Holy Fire - Bruce Sterling [106]
“No, of course not.”
“Oh, so you owe it to your escort here? Does he sponsor you? What’s your relationship with this guy exactly? And what’s your name, and who is he, anyway?”
“I’m Maya and this is Mr. Josef Novak. There’s certainly nothing illicit about our relationship.”
Novak laughed. “Don’t tell them that! I’m deeply touched to be a source of scandal.”
“How do you know Giancarlo Vietti? How old are you? Where are you from?”
“Don’t tell them anything,” Novak advised, “let the poor creatures feed on mystery.”
“Don’t be that way,” begged the young paparazza. She forced a business card on Maya. The flimsy card showed nothing but a name and a net-address. “Can I interview you later, Signorina Maya? Where are you from?”
“Where are you from?” Maya said.
“California.”
“What city?”
“The Bay.”
Maya stared at her. “Wait a minute! I can’t believe this! I know you! You’re Brett!”
Brett laughed. “Sorry, that’s not my name.”
“But it is! Your name is Brett and you had a boyfriend named Griff and I bought one of your jackets once.”
“Well, my name’s not Brett, and if anybody had one of my jackets it sure wouldn’t be a runway model for Giancarlo Vietti.”
“You are Brett, you had a rattlesnake! What on earth are you doing here in Roma, Brett? And what have you done to your hair?”
“Look, my name’s Natalie, okay? And what does it look like I’m doing here? I’m hanging around on a cold pavement outside a couture show trying to pick up scraps, that’s what.” Brett pulled off her spex and stared at Maya in pained surprise. “How come you know so much about me? Do I really know you? How? Why?”
“But it’s me, Brett! It’s me, Maya,” Maya said, and she shuddered from head to foot. A finger’s width of glue popped loose on her back. She was freezing. And she suddenly felt very bad. Nauseated, dizzy.
“You don’t know me,” Brett insisted. “I never saw you before in my life! What’s going on in there? Why are you trying to fool me?”
“The cab’s here,” Novak said.
“Don’t go now!” Brett grabbed her arm. “D’you know there’s a million girls who’d kill to do what you just did? How’d you do that? What do I have to do, to get that lucky? Tell me!”
“Don’t touch her!” Novak barked. Brett jumped back as if shot.
“If you knew what it was like in there,” Novak told her, “you’d go home tomorrow! Go lie on the beach, be a young woman, live, breathe! There’s nothing for you there. They made sure of that long before you were born.”
“I feel so bad, Josef,” Maya wailed.
“Get in the taxi.” Novak shoveled her inside. The doors shut. Brett stood stunned on the pavement, then jumped out and hammered at the window, shouting silently. The taxi pulled away.
Next morning she found she’d gotten write-ups on the net. There were white tuberoses from Vietti and eight calls from industry journalists. One of the journalists had called from the hotel lobby. He was camping out there.
They had breakfast smuggled into Novak’s room. “You’re not at the point where you can talk to real journalists,” Novak told her. “Journalists are the class enemies of celebrity models. They become hormonally excited when they discover any fact that will cause you deep personal pain.”
“I’m not a celebrity model.” She certainly didn’t feel the part. She’d had to shred the couture gown. It had required cleansing cream, a long-handled loofah, and half an hour to scrub the glue from her skin. She hadn’t dared to sleep in the intelligent wig, and in the morning she discovered it limp and dead. She couldn’t even manage to boot its software.
“That’s true enough, but a pile of sand is not yet Bohemian crystal, my dear.”
“I want to be a photographer, not a model.”
“Don’t be hasty. You should learn how to work to the camera before you torment other people with a lens. A few location shots will teach you proper sympathy for all your future victims.” Novak patted his grizzled lips with a napkin, stood, and began emptying his travel case on the bed.
The false bottom of his case held two deep layers of gray equipment foam. Four sets of highly specialized spex. Lenses in 35 mm, 105, 200, 250. Two