned to walk back to the hotel. Martim was in town. Tia Bel needed to let him know why I was here. For better or worse, I had to see him. If I was never going to see Martim again, at least we could do that face-to-face.

  It rained in earnest as I trudged back to the hotel to set in motion my own demise.

  Chapter THREE

  “I KNOW he’s in Lisbon.” I glared at Tia Bel. “Tell him I’m here and why. Or I will.”

  She looked at me for a long moment. “How can you be angry after all these years? I don’t want to get in the middle between you boys.”

  “You already have.” I crossed my arms over my chest, as if that would protect me. At least it made me more intimidating. “You borrowed money from my company, and I bet you knew that if you messed up, I’d have to come here to straighten it out. I hope to God this isn’t some sort of matchmaking scheme, because if so, you overestimated my influence with the company. I’m just an employee.”

  She cocked her head. “He was very miserable when he came home from Harvard. Did you know that? Sad, like I hadn’t seen him since his mother died.”