Vienna (3 page)

I should forget it happened.
Now that was funny.

It was Christmas in Bath all over again. Gifts under the tree and everyone talking too loudly and eating too many sweets and lights blinking in discordant cycles and it was never anything she wanted anyway. It always passed in a blur, as if Vienna were missing some internal switch to reach out and experience it as others did. Which was true enough.

Anyway, maybe it was best to add sex to the list of useless things, because then it would be one less thing to worry about. She'd done it and now there was no reason for anyone to tease her about it. So she never had to do it again.

She cut across Rue des Bouchers, lined with cafés and salons. Briefly into the wavering sun before entering the Galerie de la Reine. There were words to go with this as well, set in the blurry ink of a manually typed dissertation. Her eyes traced across a phantom page:

The Galeries Royal Saint-Hubert comprise the Galerie du Roy, the Galerie de la Reine, and the Galerie des Princes. They were conceived in 1836 by Jean-Pierre Cluysenaer …
It went on for pages. There was the barber who slit his throat over the structure's tangled property rights. And here was the aesthetic reason for the bend in the middle of the structure. Vienna didn't have the energy to go back to the beginning and see who wrote it. If she kept walking, the words would slip away.

Coffee steam and the yeast smell of fresh pastries rose through the air. The bells atop the massive Cathedral of Saint Michael and Saint Gudule called the faithful to Sunday mass. Maybe she would go after work.

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Across Rue du Marché aux Herbes. Vienna relished the sound of the French names, the way they tasted like spring. But after four months in Brussels, she knew little French, or Flemish for that matter. She recognized the sounds and some meaning, but with no education in it she lacked any idea of syntax or grammar. Which had come as an unpleasant shock.

Into the Grote Markt—the Grand Place. Built in the twilight of the Northern Renaissance, the town square was surrounded by layers of baroque architecture. Vienna felt like a playhouse princess lost on a stage of narrow steeples and filigreed stonework. There was even an evil king, compliments of an encyclopedia entry she'd read back in London:

In 1695, King Louis XIV ordered Brussels to be bombarded with red-hot cannon balls. The resulting firestorm engulfed the entire Grand Place, with the exception of the Hotel de Ville …

The same Hotel de Ville in front of her as she crossed the plaza. Archangel Michael on the highest steeple, trampling a demon. Vienna imagined Grant Eriksson under Michael's pitchfork and immediately crossed herself.
Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts?

She continued across the square, letting her thoughts dance through words, even though her doctors told her never to do that.
The Hotel de Ville was designed by a Flemish … The word Flemish means “that which is flooded” … The deadliest flood in history was the 1931 flooding of the Yanktze, Huang He, and Huai Rivers, in which four million people were …
There was a picture there. Long rows of dead children, stiff limbs twisted in mud.

She stepped up to a lemon-yellow door on Rue du Marché au Charbon. A rustic sign, implying history where there was none, marked the Gelataria du Cygne. The store's window sported a deco golden goose in the upper left corner, leaving room to display a rack of stainless steel gelato bins. The sunshine was warm on Vienna's shoulders; it would be a busy day. She produced the right key from a small chain and unlocked the door.

By noon, she'd served 124 customers 186 scoops of gelato. She said the right phrases in French to collect euros, switching to English for British and American tourists. Vienna knew by late afternoon the day's heat would drive citrus flavors to the top of the chart she kept on scrap paper. She thought a lot of inventory might be saved with the information she was collecting, but the manager was a busy man and there never seemed a chance to get a word in.

At 2:17, two men appeared at the shoe store across the street. They removed the old poster for Versace and put up a new one for Step Out. It featured a girl who was nude except for a pair of white stiletto heels, straps set with diamonds. She was seated on white-blue fur, her body turned away from the camera, but her eyes gazing back over her shoulder. Her long, smooth legs were curled under her, showing the shoes to good effect. She was positioned in such a way—her closer arm behind her bottom—to avoid being outright pornographic. But the raw sensuality of her face was intoxicating. She had blue hair and emerald eyes and a small tattoo of a lizard on her left hip. The poster said the woman's name was Justine Am.

Pedestrians gawked at the image. Vulgar laughter over imagined bedroom scenes.

For the next four hours, Vienna served melting scoops of gelato under the poster's sensuous gaze. Her stomach twisted around a knot of anger. Easy enough to find words for Justine:
Their drink is sour: they have committed whoredom continually.

No doubt the strange man wearing the shirt-of-squares had been a gently used article left by the wayside. He'd said something about “killer” and Vienna was certain the word was used in America to describe people of sexual prowess. “She's a man killer,” and the like. Not that sleeping with Justine had been all that great. Or even great at all.

Everything had gone pear-shaped, and the more Vienna thought about it, the more it was her foster father's fault. Arthur Emerson Grayfield, Earl of Idiots and Knight Commander of Nothing Anyone Had Ever Heard Of. Titles or not, he was just a miserable old git in a miserable old flat. “It's time for you to make your own way, Vienna.” As if he knew what was best for her, even though he wasn't really her father. “I have prepared a modest room for you in Brussels. I know you can do this.” Because he didn't have the courage to say: “I never wanted you in the first place.” And …

Stop being petulant.

But if she was petulant, then it just proved she was right about not being ready to be alone and Grayfield was wrong. A real knight would admit his mistake, and he would come and rescue her. And …

To complete the day Cecile showed up just before closing, suspended between aluminum crutches. Long, brown-gold hair that always looked better than Vienna's. “Sorry I didn't make it last night,” she said. “I twisted my ankle.”

“Okay.”

“I heard what happened, Vienna. I'm so sorry. They had no right.”

“Okay.”

“They were paid to set you up by some wealthy perv, an American.”

“Okay.” It wasn't, really, but she only had herself to blame.

Cecile looked as if she wanted to add something more, but she only nodded and limped from the store.

Vienna closed the shop at seven, cleaned up, and locked the door.

Night came on and she was running back to Holler. She was going to tell Justine or Heather—or whatever her real name was—that even if she wasn't on any posters at least she wasn't a whore. But the club was closed because it was Sunday and Justine was probably far away. Probably in another person's bed. And that was okay, because Vienna wouldn't have yelled at anyone. Wouldn't have even opened the door.

She was home by nine, crying into the sheets. Her doctors said that was bad, too.

Stop it!

Vienna peeled herself from the bed and went to the sole dresser she owned. In the bottom drawer, buried under shirts and folded jeans she never wore, she felt the smooth edges of her Apple Air. She pulled it out and plugged it in, connecting a thin cable to the room's phone jack. Dressed in its aluminum shell, the computer looked sleekly sinister. But it was safe to use it tonight. She didn't work on Mondays until noon.

The log-in screen was forest green, without a single icon marring its surface. Grayfield had set it up that way. His kind voice filling his London flat, his silver hair smelling faintly of cinnamon. Vivaldi playing on a real phonograph because Grayfield said it sounded better that way. Vienna looked at the composer's name and saw that he'd written his most famous works in a home for abandoned children. And it was just perfect, the way everything fit together.

With a theatrical sigh, Vienna pressed a key to call up hidden icons. She ordered the computer's ghost fingers into the net. The screen filled with ads and banners.
Don't look!

A pointless reflex arriving far too late.
Fix your credit now! The secret to whiter
teeth!
And she knew every word.
Earn 2,000€ a week! Your stomach can be this flat!

Vienna closed her eyes to a squint and made certain the cursor was in the Google window. She typed out “Justine Am.”

 

3

The Brussels Clay to Flesh shoot was set at the Atomium, a mansion-sized model of molecular iron left over from the '58 World Expo. Justine thought it looked like a chrome Tinkertoy on HGH, but she wasn't paid to think. She was paid to be in platinum hair, slate lipstick, silver nails, and the scratchy plastics of Dexter Collins's latest collection of highly textured, wildly popular, deeply symbolic crap. She fidgeted with the Velcro that anchored the towering shoulder pads.

The girl doing wardrobe looked increasingly suicidal—her big break shot to hell by the ludicrous getup. “Could be worse,” Justine said. “You could be wearing it.” The humor fell flat. If the session bombed, Justine was too valuable to take the fall. Scapegoats would materialize down the food chain.

A rising crowd flowed around the yellow tape cordoning off Heysel Plateau. Those in front waved glossies from Justine's recent projects. Careful not to upend the polymer subdivision on her shoulders, Justine scrawled her initials a few times while the lights and umbrella reflectors were being set up. As per recent instructions from James, she stayed near the cops who had been called in.

Justine could see Lower Town in the pastel distance. She heard cascading bells calling the faithful to Sunday morning mass. Was Nowhere Girl there now? Hypnotized by the threaded smoke of votive candles and praying that God might notice her at last? Long odds on that.

Justine turned back into the Atomium's latticework shadow. Mathews and his two assistants had the Brussels manikin decked out in a replica Coco Chanel little black dress. Bias-cut with full sleeves and a flawlessly proportioned V-neck. They'd sliced the seams and pinned it together over lifeless wood.

Mathews caught Justine's thought. “Our tupelo lady fetched the better designer,” he said.

“Understatement of the decade.”

Justine remembered from the Clay to Flesh media guide that this manikin's namesake was Duchess Joan of Someplace. A fourteenth-century warrior queen who tried to unify embryonic Belgium. Having failed to die horribly, she'd been largely forgotten.

Since Joan's creation a hundred and fifty years ago, some philistine had stained her blue. The caustic dye had distended the grain, giving her a corrugated appearance. She didn't even feel like wood anymore. The manikin stood upright, palms on hips. Below a flowing brunette wig, her expression was wistful, lips frozen in a sad smile. Her gaze downcast, as if surveying life's bitter defeats. Justine guessed that the sculptor—she couldn't remember his name—had been a hard-luck case.

Searching the manikin's dead eyes, Justine tried to untangle the Prague Weirdness. Had one of Joan's wooden sisters moved? Elizabetha had been carved in mid-skip—a motion capture of youthful energy. Over two days of shooting, Elizabetha's left arm had shifted down, or her torso had canted to the side, or her feet had spread farther apart. Something.

Or was it simply the manikin's dynamic pose suggested movement? Why was the obvious answer so hard to believe?

“We're ready, Justine.” Mathews showed her the first position marks of the day. His boney hands shifted into constant motion, framing each shot. “Three quarters to the fan, smile … more pout … this light is for shit … tilt forward from the hips … You seem off today. Tired? That's better … If another pigeon wanders in frame, I want it fucking strangled.… Get the hair again … less happy, more smug … hand lower on your leg…” Justine thought Mathews sounded like someone who wanted to sound like a fashion photographer.

Five hours and six wardrobe changes later, Justine was left demoralized. The day had been too hot and too wet and her thoughts remained tethered to Vienna's gray shower curtain. The seamless floor and fractured ceiling. The broken spirit forever guarding strawberries from invading yolk.
I shouldn't have just blown her off.

Guilt on a seven-hour delay. Wonderful.

Justine waved to the crowd and ducked into the wardrobe tent pitched to the side of the camera. By the time she emerged, Mathews was downloading pictures to his oversized laptop while his assistants finished stowing gear. Justine watched the images stream by, depressing in their rows of sameness.

“We have several excellent shots.” Mathews pointed to a picture of her mimicking the manikin's pose, her absurdly padded shoulders towering overhead. “This is nice.”

She knew his reputation enough to trust him. She signed off the final paperwork and said her good-byes.

Back to the hotel for an hour of cardio. A quick shower and a primal rendezvous with Grant. He moved with relaxed confidence, hands guiding her hips, his cool lips on her throat. Justine felt her body respond to his touch through filters of fatigue.

Off to rinse, adding a mental note to make certain all the water wasn't drying her skin. Dress in something expensively casual and spend the late afternoon on the phone. To Bernoulli in Paris: I'll be there. Adelina in New York: please double-check my London itinerary for the next stage of Clay to Flesh, and contact
Vogue
to see exactly what they want. A quick call back to Georgia. Mom fixing tea and fiddling with a new math curriculum. Dad out for a jog along the shoals.