Rafael Yglesias - Hot Properties

“I hear the script’s going well,” Helen, Garth’s wife, said from behind him.

She was lying on a green-and-white-cushioned deck chair, wearing a black bikini on a body so spectacular that to be aroused by it was almost too passive a response. Hurling oneself on Garth and strangling him immediately, tossing diamonds at her, instantly swearing love and running off to the Crimean War — even they might be responses not commensurate with her beauty. And to make her more infuriating, she was pleasant, intelligent, modest, and kind. “We’re almost done,” Tony said.

“You sound relieved.”

“I am.”

“Has it been very hard on you? Staying here and working?”

Below, Garth gestured toward him. Redburn looked at Tony, his eyes squinting as he concentrated on the sight. The look was almost a product’s logo — the distant glance of a hero regarding the future fearlessly, or the past with brave regret. Garth dramatically held his arms out at full length and applauded Tony. Redburn smiled. Tony nodded and held his glass up in acknowledgment.

“He loves you,” Helen said. “He told me last night, he’ll miss you terribly when you go. Made me feel jealous.”

Tony turned her way, his eyes drawn (despite the constant warning lights he flashed them) to her firm full breasts, languidly arrogant in repose. He forced them up with effort, like pulling away from a magnet (it could be done, but it required steady pressure), and looked at her wonderful face. Her green eyes were bright and cheerful. “He’s been very nice to me,” Tony answered in the tone of an ancient retainer speaking of his master.

“He said he thinks you could make a great director. Says you really understand actors.”

Tony ignored the compliment. Hollywood prophesied future success only slightly less casually than it offered absolute predictions of utter failure. “It must have been hard on you to have a houseguest for two months. You’ve been very patient.”

“Aren’t we both wonderful?” she said.

Tony smiled. “I mean it.”

“You don’t really like us,” she said. Not argumentatively, accusingly, but not stating a fact, either.

“Oh, no, no,” Tony said, startled by her comment.

“Don’t feel you have to—”

“I don’t. If I’ve behaved distantly, it’s only because of my problems. He’s a great star — you are a great beauty. For someone like me — vain, greedy, childish — it’s pretty hard to take.”

This little speech was the first time he had spoken informally, intimately. She sat up — Tony’s eyes slipped their leash for a moment and looked at her crotch, barely covered, the surrounding skin of her hips and thighs unblemished, without a ripple of fat or looseness — and looked at him eagerly. “You don’t seem anything like that. You’re self-confident, you’re very at home with yourself.”

Tony giggled. He couldn’t believe she meant that about him — he felt so uncomfortable with himself, as though his ego was infested by fleas: he was scratched raw from the restless itch of its countless wounds. “You’re kidding,” he said, and giggled again.

“No,” she said. “Both of us have talked about it. We wondered if it was our life here.” She nodded at the beach and the house. “Everybody here is conscious of being judged, talked about … you seem to be sure of your value, no matter how things are going.”

“God, I wish that were true. Thank you. But all I’ve felt since I came here is envy.” Tony looked out at the dynamic duo below. “He’s got everything. Fame, money, talent, power.” Tony looked at her, letting all his lust and longing show. “And you. He even has you.”

She showed neither encouragement nor dislike. She simply seemed to accept his comment as a fact.

“I’m sorry to talk about you like that,” Tony said, now nervous that he had said something which was both offensive and possibly untrue. He barely knew this woman. She was stunning, but he felt no love for her. He had spoken, as always, exaggerating a momentary feeling into a dramatic speech. It was his curse, his addiction to taking center stage no matter what, even if it cost him respect and love. He wanted to be interesting to her. He had played the part of modest, patient servitude to her husband for eight weeks of the run. Now he wanted the lead. “I know you’re not a possession of his. That makes it even more irritating. If he had your love simply because he’s famous, then I could be contemptuous. I’m fond of being contemptuous. But I can’t. You really love him.”

Now she was the one to laugh, pause, and then laugh again. “You really mean that to be a question. If you want to go to bed with me, why don’t you just say so?”

“No, no.” Tony pleaded. He felt terror. He had blundered his way into a mess, trying to show off. He put his glass down and put his hands out to plead. “I didn’t mean that. Going to bed with you wouldn’t make me envy him less. I meant simply that being with the two of you is hard. You have everything. I’m just here for a while. Then I’ll go back — to what? To the absence of all this.” He pointed to the house like a magician indicating the objects he was soon to make disappear. “What you both have is a constant reminder of my …” What? What was so terrible about his life? “… my … my mediocrity.”

She had resumed her normal manner: calm, interested, welcoming. “You’re not a mediocrity,” she said sharply, as though someone had insulted a close friend of hers.

“Well,” Tony said, wanting out of this conversation, turning back to look at the tableau under him, more than ten million in talent chatting against the surf, “I feel like one here.” He felt his chest tremble. He breathed out slowly to rid himself of it. At last he had spoken the truth. To an almost total stranger, he had confessed what he dreaded about Hollywood. Not Joe McCarthy or his father’s coldness. Not his mother’s smothering insanity or Garth’s narcissism. Here, he was insignificant — an amoeba in an ocean of whales. He expected at any moment to be swallowed whole — a tasty hors d’oeuvre for the giant mammals.

The flight to Brazil seemed to take forever. Chico accepted all the drinks that were offered, from the champagne before takeoff to the pre-lunch cocktail, to the wine during the meal, straight on through to the cordial. David matched him sip for sip, although he was quite drunk just from the cocktail. Chico passed out near the end, his head sliding off the seat and resting against the window. David felt sick during descent but he fought the nausea off by calling to mind the Mistress and her punishments — guaranteed to arouse him and prove a distraction.

On the ground they were met by the Newstime stringer, Ken Michaelson. Their condition was obvious. “First class is murder, isn’t it?” he said, laughing, taking Chico’s carry-on.

“It’s hot here,” was all the bleary-eyed Chico said.

It was. And humid. The strange land passed by David soundlessly in the air-conditioned car — because of the cars, architecture, and old-fashioned neon signs. Rio looked as though it were existing in a time zone ten years in the past. He felt like a vulgar American. It seemed as though everyone who looked at them knew exactly who they were— American businessmen loaded with dough and prissy assumptions. But I’m not, David wanted to answer. I’m a writer.

“You guys better get some sleep,” Ken said as he pulled into the Hilton. “Our man may want to meet tonight.”

“Where?”

“He didn’t want to talk about that until you arrived.”

They checked in. The Hilton seemed to be trying to fool its customers into believing they were really in the United States. There was barely an accent in the staff’s talk, the technology all looked up-to-date, and there was an absence of Latin decor — the only false note was the excessive deference added to the usual respect with which they were treated. There was a distinctly un-American servility to it— a subservience that made David nervous again. The gross Americans who have to be placated or they bomb the hell out of you, he imagined them thinking. Chico’s reaction was the opposite. Once in their undistinguished two-bedroom suite (Chico thought they should be accessible to each other at all times), he commented: “I love it here! They’re so friendly.”