Chapter Fifteen #4
“Yes.” It's time we were introduced,
since you found me bollock-naked in a pool. “Me llamo Sasha.”
“Mateo. Me llamo Mateo. I thought you were Latino when I saw you—the colour of
your skin and hair. I thought... maybe you were stealing a swim in
the pool.”
Sasha
snorted. It had almost felt that way. “No. I live here, just. We
only arrived last night.”
“From where? You sound Eastern European.”
“That's right. I'm part Romanian. But we came from London,
Laurie and I.” Once more Sasha drew himself up short. It was nice
to be recognised, to have dark eyes meet his and rightly guess his
origins. No reason to hand over all his details and Laurie's on a
plate, though... “You said you'd answer my question. I know that
wall's wired to trigger an alarm.”
“Not in that far corner. Do you see how it angles where the
jacaranda grows? No camera covers that part, and the beam can only
run in a straight line.”
Maybe
Sasha was concussed. He found he was more interested than worried.
“Why are you telling me burglar's secrets, please? Don't you know I
could call the police?”
“I don’t think you would. Not you. And I'm not a
burglar.”
“What, then?”
“I take the leaves out of pools. This house, next door, all the
houses in San Marco where I can. Cristo, he don't like that part.
Leaves, insects, grubs—sometimes worse things, that wealthy people
leave behind after parties.”
“And Cristo is...”
“My brother-in-law. Also your pool-maintenance man, the real
one.”
Sasha
nodded. He was beginning to get the picture. “So he subcontracts
part of the job to you. And the reason you come in over the wall
is...”
“He isn't supposed to. I know all the walls in this place, all
the gaps in their alarms. Cristo, my brother-in-law—his cousin
Miguel worked construction while San Marco was being built, and
Miguel's best friend was on the team who installed the
security.”
“And the team left a little gap in everyone's
perimeter?”
“Yes, in the places Vicente knew was best. Like that tiny angle
of your wall.” Mateo took Sasha's T-shirt and shook it out, giving
him the smallest wicked glimmer when Sasha promptly moved his jeans
to cover his lap. “Biffy Clyro? I like them too. You shouldn't
worry, Senor Sasha—Cristo and Miguel and all us others, we don't do
harm here. How could we? This is where we live. We just like to do
things our own way.”
Sasha
considered this. He pulled on his T-shirt when Mateo held it out to
him, then bent to tug on his jeans. He fought not to blush at
Mateo's proximity, but unwanted warmth stole into the base of his
throat. The denim was damp in patches, its coolness by contrast
pleasant on his skin. When he got to his feet to zip up, the
dappling shadows revolved around him, and he had to put a hand out
to the wall. Yes, his thoughts were still in disarray—he liked the
idea of Mateo's network, found a weird satisfaction in knowing this
airtight place had holes. And he was intrigued by the concept of
this sub-economy, this life going on beneath the palatial houses
and pools. “It must be difficult,” he said, sitting down again.
“For you, I mean—knowing when to come and go.”
“Sometimes. But soon I learn people's routines.”
He'd
said it with an odd kind of pride. Sasha smiled, unable to help
himself. When he had been living as a squatter in East Hill, he had
timed his own daily routines around the comings and goings of the
builders in the derelict flats. “You're like a London cabbie with
the Knowledge.”
“Cabbie... A cab driver, yes, for London taxis? What knowledge,
please?”
“It's when they know the streets so well they don't need a map
any more.”
“Oh.” Mateo nodded, evidently pleased by this comparison. “Yes,
I have such knowledge too—a kind of map of people in my head. I
follow strictly, every day.”
“You weren't following too well with me today.”
“No. You are new—a new London street to me. I don't yet know
your routine.” Now it was his turn to blush, a quick shift of blood
in the shadows. “You were swimming when I came over the wall. At
first I didn't see you. Then I did, and I started to climb back
out. But...”
“Yes?” Sasha prompted him gently. “What made you
stay?”
“I thought you were drowning.”
“Well, I'm not drowning now. Why are you here—telling me all
these things that could drown you?”
Mateo's
lips parted. Dismay flickered in his eyes, banished by a sudden
defiance. He straightened from his crouch by the bench and stood
with his arms folded. “What could you do to me, if you decided to
tell? Who else has heard what I've said? You call the police, I
tell you what happens—Cristo denies me. His wife has no brother
Mateo. Miguel denies me too, and all the staff who run this place,
houseboys and nannies and maids. All the cooks and gardeners. And
this is easy, because...”
“Because you don't really exist. You're illegal.”
Mateo
lowered his head. He folded his arms tighter. For all his solid
frame, there was something evanescent about him, almost a
transparency to light. As if he could be wiped out of the records
of the world by a few words from the people who knew him. Sasha
remembered clearly how that was. “Mateo. Tell me you don't tell
every half-drowned newcomer this tale.”
“I have told no-one. I haven't spoken to any of the people
here, not the real ones. Not one word.”
“Why me?”
Mateo
shot him a look in which anger, chagrin and amusement were
perfectly mixed. “I don't know. I have broken all my own rules.”
Then he unlocked his defensive stance. He put his hand to Sasha's
face again—pushed back Sasha's close-cropped hair above the bruise,
then skimmed his fingers over his brow, cheekbones and lips, the
intimacy absolute and delicate as the brush of a butterfly's wing.
“Your face,” he murmured. “Finer here and here than mine. Your
mouth, like a sculptor would make...” Suddenly he smiled. “I'm not
afraid of you. Nobody could look less like border
patrol.”
Sasha
sat still beneath the touch. No-one but Laurie had laid a hand on
him in two years. In a way no-one could, not so that it mattered.
Laurie's kisses and caresses echoed beneath Sasha's skin, as if
they were strings of a harp that could give out their music in a
random breeze. In a moment he would take hold of Mateo's wrist, but
in the meantime the contact was pleasant, and Sasha was thinking,
thinking. US immigration law was radically different to that of the
UK, of course. But Sasha had made case studies as part of his
diploma, comparative stories from elsewhere in Europe, from
Australia, Canada...
From
Mexico. Suddenly Sasha was gripped with desire to help this young
man. It wasn't just kindness—God, no. It was a need to become once
again what he was. He had been ripped out of England, unplugged
from every role in his life where he could be of any use. Not even
the houseplants needed him here. Now he did take Mateo's arm, very
lightly, stilling its motion but holding it warmly, like a friend.
“That's just it. I know I don't look like I work in immigration,
but—”
Mateo tugged his wrist free. Belatedly Sasha noticed that he
wore a little cross around his neck—no, a crucifix, gleaming in the
sun. He took a step back. Sasha might have been a priest who’d
heard his sins in the confessional, then threatened to break its
holy seal. “Yo nunca he estado equivocado
antes,” Mateo whispered, his colour
draining, “especialmente cuando se trata
de un hombre.”
Sasha picked out a word or two, and filled in the rest with a
natural linguist’s quickness: I have never
been wrong before. Not about a man. “No,”
he said urgently. “You don’t understand. I’m not in enforcement, I
just...”
But
Mateo had sprung away. Sasha lurched up. The world spun again, and
before he could find balance, Mateo had pelted back to the corner,
sandals silent on the marble. He grabbed at the jacaranda and swung
himself into the leaf-shade, lithe as a lynx. One rustle of the
branches—one brief shower of petals, like the confetti Sasha and
Laurie had thrown at Charlie and Mrs G on their way out of the
church—and he was gone.
Sasha
sank back down onto the bench. Something scraped in the back pocket
of his jeans. He reached round and pulled out his mobile, somehow
still with him and dry. He stared at the screen. He’d never called
Laurie at work. It had been a law of his life to pick up when
Laurie called him, but that was different. Sick, abruptly desolate,
he dialled.
The line
rang and rang. Then came the click, the familiar start of the
voicemail. Laurie had recorded his message right there in the phone
shop, unable to resist the lure of a new toy, smiling at Sasha
while he spoke. Christ, that voice—deep, sweet and sexy, hamming it
up just a little for fun...
Sasha
cut the line. His head thumped with pain, and for a moment he
considered doing something sensible, calling up a cab and taking
himself into A&E, or the ER, or whatever it was called around
here.
But it
was only ten o’clock. For some reason that dismayed him. How could
so much have happened, and the whole of a hot vacant day still lie
ahead?
Better
yet, his key cards were at the bottom of the pool. He could see
them from where he sat, drifting on the chain of their silver fob.
He must have pulled them in during his graceless, lungfish struggle
from the water. Just now he didn't have the strength to dive in and
get them back.
He
stretched out on the marble bench instead. His days would only be
empty if he allowed them to be. Inside the house lay work he could
do, the assignments he'd brought out for the next stage of his
qualifications. He could learn more Spanish, and then next time he
met an immigrant Mexican pool boy who didn't really exist, their
conversation would be easier.
Not that
he would be seeing Mateo again. That was a good thing: the boy
would be safer if he'd taken fright, reviewed whose fences he
jumped over, whose faces he could trust. Sasha closed his eyes. The
housekeeper was due at twelve. Sasha could rest until then, get rid
of this headache, then unless she too assumed he was an estate
worker napping in stolen shade, she might let him in.
He
drifted into sleep, and dreamed of San Marco as a mix between a
crate for a pedigree animal and a huge cardboard box by the Thames,
through whose sides someone had considerately pierced a pattern of
holes for air.