JOHNNY GONE DOWN (17 page)

‘Can I ask you a personal question, men?’ asked Marco during one of our monthly briefings on the state of accounts.

Three years after the shootout, the wound on his forehead had fully healed, but the scars from the stitches had twisted his brows into a perpetual frown. The juxtaposition of his usually smiling face with his scowling brow gave him a comical look, especially when he really was frowning, like now.

I couldn’t help smiling at him. ‘You sure can,’ I replied.

‘Why are you smiling, bastard?’ he said.

‘Because you look like a joker,’ I said. ‘Anyway, what’s bugging you?’

‘Look, I’m slow, so it’s taken me a while to understand all this stuff but I think I’m getting it now,’ said Marco, pointing at the computer. ‘What I don’t understand is what
you
get from all this, men. You don’t have a single bank account to your name, you live in one room in my house, you wear my hand-me-downs, you don’t even have a hundred dollars you could call your own. What are you in this for?’

‘Just look at what we have accomplished in the favela without relying on the drug trade,’ I said, answering his question indirectly. ‘Water and electricity are available twenty-four hours, the schools are flush with money, and everyone is more at peace now that gunshots don’t ring out every
few hours. We could do so much more if we didn’t actually have to hide the progress from your Red Command brothers.’

‘I know all that but it still doesn’t fit. You didn’t grow up here, you don’t have family here. If you were doing charity, why stop at this? Why not do it in India? Or why not become a nun or a priest or something, men? You were a monk before, you could become one again. Instead, you are one of Rio’s rich - one with no money though. How stupid is that?’

‘This favela is my family,’ I began but stopped. It wasn’t true. True to an extent, perhaps, but my primary interest wasn’t charity. I had struggled with the same question myself. What drove me? Ambition, perhaps, but ambition for what? I craved nothing, I had no goals. What was I seeking then? I had figured it out for myself, but the explanation required remembering a time I would rather forget. Yet, I owed Marco something close to the truth.

‘A long time ago, someone unknowingly taught me the Hindu philosophy of the karma yoga, the path of detached action, of doing your duty without any attachment to the results. His words saved my life and I’ve tried to follow them since. I am happy and have no goals for myself; neither money nor power nor fame, not even charity. My only purpose is to give myself completely to my work, to unquestioningly perform my duty - even
if it is to run a business for a slumlord with a twisted face!’

Marco pretended to shield his eyes from me. ‘Ah, ah,’ he shouted. ‘Your aura is blinding me, o saint!’

‘Some saint,’ I said. ‘You know better than anyone else how much I stumble. And if you don’t, just ask Lucia or Regina or Veronica or…’

‘They rave about your technique, by the way,’ he said. ‘They say you are gentle and silent; not like us macho Brazilian men. Are you in love with any of them, men?’

I squirmed. We never talked about that kind of stuff here. Anyone who talked about anything remotely related to love or romance would be called a faggot or a pussy. Women fell for Donos; Donos didn’t fall for women.

‘No,’ I said firmly.

‘Have you ever been in love, men?’

‘Jesus. What is this?’ I asked. ‘Can we finish the accounts now? We have a lot to cover today. We should open another shell company in Malta; there has been some change in regulation there.’

‘You know I don’t understand all that. Do what you want to,’ he said dismissively. ‘Was she in Cambodia?’

‘Love was the last thing on my mind in Cambodia. When I think of the people I met there, you are like a boy scout in comparison.’

I rarely talked about the time before Rio. The
years spent in the monastery had helped me make a grudging peace with the past and I didn’t want to open old wounds.

‘Where is she then?’ he asked.

‘Are you sure you didn’t mix oestrogen in your cocaine today?’

‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Let’s get back to business.’

‘My business is to know where she is,’ he said stubbornly.

I knew he wouldn’t let go.

‘It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘Just a schoolboy crush.’

‘That couldn’t happen to you.’

‘Well, it did. We barely met once.’

‘Romeo and Juliet dropped dead at their third meeting.’

‘To be or not to be taught love by a Shakespeare-quoting mobster! I prefer not to be,’ I said. ‘Why don’t we talk about your love life instead? It’s way more happening than mine.’

‘Did you sleep with her, men? Did you wow her with your technique?’

‘Are you crazy? I told you, we barely exchanged a few words.’

‘Where is she now?’ he asked. ‘Here, in Rio?’

I nodded.

‘Tell me her name. I will bring her to you. I run Rio.’

‘Really?’ I said mockingly. ‘Okay, wait a minute.’

I went to my room and came back with a Brazilian fashion magazine I had chanced upon a few days ago. I placed it on the table and it opened to the page I had pored over more than a few times.

‘There she is,’ I said, pointing to her picture. ‘Now tell me, is it an adolescent crush or what?’

‘Lara,’ he said softly, looking at her glossy picture hawking some French cosmetic. ‘I don’t know much about this world but she is some kind of model, I think. When did you meet her, men?’

‘On the flight to Rio, when I was in my tattered monk’s robes, bald, and with my empty sleeve dangling by my side - hardly the Don Juan she was waiting for.’

He looked at me but didn’t laugh as I had expected him to. ‘You have good taste. From what I’ve heard, she isn’t a slut.’

‘That was seven years ago,’ I said. ‘She probably married a soccer superstar and has three kids by now. Anyway, who cares? I’m not an adolescent in high school. We met, we talked, we said goodbye; no vows exchanged, no hearts broken. I was only reminded of her recently when I saw this magazine.’

‘Who cares if she is married? We can get rid of her faggot husband,’ he said confidently.

‘You are going to do no such thing!’ I said in alarm. ‘This isn’t a Paulo Coelho book. Supermodels don’t fall in love with one-armed thugs in real life.’

‘Paulo who?’

‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘Just don’t do anything foolish. Do you ever see me pining for her or for anyone else? I’m very happy here. Don’t screw it up for nothing. If you are looking for things to do, get more involved in the business like I’ve been telling you to.’

‘You should go after her yourself then,’ he said. ‘If you are smart enough to make so much money from nothing, what is a woman?’

‘Go after what?’ I said. ‘Look, I kind of know what’s happening here, though I hate admitting it. Some men fall in love with celebrities or supermodels without knowing anything about them. These are men trying to prove a point to someone - the ex-lover who dumped them, or their mother whom they secretly fantasized about, or the bully in school who stuck it up their arse. Or they are trying to compensate for something, you know, being too short, being gay, stuttering, stammering, a small dick - or a missing arm.’

‘You should stop reading so many books,’ he said. ‘Besides, you know her. It’s not like you fell in love with a magazine cover.’

‘I’ve spoken to her once. Of course, that’s more than you can say about any of the women you sleep with, so by your standards, yes, I know her very well indeed.’

‘Very funny, wise guy,’ he said. ‘So, will you try or should I do it for you?’

‘There is nothing to try.’

‘Look, men.’ He paused. ‘I don’t know how to say this, but there is something about you, men. I saw it when you came here, I see it now. You are different, men. You don’t belong here; you don’t belong anywhere. You are just… bigger than everyone and everything, you know. I don’t know how to say it but I think she will see it.’

It didn’t seem like she saw anything.

Buoyed by Marco’s enthusiasm, I had used our apparel marketing team to set up an appointment with her at our comfortable corporate office in the Ipanema business district. The plan was to launch a branded collection under her name.

I sat at my desk facing her and her lawyer - no doubt an auspicious beginning to the proposed romantic liaison. She looked just as she had in my memory: expressive brown eyes, a cleft below her chin, auburn hair streaked with gold; only the lines on her face had hardened. She would be thirty-six now, to my thirty-seven, and age, though kinder to her than to me, had left its mark.

‘What are your contract terms?’ she asked.

The greatest pick-up line in history.

‘Higher than the industry standard,’ I said. ‘A signing amount of one million dollars for the use
of your name on our new sportswear collection and ten per cent commission on every item sold in that line.’

She consulted briefly with the crusty lawyer before turning back to me.

‘The signing amount is fine, but we want higher royalties per item - at least fifteen per cent,’ she said coldly.

I was about to agree when I stopped. Business was business, after all.

‘I’m afraid that won’t work for us,’ I said. ‘Don’t forget we will be undertaking all the marketing costs to promote the line, and it helps your personal brand as much as it helps our product line.’

‘12.5 per cent,’ she said.

‘Agreed, if we have full copyright on your images,’ I said. ‘We will use them wherever we think appropriate.’

Again, she consulted her lawyer.

‘Done, if I get final veto rights on all product designs in the line,’ she said.

‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘You have a deal.’

Her smile did not reach her eyes.

‘I will sign the agreement whenever it’s ready.’

‘If you wait a few minutes, I will get it drafted now,’ I said.

She looked at her watch. ‘Fine, I guess,’ she said haughtily.

For a second, I wondered if I had met her warm, bubbly twin sister on the flight, like that Hema Malini movie from another lifetime.

I told my assistant to draft the agreement and we waited in my office, staring blankly at the walls.

Good, I thought, one more mirage checked off the fantasy list. I’d been right all along. Love was for dummies; soulmates were the creation of pulp-fiction writers; romance was craved by ageing, lonely cat owners. Successful relationships were built on rationality and compromise - and there was nothing rational about a one-armed thug falling in love with a model at first sight.

Eventually, her lawyer filled the silence.

‘Why did you decide on Ms Lara?’ he asked.

‘She is an icon,’ I said simply.

‘But yours is a young, trendy chain,’ she broke in. ‘Won’t you be better off with a younger face?’

I started spouting the bull I routinely heard from advertising agencies. ‘Our target audience associates our brand with certain heritage equities that fit your personality. The brand identity we want to create is…’

I stopped. I was too old, too damaged for this.

‘Besides, we’ve met before,’ I said. ‘I enjoyed our interaction then.’

She stared at me in surprise. As I had thought, she had no memory of our meeting.

‘We have?’

‘I have a prosthetic arm now and a head full of hair,’ I said. ‘Real - the hair, that is, not the arm.’

I sounded pathetic but I bumbled on.

‘I wear a suit now, but do you remember a bald guy in monk’s robes on your flight from a peacekeeping mission in Thailand?’

She paused, trying to remember.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said, her face breaking into a smile that reached her eyes this time. ‘It’s been so many years!’

‘Seven,’ I said.

She looked at me curiously. ‘You’ve changed quite dramatically.’

‘It’s been so many years,’ I repeated, smiling.

‘I know we had a great conversation but I can’t remember any of it now,’ she said.

So much for Marco’s claim that I was special. What had I expected anyway? That she had waited five years to rip my clothes off the moment she set eyes on me? Even Hindi films weren’t that fanciful.

My assistant arrived with the papers. I watched her study them in detail and wondered whether we would see each other again. What if we didn’t? Nothing. We would carry on, stumbling through our respective journeys, falling in love with someone, falling out of love with another one, breaking up, making up, until our biological clocks went into overdrive and it all got very tiring, and we settled down with whoever was available. Our spouses
would become our new soulmates. If life was even 0.24 per cent as romantic as a novel, Sam used to say bitterly at MIT, there is
the one
waiting for me. In reality, as Sam had accurately deduced, jocks had many soulmates and nerds had none. So much for divine providence.

‘We should catch up some time,’ she said vaguely as she handed over the signed papers.

‘How about tomorrow?’

She looked taken aback. ‘Okay,’ she said hesitantly.

‘I could pick you up at seven.’

To hell with self-respect, I thought. I was a one-armed drug dealer.

She looked at me searchingly. ‘Seven sounds good.’