The Cutting Room (11 page)

Jorge sank into a chair and swung his long, famous legs over one side. I took a seat, too, careful of my insulted crotch.

“I’m more than her manager,” he said. “In Spain, there are bigger things than show business.”

“Like soccer?” I asked.

Another smirk crossed his face.

“Like love,” Jorge answered.

I nodded, comprehending at last. I wondered if the country knew that its favorite soccer superstar was the Fizz girl’s lover. Jorge soon cleared that up.

“I am keeping our relationship private,” he said. “And I will not have it spoiled by her running off to America to pursue a . . .
career
.”

He said the last word with contempt. I wondered if Ben had actually been right about how Erendira had disappeared.

“Did
you
. . . steal her back from California?” I asked.

“I have never set foot in your country. She came back because she wanted to.”

“She came back because she had
The Magnificent Ambersons
.”

Jorge looked at me warily. “Is that an American team?”

I smiled. “It’s a movie.”

“Oh, is that all.” He shrugged dismissively.

I realized that here was a star as big as Ben, and totally unimpressed by him. So, I figured, now it was every man for himself.

“Look, I’m not interested in Erendira,” I said. “I’m just here on Ben Williams’s dime and time. I’m really looking for the movie.”

Jorge glanced at me with amusement, engaged by my disobedience. To him, I was an entertaining little monkey. Then he only shrugged. “Well, good luck.”

Gatekeeper of his girlfriend, Jorge would allow no access of any kind. I wondered how much say Erendira had in any of this. She obviously had not told Jorge about
Ambersons
. Or, more likely, he simply had not cared. Did she even have it? I also wondered something else.

“Doesn’t either one of you have a last name?”

I had ceased to antagonize; now I no longer even amused. My audience with the great Jorge was over.

“May I use your bathroom?” I asked.

As I approached one of several marble bathrooms, I passed many closed doors behind which, I assumed, the soccer players frolicked, or whatever soccer players do.

Then the door nearest the john opened.

It opened just enough for me to see a pair of eyes. They were dark eyes, a woman’s eyes. For the brief moment I saw them, they bore into me with a combination of yearning, volatility, and distrust. Then the door closed again, silently.

In the bathroom, I splashed ice-cold water on my flushed and burning skin. Erendira was here, just a few steps away! Her headshot had not done her justice. In person, just her eyes, for just a few seconds, gave off the glow that had so entranced Ben Williams.

But in such company, what could I do about it? Jorge’s self-centeredness was oddly appealing; how dangerous was he without his teammates? Could I risk confronting her without disturbing him? Could I disturb him without damaging myself? For what it was worth, I didn’t even have my gun.

Then I heard a swish.

It was almost inaudible, something sliding across marble tile. When I turned, I saw that a note had been pushed beneath the door and now lay at my feet.

It had been written on Fizz stationery.

Meet me tomorrow at noon.

Erendira

The address she gave me was near the waterfront, away from the tourist trade. I folded it carefully and placed it in my pocket.

“All better?” Jorge asked me when I returned.

“Much,” I answered.

By the time I left, I was an old friend of the team’s. Earlier, Jorge had decided I was no one to fear; now he knew I was no one to hate. I was just a pawn of an arrogant movie star from a smug, shallow, and self-obsessed country. I had even shown a little moxie in defying my boss. He summoned his “boys” back in. We all had a beer, proposed a toast, then had another beer, and another toast. Their earlier attempts to kick me to death were forgotten.

“No comprende!”
they called me, in tribute.

In Spain, stars were better company than in the U.S.

When I left, I navigated my way through the huge crowd that still remained outside. I was no drinker, but my beer buzz made it a less uncomfortable, slightly psychedelic experience. So many colors, so much music, so close to so many girls!

At the crowd’s edge, I turned back. From his window twenty floors up, the tiny figure of Jorge now stood, waving beneficently to his fans. He was like a kindly king, allowing himself to be loved. Upon seeing him, the crowd roared.

How could you not like the guy?

All the way back to my hotel, the beer continued to give me a pleasant lift. It was only shaken by the memory of Jorge’s beautiful princess, who was hidden in his tower—and what she might give me once she was freed.

Noon at the Bar Bar might as well have been midnight.

It was a dark place near the Barcelona docks, populated by a few older workmen, looking deep into their drinks. I noticed two obvious male transvestites sitting, undisturbed, among them. The name revealed its lack of pretension: it was a bar, just a bar, and if you wanted something else, get out.

It was past noon, way past, one o’clock. I was beginning to suspect that Erendira would not appear, had not been able to escape. How could she, in the middle of the day like this?

The heavyset bartender had turned on a mounted TV. To the indifference of the patrons, a soccer game now served as entertainment. The star player, cascading across the field, tapping the ball past the opposing team, was Jorge.

I realized: He was at work now. Then, a small woman, her face covered by the chic hood of her expensive sweater, sat beside me.

She loosened her backpack. The hood fell to her shoulders. Lustrous dark hair spilled out below her neck. The same striking eyes, now filled with fear as well as need and suspicion, burned into mine.

“So, who are you?” Erendira asked, in English.

“Just a movie fan,” I answered.

Bottles of Fizz stood in clear sight among the Scotches and beers behind the counter. But there was no sign of recognition from the Bar Bar. Either no one cared, or no one could believe that such a woman would be slumming there.

“I’m taking a chance in trusting you,” she said.

“I know.”

“I heard what you said to Jorge. You might have lied. You might just be here to bring me back to Ben Williams.”

“That’s true.”

“Because, you know, I was burned by him before.”

I saw traces of the sultriness and innocence that had knocked Ben out. Mostly, though, Erendira just seemed agitated, and her thumbnail picked nervously at the nail of her pointer. All of her nails had been bitten down, and only traces of red polish were left. Maybe this was why no one recognized her: She was not her image, she was her own neurotic self.

“It was my own fault,” she said. “I read that that bastard was going to play Orson Welles, so I thought that he would help me. You see someone in a movie, you think he is actually a hero.”

The power of Abner Cooley once again was made manifest. Even in Spain, his scoops had made news. But why had Erendira pursued Ben? I did not dare interrupt her to ask; there was instability in her need to talk. At any moment, she might get up and leave, or simply lash out. The bartender approached, and Erendira impatiently waved him away.

“I had taken such a risk in going. Jorge did not know. If it were up to Jorge, I would just sit in the stands all day and cheer.” She glanced at the TV, then looked away. “When I saw that, far from being my hero, Ben Williams himself had the movie, that he was my
enemy
”— she shook her head at her own naivete—“I could have killed him. I should have.”

Erendira began to eat nervously from my tiny plate of tapas potatoes. I slid them over to her, and with one abashed look of animal gratitude, she finished them.

“Now, I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I’m lost, lost. If you can’t help me, I . . .”

She muttered something in Spanish—or was it Catalan? Or Portuguese? Then she buried her face in her hands.

Slowly, I reached out and dared to touch her arm, to comfort her. She did not pull away. Instead, Erendira gripped my hand, with terrible need. Then she looked at me, her eyes filled with tears.

“I want to know who killed my mother,” she said.

With that, Erendira put her arms around my neck and burst into almost silent sobs. There was no reaction in the place, except from the bartender, who walked slowly away, to the back of the bar. On the TV, Jorge was landing a goal, or whatever soccer players do.

This new information sent a shudder through me. At each stop, the story had unraveled more, like a film spooling off a projector. It wasn’t the first time I felt out of my depth, but, holding Erendira, I had never felt so inadequate to my task.

She pulled back and laughed, weakly, at herself, wiping her runny nose.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Here I go again, trusting, trusting.”

“You can trust me,” I blurted out. “I want to help you. But, you know, I only wanted to find the complete
Ambersons
. Then I was hired to find you. And now . . .” I hesitated. “When was your mother murdered?”

“A few months ago.”

“And what does it have to do with . . .”

Erendira’s eyes widened as she realized she had told me so much, and had explained nothing.

“My mother had the film,” she said. “It was stolen from her.”

“
She
had
The Magnificent Ambersons
?” I said, shocked.

“Yes.”

“But how—”

At that moment, Erendira saw a car pull up outside the bar. When she looked back, her demeanor had changed. Now she was full of new purpose and new dread.

“I have to go,” she said. “Jorge has followed me.”

“But when will I see you? I need to know what—”

She gripped my hand again, and this time, she pulled me up with her.

“Come with me,” she said.

Before I could even answer, I was running alongside her, through the bar, into the back, past a bathroom, to a boarded-up door.

“Just push it,” she said.

I did. The two of us plunged from the dim interior into a back alley, which was almost as dark.

We were looking right at the bartender. His right hand was smacking a lead pipe into the palm of his left.

He had a squashed face, all the features close together. With the pipe, he waved me away from Erendira. His expression implied:
Give her up, and you won’t be hurt.

Erendira’s hand had not left mine since we’d stood up to go. Now I felt it moisten and tighten. She did not move, seemed in fact paralyzed. She only turned to me and whispered, “It’s okay. Go ahead.”

That was out of the question. Erendira had become
The Magnificent Ambersons
to me, a sixty-year-old treasure in a twenty-something form. As I did with Gus Ziegler, I felt absurdly brave, standing so close to what I sought. Besides, she had that story to finish telling me.

So I shook my head no. Then, holding Erendira’s hand, I started to walk past him, as if he might be polite enough to let us leave.

A gentleman he was not. Stepping forward, swiftly, he started to bring the pipe down—not on me, on Erendira. The air was whipped by the weapon, she dodged, and I jumped at him. Actually airborne for an instant, I wrapped my arms around his muscular middle, and the two of us, like awful acrobats, fell into the earth.

The pipe skittered from his hand, clanging against a garbage can. Erendira ran to retrieve it while I literally rolled around with the Bar Bar bartender. One minute he was top, the next I was. We were like two men on fire, trying to put each other out.

The next time he emerged in the dominant position, Erendira nailed him, snapping the baton into his right shoulder blade. Crying out, his arms instinctively opened as if he were swimming the butterfly in the morning sun. I used the opportunity to slip and slide out from under him.

Finding my feet, I grabbed Erendira’s hand again. She was already running. She and I headed for the alley opening, followed fast by the barman. Bellowing like a stuck bull in his country’s other sport, he had not been waylaid for long.

We made it into a narrow street. There we pushed past other pedestrians, people wheeling shopping carts, parents and their children. Loping like Frankenstein’s monster, our pursuer was always close behind, his screaming stopped, his pace slowed by the demands of propriety.

“Get on!” Erendira said.

She pulled me to the side, where I saw what she was seeking. It was a motorcycle, parked at the corner, a helmet left on it, undisturbed.

With what seemed superhuman speed, she got on the hog, and snapped the helmet on her head. I jumped on behind, my arms locked around her, her backpack at my breast.

“Hold on,” she said.

We roared off, spraying past people in the crowded street. On foot, with shocking speed, the bartender was soon at our back wheel, his breathing audible even above the din of the motor.

Then he was actually panting alongside, nearly overtaking us, the bull he had been metamorphosed into a horse. This race would be to the death, apparently, but whose I did not know.

The three of us were approaching an intersection now, scores of Spanish cars racing toward and through the lights, heedless of their own speed.

“Here!” Erendira shouted.

With a fast snap and yank, she pulled off her helmet and handed it back to me. Amazed at myself, I had no doubt about what to do with it.

Wrapping the chin strap around my knuckle, I jabbed it once, hard, into the forehead of the running man next to us. His head snapped back, a single time. Faltering just a bit, he kept running, blood now streaming down his face.

The strap wrapped tighter, I swung my arm in a roundhouse right and clocked him right in the head. This time, he went down.

We flew through a momentary gap in the intersection’s traffic. I looked back and saw the bartender’s tiny body, curled in the road, as if a million miles away. Then he disappeared from sight.