He selected a clean tumbler and went to look for the whisky. Poured the glass half full while he stared into the dead blue glare of the TV. The end titles of whatever mindless terrorists-threaten-civilisation flick they had just spun was already gone, already wiped off the screen as cleanly as the details of plot and action from his mind. Rage evaporating into remorse and a creeping sense of desolation.
A vicious clarity caught up with him, just before he knocked back the drink.
He was glad of the row, he knew abruptly. Glad of the out it had given him.
He was relieved she wouldn’t be coming with him.
Relieved, because—
He took the knowledge by the throat and drowned it.
Troy Morris’s home might not have been in the cordoned zones, but Chris could see a zone checkpoint just down the street from his front door, and the quality of housefronts plunged rapidly on the way there. The street was restored Victorian, Troy’s place and the surrounding facades carefully painted, windows clean. After that it started to get rough - at the checkpoint end, paint was a flecked rumour on most frontages and window glass had become strictly optional. Plastic coverings flapped in a couple of places.
The last three houses on both sides of the street had been demolished to provide open ground on either side of the checkpoint. The rubble had been cleared, and defoliant kept the weeds down. A hundred metres beyond the barriers, the closest structures on the other side were riot-fire blackened and crumbling. A shabby concrete block rose ten storeys high behind the shells, dirty grey facades stained darker with leakage from substandard guttering. Chris spotted someone watching him from a window near the top.
It was a perfect summer evening, still fully light after eight o’clock and the day’s heat was leaching slowly out of the air without the rain that had been threatening all afternoon. Junk salsa thumped out of Troy’s opened sash windows and when Bryant rang the doorbell, the door seemed to blow open on a gust of bassline.
‘Mike! Good to see you, man.’ Troy was kitted out in a Jamaica Test ‘47 shirt with Moses McKenzie’s grinning victorious face poking out behind a holoshot fast-bowled cricket ball that seemed to come right off the fabric at them. In contrast, Troy’s face seemed unusually sombre. ‘Hey, Faulkner. You came. That’s good.’
Chris murmured something, but Troy had already gone back to Bryant.
‘Mike, listen. Need to talk to you later, man.’
‘Sure. What’s the deal?’
Troy shook his head. ‘Later’s better.’
‘Whatever you need.’ Bryant craned his neck to look down the hall. ‘Any chance of a spliff?’
‘Yeah, somewhere I guess. That blonde TV face you like, she’s here, she’s rolling.’
‘Right.’
They went down the hall, into the heart of the party.
Chris had never been much of a fiesta machine. Growing up smart and strangely accented in a zone school had ensured he was routinely bullied nearly every day of his life and didn’t get invited to many parties. Later, he learned to fight. Later still he grew into looks that a lot of the cooler female kids liked. Life got easier, but the damage was already done. He remained withdrawn and watchful around other people, found it hard to relax and harder to have fun if he was surrounded. A reputation for moody cool, approved and codified by male peers and female fans alike, nailed the doors shut on him. By the time he hacked his way into the corporate world, he had exactly the demeanour required for long-term survival. The edgy, peer-thrown parties and corporate functions, rancid with rivalry and display politics, were a comfortable fit. He turned up because he had to, faked his way through the necessary rituals with polished skill, never let his guard down and hated every minute. Just like the parties of his youth.
Accordingly, he was mildly shocked to discover, a couple of hours later, the extent to which he was enjoying himself at Troy Morris’s gathering.
He’d ended up, as he often did at house parties, in the kitchen, mildly buzzed on a couple of tequila slammers and a single line of very good cocaine, arguing South American politics with Troy’s son James and a glossy Spanish fashion model called Patricia, who they’d discovered -wow, you’re kidding me - had appeared in the same issue of GQ as Chris, though wearing a lot fewer clothes. Not, Chris couldn’t help noticing, that she was wearing a lot of clothes at the moment either. There were about a dozen of these exotic creatures sprinkled around the party like sex-interest models at a motorshow. They drifted elegantly from room to room, drawn occasionally into the orbits of the expensively dressed men they appeared to have come with, spoke English in a variety of alluring non-English accents and, without exception danced superlatively well to the junk salsa blasting out of the speakers in the lounge. To judge by Patricia and her end of the South America conversation, they had all been required to check their brains in at the door. Or had maybe just pawned them for the wisps of designer clothing they were fractionally wrapped in.
‘For me, all these bad things they say about Hernan Echevarria, I think they exaggerate. You know, I have met his son in Miami and he is a really quite nice guy. He really loves his father.’
James, perhaps thinking of his imminent entry into the Thatcher Institute and the possible eavesdroppers on this conversation, said nothing. But he was young and unschooled as yet, and his face said it all.
‘It isn’t really a question of his son,’ said Chris, making an effort. ‘The point is that excessive use of force by a regime, any regime, can make investors nervous. If they think the government is stepping up repressive measures too much, they start to wonder how secure the regime is, and what’ll happen to their money if it comes tumbling down. It’s like scaffolding around an apartment block - it’s not the sort of thing that makes you keen to buy in that block, is it?’
Patricia blinked. ‘Oh, I would never buy a flat in a block,’ she assured him. ‘No garden, and you would have to share the swimming pool. I couldn’t stand that.’
Chris blinked as well. There was a short silence.
‘Actually, the right kind of repression is usually a pretty good booster for investor confidence. I mean, look at Guatemala.’
It was the dealer of the high-quality powdered goods. He’d been leaning into the conversation on and off for the last hour, each time making remarkably astute observations about the political and economic salients of Latin America. Chris couldn’t make up his mind if this was a result of close association on the dealer’s part with some of his corporate clients or just exemplary background knowledge of his supply chain. He thought it’d be unwise to ask.
‘Guatemala’s a different game,’ he said.
‘How so?’ asked the dealer. ‘From what I hear their indices are pretty close to Echevarria’s, pro rata. About the same balance of payments. Same military budget. Same structural adjustment.’
‘But not the same governance durability. The last twenty-five years, you’ve had over a dozen different regimes, a dozen regime shifts, most of them with violence. The US military has been in and out of there like it was a urinal. Violent change is the norm. The investors expect it there. That’s why they get such a huge return. And, sure, violent repression is part of the picture, but it’s successful violent repression. You’re right. Which does inspire investment.’
James cleared his throat. ‘But not in the North Andean Monitored?’
‘No, Echevarria’s been in power a long time. Tight grip on the military, he’s one of them himself. Investors expect stability, because that’s what he’s given them for decades. That’s why shooting protesters on the steps of major universities isn’t smart.’
‘Oh, but they were marquistas,’ broke in Patricia. ‘He had to do that to protect the public’