Lives Undone

by Aitana Moore

  Quinn threw an American passport in the air and she caught it. "Ashley Elizabeth Clark,” he announced.

  "You're always so old fashioned."

  "What do you want me to call you, Shakira or something? I’ve gotten you a new French passport, just in case the Lydie one has been compromised. That’s what you need to use when you get into Mexico. Then use the American documents when you’re with the mark. But don’t cross into the States—”

  “I’m not going there. You know that.”

  The photo in the US passport was of her as she really was. She wasn’t going to steal anything in Mexico; she was going to blackmail a blackmailer, so it didn’t matter what she looked like. There wasn't much she could do to change her hair, as it was already short, and she had no heart for the usual dyeing, or for sculpting her lips or for anything at all. She was only turning her green eyes to brown through contact lenses so that she felt less exposed.

  "You’ve changed again?" Cora had exclaimed over a video call the day before.

  At least she hadn't said, “You look sad, Lee.” Sometimes the biggest effort Lee had to make was for Cora to believe that all was fine, that she was happy and busy, working toward a future where they would be able to live together.

  “You were right, sweetheart. That hair was high maintenance.”

  “You look tired.”

  “A little bit. Demanding boss.”

  “Oh!” Cora widened her eyes. “Was he an asshole?”

  “Cora, language!”

  “Was he?”

  “Not exactly. I’m just glad it’s over.”

  I’m glad it’s over. I’m glad I won’t ever see him again.

  Now Lee took a deep breath and asked Quinn, "So, what about the boy?"

  "Diego is twenty-five. That's older than you. Did Bryce call him boy?"

  "Tell me about Diego," Lee insisted.

  "All right, intro to Diego."

  Quinn jumped out of the sun bed with sudden agility, and they sat next to each other at a small round table as he opened his laptop. Lee had already seen images of Diego Aguirre de Ayala. He was the first thing she had googled, as soon as she had access to internet. Caitlin wouldn't have gone around with a man who looked like a brute, even if he turned out to be one in spirit: Diego was a handsome young man with tidy dark hair and eyes that seemed sweet for a blackmailer.

  Scrolling through more photos, Quinn said, "Comes from high political stock — a great-great uncle on his mother’s side was president of Mexico and his grandfather is still a senator, although he’s almost eighty."

  A man in his fifties appeared on screen as Quinn continued, "His father Miguel is the head of Index, the family conglomerate. Stands for Industrias Mexicanas. Market value is at $9.5 billion."

  Lee let out a low whistle.

  "Right?" Quinn asked with a wry smile. "We've done nothing but roll around in a silly playground all our lives, Lee. Through Index the Aguirres have a finger in every pie, basically: oil, steel, tourism, transport, construction. And they've been rich for generations."

  He clicked the mouse again to show her a man in his early thirties. His hair was lighter than Diego's and his eyes blue, but their features were almost identical.

  "Diego's older brother, David. He’s already on the board of directors of the holding. Diego, on the other hand, is just returning to Mexico from business courses in Europe, which I suppose is how he met Caitlin. He will be entering the board soon."

  "Hobbies?"

  Again, images succeeded each other. "Skiing, jet skiing, bungee jumping, hunting, you name it. Your average imbecile billionaire who can't sit still."

  "I hate the hunters most of all," Lee mumbled. “At least the ones who hunt with guns.”

  "Killing Bambi and the Lion King and whatnot. I hate the jet-skiing idiots most of all, they keep me from falling asleep on beautiful beaches. Oh, he loves this."

  The image Quinn produced was of a game being played by white-clad men holding baskets.

  "I've seen that," Lee said. "Has two short names?"

  "Jai Alai," Quinn said, pronouncing it carefully. "Basque game. Lots of old Basque families in Mexico, they went there hundreds of years ago to massacre the natives and did very well."

  "Well, we can't hold that against Diego. Haven't you found any scandals?"

  Quinn reached backwards for his glass of bourbon and sounded regretful as he said, "It won't be that easy, Lee. If it were, wouldn't your brilliant victim-or-tormentor, don't know which, Señor Bryce have figured it out?"

  She shrugged. "I guess."

  "In a family like the Aguirres, there have to be whole cemeteries of dirt and populations of skeletons hiding. There must be walking dead coming out of every closet. The point, though, is that they have enough money to avoid anything sticking to them."

  Lee stood and moved to the edge of the terrace, looking down at the red roofs of Lisbon, which undulated all the way to the Tagus. "I only need something on Diego. Something he desperately wants to hide from his family."

  "I know. How will you meet him?"

  "Señor Bryce has given me an intro point. A Mexican artist he knows, who moves in the right circles. The Aguirres are her patrons and she can introduce me to Diego." Lee added, “The rest is up to my skills as a honeytrap.”

  “Is that what Bryce called you?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “We have to have thick skin, I guess,” Quinn said. “At least when we’re caught.”

  Turning, she motioned toward the laptop. "All of Diego’s known history's in there?"

  "I'm thorough, my sweet."

  Lee smiled. "You're the best."

  Was it the right time for Lee to tell Quinn that she wouldn’t go back to their old tricks? He was highly intelligent, and he probably already knew. It would feel like a goodbye to talk about it, and she didn’t ever want to say goodbye to Quinn.

  "Need to give you this," he said with another sigh.

  He opened the false bottom of a cream jar, revealing different kinds of tiny cameras, as usual. She had ditched the previous ones when she ran from Deerholt. Unfolding a kit with make-up brushes, he showed her the hidden reverse side, which held instruments she could use to open doors or duplicate keys.

  “And I’ll be a call or text away for any hacking you need,” he told her.

  She took his hand. “Quinn — I screwed up really badly. If James were a different kind of man, he’d have people out looking for you. He knew I wasn’t doing this alone.”

  “It was stupid of you to run like that, Lee. But I believe you when you say this isn’t the kind of man who would bother about me. I’m more worried about you, actually.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Can feel something. It’s because I’m Irish.”

  “Oh, and the Irish are special.”

  “We have special powers, we do. I feel that …”

  “What?”

  He gazed at her for a moment. "That this man is dangerous to you.”

  Scoffing, she poured herself a drink. “You haven’t even met him.”

  “The Irish trick wouldn’t be so impressive, if I had.”

  “You must have powers, then, because he was dangerous. I did get caught. The job was a bit too big, he was smart, and I guess I got nervous.”

  She was forced to look up when he didn’t say anything.

  “There’s something else I should tell you,” Quinn said softly. “In case you don't realize that others can see it."

  Her expression became detached. "What?”

  "You're madly in love with Bryce.” Swirling the bourbon, he continued, "And you've annihilated his trust and wounded his pride. He just found a horrible way to keep you close to him, that's all."

  "I've told you," she said, almost impatiently, "he'd do anything for his sister, and this is the only thing he can do to make sure she's safe."

  Quinn shook his head slowly. “I want you to understand: you're going into Diego's life as a fake, and you'r
e used to doing that — but you're doing it for a different reason now. What doesn't change is that you have a mission, and you have to keep a cool head at all times. Get what you need, get out. Don’t act like you did with Bryce, because that's how you got caught."

  “I’m not dawdling again, if that’s what you mean.”

  “What I mean is that I have a big feeling Bryce will appear in Mexico. He will go to you, and when he does you have to get rid of him or the cool head is gone, and you'll make mistakes. You can't afford that, not a second time."

  Lee said nothing, and his eyes bored into hers to drive the point home. "Do you hear me, Lee?"

  "I hear you."

  She didn't think Quinn knew what he was talking about. She was never going to see James again.

  FOUR

  As Lee shopped for “Ashley” and packed her suitcase, she felt no butterflies in her stomach, no obsessive curiosity over Diego, no anticipation or excitement.

  She had been found out, and she didn’t think stealing would ever give her the same rush again. Even if James felt the indifference he professed for her criminal activities, even if she never saw him again, she would feel watched. It wasn’t her secret anymore, a secret she could only have shared with Quinn. It was out in the open, subject to the judgment of a man whose opinion mattered to her, much as she told herself otherwise.

  You’re just a thief …

  It had hurt to hear him say that. James was a man of principles; even if his beliefs were unconventional at times, he had the grace of standing by them and bearing the consequences. A thief was a weathervane, changing with every wind. A thief was nothing and no one, which was what Lee had often longed to be.

  Lost as a light is lost in light.

  It felt sordid to put away the cameras and instruments Quinn had given her, to hide the American documents so that she could go through immigration with her French ones. She had almost no imagination for Ashley’s story and hoped that Diego would turn out like many spoiled young men: incapable of listening. She hoped he would boast every time he opened his mouth, and never hear a word she uttered.

  Unlike James.

  As she crossed the Atlantic toward Mexico, Lee swatted away thoughts of James as if she were in a jungle infested with disease-carrying mosquitoes — but the memories slipped inside her head anyway, as persistent as a delirium: she thought of how it had felt to be filled with him, how it had felt when he was savage and when he was tender, how pleasure had been something much greater than it was meant to be.

  She had often been told that pleasure was for animals, and yet pleasure had made her more human.

  I find it hard to forgive, James had written in one of his notebooks, a long time ago. He would never forgive her, but he might have had pity and turned her loose — or let her rot in prison. Instead, he had chosen to humiliate her.

  Shaking her head to clear it, she took her iPad and looked at the information she had saved about James’ friend, Soledad Díaz Romero. The images showed a woman in her mid-forties, with hair, lips and nails an outrageous shade of red. Sol Díaz’s work had been exhibited in some of the world’s most sacred halls of art. There were photos of her with Damien Hirst, Ai Weiwei and Louise Bourgeois, among other luminaries. Her work included a provocative installation depicting Mexican politicians being tortured by giant aliens, but it had still turned her into a status symbol for the very rich.

  In his brief phone call to Lee, James had explained that Sol knew about Lee’s “career” and was aware that her name wasn’t Ashley.

  “She’s not that curious about people’s lives,” James had said. “You don’t have to worry.”

  Still, Lee was about to stay at Sol’s for a week before she ever met Diego. She hoped the woman was pleasant, at least, and not some sort of gruff artist.

  As the plane moved in the void, Lee didn’t recline her chair or try to sleep; she knew it would be futile. She stared at the darkness outside and let an action film play through her earphones. If she slept she would dream, and she wanted no good dreams — and no bad ones either.

  It was in a state of alertness mixed with exhaustion that she went through immigration at Benito Juarez International Airport the next morning. Her French passport was as good as the one before, and outside she got a special taxi to take her to Sol’s house.

  The Federal District or DF, as the locals called Mexico’s capital, was enormous. The plane had crossed it for a good quarter of an hour or more before landing, while smog hovered over the city like a Biblical pestilence. The taxi driver explained to her in bad English that private cars were not allowed to circulate on certain days, according to their license plate numbers.

  “La contaminación bajó, pero no lo bastante,” he said.

  The pollution had decreased, but not enough.

  Traffic was certainly a bitch in the DF, and a good ninety minutes passed before they had to stop at a gate for her to identify herself. Once she was cleared, the driver dropped her down the street before a charming pink façade with white stucco decoration around doors and windows. As she paid him and rolled her luggage over cobblestones, the front door was thrown open and Sol appeared in an elaborate Chinese robe and heeled slippers.

  “Welcome, welcome, welcome! How was your terrible flight?” she asked dramatically. She spoke good English with a slight British accent; her biography stated that she had lived in London for a decade.

  Sol advanced to help Lee with the luggage, not before putting an arm around her guest’s neck and giving her a resounding kiss on each cheek.

  “Terrible but all right,” Lee said.

  “It’s all can we hope for, my dear. But I’m making it up to you con un desayuno extraordinario.” An extraordinary breakfast. She pulled back to look at Lee’s face. “No hablas español?”

  “Entiendo mucho, hablo un poquito,” Lee said. I understand a lot and speak a little.

  Sol pulled her by the hand into the house. “Well, you’ll pretend that you entiende muy poco and no habla nada. I mean, you’re a spy, right?”

  She gave a big, delighted, generous laugh. Lee already liked Sol; if she could concentrate on that fact, perhaps she wouldn’t have to think that she had to seduce a man when she couldn’t stop thinking of another.

  “What’s the deal between you two?” Sol asked her two days later. “You and James?”

  Lee gave a wry smile as she looked up from a gossip magazine. “And he said you weren’t curious about people ...”

  It was easy to feel close to Sol, who demolished the barriers of politeness with intrusive but good-natured questions that didn’t offend Lee.

  “What does he know?” Sol wondered with a comical grimace. “Besides, he sold me some bullshit when he asked me to introduce you to Diego Aguirre.”

  “He didn’t tell you—?”

  “He told me about Caitlin and the blackmail. And that you’re some sort of Mata Hari who will make it right. He didn’t tell me you two were involved.”

  Her eyes returning to the magazine in a show of indifference, Lee said, “We’re not.”

  “Then what’s that smutty film playing all over your face every time he’s mentioned?” Sol asked. “Well, it’s either a smutty film or painful longing. Or you jump like you’ve been hit by lightning.”

  “You’re imagining stuff,” Lee insisted in a small voice.

  Sol snorted. “Sure. Two people this attractive get together and it’s all a business deal. Unless you’re gay?”

  Taking a deep breath, Lee put down the magazine and let her eyes meet Sol’s. There wasn’t sarcasm in the older woman’s; there was understanding. Lee shrugged.

  “I’m not gay. Something went wrong, and it was my fault.”

  “And it can’t be put right?”

  “No.”

  “Hmmm.” Sol held up the skirt she had been making: it was white, and she had painted men with sombreros, cacti, churches, hearts and skeletons on it. “Do you like all these Mexican clichés?”

  “The
skirt looks wonderful.”

  Sol held it against her own wiry body. “It’s for you.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. I need to glitter it up, though.”

  “It’s an expensive gift!”

  “A bit of fabric, paint and some sequins?”

  “From Sol Díaz, though.”

  “To Mata Hari.”

  They laughed, but when Lee’s eyes fell on the magazine again, she became serious. “Am I his type?”

  Knowing she meant Diego, Sol said, “He likes foreign girls. If it were David, the brother, you’d have less of a chance.”

  Lee looked at the photo of David Aguirre and a beautiful girl with brown skin, oblique eyes and black hair. “Is she his type?”

  “Very much so. And the parents don’t like it one bit.”

  Lee scoffed. “At this day and age! Who cares—?”

  “Oh, my dear,” Sol said as she threaded a needle. She looked at Lee over her glasses. “Really?”

  “Well, all right.” Lee let the magazine fall on her lap. “People are racists, what else is new?”

  “Here it’s even more about class,” Sol explained. “We might all find a bit of Aztec or Mayan in us, if we were to bother with DNA tests. But a girl who looks like that comes from the wrong side of the tracks, as the Americans say. Perhaps a liberal family might accept her — not the Aguirres.”

  “But David is all over the press with her.”

  “And other girls like her. He’ll never marry them, though. He’ll act wild and he’ll upset his parents for a bit, then he’ll marry someone like him.”

  Lee’s eyes returned to the magazine, this time to Diego’s smiling face as he posed with his family. He looked young, clean-cut and harmless, and he meant hell to her.

  “I hope there’s something horribly wrong with Diego,” she said.

  Sol looked up from the skirt, and now there was regret on her face.

  “And I hope he shows it really fast.”