Holy Fire

uncanny.”

Maya wiped at her tears, and tried to smile. “Oh, I’m so bad, I’ve ruined that wonderful job Philippe did on my eyes.”

“No, no, don’t fret now.” Novak stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Maya, we’re going to do a proper photo shoot. You and I. We can bring your Philippe in on the job, we can bill for him. When you are working on assignment for Giancarlo, it’s very nice to have some good expensive people you can bill for.… ”

“I should go thank Giancarlo. Shouldn’t I? He really did me a huge favor, letting me go on. I mean, compared to all these professionals … And they were so kind to me, they weren’t jealous at all.”

“They are veterans. You’re far too young to make them jealous. You can thank your friend Giancarlo on the net. It’s better for us to leave now.” Novak smiled. “You’ve beaten them, darling, you beat them like sick old dogs. We’ll go now. It’s always best to leave them wanting more.”

“Well, I’ll get dressed, then.”

“Wear that gown. You can keep it. They had to hurry, so they had to ruin it.”

“Well, I’d better return this incredible wig at least.”

“Take the wig with us, we’ll hold the wig. Just to make sure they call.”

She managed to get rid of the pinching shoes. When she emerged from the dressing room she found Novak clawing one-handed at the air in the corridor, as if fighting off a phantom horde of gnats. He hadn’t gone mad, he was only using the menus on his spex. He was calling them a taxi.

Novak led her deftly past half a dozen random well-wishers backstage. The professionals all seemed quite pleased and amused with her, in their rigid and terrifying fashion. They escaped the amphitheater by a stage exit. It was cold outside, cold enough to frost the breath. The sweat leapt off her bare neck and shoulders into the Roman night. She shivered violently.

When they rounded the corner of the Kio, the paparazzi spotted them. A dozen of them dashed up, yelling at her in Italiano. They were the youngest of the paparazzi, which accounted for the fact that they were willing to dash. Some of them held up ragged halos of fiber-optic flash wire, drowning the damp pavement in sudden gouts of light. Maya smiled at them, flattered. When they saw this response they yelled more loudly and with greater enthusiasm.

“Does anyone here speak English?” Maya said.

The paparazzi, circling them and staring through their gleaming lenses, held a quick shouted consultation. A young woman hurriedly shoved her way through from the back. “I do, I speak English! Will you really talk to us?”

“Sure.”

“Great! We all want to know how you pulled that off.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, how did you get your big break?” said the girl, hastily plucking the translation cuff from her ear. She was American. “Did you do it yourself?”

“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 ductile fisheyes and a photogrammeter. A tripod. Filters. Two camera bodies. Sync cording. Ten meters of tunable laser fiber-optic lighting cord. Gaffer tape. A fat graphics notebook with a high-powered touch-up wand and backup storage. Multi-head photofloods, roll-up reflector cards, filter frames, adapter rings, matte foil, a pocket superconductor.

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