Muse (5 page)

She lifts the first silver dome, revealing a plate of mixed warm pastries and toasted bread. Under the second, there’s a small white bowl with a couple of tablespoons of dry oatmeal in it, mixed in with a type of seed and dried berries I can’t identify. She sets these down, blushing beneath my scrutiny, then unrolls two heavy, linen placemats and lines each one up with a dining chair.

Out of the warming area inside the trolley, she pulls a plate bearing a lavish, English-style breakfast — scrambled eggs, fried bacon, grilled sausages, tomatoes and mushrooms — and places it on one placemat. Then she pulls out another plate, which appears to hold a couple of tablespoons of scrambled egg-white and sets it on top of the other mat. Finally, she removes a small jug of hot milk.

The woman clumsily lays out two sets of silver cutlery, puts a folded cloth napkin beside each plate
before practically bowing her way backwards out of the room. Her eyes are fixed on me so attentively as she lets herself out that she bounces off the doorframe and almost falls in a heap in the hallway outside. Blushing furiously, she staggers upright and shuts the door to the suite behind her with one last anguished look in my direction.

‘What was
that
all about?’ I say.

Gia follows the direction of my astonished gaze and shrugs. ‘Just another case of insta-girl-crush. People are more accident-prone around you. Remember that reporter from the
Argus
who followed you around during the London shows three years back when you really began to take off? He wrote an article about it; said you were the human equivalent of walking under a ladder. Total bad news from start to finish. And I should know!’ She gives a burst of genuine laughter before her expression grows wary again, as if she’s said too much and can’t understand how it keeps happening.

The smell of the food is strangely welcome. I don’t often feel hungry, but today, for some reason, I’m ravenous.

‘Let’s eat,’ I say, pulling out the dining chair in front of the loaded, cooked breakfast plate.

Gia clears her throat. ‘Uh, that would be mine? You’re the one with the agent who insists you limit your daily calorie intake to keep you “competitive”. Your definition of breakfast is two tablespoons of raw oats, linseed and goji berry, slightly wetted with hot, soy milk, capped off with some cooked egg-white washed down with hot lemon water.’ She pulls a face. ‘Yummy.’

‘I don’t do starvation diets,’ I exclaim. ‘And the pastries?’

Gia’s expression is half-sceptical, half-amused. ‘Um, they’d be mine, too. But I’m happy to share.’ She grins. ‘If, for a change, you do as you’re bloody well told.’

We split the pastries and hot breakfast down the middle, returning Irina’s usual cheerless fare to the trolley. As we eat, I can feel Gia’s eyes on me. But whenever I look up, she glances away.

‘Coffee?’ she asks, pouring herself a cup.

I wrinkle my nose and shake my head. ‘Can’t stand it.’

She stares at me for a second. ‘That’s not what you usually say.’

I shrug.

‘You know,’ she says finally, when we place our cutlery down, having eaten our way through
everything worth eating, ‘you seem so different today. I can’t put my finger on it. But I like this version of you. Much as it pains me to say it, you seem more in touch with your … humanity today. You seem more like the rest of us.’

I laugh, genuinely amused by her words.

She can’t help giving me an answering grin. ‘You look startled by the suggestion.’

‘You have no idea how much!’ I grin back.

Then Gia’s smile dies, and she pushes her plate away firmly, as if she’s about to walk into battle. ‘You ready?’

I lift Irina’s narrow shoulders again in a shrug, let them fall. How can one ever be ready to live another person’s life? To go forth into another person’s day?

Gia stalks over to the gilt-edged console table by the in-room surround-sound system, her silver jewellery jangling. She picks up the house phone, dials a number and says curtly into the receiver, ‘We’re coming down.’

After replacing the handset, she walks across to an elegant, button-back armchair near the door and picks up a huge, tan-coloured, crocodile-skin carryall, holding it out to me as she picks up her own shiny, black patent-leather tote off the floor. It’s bristling
with external pockets and silver buckles. ‘Okay?’ she says. ‘I mean it, are you ready?’

I loop the handles of the holdall over one thin shoulder. ‘As ready as I’ll ever be,
darlink
,’ I say in Irina’s husky voice, as Gia holds the door open to let me through into the hotel corridor.

As I teeter down the hallway after Gia, my eyes feel grainy and the ground seems wavy and distorted and way too far away.

I should have slept last night, but I couldn’t. Sometimes I forget that the human body — as miraculous and complex as it is — is not a machine and cannot be dictated to. Not in the ways that really matter.

We stalk down miles of lush royal blue and gold patterned carpet, beneath enormous hand-blown Murano glass chandeliers of breathtaking beauty, past hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of original art, statuary and antique
demi-lune
tables with delicately carved clawed feet, like the feet of predatory animals. As we move closer to the lifts, I see a man holding a
lift door open for us with a hand the size of a dinner plate. His eyes seem to linger just a fraction too long upon my face.

He’s dressed like a suit, though he looks like a thug made good, with a heavy-set frame and a nose that’s slightly left of centre. He’s sporting a five o’clock shadow that must be pretty much around-the-clock, has scarred facial skin and a serious case of perma-tan. His long, thick, unnaturally black hair is pulled tight into a low ponytail and he’s wearing an earpiece. He’s taller than average, and it’s clear from a quick visual inspection that he enjoys a workout. Big head, big hands. Bull-necked. Neat, clipped nails. Expensive gold watch. Expensive shoes for someone in his line of work.

With a nod, the man indicates we should enter the lift. ‘Irina,’ he rasps, his Russian accent unmistakeable. ‘
Zdravstvujte.
’

Hello
, he’s saying, and I don’t know how I know this, but it’s the formal way. The way an employee, say, would address his employer, even though this guy has thirty years and about two hundred pounds on Irina, at least, and looks like a wise guy, a hit man.

‘Vladimir,’ I reply, thinking back quickly to the names that Gia and Felipe had bandied around. That was the only Russian name they’d mentioned.

I don’t recall ever speaking a word of Russian, but it’s Irina’s first language and it seems to be making perfect sense to me so far. So to hell with it — what have I got to lose? It’s like how Carmen could sing, and Lela was good with people; and when I was them, I could somehow do those things, too. Because some things the body just remembers.

A fine sweat breaks out on my forehead as I close my eyes and channel myself inwards, chasing the words I’m looking for down the unreliable pathways of Irina’s brain. When I open my eyes again, it’s like I’ve always known them.

‘
Kak … tvoyo zdorovie?
’ I say — accents on all the wrong places, accents where there shouldn’t be any — testing the unfamiliar weight and feel of the words on my tongue. I think I’ve just said:
How’s your health?

The man-mountain nods slowly, gratified that I seem to remember him. ‘
Neplokho
,’ he says, shrugging.
Not bad.

I feel a surge of elation, a chemical rush. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the human body
is
a machine that may be harnessed, after all. If you just work out how.

Gia’s eyes are on me again as we take our positions at the back of the high-shine mirrored lift. Perhaps Irina’s voice sounded weird. Hell, maybe I forgot to conjugate a verb properly and Gia zeroed in on the error. But at least Vladimir understood what I was saying. I casually flip Irina’s unbound caramel-coloured hair back over her narrow shoulders, hitch her handbag higher and pretend not to notice Gia staring. The lift doors slide shut and we begin our descent.

Vladimir addresses something small and round pinned to the lapel of his killer suit. ‘I have them,’ he says, tilting his head to one side as he listens to an answering voice in his almost-invisible earpiece. I watch his small, pale blue eyes watching the numbered wall panel light up in descending order.

We sink down past the ground floor without stopping and on past the basement into the lower basement. The lift doesn’t even stop on the way; not a soul tries to get in. Clearly, being a world-class bitch can come in handy.

‘Coming up through the laundry in five,’ Vladimir mutters into his mic as the doors glide open.

Another of Irina’s hired security goons is standing there — the man’s colossal build, tiny earpiece and
bespoke-tailored suit and expensive shoes are a dead giveaway, although I have no idea if it’s Carlo, Jürgen, Angelo or even Gianfranco himself that I’m looking at. The guy’s got a platinum-blond buzz cut and a face like hewn granite. When his cold, grey eyes meet mine, something seems to leap in them, even though the muscles of his face remain motionless.

Everyone wants you, everyone loves you
, Gia said. And I see that it’s true.

I study the large space before me with fascination. It’s filled with steam, shouting and mechanical noises, the smell of soap powder mingled with disinfectant and wet wool. Everywhere I turn, there are laundry bags and open trolleys piled high with dirty linen or clean, folded linen. An automated drying and sorting system snakes its way around the perimeters of the cavernous room, and almost all the clips are filled. The space is packed with busy migrant workers in disposable headgear and identical hotel uniforms.

Vladimir leads the way through the vast, humming room at a brisk pace, the second guy falling in wordlessly behind Gia and me.

Much the same way the woman who served me breakfast did, every single person in the place turns to stare at me as if I’ve just descended from the sun on a
golden chariot.
Dazzled.
That’s the way I’d describe the universal reaction to Irina’s presence; although they’ve all clearly been ordered not to approach or address her because when I try to meet anyone’s eyes, they look away immediately.

Still, there’s talk, talk, talk in at least a dozen different languages. And in every accent I hear the word
Irina
repeated and amplified until it seems to break in a wave against the heavy beams of the ceiling that separate this stifling underworld from the gracious apartments above.

One law for the lion and ox is oppression.
The words come to me unexpectedly as I look around at all the busy worker bees in the room. It’s so true. And such a sad truth. I mean, I should know; who better than I? But still it bothers me that we can’t all be lions, or all be oxen; that equality was not one of the necessary pre-conditions of the closed system that we know as the universe. Because how is that fair? It’s just asking for trouble from the get-go.

Our tight, mismatched little group has almost made it to the exit across the room when a starstruck middle-aged woman spills a huge bag of dirty laundry straight onto Vladimir’s expensive shoes. We’re forced to stop as she gets down on her hands and knees in
front of us, desperately trying to stuff an avalanche of wet towels back into the bag.

‘Jürgen!’ Vladimir snaps and the platinum-blond giant immediately scans the room for threats.

‘Didn’t I tell you you were bad luck?’ Gia murmurs out of the side of her mouth as Vladimir starts shouting at the woman in English to get out of our way.

‘Vladimir,
dostatochno
,’ I caution. Enough.

He glowers at me, growling into the mic on his lapel, ‘There’s a delay.’ He kicks out at the soiled laundry nearest his feet as he listens to the reply.

I stamp my own feet in my towering, alien heels. It feels as if my legs are dying from the soles upwards.

Gia shoots me a warning look. ‘Don’t get involved!’ she hisses.

Vladimir insists loudly, ‘No, no, I’m handling it.’

What he
isn’t
handling is the dirty laundry, and I can feel the worker’s mounting distress. It hangs about her like a detectable odour, like a cloud, as she scrabbles desperately at our feet. I wonder how it is that people like Irina and Gia could become so divorced from ordinary life. I catch everyone by surprise when I dump Irina’s oversized croc-skin holdall against Jürgen’s knife-pleated trouser leg and crouch down, reaching for the nearest towel.

Jürgen kicks the handbag out of his way with unnecessary force and a gold-plated mobile phone falls out with a sharp clatter onto the ancient, stone-flagged floor.

‘Irina,
nyet
!’ Vladimir roars over my head.

The laundry worker lets out a wail and rips dirty towels out of my hands as fast as I can pick them up.

‘That’s a two hundred thousand dollar, one-of-a-kind bag,’ Gia says to Jürgen mildly as she bends down and gathers up Irina’s things. ‘But of course you’d know that.’

Workers begin darting over from everywhere to help the woman and me repack the laundry bag. Though I pretend not to notice, I feel their hands brush mine deliberately, feel their eyes raking my face.
Everyone wants you, everyone loves you
. It’s making me feel kind of queasy, all the attention.

Gia helps me to my feet and the people around me fall back reluctantly. ‘Don’t even get me started on your
But I must have eeet
little phone that you haven’t even learnt how to use properly yet, which is now probably broken thanks to Tyrannodon here …’ She hooks Irina’s bag back onto my shoulder, nodding at the crowd.

‘You’re attention-seeking again in some bizarre way I can’t fathom,’ she says. ‘I’ve
never
seen you lift
a finger to help anyone if there wasn’t something in it for you. But now that you’ve picked up the germs of hundreds of past hotel guests, can we
go
?’

Vladimir claps his hands dismissively and the crowd scatters. He extends a spotless handkerchief in my direction and I wipe my hands with it. He takes it from me with his thumb and index finger and drops it disdainfully on the floor beside him. We continue through the room, to a doorway on the other side that leads to an internal staircase, away from that sea of expectant, devouring eyes. As we move up the stairwell, it’s suddenly eerily quiet and our footsteps echo on the uneven stone stairs, worn down from centuries of use. We walk up in single file, past two landings, not a single, living soul around, until we reach a pair of heavy steel doors. Vladimir pushes down hard on the panic bar running along the inside of the door on the right, meeting with unexpected resistance. He turns and exchanges a look with Jürgen over our heads. Together, both men put their shoulders to the door and force it open, hissing with the effort.

We stagger out onto Via Victor Hugo, into the teeth of a building gale. Even as I watch, black clouds hurtle across the sky, covering the sun. A long shadow seems
to blanket the wide thoroughfare we are standing on, sweeping down its face, across the exteriors of all the graceful buildings crowded on either side, like a river of darkness. In the distance, through the man-made stone canyon, I catch a glimpse of the Piazza del Duomo — the Duomo Square — the Christmas tree and the softly gleaming cathedral rising at its far end like a mirage.

We’re quite some distance from the recessed circular drive of the hotel’s official entrance. According to plan, there are three glossy black luxury sedans with dark tinted windows illegally parked against the kerb, engines idling, each sporting a silver hood ornament in the shape of a delicate winged lady in flight. The cars are longer and wider than normal, with two rear doors instead of one, and they seem to be riding a little low to the ground, as if they might be armoured.

I wonder again how one lone skinny female could merit all this protection, be the centre of so much attention. I don’t know how Irina can stand living like this. It’s beginning to give me the creeps, the way everyone stares and whispers and desires.

Standing beside the first car is a heavy-set older guy in a tailored navy overcoat, who can only be Angelo. A younger coat-wearing giant, with a head of
short, tight dark curls, who must be Carlo, is holding open one of the back doors to the third car. The eyes of both men light up when they see me, but then they dart anxious looks at the leaden ominous sky.

‘Is about time!’ Angelo calls out, looking back at me longingly.

‘
Subito!
’ Carlo snaps, though he, too, cannot look away from me for long.

The fierce gusting wind tears at the ends of my hair so that it ripples out behind me like a bright banner. All the fancy awnings and shutters along the street snap and creak, as the wind buffets them. The sky is an unnatural colour — steel grey with a hint of yellow in it — and the arctic conditions are enough to stop Gia in her tracks so that I almost collide with her back. With an oath, she knots her fancy scarves tightly around the lower half of her face before zipping her leather jacket right up under her neck. Vladimir and Jürgen scowl as they hunch their heavy shoulders against the bitter conditions and pull on matching pairs of black leather gloves, scanning opposite ends of the street continuously.

Vladimir moves forward and opens the back passenger side door to the second car, gesturing urgently for me to get inside as the wind throws grit
in all our faces and threatens to snatch the stylish cloche hat right off my head and over the rooftops. Still, I hesitate, unwilling to be dragged back inside, back into Irina’s claustrophobic, over-protected, hothouse little life. I close my eyes and tilt my head back as if I could drink in the approaching tempest, transcend it.

‘What are you doing? Get moving!’ Gia yells through her veil of scarves as she stumbles in the direction of the third car. ‘See you at Giovanni’s.
Just be prepared.
’

‘Wait!’ I scream, raising my black-gloved hand in her direction.

Gia stops, looking back at me quizzically, and I shriek ‘Ryan!’ into the teeth of the wind. It’s not a question.

Gia hesitates as Carlo plucks at her arm. She throws his hand off and pivots on one heel, back in my direction. Carlo snarls in guttural Italian, but remains where he is, watching me, because that’s what he’s supposed to do, and what he can’t help doing.

Gia leans in towards me as I yell, ‘Bring him to me. As soon as you can.’

In reply, she shouts: ‘
Mercy is alive and badly needs your help
— have I got it?’

I nod vigorously and she gives me a thumbs-up, then shoves me in the direction of the second limo before stumbling back towards the third car and climbing into the back seat. Jürgen gets in beside her and Carlo swings into the seat facing theirs. The two rear doors slam shut in unison and I can no longer see them all behind the car’s blank, dark windows, though I can still feel their eyes on me.