Yves was unrecognizable as the suave venture capitalist of daytime meetings at Transcendenta. His hair had fallen over his face. His shirt collar was undone, and his silk tie hung in a bedraggled noose round his neck. He looked wasted. He looked almost British. ‘You,’ Guy told him, ‘are fucking amazing. You are the man.’
‘No, you are amazing. This is so great, you know. You’re going to get so much work from those people. The way that Becker was looking at you, I thought she would jump over the table.’
‘You know what? I thought she was all right.’
‘All right?’
‘You know. Fit. Sexy.’
First Yves started to snigger, then Guy. The two of them clung on to each other, laughing so hard they almost tipped the drugs into the toilet bowl. Physical closeness put Guy into a confessional mood.
‘You know, Yves, if this hadn’t worked I’d be fucked. I mean really fucked. As it is, I don’t know if my fucking girlfriend has left me, or what the fuck is going on. But at least now I know you’re on my side. I’ve been thinking you were going to pull the plug.’
Yves looked at him and cracked a woozy smile. ‘That’s funny. You want to know a secret? I need this deal to work as badly as you. This fucking market is so down, I can’t tell you. All these technology companies we funded? They turned to shit. Every one. And if we don’t make some money soon I’m going to be fucked too. What do you think of that?’
‘Really?’
‘Really Why do you think I’m here? Your fucking company has to work. My ass is on the line, the same as yours.’
They looked at each other and started to laugh again. Guy thought he might be sick. The doorman banged impatiently on the cubicle door.
‘Time to go, I think,’ drawled Yves.
They stumbled back out into the club. Guy slumped on to his stool. He looked at his watch. It was past two. Yves put an arm round his shoulder, leaning on him heavily.
‘It’s too fucking bad about your girlfriend.’
‘Sure.’
‘But you’re with Yves Ballard and your company is going to be a lean machine and you got a new client and you’re the tomorrow man, right?’
‘Right.’
‘So now you got another girlfriend.’ Yves jerked a thumb behind him. Two of the dancers were hovering in the shadows, smoking cigarettes and whispering to each other.
‘Take whichever you like.’
‘But —’
‘Don’t worry. It’s all fixed. They all do a little work, you know, on the side. The manager takes a cut. It’s that kind of place.’1
‘It’s late, Yves.’
‘Don’t be a pussy. You English, you’re all such fucking pussies. Come on. You don’t have to spend the night with her. Just let her show you a good time for an hour, then kick her out the door. Come on, I already paid.’
‘You did?’
‘Sure. Don’t tell me I don’t look after my investments.’
Guy looked at the two women. There she was, the one he’d stared at, her long permed hair tied up, dressed now in a short white dress and high-heeled sandals. Even with her clothes on she was exciting. The prospect of going home with her was a little daunting.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘Irina,’ she said in a flat Eastern European accent. He felt a twinge of misgiving. Not a customer-service voice. But sexy, potentially.
‘So, all settled?’ asked Yves. ‘I see you tomorrow at the hotel.’ He shook Guy’s hand and left the club, leaning on the other girl for support. Guy realized Yves was even more wasted than he was. He wondered if he was going to get into his car.
Irina asked where they were going. Guy had a vision of trying to sneak her through the lobby of his hotel. He wasn’t sure it was a sensible idea.
‘Um, I’m not sure. Do you know somewhere?’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Come.’
Outside they found a taxi. Irina gave an address and they started off, the driver examining them in the rear-view mirror. They drove away from the city centre and the girl let a hand fall casually into Guy’s lap, squeezing experimentally. It was more an appraisal than a caress, the gesture of a housewife at a fruit stall. He couldn’t feel anything. His head was bubbling with pornographic fantasies, but they were all somehow disconnected from his body. He felt anaesthetized, worn out. A hard-on would require an effort of will.
Relax, Guy, he told himself. Yves was right. It was a bit of fun. But he looked out of the window at a street of darkened houses and wondered uneasily where they were going. It was three in the morning. They were heading out into the suburbs.
The border between the United States and Mexico is one of the most tightly controlled in the world. From Brownsville, Texas, to the California coast it runs for 2,000 miles, monitored by armed patrols equipped with thermal-imaging cameras and remote-movement sensors, portable X-ray devices, GPS optics, satellite maps and other technologies intended to prevent (or at least minimize) the unauthorized crossing of goods, vehicles and people. At San Ysidro, just south of San Diego, twenty-four lanes of traffic funnel into an artful system of concrete barriers designed to prevent vehicles turning or reversing as their details are checked against databases and trained dogs are encouraged by their handlers to sniff their wheel arches.
On the north side of the border is an outlet mall, where, under red-tiled roofs with fake adobe façades, piles of discount jeans and sports shoes are sold by sleepy staff who look out all day over the parking lot, hoping and dreaming about whatever you hope and dream about if you are administrating the disposal of surplus clothing and footwear at the very edge of America.
Arjun arrived on the morning shoppers’ shuttle, which made the journey from downtown San Diego in twenty minutes. It felt too quick. He needed more time to prepare. He stood for a while on a road bridge over the freeway, watching the vehicles inch forward towards the barriers, then meandered back into the mall, stopping to look in the window of a shoe store. Was it safe just to stroll out of America? That’s what all the other people were doing. They were just walking into Mexico. Surely that was too easy. Shouldn’t he take precautions?
He decided on a disguise. The unit next to the shoe store sold sunglasses, so he bought a pair and put them on. A few minutes later, catching sight of himself in the plate glass of Laura Ashley, he stopped to bite off the tag. Then he carried on, aimlessly wandering from Nautica to Levis to Banana Republic.
His first sight of Mexico had scared him. Beyond the parking lots and freight yards on the US side was a wide concrete river channel. Beyond that was a range of low hills clustered with flat-roofed cinderblock buildings. The air was hazy, scented with oil fumes and sewage. Over the sullen-looking city on the far side of the river, a giant Mexican flag hung limply on a tall pole. When Arjun saw the flag, the forlorn droop of it against the yellow-grey sky, he found he no longer knew which frightened him more: the possibility that he would be captured or the possibility he would not. For days the border had acted as the outer limit of his imagination. Beyond it were abstractions: Escape, Freedom, The Future. Now the future had a landscape, a mess of flat roofs strung with telephone and electrical wires, the store signs and billboards written in a language he did not understand. What kind of a life could he have over there?
The place on the other side of the river had a hopeless quality, not at all like the Mexico portrayed in cowboy movies. Where were the cacti, the white-clad peasants with the big hats? He browsed neurotically through racks of souvenir t-shirts. Their humorous slogans (one tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor!) passed through his mind without leaving a trace. As he picked up snow globes and methodically sorted through postcards he had no intention of buying, his body started to send out contradictory signals, most of them related in some way to physical distress. He felt hot and cold simultaneously. Under the arms of his pink polo shirt (the one he had been wearing for the previous seventy-two hours) there were large circles of sweat. He decided to drink coffee. Coffee, in his experience, was a drink with negen-tropic properties.