?No, Carlos . . .?
?They give you extra??
?No.?
?So why see them??
?I have to make a living.?
He was silent until she said his name.
?Carlos will come tomorrow. Carlos wants to be first, you unnerstand? First love of the day.?
?He phoned one day and he said he was going to send someone to pick me up. These two guys that I didn?t know came in a big BMW, one of those with a road map on a television up front, and they took me to Camps Bay. We got out, but you couldn?t see the house, it was up on the slope. You go up in a lift. Everything is glass and the view is out of this world, but there wasn?t really furniture in it. Carlos said he had just bought it and I must help him, as he wasn?t very good with decorating and stuff.
?Maybe that was the night I clicked for the first time. I had been there for half an hour when I looked at my watch, but Carlos was angry and said: ?Don?t look at your watch.?
?When I wanted to protest, he said: ?Carlos will take care of you, hokay??
?We ate on the balcony, on a blanket, and Carlos chatted as if we were boyfriend and girlfriend. The other two who fetched me were around somewhere, and he told me they were bodyguards and there was nothing to be scared of.
?Then he asked me: ?How much do you get in a month, conchita?? I didn?t like to say. Lots of them ask, but I never say?it?s not their business. So I told him: ?That?s private.?
?Then he came out with it. ?Carlos do not want his girlfriend to see other guys. But he knows you must make a living, so he will pay what you make. More. Double.?
?So I said: ?No, Carlos, I can?t,? and that made him angry, for the first time. He smacked all the food around on the blanket and screamed at me in Spanish, and I thought he would hit me. So I took my handbag and said I had better go. I was scared; he was another person, his face . . . The bodyguards came walking out and talked to him and suddenly he calmed down and he just said: ?Sorry, conchita, Carlos is so sorry.? But I asked him, please, could they just take me home, and he said he would do it himself and all the way he was sorry and he made jokes and when I got out he gave me two thousand. I took it, because I thought if I tried to give it back he would be angry again.
?The next morning I phoned Vanessa and asked her what I should do, this guy thinks I am his girlfriend and he wants to pay me to be with just him and she said that is bad news, I must get rid of him, that sort of thing could ruin my whole business. So I said thanks and bye, because I didn?t want to tell her this guy is in drugs and he has a terrible temper and I haven?t a clue how to get rid of him.
?So I phoned Carlos and he said he was terribly sorry, it was his work that made him like that, and he sent flowers and I started to think it would be okay. But then they assaulted one of my clients, just outside the door of my room in the Gardens Center.?
The master bedroom of the Camps Bay house had a four-poster bed now. He had retained an expensive, well-known interior decorator who had begun with the bedroom and everything was in white: curtains, bedding, drapes on the bed like the sails of a ship. He showed off like a little boy, keeping his hands over her eyes all the way down the passage and then: ?Ta-daaa!? and watched her reaction. He asked her four or five times, ?You like the master?s bedroom?? and she said, ?It?s beautiful,? because it was.
He dived onto the bed and said, ?Come to Carlos,? and he was exuberant, even more boisterous than usual, and she tried to forget about the bodyguards somewhere in the house.
Later he lay beside her and softly traced little circles around her nipple with the tip of the little gold crucifix. ?Where do you live, conchita??
?You know . . .?
?No, where do you
?
?Gardens Center,? she replied, hoping he would drop the subject.
?You think Carlos is stupid because he looks stupid? You work there, but where is your home, where is the place with your pictures on the fridge??
?I can?t afford another place, you pay me too little.?
?Carlos pay you too little? Carlos pay you too much. All the time the moneyman is saying: ?Carlos, we are here to make a profit, remember.? ?
?You have a bookkeeper??
?Of course. You think Carlos is small fish? Cocaine is big business, conchita, very big business.?
?Oh.?
?So you will take Carlos to your house??
Never, she thought, never ever, but said, ?One day . . .?
?You don?t trust Carlos??
?Can I ask you a question??
?Conchita, you can ask Carlos anything.?
?Did you have my client beaten up??
