From Cape Town with Love (5 page)

“Yeah, we'll see. Hey, I almost forgot: What about April? How'd it go?”

I love you, Alice.

“Didn't.”

There was a long silence on the other end. Len had had a minor nervous breakdown during his divorce, although I was one of only two people who knew. I'd found him sobbing under his desk one day, but we never talked about that. Only two months before, I'd taken April by his office to meet him—the first time I'd brought a date out into the light. Len had beamed at me like a proud father, gushing about how good April was for me.

“Shit. I'm really sorry,” Len said. “You know I mean that.”

“Thanks. Next subject.”

“Ten, I've been there. Your guts just got stomped to dogshit, and you need a boost. Boy, do I get that head space.”

“You stink at pep talks. Move on.”

Len pressed on with his true agenda: “. . . but no matter what, do
not
bump uglies with the boss—Sofia Maitlin is very engaged. To be honest, too many people know about the Lynda Jewell thing. You get tied to Maitlin, you're the
Enquirer's
poster boy for a year.”

“Fuck you very much, Len.”

“Tennyson, promise me you will not screw Sofia Maitlin.”

Len only called me Tennyson as my friend, not my agent. He'd watched me flush my career away once. He knew I had sex with every woman who came near me, mostly because I could. The grieving woman I'd coaxed into bed in L.A. soon after April cut me loose was engaged, too. I was still a whore, whether or not I charged money. April had just helped me forget for a while.

And Sofia Maitlin was one of the most beautiful women in the world.

“I promise you,” I told Len, “nobody will know if I fuck Sofia Maitlin. Especially you.”

“Ten, this isn't a joke—”

I hung up, realizing the harsh truth: I could easily start working day and night again, like the Michael Jackson song. It wasn't so far behind me.
So what?
my mind challenged.
At least you'd get paid. You should send a damn bill to April. She was joyriding you, man, and in this world, joy comes with a price tag.

Anger was my medicine, softening the bite. I drove faster on the nearly deserted road, creeping far beyond the 120-kilometer-per-hour speed limit. My iPhone was on shuffle, and Lynyrd Skynyrd's “Freebird” played on the car's speakers next. The Southern-fried beat of liberation suited me fine. I jammed on the accelerator while the electric guitar whined and raged.

Free!
I sang along at the top of my lungs, vowing never to change.

The Twelve Apostles Hotel was sandwiched between the mountains and the endless rocky shoreline, almost an island unto itself. The only vehicle parked outside was the well-shined white van Rachel Wentz had mentioned. I expected to find paparazzi, but I didn't see anyone lurking.
Good for her.
There are worse problems in life, but I feel bad for actors with swarms of paparazzi. Why would Sofia Maitlin want a circus in the middle of an adoption?

I hate tabloid culture. I haven't bought a tabloid since the nineties, and here's why: I once had a costar who was one of my mentors, an older man I'll call Raul Garcia. He played the assistant principal on my old series,
Malibu High
—a stern Edward James Olmos type. He was far from
a household name, just a working character actor who'd been in the business for years, delivered his lines, showed up on time, and loved his work. He often brought his nephews to the set, and I used to shoot hoops with them. (I played a basketball coach.)

Our series came and went, so we didn't see each other for about a year. I called to have lunch with Raul and found out he was dying. Too far gone for visitors, his family said, but we spoke for ten minutes on the phone. His voice sounded awful, but he cracked me up with jokes, and the single most blasphemously filthy limerick I've ever heard. Buy me a drink sometime and ask me. I refuse to write it down.

Raul was an immigrant, and his family was proud and protective. In his home country, his success in American television gave him a stature beyond the size of his roles. His family might have suspected he was gay, but he never told them—only a few select friends. It was nobody's business. At his funeral, where his parents wept over his casket, no one acknowledged the lonely white-haired man I guessed to be his lover, and no one said the word
AIDS
aloud.

A week after the funeral, I was walking down Wilshire when a tabloid on display at the newsstand stopped me:
RAUL GARCIA AIDS SECRET,
a giant headline read. The photo was worse: an emaciated Raul celebrating his sixty-third birthday only two weeks before he died. A private photo someone had stolen or sold. Apparently, grave robbing is alive and well.

I refused to read the story inside, but a grainy image of the sad, white-haired man I'd seen at the funeral bore the caption
RAUL'S SECRET GAY LOVER
. And a large, boxed quote from an anonymous morgue employee confirmed that Raul died of AIDS from his
toe tag.
The toe tag was pictured beneath the quote—exhibit A.

It was an assault, as if someone had dug Raul up out of the ground and violated him. Maybe his family shouldn't have cared—and it's too bad Raul felt he had to hide—but grief is hard enough. If that tabloid story had been about my father, I would have wanted to skin the reporter and roll him in salt.

Thank God no reporters will be calling to ask me about April,
I thought, the bright side of anonymity.
Yeah, Ten—lucky you! You're not an Oscar winner worth fifty million dollars.

The parked white van was empty except for the wiry driver, who looked about fifty. He was so preoccupied with his cell phone, speaking Xhosa with clicks and dizzying speed, that he didn't notice me standing by the passenger-side door. I scanned the license pinned to the visor—his face matched the photo. The van was owned by an agency called Children First Mission. The insignia, children's hands clasped around a traditional shield, was on the door.

Rachel Wentz had asked me to wait by the van, but I wanted to meet my client before we faced the public. I used to know the hotel security managers in Cape Town, but I had to wait at the desk while the skeptical concierge called up to the room. She was a matronly woman with blond hair in a severe bun. When she got the okay, her eyebrows shot up high with surprise.

Not surprisingly, Sofia Maitlin was in the Presidential Suite—14,000 rand a night, or about $1,800. Loose change for members of the one-name club.

The three staff people who met me in the hotel room looked like they were dressed for a safari, not a visit to a township. All three wore oversize beige camera vests and hiking boots. Someone had read way too much Hemingway.

Rachel Wentz was about fifty and short, five feet tall, with a wide, jolly face that belied her phone manner. The other woman was Pilar, a tall Latina with merry hips who welcomed me with a bright smile. Pilar's skin was two shades lighter than April's, but she was about the same age, with a similar shape. My restless eyes lingered on Pilar's mouth.

The sole man was wiry, about thirty, and glued to his Bluetooth. He interrupted his conversation long enough to shake my hand and mumble his name—Tim—before his back was turned. He wouldn't be any help in an emergency.

The room was huge, about eighteen hundred square feet, with a décor in vibrant white and gold. The white dining-room table was a centerpiece, with six tall matching chairs. The glass sliding door in the rear was open, so the room was a bit muggy, but the ocean lay right beyond the balcony, and the water was the room's best feature. The rooftop suite floated on the world.

I liked the vibe already. No drama. Except for Tim's constant chatter,
they felt like a group of friends on vacation. South African pop music played from the bedroom.

“Sophie's on the deck,” Rachel said, beckoning me.

It had been a long time since I'd been in the presence of a star as big as Sofia Maitlin. Trust me, we don't get invited to the same parties—at least not anymore. If you don't believe there's any such thing as magic, you haven't floated near the inner sanctum of the Hollywood A list. These actors are no longer individuals, they're corporations with poreless skin. Movies fail or succeed on the basis of their allure, and their misadventures can kill box office or even a career. Ask Meg Ryan if Russell Crowe was worth it.

According to those ugly tabloids, Sofia Maitlin had been enough of a party girl to frighten producers who kissed Lindsay Lohan's butt. That was, until she had some kind of a spiritual breakthrough and found meditation or yoga or something. At that point, they only had to worry about her trips to Bali and Tibet, and not her screwing the offensive line of the New York Jets on YouTube. God is good.

“Where's her regular bodyguard?” I asked as we walked the length of the room.

“Food poisoning,” Rachel said quietly. “Solid two hundred and ten pounds, Force Recon Marine, and a bad bowl of stew put him on his back. She's saying, ‘We don't need a bodyguard.' Most times, I wouldn't be too concerned, but today's a special occasion, so we're worried about a leak bringing out the weirdos. Maybe you can talk some sense into her.”

“Hello . . . ? I can
hear
you,” a woman's voice said ahead of us. She sounded playful.

When I stood in the balcony doorway, I saw olive brown legs twined down the length of a rattan lounging chair. The calves were slender, sturdy, and athletic.

And bare feet. Sofia Maitlin's toenails were painted only with a light gloss, but she had magnificent feet. Long, lovely toes. Smooth, shiny heels. I'm a foot man, so she might as well have been lying on that lounger naked.

“Tennyson Hardwick, this is Sofia Maitlin,” Rachel said.

The wide brim of a white straw hat peeked from behind the lounger as Maitlin leaned around to look at me. Two pairs of gold-brown eyes
found mine. When she smiled, I felt a primal part of my brain slowing down, refracting to one word:
woman.

Sofia Maitlin was a petite ball of pheromones, glowing at the center of her own force field. Raven hair coiled down her neck and shoulders in a loose ponytail. If her face had an imperfection, or if she was wearing makeup, I couldn't see it. I saw very faint freckles across her cheeks that the camera missed, a humanizing detail that only made her more appealing.

She had an ethnicity that was hard to place; skin dark enough, and light enough, to be from almost anywhere. She was wearing casual khaki shorts and a button-down frilly white blouse that hugged her bosom, open low enough to show subtle cleavage. Her all-natural chest is her hallmark; it was hard to forget the steamy waterfall scene in
The Vintner
that some critics believed was the sole reason Sofia Maitlin had won last year's Oscar.

Reason enough, from what I could see.

I was surprised when she stood up to greet me. She was only about five-two, shorter than April—typically, much smaller than I would have imagined. Her dancer's body moved with fluidity as she gave me a firm, businesslike handshake.

“May I assume the other man is in worse shape, Mr. Hardwick?”

Damned bruises. I felt as self-conscious as a schoolboy, wishing I could hide my face.

“Much,” I said, remembering the cloudy eyes in the swamp. “It all worked out fine.”

“Yes it did.” Her eyes pulsed at me. Subtle, but I saw it.

“I really enjoyed you in
The Vintner,”
I said, picturing the waterfall scene.

Her eyes glimmered, knowing. “Did you? How sweet of you to say so. Have a seat.”

When I glanced around, I realized that Rachel Wentz was gone—or suddenly invisible to me. Not sure which, but I never saw her leave. Below us, the mightily blue ocean massaged the shoreline with a gentle, private song. It felt like the deck of a private cruise ship. I sat on the dark gray rattan lounger beside Maitlin's while she picked at the breakfast plate on her glass-top lounge table. She popped the last strawberry into her mouth and seemed to swallow it whole.

“Are you familiar with Langa?” she said.

“Yeah, and it can be a tough place,” I said. “It's like any other poor section of town. There are houses, schools, stores. Some sections are better off than others. You definitely want to be aware, but you should be fine. There are regular tours through Langa. People invite you right into their homes.”

“Then why do I need you?” she said, smiling.

“Because you know life is full of surprises, Ms. Maitlin. Someone in your position, with your fame, must be prepared for any scenario.”

I saw a veil lift from her eyes, deeper penetration. For an instant, she was Sophie Echevarria—half Greek, half Cuban, the girl who'd set out from meager roots in Miami to try to conquer Hollywood. Her father had come to the States on a raft, nearly drowning at sea. Both of her parents died in a car accident soon after her first major film role. During last year's Oscar frenzy, her biography had been everywhere. She was Hollywood's favorite Cinderella story.

Even without reading the tabloids, I knew more about her than I was supposed to. Sofia Maitlin was a gossip magnet, the perfect combination of beauty, eccentricity, and vulnerability. Shooting
The Vintner
had been draining enough to send her on a six-month retreat in Mysore, India, to meditate and practice yoga with her master. Her off-again-off-again relationship with a Greek shipping billionaire only fanned the tabloid flames. She had famously dumped him when the
Enquirer
ran photos of him and a blonde playing naked Twister on the deck of his yacht.

That might have been some of the most expensive tail in Hollywood history. The billionaire missed Maitlin so much after she dumped him and went to India that he offered to marry her with a quarter-billion-dollar prenup. And if she caught him with his pants down again, she'd make another $20 million just on the side action.