A Not So Lonely Planet

by Karina Kennedy

  Having taken Frantonio’s bait, I’m reading about Virginia Oldoini. It will be fun to talk to him about her. Because I can find only one short entry about her in a book Regina has, most of my digging is online. I’m struck first by the unique photos I keep finding. She was stunning and mysterious.

  NOTES ON ITALIAN WOMAN OF INFLUENCE: Virginia Oldoini

  1. Known as the Countess of Castiglione, born 1837 in Florence.

  2. The daughter of a Marquis, she was married to a count at seventeen.

  3. Went to Paris in 1855 to discuss Italian unity with Napoleon, and ended up his lover.

  4. Known for her flamboyant and exciting costumes at court (e.g. the Queen of Hearts), her exceptional beauty, and her eyes that apparently changed their color.

  5. At court she met photographers Mayer and Pierson, and began to sit for portraits, wearing her elaborate costumes.

  6. After the affair she returned to Italy, which was declared a kingdom not long after. Had she bewitched the mighty Napoleon on behalf of her homeland? Many think so.

  7. She spent her fortune and forty years directing Pierson in elaborate photo shoots, many of which tried to recreate moments of her life.

  8. Some of the photos, showing her bare legs and feet, were considered hot and scandalous for the day. Her head was cropped out.

  9. There were over seven hundred photos. Four hundred and thirty-three are at the Met.

  10. Must find and read: La Divine Comtesse by Robert de Montesquiou.

  I realize how much Regina and the countess have in common. Both the subject of hundreds of photos, representing both art and fashion. Each had power, arguably derived from beauty, and each parlayed that into control of the public gaze. But, while Regina spent years cultivating her image as a whole, the countess directed each individual image or photo. Complete control of how she was seen. I wonder if it took seven hundred photos for Virginia to find herself through photos. Or did it take these men seven hundred photos to finally capture how she saw herself? Both she and Regina are utterly self-aware. Am I?

  So far, I’ve been at this house less than twenty-four hours and I’m already the subject of comedic ballads. I must somehow revise everyone’s opinion. Until I come up with a good plan, I vow to keep my head down, lie low.

  Chapter 21

  How Not to Lie Low

  Garden, Casa di Pavone: Friday, 10:54 a.m.

  In the still cool light of late morning, I sit at a table in the garden next to Regina, sipping my second cappuccino. We’re talking about the Countess of Castiglione. Regina found one of Virginia Oldoini’s original photos at an auction once. She purchased it, but in the end, donated it to a museum in Milan.

  We both watch Frantonio. He’s setting up already. Working around the fountain in her garden, which is now turned off. I had an answer to my midnight text waiting for me this morning when I awoke.

  A flower blossoms under the sun,

  Like I blossom in your arms,

  I come alive with you.

  It’s a different lyric from the same song I picked. He’s good. Regina leans in and whispers to me.

  “I think our photographer has secretly found some of the Countess’s photos and keeps them locked away at his studio in Firenze,” she smiles. “You should ask him.”

  “You remind me of her,” I say.

  “Me?”

  “Yes,” I answer. “Beautiful camera candy with a strong sense of self.” Regina laughs.

  “It is a strange compliment that I will accept with honor. Grazie.” Here, another of Regina’s impossibly handsome assistants brings me a second chocolate croissant and Regina an orange juice. I have no doubt it was freshly squeezed by his strong, young hands, moments ago.

  “Grazie, Piero,” says Regina. After he walks away, I look at her, puzzled.

  “His name is also Piero?” I ask, remembering the gorgeous assistant who showed me to my room when I arrived yesterday.

  “They’re all called Piero actually,” she laughs. “It’s so hard to remember their names, they come and go every season practically. But number four’s been with me a while.”

  “You rename them all?” I say, incredulous.

  “No! That would be ridiculous,” she says, sipping her juice. “I only hire boys named Piero.” Oh. Right, I think. This is much less ridiculous.

  “All your Pieros are very beautiful,” I comment with a smile.

  “Sì, but they’re not just pretty. Piero #1 is an excellent chef. Piero #2 is a bartender, training to be a sommelier. Piero #3 works miracles with my roses, and Piero #4 helps me organize the guests, my travel, everything.”

  “Number four looks like an Olympic swimmer,” I say.

  “Retired Turkish football player,” she explains.

  “Named Piero?”

  “That’s what his CV said,” she laughs. “I think he just wanted the job. An injury ended his career prematurely. Now he’s doing some courses for sports medicine, including massage therapy. If there’s anything you need his help with, just ask him. I’m sure he’d be eager to assist you.” She gives me a coy look. I stare—is she saying what I think she’s saying?

  “Oh, I’m fine. But thank you.” I feel myself blushing. “I’ll keep that in mind.” Then, as if summoned by my embarrassment, Piero #4 appears with some papers for Regina to sign. I try not to stare at the biceps peeking out of his polo shirt.

  “Piero, did you meet Marina yesterday? She’s a writer from Miami.”

  “Yes, we did meet yesterday. Ciao, Marina.” He nods at me. Then, “I love Miami. It is hot, beautiful, and exciting all the time.” He runs a hand through his wavy black hair.

  “Just like Marina,” Regina says.

  “Sì è vero. It’s true.” He grins, and his eyes sparkle. “Sorry I missed your dancing last night.”

  “No. You didn’t miss anything,” I say, horrified.

  “Perhaps you didn’t have the right partner,” he says. Is he flirting with me? “I am good with my feet, and other things . . . .” Yes, he is definitely flirting with me. I glance at Regina, but she’s focused on the papers he brought her to sign.

  “So I hear.” Regina hands the papers back to #4.

  “Allora. I have work to do, if you’ll excuse me,” he says. “But I am always around. I am easy to find. If you want me.” With a wink, he’s gone.

  Thanks to the talents of “Bob” (my nocturnal artist friend), Regina’s camera is now a stunning peacock mosaic glued to wood. She is delighted, and it currently holds a place of pride on a shelf over the bar. Apparently, Bob always sleeps during the day and works at night. “Some nights she turns herself into a bat to fly around the countryside, swooping into open windows. She sits on bedposts watching people’s dreams, you know, for inspiration. She uses her radar,” confides Regina.

  “Sonar. Bats use sound waves to see,” I correct her. Why this has caught me up, instead of “she turns into a bat and watches people’s dreams,” I have no idea.

  “Sì, but she is Sicilian, so . . . .” I wait, but that’s the end of her explanation. Yin and Yang have not emerged from their room, and I expect I won’t see them until the photo shoot. They both plan to participate. Frantonio’s vision, as Regina explains it to me, is “to build a majestic fountain out of unclothed people, with water cascading across their bodies, frozen in postures of strength and beauty, as if they themselves are made of stone. Isn’t he fantastico?”

  “Fantastico,” I agree, not referencing the same skills.

  “He will position every model now. We will shoot in the final hour of daylight. L’ora d’oro. Golden hour. Then the fountain will flow.” I watch Frantonio, linen pants and designer shirtsleeves rolled up. He belongs to the class of Italians who don’t own T-shirts and make elegant dress clothes seem casual. Regina’s class. I’m sitting here in my goofy sun hat, tank, and shorts. She’s buttoned up to the bosom in a soft, lilac-colored cotton dress with ruffled skirt and thin lines of lace over each shoulder. The effect—with her golde
n tanned skin—is not unlike an upside-down cupcake with lavender frosting. I make a mental note to avoid seeing her closet, certain it will ruin me for life. “There he goes, into the water,” she smiles.

  Frantonio wades into the fountain to take focus measurements. He is meticulous and focused as he works. As I watch him, images of last night flash through my mind. In the fountain he adjusts his glasses. In my head I see those same glasses slip into his breast pocket as he smiles at me with a calm, hungry intention. In the fountain he runs his hand through his hair. In my mind I see my hand, grabbing his hair as he kisses my breasts. In the fountain he wiggles his fingers absently as he visualizes his upcoming creation. In my mind his hand is sliding down my ass, those same fingers slipping deeply—

  “He’ll begin placing people, designing and sculpting the shot he wants,” Regina’s voice snaps me out of my daydream. “Then we’ll take a break before the shoot.” Beautiful people, scantily clad, have trickled into the garden. Some couples are clearly in the afterglow of morning sex. Other people whisper quietly, watching. Frantonio walks over to his phone, which is sitting on a small speaker, and soon a French aria is floating through the garden. The breeze sends tiny fuchsia snowflakes drifting down from the crepe myrtle trees. A white cat watches from a bench. The peacock struts around. It’s quite the scene. We’re only a few goats and an ecstasy tablet shy of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights.

  As Frantonio places the models one by one in the fountain, posing and adjusting them like live mannequins, I can see them each respond to his easy, affable manner. He is patient and respectful. His calm voice is confident and disarming. People outside the fountain wait with silent ardor.

  “They crave his gaze,” I remark.

  “He is a master,” Regina agrees. I realize I’m smiling just watching him. He continually checks his frame and returns to gently adjust an arm here or a leg there. As time passes, nobody seems to care that he or she has been standing in the same awkward position for nearly half an hour. They bask in his attention. As the Russian redheaded model balances on the “top tier” of his creation that is slowly growing, she teeters and slips, giving a high yelp. But Frantonio catches her. They’re both laughing as he guides her gorgeous, bikini-clad body back into position, his hand on her perfect ass. I feel my stomach tighten into a knot. What’s happening to me?

  Slowly, the stone façade of the fountain is completely covered. In its place is a human mosaic in the shape of a regal fountain. It’s totally and completely weird. But, I have to admit, bizarrely beautiful. One large spot in the middle remains open. “This is where I shall stand,” Regina says. “In the very middle, with your friends on either side.” She looks at me. “Would you like to join us?” Her question catches me off guard. “You may not get this opportunity again, to be part of such an interesting and exotic piece of art. Everyone who participates will get a large framed print to hang at home.” I picture my mother welcoming guests to her cozy bed and breakfast: dried florals, paintings of pelicans in frames of weathered wood, and a print of Frantonio’s fountain of naked bodies, her own daughter buck ass naked in the middle. “It’s an opportunity for you to channel the countess. She would truly appreciate such artistic and unique staging for a photograph.”

  “She cropped her own head out of all the sexy ones she took,” I reply.

  “Regina, is the other case of lenses over there?” Frantonio calls from behind his camera. I turn and spot the case.

  “I’ll get it,” I offer, hopping up quickly. Careful to ensure it’s latched, I carry the case over to Frantonio as if it contained plutonium. As I put the case down, he smiles.

  “Thank you, Ms. Taylor. F-Y-I, this is a no-dancing area,” he announces. “Una zona senza hallo.” Now the entire sculpture of posed people is laughing at me. My face turns bright red. That wasn’t nice. “We are only teasing, my dear. Come, I have saved you a special spot, in the middle, next to our hostess.” He walks over to the fountain and holds out his hand to me.

  “I’m just here to watch,” I say.

  “Nonsense. You are the one who inspired this fountain vision. It will not be complete without you. Come.” His voice is commanding, relaxed, and easy. There’s no doubt in his mind that I will do as he instructs. I stare at his outstretched hand. He waits. Everyone waits. Fuck.

  Chapter 22

  How Not to Create Art

  My Room, Casa di Pavone: Friday, 5:49pm, Just Before the Shoot

  HINTS FOR PREPPING TO POSE NAKED IN A FOUNTAIN WITH TOTAL STRANGERS, ALL OF WHOM ARE MORE ATTRACTIVE THAN YOU:

  1. Don’t waste all your prep time curling your hair. It’s going to get wet.

  2. Concealer on butt pimples just washes off.

  3. Mascara is also a bad idea.

  4. Do not try to shave your pubic hair into the perfectly symmetrical, upside-down teardrop shape you read about in Maxim Magazine, taking more and more off each side until you have an angry pink and white vagina that looks like the bald cat, Mr. Bigglesworth, from Austin Powers.

  5. Don’t try to use eyeliner pencil to draw your pubic hair back on, no matter how good an artist you think you are.

  6. Don’t do emergency pushups and crunches in a fruitless attempt to tone.

  7. Do NOT drink two glasses of wine to get your nerve up.

  Am I actually going to do this? Why? Because I want to channel the spirit of Virginia Oldoini? Because Frantonio asked me to? Because he saved me a special spot, right beside our hostess? Because he placed me there while everyone watched? Is there really going to be a naked photo of Marina Taylor, with twenty other also naked people, hanging on random walls of dining rooms, parlors, and bedrooms throughout Europe?

  I’ve just got to reframe. I’ll be glad I did it when I begin to receive calls from modeling agents and hip photographers asking what my fee is. And one day my teenaged son will stumble across the photo, buried in an attic, and say, “Wow, Mom used to be cool. Let’s take it to space school for show and tell.” And my daughter will say, “No, gross.”

  “DLT! It’s time to go down.” Yang is at the door.

  “I have a silk robe for you.” Yin is with her.

  “I’ll meet you down there,” I lie and spring onto the bed like a panicked gazelle. Yang opens the door to find me jumping on the bed, tits bouncing, frantically trying to unlatch the window so I can make my escape.

  “Are you trying to escape through the window, DLT?” she asks.

  “No,” I lie.

  “You’re naked. Where are you going to go naked?” she says.

  “You look beautiful, chèrie, just take a deep breath,” Yin says soothingly, approaching the bed as if she’s talking to a spooked horse. “Here’s your robe.”

  “What did you do to your snatch, mate? It looks like that cat in Austin—”

  “She looks fine!” Yin puts the robe around me and motions at Yang’s pocket. She pulls out a small pipe, already packed with pot and ready to go.

  “Have a hit of this, DLT. You need to relax,” says Yang.

  “I don’t really smoke,” I say. I had tried pot twice in college and never really found the appeal.

  “You want to pop an E tab instead? I got one in the room.”

  “No. I’m good.”

  “You’re not good, mate. You want some coke? Luciano had some—”

  “No, give me the damn pipe. I’ll just have the pot, so when I commemorate my naked shame for generations to come, I won’t care so much.”

  “Atta girl!” Yang hands me the pipe and the lighter.

  Garden, Casa di Pavone: Friday, L’ora D’oro (Golden Hour)

  I am standing in a fountain, just to the left of Regina, with twenty strangers, all of us wearing absolutely nothing. The pot must be working because I’m suddenly not worried about being tagged on social media. My butt is toward camera. I’m vaguely relieved that my Austin Powers cat pussy will not be on camera, and my sense of trepidation has melted into mellow acceptance. The guy next to me, Mario, is very at
tractive. I stare at his perfectly sculpted abs and decide I’m actually enjoying myself.

  My arms are stretched upward, fingers fanned. Yin is next to me in similar formation. On Regina’s right side, Yang and Frantonio’s redhead are our mirror images, creating the other half of Venus’s clamshell. I think to myself: I’m a part of something that nobody else in the world will ever be a part of. Well except for the twenty other naked people around me.

  Regina, our Venus, stands front and center in all her aging starlet glory. The goddess of beauty with surgically boosted breasts, liposuctioned ass, and perfectly waxed, fifty-year-old figa. Unlike Venus, Regina’s strong, slender arms and delicate fingers do not demurely cover her feminine assets, as seen in every painting of the deity. Instead they reach gracefully toward camera in a beckoning gesture. An open offer to a world that is clamoring to love her. It is perfect. How great is that, I ask myself. I want to be her. But not now—like in thirty years or something. Is that a frog sitting on the fountain spout? I love frogs. Maybe it’s just a leaf shaped like a frog, or a very small alien. Come to think of it, maybe frogs are actually very small aliens sent here to—

  “Stand up a bit please, Miss Taylor,” Frantonio commands professionally. The upper left portion of Venus’s clamshell is crumbling. I try to rectify the breech, but the twenty push-ups and hundred crunches I did earlier in a hopeless attempt to vanquish my paunch had only vanquished my strength. After ten minutes in position, my posture is turning to Jello.

  “Sorry,” I say, correcting my position. My pruning feet are tingling and my bladder is faintly calling for help. Frantonio walks over and puts one hand on my stomach and one on my bare ass, firmly molding me back into shape.

  “Tall, as if you’re wearing an imaginary corset,” he instructs. I suck everything in, remembering the time I squeezed myself into a vintage corset for Pirate Days in Key West—it was like a torture device. The more beer I drank the less I could feel my lower half. Why did women have to be little in the middle? That rhymes. Men need to be thick in the prick. I giggle to myself and suddenly feel dizzy. Without realizing it, I swoon. Mario, the guy next to me, puts an arm behind to steady me. “I know it’s uncomfortable, Ms. Taylor, but we must all suffer for the art together.” There are murmurs of agreement. “Although, Mario certainly seems to be enjoying himself.”