Holy Fire - Bruce Sterling [72]
In the morning she made them breakfast. Emil, just as he had promised, did not remember her name. He was cheerfully embarrassed about this fact. A quick bed-wrestling match knocked their affair into order. Emil ate his breakfast, grinned triumphantly, and started working. Maya, unable to bear the disorder, started cleaning the studio.
To judge by the state of his catalog, Emil had been living alone for two, maybe three months. The documentation of his work was out of order and out of date. She would have to see to putting the record straight. This was clearly the open-ended legacy of being with Emil. To judge from the varying competence of the photographs, she was the fourth in a series.
Giving the place a good cleaning job was even more revelatory. Women had blown through Emil’s studio like a series of storm fronts. Hairpins here. A single crumpled stocking there. Shoe liners. An empty lipstick. Pink feathers off some long-lost costume. Cheap sunglasses. Mismatched cooking utensils. Lubricants. Blood testers. And, of course, the photographs. The women doing the photographs had been the ones investing real effort.
“I feel good today,” Emil declared, as well he should. “I’m going to create a new piece just for you, Maya. A piece to capture your unique qualities. Your generosity. Your goodness.”
“I’m not your clay vessel, you know.”
“Of course you are, my dear! We are all clay vessels. Why contradict Scripture?” Emil chuckled merrily and started pounding clay.
Maya found her way downtown and rescued her luggage from the storage locker. Klaudia’s backpack and garment bag were gone. Klaudia had left her a note. In Deutsch. Maya couldn’t read Deutsch, of course, but to judge by the angular scrawl and the forest of exclamation points, Klaudia had been furious.
Maya found a public netsite. She plugged in her camera and wired her photos to Therese at the shop. Then she had lunch.
When she had finished dutifully nourishing herself, she called the shop in Munchen.
“Where are you?” said Therese.
“I’m still in Praha. How is Klaudia?”
“She’s back. Mad. Worried. Hung over. Humiliated. You’re not being helpful, Maya.”
“I picked up a guy.”
“That’s exactly what I thought.… When will you be back?”
Maya shook her head. “Therese, if I don’t look after this one, he’s going to throw himself out the window.”
Therese laughed. “Have you lost your mind? That’s the oldest art-boy scam in the book. Show some sense and get back right away. I’ve brought in a lot of new stock.”
“Therese …” She sighed. “You were right. The Tête is a scene. I’m very taken with these artifice people. They’re going to teach me to be vivid. I’m not coming back to Munchen.”
Therese was silent.
“Therese, did you see my photos?”
“The photos are not bad,” Therese said. “I think maybe I can use the photos.”
“They’re awful. But I’m going to take lessons. In photography, in spex work. I’m going to get better. I’m going to get better equipment and I’m going to really work in artifice. I’m going to make myself into one of these people.”
“You’re not happy here at the shop, darling?”
“I don’t want to be happy, Therese. There’s not enough of me to be happy. I’m not my own woman yet, I have to learn to be more like myself. These artifice people, I think they can help me. They have my kind of hunger.”
“You sound very certain very suddenly. What changed your mind for you? One night in bed with some man? Why don’t you get on the train and come back here? Trains are very easy.”
“I can send you lots of photos, if you want them. But I can’t go back to the shop.”
“If you don’t come back to Munchen, I’ll have to get someone else. There won’t be a welcome for you anymore.”
“Get someone else, Therese.”
“My poor little Maya! Always so ambitious. And artifice people are so chic.” Therese sighed. “Cleverness doesn’t make them nice people, you know. You’re very innocent, and they could hurt you.”
“If I wanted safe and nice, I’d have stayed in California. My life is risk. I’m an illegal. I’m on the drift, the wanderjahr. You were very good to me, but Munchen’s