Holy Fire - Bruce Sterling [101]
“Josef, so good of you to come,” said Vietti in English. He was tall and broad shouldered and square chinned and one of the very few people at the event who did not deign to wear spex. It was clear that Vietti had once been very beautiful. Many years and many pains had been at him. Now he had the slightly sinister ruinous dignity of the Roman Colosseum—although in point of fact Giancarlo Vietti was not Roman but Milanese.
Vietti glanced at Maya with the same absently indulgent gaze he’d been giving his obedient storks. His faded blue eyes widened suddenly. Finally he revealed a sparkling rack of ceramic teeth. “Oh, but Josef. But she’s so cute! You rascal. Really, you shouldn’t have.”
“So you do remember.”
“You thought I’d forget my first collection? It’s like forgetting your first time under the knife.” Vietti gazed at Maya, deeply intrigued. “Where did you find her?”
“She’s my new student.”
Vietti very gently touched Maya’s jawline with one black-gloved fingertip. He plucked once at the end of a trailing length of her wig, and gave a quick adjusting tug at her shoulder seam. He laughed delightedly.
After ten seconds or so of hearty laughter, Vietti’s cheeks flushed patchily and there were odd aquatic gurglings beneath the suit. Vietti put his left hand to his midriff, winced, wriggled a bit on the deep internal hooks of his life support. Then he examined a wrist-fan and sketched at the membrane with his forefinger.
“Let’s put her on the catwalk tonight,” he said. “A show in Roma is always such chaos anyway. And really, this is too cute.”
“You mustn’t, Giancarlo. That’s costume plastic, it’s a knockoff.”
“I know this garment is your little joke on me, but we can get that fixed. Can she walk?”
“She can walk a little.”
“She’s very young, they’ll forgive her if she can’t walk.” Vietti looked at her, expectantly. “The name?”
“Maya.”
“Little Maya, I have a very good crew here. Let me put you in their hands. Can you walk in front of all these shiny people? They are terribly old, and they all have silly spex and too much money.” Vietti winked at her, a leaden pretense of camaraderie across the awful gulf of a century.
“Sure I can.” Perfectly happy and confident.
Vietti gazed at Novak limpidly. “And Josef—a few little pictures for me. For my little corner of the net.”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” said Novak. “I haven’t brought the proper gear.”
“Josef, for old times’ sake. You can use Madracki’s gear, Madracki’s a poseur, he’s an idiot, he owes me the favor anyway.”
“I’m all out of practice with couture. Really, it takes everything I have these days just to photograph an eggshell, a spiderweb.… ”
“Josef, after you took the trouble to dress her! Don’t be coy. The face is awful, it’s true, that’s little-girl makeup, vivid kitsch for kids, but we can see to the face. And the wig’s a disaster.… But she’s so sexy, Josef! Everyone was so very sexy in the twenties. Even I was sexy then.” Vietti sighed nostalgically. “You remember how sexy I was?”
“When you’re young, even the moon and stars are sexy.”
“Ah, but people died so young in the twenties, so everyone was sexy then, everything was always so sexy. Even AIDS was sexy in the twenties. I don’t have a single sexy thing in this collection, your little girl can be my sexy thing tonight, it’ll be fun. Barbara will see to it.” Vietti flapped his wrist-fans shut and clapped his hands. “Barbara!”
“You’re very lucky,” Novak told Maya, very quietly. “He wants to like you. Don’t disappoint us.”
She whispered back. “He’s not going to pay me, is he? I can do this as long as I don’t get paid.”
“I’ll look after that,” Novak assured her. “Be brave.”
Barbara was a senior Vietti assistant. Barbara had the accent of West End London, and the broad features and kinked black hair of a West Indian, combined with the painterly peaches-and-cream complexion of a Pre-Raphaelite lass on a canvas. Barbara was sober and efficient and dressed as beautifully as a ranking diplomat. Barbara