known became on the lumpy daybed in
the back of his office as foul-mouthed and unhindered as a common
soldier.
That she was
not the only woman he was seeing did not occur to her. After their
affair was over she wondered how she could have been so stupid.
Women were a game for Caribe. The only things that truly moved him
were money and silk.
“ He’s a tight bastard, your dad,” he would say as he pulled
one of the dyed silk squares her father always sent out as samples
back and forth through his outspread fingers as if frustrated he
could find no fault with it. Layla felt a surge of pride whenever
he said this, knowing Idmon Vargas cared far more about quality
than he did about money, that somehow through her father she and
John Caribe met as equals. Later she was forced to wonder if this
had been the truth all along, that Caribe had seduced her as a way
of getting back at her father. She understood that he genuinely
begrudged the money he had to lay out on Idmon Vargas’s purple,
even though he knew he could sell his allotted consignment ten
times over.
He held the
square up to the light. A purple dusk descended on his upturned
face.
“ Damned swindle if you ask me. Highway robbery.” But the first
thing she noticed about the woman she saw him with at the Parnassus
was that she was carrying a clutch bag sewn from purple damask, her
father’s blend. The Parnassus was a matador club at the western end
of the docks, a place where minor starlets congregated in the hope
of hooking themselves a major league fighter or attracting the
attention of one of the dozens of agents and talent scouts who were
said to hang out there. Layla watched the women passing to and fro
beneath the lights, sneaking glimpses of their own reflections in
the mirrored ceiling, and wondered what they did with themselves in
the daytime. She would not normally have entered a place like the
Parnassus, but she had been invited to the club by the management
to discuss a commission. The saloon was stuffed with expensive
artwork already, most of it bull-themed, and Layla privately
thought that cramming in more would be a waste of money. But the
price named was so high she couldn’t refuse, and the glitzy
opulence of her surroundings even gave her the confidence to ask
them to raise it a little.
The manager
seemed vaguely familiar and at some point during the course of
their discussions Layla realised it was Steely Jurassic, the prize
fighter who had often been on vTV shows when she was young. He
asked if she would join him for dinner but she declined. She did
not want to run the risk of the man making a pass at her, then
jeopardising the commission by refusing him. She was making her way
to the exit when she saw them, John Caribe and the woman with the
purple clutch bag, sitting together in one of the velvet-curtained
booths to the side of the bar. They were laughing together,
forehead to forehead. Caribe’s arm lay lightly about her
shoulders.
She hurried
from the club, telling herself that the woman was probably just one
of Caribe’s business clients. She decided not to mention the
incident, but when Caribe came to her flat the following evening it
came spilling out.
The thing that
shocked her most was that Caribe laughed.
“ How do you think I got you that commission in the first
place?” he said. “Honor Clayden is the manager’s girlfriend. She
designed the place, the interior anyway. They don’t shell out top
dollar for just anyone. Think of it as greasing her palm.” He
smiled suggestively in a way that made Layla rigid with anger even
as she realised with horror that she was turned on by
it.
“ I’m not just anyone. Do you mean to say the manager knows
about this?”
“ Of course he knows. It’s how he keeps her. Old Nestor has
been past it for years.”
Her mind
reeled, trying to work out who Caribe was talking about then
realising that Nestor must be the real name of Steely Jurassic. In
a voice that seemed to come entirely
Tracie Peterson, Judith Pella