Benedetta plucked the stylus from her hair. She adjusted a tiny knob, then bent over carefully and touched the stylus to a ceramic tile. Sparks flew. Blackness etched its way into the tile.
“Sign our membership list,” Benedetta said. She handed Maya the stylus.
“Wonderful. Good idea. Where do I sign?”
“You sign on that post.” Benedetta pointed at the satellite dish.
“You walk,” Niko said.
“You mean I walk from here to there, along the peak of this roof.”
“She’s so clever,” said Bouboule to Niko. Niko nodded smugly.
“So I just walk twenty meters in the dark along the peak of a slippery tile roof with a four-story drop on both sides,” Maya said. “That’s what you want from me. Right?”
“Do you remember,” said Benedetta, quietly, “that vivid friend of yours in Roma? Little Natalie?”
“Natalie. Sure. What about her?”
“You asked me to look after your friend Natalie a little.”
“Yes, I did.”
“I did that for you,” Benedetta said. “Now I know your Natalie. She could never pass this test. You know why? Because she’ll stop in the middle, and she’ll know that she can’t win. Then the fear will kill her. The blackness and the badness will take her by her little beating heart, and she’ll slip. Down she goes. Off the edge, darling. Bang, bang, bang, down the tiles. And then hard onto the cold old streets of Praha. If she’s lucky, she’ll land on her head.”
“But since you are one of us,” Bouboule said, “it’s not risky.”
“It only
“If these tiles were on the ground in the old town square, any fool could walk them,” said Benedetta. “No one would ever slip or fall. The tiles are not dangerous. The danger is inside you. In your head, in your heart. It’s your self that is the danger. If you can possess your self, then you go sign your name on the post and you walk back to us. It is safe as a pillow, safe as a bed; no, darling, it’s safer than that, because there are men in the world. But to walk beneath the stars—well, it’s in you, or it isn’t in you.”
“Go sign your name for us, darling,” said Bouboule.
“Then come back to us and be our sister,” said Niko.
Maya looked at them. They were perfectly serious. They meant it. This was how they lived.
“Well, I’m not gonna do it in heels,” she said. She pulled off her shoes and stood up. It was good that Novak had taught her to walk a little. She fixed her eyes on the distant glow of the dish and she walked the spine of the roof. Nothing could stop her. She was perfectly happy and confident. Then she wrote:
MIA ZIEMANN WAS HERE
In a blast of sparks. It looked very nice there on the post with all the other names. So she did a little drawing, too.
The way back was harder because her bare feet were so cold. The tiles hurt her, and she picked her way more slowly, and this gave her more time to think. She would not fall, but it occurred to her in a cold black flash that she might deliberately throw herself from the roof. There was bittersweet appeal in the idea. If she was Mia Ziemann, as she had just proclaimed herself to be, then there was part of Mia Ziemann she had not yet made her peace with. This was the large and deeply human part of Mia Ziemann that was truly tired of life and genuinely anxious to be dead.
But she was so much stronger than that now.
“We hoped you would blow us a kiss,” Benedetta said, scooting over to make room.
“I save that for gerontocrats,” Maya said. She gave Benedetta the stylus.
The trapdoor opened a bit. One of Helene’s dogs squirmed out. A little white dog had no business on a steep tile roof, but the dog walked like no dog had any business walking. It crept like a gecko, like a salamander. It saw them and it skidded a bit on the tile in surprise and it whimpered.
“
A screech, a catapulting flash of golden fur. Primates were smarter than canines. Primates could climb like anything. The dog yelped in terror and tumbled from the edge of the roof with a howl of despair.
“Oh, poor baby,” said Bouboule, hugging her shivering marmoset, “you have lost your fine chapeau.”
“No, I see it,” said Niko. “It’s in the gutter.” She scrambled down and fetched the tiny hat and brought it back.
They were silent for a moment, weighing the consequences.
“We’d better not go back down. You know another way out?” Maya said to Benedetta.
“I specialize in other ways out,” said Benedetta.
The four of them caught the tube and split up. It seemed wisest. Maya took Benedetta home with her. She and Benedetta had a lot to discuss. Two in the morning found them nibbling canapes in the actress’s white furry apartment. Then Novak called her on the actress’s netlink. The screen was blank, a voice call. Novak hated synchronous video.
“You don’t meet in the Tete again,” he told her somberly.
“No?”
“She wept for her little dog. Klaus won’t have that. It was cruel and stupid.”
“I’m sorry for the accident, Josef. It was very sudden.”
“You’re a bad and destructive girl.”
“I don’t mean to be. Truly.”
“Helene understands you far, far better than you will ever understand Helene. She means so well and has no malice, but how she suffers! She won’t allow herself any luck.” Novak sighed. “Helene was rude to me tonight. Can you believe that, girl? It’s a tragedy to see a grande dame being crass. And in public! It means she is afraid, you see.”
“I’m sorry that she was rude.”
“If you could have known her, Maya, when she was young. A great patroness of the arts. A woman of taste and discernment. She asked for nothing but to help us. But the parasites crowded around her, taking advantage of her. Feeding on her, for decades. Never forgiving her anything. They have embittered her. She’s defending you, you should know that. She defends you from far worse things than Helene Vauxcelles-Serusier. She guards the young people in artifice. Helene still believes.”
“Josef,” she said, “are you calling me from your house?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you think this line might be tapped?”
“Helene has that capacity,” Novak said, his voice tightening. “That doesn’t mean that she will bother to listen.”
“I’m sorry I made this night such a debacle. Do you hate me now, Josef? Please don’t hate me. Because I’m afraid that worse is coming.”
“Darling, I don’t hate you. I’m sorry that I must tell you this, but there’s nothing you can do to make me hate you. I am a very old man. There’s nothing left of me but irony and pride, and a little muddy benevolence. I’m afraid perhaps you are becoming evil. But I can’t find it in myself to hate that, or to hate you. You will always be my favorite little monster.”
She had nothing to say to that, so she hung up.
“He really hurt me when he said that,” she said to Benedetta, and began to cry.
“You should leave that old fool,” Benedetta said, munching a fresh canape. “You should come with me to Bologna. Come tonight. We’ll catch a train. It’s the finest city in Europe. There are colonnades and communards and blimps. You should see the arcades, they’re so beautiful. And we have wonderful plans in Bologna. Come with us to the Istituto di Estetica. You can watch us as we work.”
“Can I take photos of what you’re up to?”
