Glamorama (91 page)

Another day. Outside, rain pours down continuously, the wrong kind of weather. I’m eating an omelette that Davide ordered up but it has no taste. Davide tells me that his favorite TV newscaster is Simona Ventura and that he met her once at L’Isola. In the suite next to ours a Saudi prince is behaving badly with a beautiful married woman. The director from the French film crew calls. It has been a week since we last spoke.

“Where’s Palakon?” I automatically ask.

“Ah,” the director sighs. “There’s that name again, Victor.”

“Where is he?” I’m gasping.

“We’ve been through this a hundred times,” the director says. “There is no Palakon. I’ve never heard that name.”

“That’s just too heavy for me to accept at this point.”

“Well, lighten up,” the director says. “I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“I want to go back,” I’m weeping. “I want to go home.”

“There’s always that possibility, Victor,” the director says. “Don’t discount it.”

“Why aren’t you paying attention to me anymore?” I ask. “You haven’t called in a week.”

“Plans are forming,” is all the director says.

“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 Café 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 porn film, Japanese girls having sex on a foam-rubber mattress.

His cell phone rings.

Davide answers it, dulled out, eyes empty.

He speaks quickly in Italian. Then he listens. Then he speaks quickly again before clicking off.

“Someone’s coming,” Davide says. “To see us.”

I’m humming
listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise
.

7

A knock on the door.

Davide opens it.

A beautiful young girl enters the room. Davide and the girl embrace and chat amiably in Italian while I stare, dazed, from the bed. The girl is holding an envelope and in the envelope is a videocassette. Without being introduced, she hands it to me.

I stare at it dumbly, then Davide impatiently yanks it out of my hand and slips it into the VCR beneath the television set.

Davide and the girl move over to another room in the suite as the tape starts playing.

8