by Victoria Fox
Afterwards, the jury conferred among themselves for a while before dismissing them with a brisk, ‘Thank you, that’s all.’
‘How great was that?’ squealed Bibi when they were back outside.
Stevie smiled encouragingly. ‘You did brilliantly. I don’t know how you memorise all those lines. I don’t think I could.’
‘Ah, don’t be dumb.’ But she blushed at the compliment. ‘You really think I did OK?’
‘Definitely,’ Stevie reassured her. Bibi had been word-perfect and her enthusiasm was second to none. ‘When are you likely to hear?’
‘Carrie will be in touch as soon as they are.’ She hailed a cab. ‘Keep your knickers crossed for me!’
‘My knickers?’
‘Sorry,’ said Bibi, in a much better mood than this morning. ‘On the contrary! I forgot you were with Will.’
‘That’s gross. And anyway, I’m not “with” Will. I’m not with anyone.’
Bibi narrowed her eyes. ‘You’re a commitment-phobe,’ she said. ‘That’s what it is.’
Stevie laughed. ‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘Fine, maybe I am, but just for the time being.’
‘Ah, but love’s the best thing in the world.’ Bibi pressed her palms exaggeratedly to her chest as a cab pulled up. ‘Love richly and love well. Isn’t that a saying?’
‘I don’t think so.’
Bibi pulled open the door. ‘You know what I’m getting at.’
She did. Only she’d been the one loving. He hadn’t said he loved her at all. Not even when she got rid of the baby.
‘Thanks for coming today, Steve.’
‘Any time,’ she replied, with a faint smile. ‘It was kind of fun.’
As she was climbing in, a young woman with a scruffy blonde ponytail emerged from the building, glanced once up and down the avenue then waved in their direction. Stevie recognised her as the casting agent from their audition. She had to nudge Bibi to get her attention.
‘B, that woman’s waving at you—look!’
Bibi followed her gaze. She covered her mouth with her hands. ‘My God, Steve! Do you think she wants to offer me the part? What if she offers me the part? What do I do?’
Stevie giggled. ‘You say yes.’
The woman strode over. ‘Are you able to come back inside?’ she asked, eyebrow arched. ‘We’d like to hear you read again.’
‘Of course.’ Bibi flushed with pleasure.
The woman’s gaze flicked over Bibi, as if she’d only just noticed her. ‘Not you,’ she said dismissively, turning back to Stevie. ‘We’d like to hear you read again, for Lauren this time. We’ve been looking for someone like you for a very, very long time. We think you’re absolutely right for the part.’ She grinned, exposing a row of small neat teeth. ‘What do you say?’
13
Lori
When Tony and Angélica found out about Rico’s involvement in the gang homicide, they resolved to send Lori to Spain without further delay.
‘It’s the only place we can be sure you’ll stay out of trouble,’ her father said.
The last Lori had heard from her boyfriend was a rushed phone call shortly after he was arrested. She had asked him if the reports were true. They were. It broke her heart. She didn’t know him any more. Rico, the gentle Rico with the kind eyes and the tender promises, was gone. He was a killer, capable of taking another person’s life.
Things moved fast. Her flight was tomorrow. When she arrived, she would take a taxi out of Murcia and travel south, to the outskirts of a remote town where her grandmother resided in the same rural house Tony had grown up in. It was falling apart, too sprawling and dilapidated for one person to look after. Ancient, tired out, like its sole occupant.
Tony was dropping her off at Tres Hermanas for the last time.
‘Please don’t send me away,’ she begged. ‘Can’t you see I’ve been punished enough?’
Angrily, Tony changed lanes. ‘I’ve done everything to make things right, Loriana—I’ve tried my best with that business, I’ve tried to secure you the future your mama wanted. I found us another family—’
‘I never said I wanted another family. I had you.’
‘And who did I have?’
Her voice was small. ‘Me.’
‘You were a child. I had to look after you.’
Lori tried to reach him. ‘Mama always said it didn’t matter how small you were, you could always make a difference.’
Tony pulled over amid an explosion of sounding horns. ‘Will you stop?’
‘Stop what?’
‘Accept that she’s dead.’ His voice was bitter. ‘I’ve been trying for ten years to find a different happiness, while you dream only of the past—’
‘Moving on isn’t the same as forgetting.’
‘Do you think I can forget? Do you? How can I, when I look at you and all I see is her?’
‘Is that why you want me gone?’ Lori wept then, proper tears she had been keeping in check for too long. For a second she thought Tony might comfort her, but the embrace she had been hoping for didn’t come. Instead he signalled and rejoined the stream of downtown traffic.
‘You are going to Corazón because it is the right thing,’ Tony said evenly, ‘and because I hope it will put an end to this pointless rebellion. That boy and his family are dangerous. I cannot lose you as well.’
The working day began like any other. There was no reason to suspect what was to come, the event that would change Lori’s life irrevocably and for ever. Her sisters had spent all morning doing zero work, gloating about how miserable she would be bundled away in Europe with a rotting old crone, while Lori answered the phones, sorted the orders, prepped the treatments and cleaned up after them. Her head was numb and her heart was numb, going through the motions and that was all: a living doll, with a face and hair and arms and legs, but when you unscrew its neck and turn it upside down and shake it around, nothing inside, just empty.
It was a little after two o’clock and she was alone, unpacking a delivery on the salon floor. Anita and Rosa had slipped cash from the register, informing her they were ‘heading out’, which meant they were down on the beach sipping coladas, examining their nails, bitching about her, and would be till half an hour before close.
The boxes were heavy, filled with stuff they didn’t need and could not afford, but the girls had to spend their time somehow and it would be Lori who made the returns. A guy in a van had dumped them by the door and told her to sign. Afterwards, she would remember scribbling her name in the space he indicated, and would that night, and in the nights to come, think back to how it was a different girl signing from the one she was now: that the Lori Garcia she’d been before had given her very last autograph and was finally checking out.
She was bent, her back to the door, when she heard someone come in.
Preparing to apologise for her sisters’ absence, since this was no doubt a forgotten appointment, she turned—and came face to face with a man. He was dark, short and stockily built, with a hard, low brow and a nose beaten out of shape. He possessed deep-set, unblinking eyes, and wore a black vest that exposed meaty, painted flesh at the neck and shoulders. His arms were sketched with tattoos, a cobra winding up one arm, its head emerging beneath his thick jaw, cut from a bad shave, where the serpent’s thin forked tongue escaped.
Diego Marquez. Rico’s brother.
‘What do you want?’ Lori asked coldly.
Diego’s mouth moved into a thin, satisfied smile. ‘A word, chica. That is all.’
‘I’m busy.’
‘So am I.’ He kicked the door shut with one foot. ‘Which is why you’re going to give me what I need and you’re going to make it quick.’
She backed off. ‘Don’t come any closer.’
‘What you gonna do about it?’ His eyes flicked behind her, scoping the place. ‘Looks like you might be getting a little lonely in here.’ He reached out, attempted to touch her but she pulled away. ‘You saying you don’t want company?�
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‘I mean it. I’ll call the police.’
He laughed. It was cold, dead, utterly without humour. Lori felt the push of wood against her back as she came into contact with the counter. Diego was close now, his breath in her face.
‘An’ how d’you think that’s gonna look? One Marquez boy not enough for you?’
Panic was rising, a steady, obliterating tide. ‘Please. I won’t tell anyone you were here.’
Diego narrowed his eyes. She could see the hard sinews in his neck, a trapped muscle pulsing like there was something living beneath his skin, writhing, contorting, trying to get out.
‘Oh no,’ he snarled. ‘Not until I get what I came for.’ This time, he grabbed her chin, the impact of it so hard, so sudden, she bit the inside of her cheek. ‘Are you gonna be a good girl and tell me what happened that night? Think carefully, now, ‘cause I don’t want no mistakes.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Sure you do. You were with Enrique. You were with him the whole time, the whole damn night. He never left your side, not once.’
‘That’s a lie. You know it is.’
Diego tightened his grip. ‘D’you think Enrique gives a fuck about the truth where he is right about now?’
Hate burned in Lori’s eyes. ‘You’ve done nothing for Rico,’ she countered. ‘You never have. All you’ve done is hurt him and ruin him and take away any chance of a life he might—’
This time Diego pressed his iron-hard body against her, pinning her in place. She could feel every contour, heavy as a brick, inescapable, suffocating. He made a sound of teasing disapproval, shaking his head with grim amusement. Up close she could smell him—the scent was of rotten sweat and something sharper, more astringent, like vinegar.
‘No, no, no,’ he taunted, ‘you’re not listening. This is how it works. I ask you for something, Loriana. You give it to me. Easy. Shall we try again?’
‘I’m giving you nothing.’
‘Then I won’t spare you nothing.’ Diego lunged for her—to kiss her, to take her by the throat?—but she was too quick. Darting from his grip, she ran. She went for the door, forgetting she had cleaned that morning and the floor was still slick with wet. Her feet vanished from under her. Uselessly she reached out to break the fall, spraining her wrist, and when her chin hit she felt a warmth of blood escape, so quick, as always blood was, as if her skin were an eggshell, or a balloon filled with water, thin-membraned and fit to rupture. A heavy foot landed across her back, pushing down on her lungs so that it hurt to breathe.
She heard the click of a cigarette being lit. Seconds later, the door opened, tantalisingly close to Lori’s desperate, upturned face, but at the same time impossibly far away. For a brief moment she imagined help had come.
It hadn’t.
Three other men walked in. Her ears felt cloudy so it was difficult to understand what they were saying. Her mouth tasted thick, the smell of antiseptic in her nostrils.
‘She causin’ you trouble?’ One of the boots nudged her lightly with its toe, then, when she didn’t protest, a bit harder, like a child prodding a frightened animal with a stick.
Diego hauled her up, holding Lori to him, her arms behind her back.
‘Let me go,’ she whimpered, making a futile attempt to break free.
One glance told her that wasn’t going to happen. Circling her was Diego’s gang. She looked from one to the next, with each pinched, expressionless face feeling hope dwindle—then, worse, a shoot of fear that blossomed and spread, climbing into her throat. The way they were eyeing her, sharply, greedily, and with a satisfied reticence that she had not the experience to consider but knew instinctively put her body at risk. One had a long, thin ponytail down his back. He licked dry lips.
‘Try again,’ said Diego, menacingly quiet in her ear. ‘And get it right this time or we are gonna fuck you up so bad that when you look in the mirror you won’t even know who’s lookin’ back. You got that, chica?’
‘Rico didn’t show,’ she spluttered. ‘It’s the truth. I don’t know what more you want.’
Diego tugged her backwards. Pain shot up her arm. ‘Give it to us, Loriana.’
She knew what they wanted. An alibi. The words that would set Rico free.
He was her boyfriend. The man I’m supposed to love. But she couldn’t.
‘I can’t lie for him,’ she choked. ‘I can’t.’
‘Aw.’ Diego arranged his mean features into something like pity. ‘There was me thinkin’ you were his girl.’ Roughly, he pushed her. She landed in the scrawny grip of the guy with the ponytail. ‘Girls do right by their men, wouldn’t you say, boys? But then if you ain’t his girl, then we ain’t gonna treat you like his girl. We’re gonna treat you just like what you are—a dirty fuckin’ whore.’
The scrawny grip was wrestling her. Violently she was thrust into another pair of arms, then another, and another, passed between them, playing with her like a kitten on a string, making her dizzy, her vision gather and dissolve like ink in water. The shoving got more and more forceful, she was conscious of hands seizing parts of her, wrenching at her with ferocity. She heard her dress tear. Someone kicked her, pulled her hair.
‘Stop,’ she begged. ‘Please, please, stop!’
‘Nah—not till we’ve had our fun.’ She didn’t know who spoke. Through the ringing in her ears she thought she heard a belt buckle being unclasped.
‘You heard her.’ A new voice. ‘Stop.’
Lori was thrown to the floor. Through red panic a splinter of blue appeared, like water poured on flames. A hot current travelled down her spine, the hairs at the back of her neck prickling, thousands of needlepoints, each tip like fire. She became aware of her breathing, low and shallow, and her frantic heart.
Diego spoke. ‘This ain’t nothin’ t’do with you, man. Back away.’
The stranger moved. She heard the clean smack of his step as he approached. Smart, controlled, precise. ‘Wrong. Let her go.’
Lori raised her head, taking the newcomer in in pieces—the oil-black shoes, the expensively tailored suit pants, the way a strip of crisp white shirt emerged from each sleeve of his jacket. His suit was the sharp, thousand-dollar sort she had seen on models in magazines and on businessmen who dealt in money and gambling and sex with their secretaries. He was tall. One of his hands was visible. Strong knuckles. His hair, the colour of sand after the tide’s been in; his precise profile and square-sharp jaw; his mouth. In his right earlobe he wore a flat black stud, which was ill-matched with the attire and spoke of something exotic.
The man regarded her directly and with a gaze that was bluer than the colour itself, light blue of a kind that seemed artificial. She saw his top lip was scarred, a jagged groove that ran like lightning, almost ugly, through his philtrum.
‘You got no business comin’ round here,’ warned one of Diego’s gang. They were hesitant with the stranger—they outnumbered him and yet they did not make a move. ‘Walk away now an’ no one gets hurt.’
The man reached down to Lori and held out his hand. With the gesture, his sleeve lifted a fraction and she saw a thin band of leather encircling his wrist.
‘Get up,’ he told her.
Diego was quick but the stranger was quicker, bringing Lori to her feet as if she weighed nothing at all. Smoothly, swiftly, he positioned his body in front of hers, simultaneously catching Diego’s punch in one of his fists.
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’
Diego’s eyes flashed a caution. One of his guys freed a gun. The weapon was raised.
‘We ain’t gonna tell you again,’ growled Diego. ‘Walk away. ’
One of the crew lunged but the man seized the strike, twisting the elbow back at such an angle that the body crumpled to the floor.
‘My arm!’ the guy howled. ‘My fuckin’ arm, you’ve broken it, you sonofabitch!’
A second swing; the audible rush of swiped air as he evaded the blow, landing his own fist squarely in t
he throat of his assailant, who performed a sickening pirouette and was slammed back against the wall with a force that made something crack.
The next she knew, they had the gun. The last of Diego’s crew still standing was making a run for it. ‘Fuckin’ get outta here, man!’ he urged his chief. ‘Fuckin’ let’s go!’
Diego stared down his own weapon. ‘You don’t know who I am,’ he said. ‘Do you?’
The gun didn’t waver.
Lori saw Diego hesitate, a ripple of fear behind his eyes.
‘Take your men away from here,’ the stranger said, in an accent she could not place. ‘And don’t ever come back. If you come back, you will disappear. Nobody will know what happened to you. Your wives will not know. Your friends will not know. Your brothers will not know. Your children will not know. Your lovers will wait for you in a cold room in a cold bed but you will never come. Do not doubt this will happen. If you come here again, it will happen to every last one of you.’
And in a rush that felt like flying, the stranger had taken her hand, she was with him, next to him, and they were moving, out of the door and into the blazing sun. She saw his car, a gleaming, purring Mercedes, black and silver, opened to an interior of plush, heavy-scented leather, a secret world. She hadn’t time to question her actions. They were inside, the door slammed shut; he was pushing a button and giving instructions to someone up front, concealed behind a screen of dark glass, to drive. He turned to her, eyes so blue, so blue.
‘I won’t let you go until I know it is over. I’m not going to hurt you. You’re safe with me.’
She found her voice, only it sounded like someone else’s. ‘Do I know you?’
‘No.’
The car was moving at speed. ‘Who are you?’
‘I am no one.’
Lori wanted to touch him. She wanted to touch him in a way she had never before encountered—raw, necessary, primal. The stranger was facing away, his profile still, his mouth set in a line of grim determination, as though he were trying to resist unseen temptation.