Holy Fire - Bruce Sterling [107]
Maya blinked. “I thought you said you hadn’t brought proper equipment.”
“I said I hadn’t brought equipment to the show,” Novak said. “Anyway, this gear is nothing much. Since I was forced to come here, I thought I might shoot—I don’t know—a few of those lovely Roman manhole covers.… But a couture shoot! Oh, what a challenge.”
“Won’t Vietti help us? He’s got a million flunkies on staff, he ought to give us anything we want.”
“Darling, Giancarlo and I are professionals. The game between the two of us has rules. When I win, I give Giancarlo exactly what I want to give Giancarlo. He shuts up and pays me. When I lose, Giancarlo offers me the full and terrible burden of his tactful advice and help.”
“Oh.”
Novak examined his bedspread arsenal of digital photon-benders and tugged thoughtfully at the bulbous end of his large, aged, cartilaginous male nose. “A couture session is no mere still life, it truly needs a team. You don’t take couture shots, you make them. The stylist for the clothing, the set dresser … a decent studio service is invaluable for props. A location scout … Hair designer, cosmetician very certainly …”
“How do we get all these people?”
“We hire them. After that, we bill Giancarlo for their services. That’s the good part. The bad part is I have no decent contacts in Roma. And, of course, since I am devastated by business failure, I have no capital.”
She gazed at him thoughtfully. She knew with deep cellular certainty that Novak had plenty of money, but extracting it from him would be like drawing ten liters of blood. “I think I have a little money,” she said tentatively.
“You do? That’s exciting news, my dear.”
“I have a contact in Bologna who might help us. She has a lot of friends in virtuality and artifice.”
“Young people? Amateurs.”
“Yes, Josef, young people. You know what that means, don’t you? It means they’ll work for us for nothing, and then we can bill for whatever we like.”
“Well,” Novak allowed thoughtfully, “they’re still amateurs, but it never hurts to ask.”
“I can ask. I’m pretty sure I can ask. Before I can ask, though, I’m going to need some equipment for asking. Do you happen to know a nice discreet netsite in Roma that runs defunct protocols?”
That question was no challenge for Josef Novak. “The Villa Curonia,” Novak said at once. “Of course, the old and wicked Villa Curonia. What a lovely atmosphere for a location shoot.”
The Villa Curonia was a former private residence in Roma’s Monteverde Nuovo. The shaggy green heads of indiscreet palm trees loomed behind its glass-topped brick walls. A certain eccentricity in the facade suggested that its builder had been some opium-smoking D’Annunzio aesthete with aristo relations in the highest and creepiest circles of the early twentieth-century Curia.
Inside, the villa had an arch-heavy interior courtyard with a dry fountain and pedestaled statue of Hermes, perfect for the midnight meetings of bagmen. The three-story east wing was riddled like cheesecloth with power leads and fiber optics, all scuffed parquet flooring and silent ivory corridors and monster antique virch-sets squatting like toads behind the locked doors of servants’ cubbyholes. Two comically sinister brothers named Khornak were running the place, for heaven only knew what sub-rosa cabal of backers, and under their aegis the ancient building had achieved the silk-padded atmosphere of a digital bordello. A Roman house of assignation for man-machine liaisons.
Novak was busy and methodical, Maya busy and nearly manic. Benedetta proved very helpful. Benedetta was tireless once she perceived a link to her own ambitions.
Brett arrived on a rented bicycle around three in the afternoon. Maya ushered her past the sidewalk guard