‘Thanks,’ I said abruptly, taking the bag from him. I peered in; three pairs of boots and three lots of holiday snaps. Plus a wodge of papers.
‘You’ve left some papers in here,’ I said sarcastically.
‘No, they belong to the guys. Do tell them I’m sorry that I seemed to have run off with them.’
‘Not a worry,’ I said, consciously adopting the Australianism to demonstrate where my solidarity lay. ‘They already had copies of them. And in any case they’d faxed them to their friends so they could get to work on them straight away.’
I faced him triumphantly as I told him that he was already on the verge of being rumbled in his crooked dealings. Worryingly he didn’t look at all put out.
‘I had assumed they would have done, but I was interested to read them all the same. Anyway, take that bag upstairs and I’ll take you out to dinner.’
I couldn’t believe his cheek. Exasperated, I took the bag from him and half turned away. ‘Actually, I have dinner plans, not to mention a class beforehand, so I’m afraid you’ve had a wasted journey.’
‘Oh, what sort of class?’ he asked as if genuinely interested. ‘Spanish?’
I glared at him. ‘Tango, as it goes. So if you’ll forgive me, I have to get ready and cross town.’
‘Bliss, get off your high horse. Just take that bag to your room and I’ll drive you wherever you want to go. I want to talk to you before you go home. Even if not for long.’
Yes, I know, I should have told him to fuck off out of my face before I called the police. But I couldn’t help but be disarmed by how easily he took the news about the papers, not to mention his amusement at finding himself with my pictures instead of Red and Robbie’s. As I stomped towards the lift I had to accept that the turbulence he had stirred up in my body wasn’t due to indignation; if the guys could accept that he hadn’t planned to harm us I certainly could.
Besides, it was very nice to look into his espresso eyes as a change from blue and grey. And I liked the idea of driving through BA with a man in a cream suit. Who wore just a splash of a rather sexy cologne.
His eyes widened appreciatively when I returned to the lobby dressed for the lesson. OK, it was extravagant, but after the first night I’d been shopping for a tango outfit: a short strapless red dress with a boned bra top and a pair of black kitten-heel sandals. It didn’t have class but it was cheap and sexy, which was just how I felt when I put it on. As soon as I’d checked myself in the mirror before I left the room I knew that although Carlos wasn’t completely forgiven I wasn’t going to deny myself the pleasure of flirting with him.
He drove quickly and aggressively in his hire car to the address I gave him and stopped outside looking at his watch. ‘Seven thirty. Have you got time for a quick drink?’
It was my turn to laugh. As I’d planned to either walk or take the subway it was fairly clear that the class wasn’t about to start immediately.
‘Lovely.’
We sat in a corner of an old-fashioned bar panelled in dark wood, with stained glass-windows diffusing the evening sunlight. I ordered a vodka tonic and threw Carlos a challenging look.
‘Just out of interest, did you come all this way just to see me?’
‘And return your things,’ he teased. ‘No. I had a bit of business to attend to.’
‘I bet. What are you up to here? Buenos Aires seems quite developed enough to me.’
His mouth twitched. ‘There’s always room for more development. Actually, you might be interested, as the client is a Dutch company. They’re test-marketing a new soft drink all over the continent and we’re sorting out some possible factory sites for them on the outskirts of town.’
That déjà vu feeling again!
‘Hang on a minute, is that the drink that’s a bit like a fizzy milkshake?’
‘So I’m told. I haven’t tried it.’
He looked puzzled as I laughed out loud. I decided not to tell him that his client, or rather one of their marketing men, was my plane fuck, especially as I doubted he would remember my story anyway. I had a vision of international corporations criss-crossing the world with the various strands of their businesses, like a global spider’s web. I ran my hand over my fringe as if to brush the thought, or the spider’s web, away.
Carlos put his hand on my bare arm and drew his chair closer.
‘Bliss, you do know I wouldn’t have let anything happen to you.’
I believed him, but didn’t want to seem too much of a pushover.
‘You must think I’m pretty stupid. How on earth could you have known that I would be all right after you’d made your getaway?’
‘Fairly easily,’ he said, smirking. ‘I phoned to say I had news about the missing woman; I was going to pretend that someone had seen her back at the camp site with two men. The park officer misunderstood me, though, and thought instead that I was enquiring about the missing woman. Of course he told me that she’d been found with two others and help was on the way.’
‘Hmm,’ I sniffed. ‘I don’t know why I should believe you. What about pulling a gun on Red and Robbie?’
‘It wasn’t loaded. I just thought they needed to learn that if you play with fire you can get burned. Didn’t you think I threw it into my rucksack rather carelessly? Your career as a spy doesn’t seem to have taught you very much.’
‘Stop laughing at me!’ I snapped. ‘You shouldn’t wave guns around, loaded or not. I might have had a heart attack. In fact for a minute I thought I had had one.’
He did laugh then, out loud. ‘I really am going to miss you,’ he said affectionately. ‘American girls just don’t have your sense of humour.’
‘How is Susie, by the way?’ I asked drily.
‘Fine. I’m sure she’d send her best if she knew I was seeing you. She’s down in Santiago for a few days. Tying poor Jorge up in knots, no doubt.’
‘I wondered if he swung both ways, or whatever you call it. Susie told me you weren’t interested, though.’
‘No way. I like to be the one in control.’
‘You don’t say.’ I sipped my vodka tonic. ‘So what are you going to do now? Now that Red and Robbie have foiled your plans in Chiloe?’
‘I hope they don’t really believe that.’ He laughed. ‘Surely they’re not that naïve – are they?’
There I was thinking I was being smart not letting him know that even they thought it had probably all been a waste of time, and all I’d done was make him think they were gormless innocents.
‘They might get a bit of publicity in the left-wing press but nothing much will come of it,’ he explained, as if to a child. ‘That’s if the plans go ahead after all.’
‘Why wouldn’t they?’ I was confused. ‘You’re not saying that despite bribing the planning people and Susie prostituting herself and working out all the plans for staffing and sourcing the whole project might be ditched?’
He grinned. ‘Gosh, you must have read all those papers. No, very possibly it won’t get off the ground. These things often fall at the last fence. It happens all the time.’
I was definitely out of my depth. ‘You’re not telling me that all this subterfuge and corruption and planning go on all the time for
nothing
? It must cost a fortune! How can anyone waste that sort of money?’
‘Bliss, you don’t understand the real world, do you? We’re talking about massive corporations with huge turnovers that think nothing of spending thousands on plans that may not bear fruit. It’s better to go ahead with a feasibility study and then pull out than throw good money after bad, or even worse not to even investigate the possibilities and find the competition moving in.’
I was confused. ‘But I thought one of the arguments against global capitalism is that they cut costs by employing slave labour in the third world; how can they do that when they throw money away like this?’
Carlos shrugged. ‘Well, I expect your friends will tell you that’s a good example of what’s wrong with the way they work. But whatever they think, or do, nothing’s going to change.’
It seemed to me that it was all a game. The multinationals played at setting up shop somewhere but then decided they’d go off and do it somewhere else. The activists played at trying to stop them but realised they didn’t have much hope of doing so. The companies flexed their muscles just to emphasise who had the power, like Carlos pointing an empty gun at Red and Robbie’s heads.
It was time for my class.
‘Can I come with you? I know how to tango.’
I shook my head but I knew he was coming anyway. I couldn’t stop him, any more than Red and Robbie could prevent the relentless takeover by the multinationals. Really, I thought, I just want to get my head back in the sand again as far as business and politics are concerned.
Carlos was dynamite. I rarely dance with men; as I explained I usually find dancing banal, etc. In fact this was the first time I’d danced with a lover, especially one who’d dressed me in black leather and chains and given me such exquisite agonies of anticipation, fear and shame. Despite the events of the last few weeks I still found him as sexy as hell and he pressed me close and manoeuvred me as intimately on the dance floor as he did in bed. By the end of the first dance it wasn’t just the thirty degrees that were making me sweat, and it wasn’t just on my back that a slick of moisture had appeared.
To my slight irritation Luis came and partnered me for the next dance to show me some finer points but I wasn’t concentrating, instead watching Carlos with another woman. She was obviously a local and they laughed and rattled on easily in Spanish. He would have had no trouble getting her to go back to his hotel afterwards and I felt a stab of jealousy combined with a wobble in my reserve not to do just that.
We danced together for the rest of the class and left silently. My mind was whirling with possibilities. Should I escape from Carlos and scuttle off to the bar? Would Red and Robbie be interested in performing a replay of the scene at the campsite? Or would Carlos capture me and take me to his hotel for a final torrid night in chains, ignoring my protests? Would I, in fact, protest?
He opened the car door for me like a chauffeur and got in with a smile. ‘Where to, madam?’
That rather unsettled me. Did he expect me to ask him to take me with him, or did he assume that I wasn’t interested? Shrugging mentally I gave him the name and street of the bar I was meeting the boys in. He started the car and without further conversation drove back the way we came, almost driving past the bar but braking sharply just in front of it. Again he opened the car door for me and helped me out.
‘Shall I pick you up at the same time tomorrow?’
‘What for?’ I asked, bewildered.
‘For the class, of course. I enjoyed it, didn’t you? We dance well together, don’t you think? And of course a drink first. It’s your last night, after all. Please let me say goodbye.’
Completely wrong-footed I nodded and he kissed my cheek briefly, got back in the car and drove off. As I turned towards the bar I saw Red and Robbie watching from the window.
‘Nice time?’ Red asked lightly. ‘Thought you were going to your tango class.’
‘I did. He turned up at the hotel before I left.’
I described the events of the evening, apart from my own indecision as to who to spend the night with, or at least who I might have spent the night with if I’d had another offer. They seemed completely unfazed by Carlos’s reappearance, and were instead pleased that the Chiloe project might not get off the ground and delighted to get their boots back. Either they didn’t think I could be interested in Carlos again or they were playing it cool, as they exhibited no sign of jealousy or even curiosity as to whether he had tried it on. I felt a bit piqued all round; didn’t Carlos want me any more? Didn’t Red and Robbie care if he did or not? I guessed that they’d all started to detach themselves from me as I’d soon be gone, and felt depressed.
For the second night running I drank too much and fell asleep as soon as I got into bed. Three hours later I woke dripping with sweat and with a raging thirst. Red was snoring next to me and Robbie was pressed against him. Pitying myself, I felt left out. I drank one litre of water and splashed another over my already damp body and crawled back into bed.
The next evening followed the same pattern, up to a point. Carlos picked me up and we had a drink in the same bar and went to the class. I concentrated as hard as I could on the dance steps, wishing I had longer in the city to learn them. Then halfway through the class Carlos pulled me close to him and murmured, ‘Come back with me tonight. I can’t let you go without making love to you one more time.’
‘No,’ I whispered, executing the turn clumsily as his words unsettled me. ‘I can’t. The boys are expecting me.’
‘But you want to?’ His voice was low and commanding.
‘Yes. But I can’t trust you. Look what happened last time I let you tie me up.’
Carlos laughed aloud, earning a glance of disapproval from Luis. We exchanged a guilty look at disrupting the mood of the class.
‘You can stay free,’ he persisted quietly. ‘I want to touch your body again.’
‘You’re touching quite a lot of it now,’ I pointed out as I wound my leg around his. ‘It’s not that I don’t want to have sex with you, Carlos. It’s just bad timing.’
‘More like
Last Tango in Paris
,’ he quipped. ‘Seriously, Bliss. I want you badly.’
I nodded towards the girl he’d been dancing with the previous evening. ‘Ask her, I’m sure she fancies you.’
‘You’d be jealous.’
Shit, of course I would. But after all we’d been through I wasn’t going to spend the last night without Red and Robbie.
He pulled me back and leaned over me, his face almost on mine. ‘Let’s leave now. There’s a hotel next door. We’ll get a room for half an hour.’
The sleaziness of the idea took my breath away. Almost numbly I nodded, and regardless of what Luis or anyone else thought we stopped mid-dance and left the ballroom.
He handed over a few dollar bills to the desk clerk and we walked up the stairs; there was no lift. The paintwork was peeling and the stair carpet threadbare, though the dingy bulb cast little light on it. Room 212 was dark and musty and smelled of the last occupant’s cigarette smoke but I didn’t care, in fact the seedier the better. Carlos kicked the door to and turned round and grabbed me, kissing me with a dizzying intensity that took my breath away. His hands were on my breasts, pushing down inside the bra-style cups to lift them out and display them, his fingers playing with my nipples. Still with his mouth on mine he pushed me back against the wall and ran his hands up my legs, pulling my knickers down. I stepped out of them and he lifted my dress and surveyed me, his eyes sweeping from my cunt to my tits, with the cheap red imitation silk in between. Standing tall in my heels I revelled in his undisguised lust and took my dress from his hands so that he could undress while still looking at my swollen sex.