Holy Fire - Bruce Sterling [108]
“This place is so amazing, it’s so refined,” Brett marveled. “It was so nice of you to ask me here.”
“You can stop gushing at me just any time now, Brett. Tell me something—tell me how you got to Roma.”
“You really want to know? Well, my first stop in Europe was Stuttgart, but the rents are so high there and the people are so snobby and full of themselves, so I just started doing a kind of wanderjahr, and, well, all roads lead to Roma, don’t they? And nobody was interested in what I could do with clothes, so I kept asking around and I got this kind of piecework spex job with this tabloid net, and I hang around on the shows and cafés and sometimes I get lucky and spot somebody who ranks.”
“That’s about what I imagined. You must know a lot of secondhand shops around here, right?”
“You mean clothing stores? Sure. This is Roma, there’s zillions. The Via del Corso, the Via Condotti, you can get all kinds of stuff for cash in Trastevere.… ”
“Josef is upstairs, running through his files in Praha. He’s going to instantiate me some clothes from his files, some clothes from the twenties. That’s the theme of the shoot. You know the style of that period?”
“Well, sure I do, sort of. In the twenties they were real big on, like, camisades and aubades with lastex and tulle and lots of optical fringe ribbon.”
Maya paused. The camisades sounded plausible, but she couldn’t recall having ever worn so much as a centimeter of optical fringe ribbon. “Brett, we’re going to need some props for the session. Something to inspire Josef. He hasn’t worked this way in a long time, so we need something very atmospheric, something very … well, very Glass Labyrinth, very early-Novak. Josef Novak was always very big on the inherent poetry in things … on that very strange intense poetic thingness that certain, uhm, things possess.… You have any real idea what I’m talking about here?”
“I guess so.”
Maya handed her a fat cashcard. Brett checked the register band and her eyes widened.
“Old playing cards,” Maya told her. “Crescent moons. Ladies’ gloves. Colored yarn. Netting. Weird twentieth-century scientific instruments. Obsolete prosthetics. Driftwood. Prisms. Compasses. Brass-tipped walking sticks. Some ratty stuffed animals with scary glass eyes, like minks or weasels or, you know, ermines. Broken windup toys. Do you know what a phonograph was? Well, never mind the phonographs, then. Do you get my general Novak-ish drift here?”
Brett nodded uncertainly.
“Okay, then take that money I just gave you, scout out some junk shops, tell them you’re my stylist. You’re working on my photo shoot for Giancarlo Vietti. Try to borrow whatever you can, rent what you can’t borrow, and don’t buy anything unless you’re willing to keep it yourself. We’re in a big hurry here, so round up any vivid friends that can help you. Bring it all back here to the villa. Travel quick. Forget the bike, use taxis. If you get in trouble, call me. Time is of the essence, and money is basically no object. Understand all that? Okay, get going.”
Brett stood blinking.
“What are you waiting for?”
“Nothing,” she said. “It’s just that it’s so exciting. I’m just so glad to be really doing this.”
“Well, do it quick.”
Brett scampered off. Josef’s first instantiations arrived by courier. They were costumery. They weren’t about comfort or wearability. They were camera props, they were about photons.
Back in the twenties, they had still been very big on natural fibers, but there was no fabric in these costumes. They were all microscopic shirrings and shrinkings and tiny little squirms of extruded plastic. The costumes didn’t breathe well and they rustled loudly when they moved, but they looked angelic. When you pinched or tucked them into place they stayed that way and laughed mockingly at gravity.
“Looks like you got us our money’s worth.”
“The Khornak brothers are robbing us,” groaned Novak. “Sixteen percent transaction fees! Can you believe that?”
Maya peeled a tangerine cape-dress from the top of the heap and held it to herself. “That won