"You haven't called me in a week," I shout. "What am I doing here?"
"How... shall I put this?" the director ponders.
"You're thinking the project is unrealized," I spit out, panicking. "Don't You? That's what you think. But it isn't."
"How shall I put this?" the director says again.
"Tactfully?" I whisper.
"Tactfully?"
"Yes."
"Your role is over, Victor," he says. "Don't be shocked," he says.
"Should I read this... as a warning?"
"No." He considers something. "Just a long period of adjustment."
"You mean... that I could be here until when? August? Next year?"
"Someone is going to extract you from this sooner or later," the director says. "I'm just not sure exactly when." He pauses. "Davide will watch over you and someone will be in touch shortly."
"What about you?" I wail. "Why can't you do anything? Call Palakon."
"Victor," the director says patiently, "I'm at a loss. I'm moving on to another project."
"You can't, you can't," I'm shouting. "You can't leave me here."
"Because I'm moving on, someone else will be brought in to oversee what your, um, future role might be."
"This isn't happening," I murmur.
I start crying again.
Davide looks up from his computer game. He offers a moment of attention, a random smile.
"In the meantime..." The director trails off.
Before hanging up, the director says he will try to speed things along by putting me in contact with a war criminal "who might know what to do" with me, and then the director's gone and I never speak to him again.
5
Occasionally I'm allowed out for a walk. Davide always makes a series of calls. We always take the service elevator down. Davide is always armed inconspicuously. On the walk he closely scrutinizes every stranger that passes by. Since it's the off-season and there's no one in town, I'm allowed to browse through the Prada men's boutique on Via Montenapoleone. We have a drink at Cafe L'Atlantique on Viale Umbria. Later we share a plate of sushi at La Terrazza on Via Palestro. I have so many little theories. I'm still piecing together clues-there's only a blueprint, there's only an outline-and sometimes they come together, but only when I'm drinking from a cold, syrupy bottle of Sambuca. Davide has one big theory that explains everything. "I like the really cool way you express yourself, Davide," I say. Looking down, I add, "I'm sorry." He mentions something about Leonardo and The Last Supper and how cute the waitress is.
And in the late afternoon there's a polluted sky above Milan and it gets dark rather rapidly and then Davide and I are wandering through the fog floating around us and while walking along the Via Sottocorno I notice a limousine idling by the curb and models with orange hair and frostbite-blue lipstick are moving toward a bank of lighted windows and I break away from Davide and run into Da Giacomo and I glimpse Stefano Gabbana and Tom Ford, who glances over at me and nods casually before Davide pulls me out of the restaurant. This outburst means it's time to go back to the hotel.
6
Back in the room shaped like a beehive Davide tosses me a Playboy before he takes a shower. December's Playmate and her favorite things: military insignia, weapon designs, visiting the Pentagon's national command center. But I'm watching MTV and a segment about the Impersonators-the huge DreamWorks contract, an interview with the band, the new single "Nothing Happened" off their soon-to-be-released CD In the Presence of Nothing. I slowly move to a mirror and in it my face looks ghostly, transparent, a vacant stare reminds me of something, my hair is turning white. I can hear Davide taking a shower, jets of water splashing against tile, Davide whistling a pop hit from four years ago. When Davide opens the bathroom I'm huddling on the bed, wilted, half-asleep, sucking on a lozenge.
"You are still alive," Davide says, but as he reads the line I can swear he places a subtle emphasis on the pronoun.
Davide's naked, carelessly drying himself off in front of me. Huge biceps, coarse hair tufting out from his armpits, the cheeks of his ass are like melons, the muscles in his stomach push out his belly button. He notices me watching and smiles emphatically. I tell myself he's here to ward off danger.
Once dressed, Davide is in a gray mood and barely tolerant of any despair emanating from where I'm writhing on the bed, and I'm crying endlessly and staring at him. He stares back, puzzled, low key. He starts watching a soft-core p**n film, Japanese girls having sex on a foam-rubber mattress.