The Blue Guide

by Carrie Williams

  I immediately want to take back my words, rewind time like Superman does to save Lois Lane, come in again and say something sensible. Of course this is not his first visit to London: he’s an international dance superstar, for God’s sake. I know for a fact he did a season at Sadler’s Wells just a couple of years back.

  But Paco is all smiles and good cheer. ‘Oh no,’ he says. ‘I have been here many, many times. I just love this city. But I’ve never really had time to see much of it, I’ve always been so busy. And Carlotta –’ he smiles over at his wife ‘– this is Carlotta’s first time here. So when an acquaintance mentioned your tours, I thought I would treat her.’

  I’m mentally riffling through my client list, avid to know who recommended me, but I can’t bring myself to ask. I wouldn’t hesitate with asking a regular customer, but with a celebrity it seems like an intrusion. I resolve to pluck up the courage when I’ve spent a little more time with Paco, or try to worm it out of Carlotta sometime. It would be interesting to know who rates me highly enough to recommend me to a superstar.

  The waiter returns to convey the chef’s recommendations and before long we’re enjoying a starter of lobster, langoustines and scallops in an anis-infused saffron nage. Carlotta, I notice, eats hers almost wolfishly, and I’m relieved. If she was one of those faddy picky women who shuffle their food around the plate in the hope that no one notices they’re not eating any of it, I’d be worried about looking like a glutton next to her. But no, she tucks in heartily, and I am pleased to have met another woman of appetite. She’s slim, mind, as her clingy strapless red dress testifies.

  It’s Paco, surprisingly, who really only toys with his meal. It rapidly becomes clear, as the starter is cleared away and a main course of veal fillet with foie gras ravioli is set down before us, that he loves the sound of his own voice, regaling us with tales of his globetrotting and the big names he regularly rubs shoulders with – Baryshnikov, Bono, Damien Hirst. Carlotta pays me virtually no heed during all of this: her eyes are riveted to her husband, though she must have heard all these stories countless times. Or maybe not, if they had such a whirlwind romance.

  As our desserts arrive, I finally get a space in which to broach the subject that has been bugging me all night. Turning towards Carlotta, keen to hear the facts from her rather than Paco, I say:

  ‘So Carlotta, how long have you and Paco been married?’

  Carlotta turns her electrifying gaze on me, pausing for a minute as if weighing me up. ‘A month,’ she says then, and smiles a little coyly. ‘Just one month.’ She looks back at Paco, adulation in her eyes. Without moving them from his, she spoons some of the unctuous chocolate soufflé with black pepper sauce into her mouth.

  ‘Well, congratulations,’ I say. She hasn’t looked back at me. ‘Where did you meet?’

  Paco wades back in before his new bride can continue. ‘Carlotta’s an actress,’ he says. ‘We met at a party thrown by my agent. We kept the wedding very hush hush. We want to be left alone.’

  ‘Have I seen any of your films?’ I ask Carlotta.

  ‘She’s not been in any yet,’ says Paco, smiling encouragingly over at her, as one would, it strikes me, a child. ‘She’s only just really started out. But it’s only a matter of time. She’s incredibly talented.’ He winks at her. ‘As well as beautiful.’

  I’m starting to feel a bit queasy now, in the presence of all this mutual adoration, and as our coffees arrive I finally turn talk to business, which is after all what we’re here for – to formulate a sightseeing itinerary. I open my virgin Smythson notebook, which I picked up on Sloane Street just before my beauty treatments at Harvey Nichols. Specially chosen to impress a client of Paco’s calibre, its thick, luscious, creamy pages are bound by a cover of the best black leather. It shrieks professionalism and good taste.

  ‘So,’ I say, pen poised. ‘What would you like to see while you’re in town?’

  Paco leans back, resuming his relaxed pose of earlier, and runs his fingers through his luxuriant locks before lighting another slender cigar.

  ‘Well,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘There are lots of places I should have visited by now, and which I’d like to. But realistically speaking, I am not going to have a great deal of time. It’s really Carlotta I’m concerned about. I want her to have a good time while I’m stuck in all my boring meetings and rehearsals and shows.’

  I hope my face doesn’t show my feelings as I hear these words. I was all fired up for my celebrity client, envisaging incognito trips to Somerset House and the British Museum with Paco disguised behind Gucci shades, diving in and out of taxis in a bid to shake off the press. Instead I find I’m little more than a glorified babysitter to his ingenue wife. To a nobody.

  I turn to her a little tetchily. ‘And what would you like to see, Carlotta?’

  She’s about to open her mouth when Paco, surprise surprise, answers for her.

  ‘Carlotta likes shopping,’ he says, smiling at her indulgently, as you would a spoilt child. ‘And she likes art, modern art especially.’ His eyes flit to me. ‘She used to be an artists’ model in Madrid,’ he says proudly, raising his chin a little, then looking back at his wife. ‘My little nymph has posed for some of the most talented Spanish artists of our generation, haven’t you, angel?’

  Carlotta nods, tracing her finger around the rim of her wine glass. She’s looking at neither of us now, and I sense a little tension in the air that wasn’t there before. I jot down a few words in my notebook, more for show than for anything else, then slap it closed and slip it into my bag.

  ‘Well, it’s getting late,’ I say, ‘and I suppose that Carlotta and I can discuss itineraries between ourselves, since you are not going to be involved.’

  ‘Sure,’ Paco nods. ‘I have a lunch appointment tomorrow followed by a meeting at one of the venues, so perhaps you could go out for lunch together and take it from there. Is that OK, darling?’ he says to Carlotta, almost as an afterthought.

  ‘Of course.’ She smiles up at him, her dark mood dissipated.

  ‘Great,’ I say, and after making arrangements to meet in the lobby of her hotel the next day, I leave for home.

  6

  THE NEXT MORNING my mobile rings as I am getting out of the bath after a lie-in and a long, leisurely breakfast. I’ve reconciled myself to two weeks of trawling designer clothes shops and making vapid art gallery chat with Paco’s petulant bride, and I am in fact congratulating myself on the money and wondering about booking myself a holiday when the job is over. The past few months have really knocked the wind out of my sails.

  It’s Paco on the line, relaying the news that Carlotta has been called to an audition in Madrid at very short notice. I feign disappointment but I am secretly pleased; they have booked up my time, and now I can extend my slobbish morning and not feel guilty about it.

  Just as I am about to hang up and research the best airfares to the Caribbean, Paco speaks up again.

  ‘Listen,’ he says. ‘I don’t have plans for this evening, as Carlotta and I were just going to chill out in our suite. How about if you show me some of London, after all, while I’m at a loose end?’

  ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Do you have any preferences?’

  ‘I’m easy,’ he says. ‘I put myself in your capable hands.’

  ‘Great,’ I say, starting to flick through the copy of Time Out in front of me for inspiration. ‘I’ll pick you up from your hotel at – say, seven?’

  ‘Fabulous. Que le vaya bien.’

  I’m not at all sure that Paco will enjoy Stomp, a West End musical inspired by street theatre. I’m worried that it will be a bit downmarket for him. But I chance it, and afterwards I’m glad that I did because he proclaims himself an enthusiast of the wordless show in which dancers move to rhythms generated by oil drums, rubbish bins and brooms. Indeed, he confesses that he may go and see it again if he has time, as some of the moves have given him inspiration for his own performances.

  Although I know very little abo
ut the dance world, I manage to bluff it as we stroll from the Vaudeville Theatre on the Strand up through Covent Garden to Hakkasan, a stylish contemporary Cantonese and dim sum restaurant where I have booked us a corner table. This is the only time, it seems, I am likely to have Paco to myself, so I’m hoping he won’t be recognised. The low lighting should help.

  Not that he has particularly endeared himself to me so far – I found his attitude towards Carlotta at dinner last night, and his general monopolisation of the conversation, more than a little macho. But then I suppose most celebrities must be this way – self-centred, dominating, insensitive to others’ feelings – from being indulged and kowtowed to the whole time. For all that, I am more impressed than I would openly admit by being in the presence of someone who’s in the papers just about every day. And I’m curious to find out more about him.

  I watch him as he browses the menu. He’s divine, even more so in the flesh than in the magazines, and suddenly, from out the blue, I have a vision of him lying naked on a big hotel bed being straddled by Carlotta, her tight little pussy slotting down over his straining cock. It is all I can do not to splutter my wine all over Paco, so stunned am I by the lewd workings of my own imagination.

  Paco is looking at me a bit funny now. ‘Are you OK, Alicia?’ he says, and I am heartened to detect what seems like real concern in his eyes. Maybe he’s not such a big phoney after all.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, and I cringe at what his reaction would be if he’d been able to read my mind, to discover the dirty thoughts that are germinating there.

  ‘Good.’ He smiles, and looks back at the menu. ‘What about if we shared a few dishes?’ he proposes. ‘Carlotta and I often do that, especially in this kind of restaurant.’

  My reservations about his machismo not with standing, I’m secretly flattered by the offer, by being placed in the same situation as his wife, and readily agree to the proposal. In fact, I even go so far as to give him total responsibility for choosing what to have. Still, I don’t regret it as I listen to him ordering – most of the dishes are the very ones I would have picked myself, including mango spring rolls filled with scallops and prawns. He also orders one of the best bottles on the wine list, a Sancerre. I grin, sit back and prepare to let myself be seriously pampered.

  We end up drinking several bottles of the wine, and the evening turns into a long one. I am pleased to have the distraction, and also touched to sense that Paco is slightly lost without little Carlotta at his side: gone is his braggart talk of yesterday evening, and in fact most topics of conversation turn inevitably back to her, to the point where it doesn’t feel cheeky of me to probe a little more.

  ‘So you say you met her at your agent’s house,’ I prompt.

  He nods, his eyes already far away as if he is reliving the scene in his head. ‘She was talking to my best friend,’ he says, his voice small now, constricted in his throat as he re-experiences that flowering of desire. ‘At first I saw virtually nothing of her – she was wearing a scooped-back dress, and her hair swung short of the small of her back. But already I wanted her. I had to stop myself from going over and placing the palm of my hand on her naked brown flesh, from licking it.’

  I observe him intently as he speaks, watching tiny beads of perspiration erupt on his brow while he bears witness to his lust, with no trace of self-consciousness.

  ‘What did you do?’ I almost whisper, awed to be privy to a moment of abandonment as strong as I felt with Daniel.

  He looks at me, his eyes lost to the memory. ‘I put the woman I was with in a taxi,’ he says. ‘I was a complete bastard – I told her I had a headache and was going to call my chauffeur to fetch me.’ He sighs. ‘Then I went back in and I got her.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I told my best friend someone was looking for him in the next room.’ He snorts, shakes his head. ‘I lied to my best friend. Can you believe it?’

  I nod. ‘You really wanted her,’ I say.

  ‘My God, yes. Alicia, I think I might just have died right there and then if I couldn’t have her. And I hadn’t even seen her face by then.’

  ‘But you did now.’

  ‘Yes, my friend left – looking a bit pissed-off, I must say. But Carlotta told me later he stood no chance with her, so I didn’t feel too guilty. And he forgave me in the end, when he saw how we are together.’

  ‘What did you say to her?’

  ‘Do you know what? I don’t remember. I’ve thought about it so many times since, and I have absolutely no idea what our first words to each other were. Isn’t it ridiculous? – something so important. All I know is, within twenty minutes we were fucking each others’ brains out on the clifftop beyond my agent’s villa. Screaming the night down.’

  I look away over Paco’s shoulder, at the other people sitting chatting at their tables, none of them in the slightest degree aware of how my cunt has gone up in flames at his words. Part of me can’t believe he is telling me all this, although I know I have goaded him on. I want more, and yet I don’t know if I can handle it. The only thing I’m at all sure of is that I am going to have the mother of all wanks when I get home tonight.

  Prolonging the agony, Paco orders us a couple of Chinese plum brandies while he waits for our bill to be brought over. I’m half-considering sneaking off to the loo to pleasure myself while he settles up, when he leans in towards me and says:

  ‘Since Carlotta’s not back until tomorrow evening and you don’t need to get up for work, why don’t you come back to my hotel? I’ll order up a nightcap and you can bounce some ideas off me about things to do with Carlotta. She gets easily bored, poor thing. What she really needs is a good friend in life. Other than me, of course.’

  I look at him. I’m a bit pissed, he’s a bit pissed. More than a bit, in fact. In the light of his last statement and what he’s just told me about his first time with Carlotta, I don’t think he’s going to make a move on me. But do I trust myself? Horny as I am right now, how am I going to stop myself jumping on him and making a complete fool of myself? No, far better to just hop in a cab and get the hell out of here, to my own bed and the friction of my own fingers on my yearning clit, or better still the pulsing of the big pink vibrator that’s currently nestling in my bedside drawer, ready for moments like this.

  But as these thoughts spin through my brain, already we’re outside on the pavement and Paco is flagging down a cab. We’re inside before I can say another word, and within minutes we’re racing along Goodge Street and then Mortimer Street, just off which the driver swings us into the forecourt of Paco’s hotel and a waiting doorman helps us out.

  Once up the front steps and inside the hotel, Paco ushers me into a lift and we ascend to the Infinity Suite, which I happen to know is just about the most expensive in London. I’ve been itching to know what it is like since Fenella mentioned that he was booked in here.

  He passes his card through the swipe and pushes the door open for me, revealing a dramatic vestibule with walls sheathed in sumptous aubergine silk. At the end of it, an abstract sculpture made from optical glass seems both to reflect the light and capture it within itself. I’d thought I’d seen some swank in London, but this place is in its own league.

  We walk down the hallway towards the drawing room, where a strange fluffy modern chandlier twinkles above a dining table, beside two huge armchairs swathed in purplish velvet and a gently curving cream sofa. I plump myself down in one of the former, marvelling at its softness, and gaze around me.

  ‘Some suite,’ I say.

  ‘Isn’t it just?’ smiles Paco. ‘I’ll get us those drinks.’ He presses a button on the phone and within minutes a butler appears to take care of our needs.

  ‘I used to stay in the Hempel in Bayswater,’ he says, ‘but last time I decided that whole Eastern minimalist vibe is getting rather tired. And the area is a bit of a dump. This suits my mood perfectly – a grand old hotel but contemporary decor, and about as central as you can get. Shall I show you around?’ />
  I nod, unceasingly curious about London’s most exclusive nooks and crannies, and keen not to waste any opportunity my job grants me to have a peek at them.

  As we are about to set forth, the butler reappears with a tray bearing two brandy glasses and a whole decanter full of the rich amber liquid. Setting it down on the enormous square coffee table, beside a ceramic bowl filled – rather pointlessly, I think to myself – with outsized ceramic eggs, he pours us two generous measures and, bowing slightly, slips away, leaving us alone again.

  Paco hands me a glass then gestures towards a door. ‘The master bedroom,’ he declares. I walk in ahead of him and am confronted by a massive mahoghany four-poster bed dressed in velvet of the deepest burgundy and black and white toile de Jouy. Paco points out to me the separate dressing rooms, then we go back through the entrance hall and he shows me the ‘guest bedroom’ with its two queen-size beds clad in eau-de-Nil fabrics, followed by the small pantry kitchen from which the butler operates. All in all, I’m pretty impressed, and I say so.

  ‘Well, that’s not all,’ says Paco with a smile. ‘I’ve saved the best until last. Come this way.’

  I follow him, and he leads the way back through the master bedroom and into its ensuite bathroom, in the middle of which stands a huge, deep bath. Paco steps forward and presses a button, and the bath begins to project colours, running through a spectrum from red to white.

  ‘Chromatherapy,’ explains Paco. ‘You hit the button to stop it on the colour that best suits your mood, or the mood that you would like to be in – red is stimulating, indigo is sedating, green is harmonising and so on. Your eyes and your skin absorb the colour, apparently, and you get happy, or sleepy, or whatever you want to be.’

  ‘Why don’t you try it?’ he says, leaning forwards to start the bath filling. ‘It also has a hydrotherapy option, basically lots of fizzy bubbles. Please, be my guest. I’ll get my man to bring up an extra bathrobe.’