by Silvia Zucca
“Hmm,” I say, pretending to think about it. “What star sign are you?”
“Taurus, ma chérie.”
I sigh. “I’m so sorry. Ah, Libra with Taurus . . .” I pull a face and snap my fingers, as if to imply that it’s a real shame. “No, it would never work,” I add, walking away. “Enjoy your lunch.”
I go to retrieve my bag because, although I called a break, I will be remaining on set to go over some notes with Lars.
When I bend down to pick it up, I hear barking outside, and I frown, wondering if perhaps I accidentally forgot that there is a dog in one of the scenes we have to film this afternoon. I don’t go through the trouble of checking the agenda. I know perfectly well that there are no scenes with dogs, other than those with Caspar Belli, which alas have been imposed on us by Production. So, I just poke my head out of the studio and blink under the strong midday sun. I don’t see any dogs, though I think I glimpse a flicker of movement down the road, but that thing is tall enough to be a pony. It’s probably for the new Spartacus series that they are shooting next door.
I go back inside to retrieve my sandwich, and I greet the script supervisor, the live recording engineer, and the costume designer. Mario, the camera assistant, approaches me, scratching his nose.
“Sorry to disturb you, Alice, but could you clarify something here?” He indicates the script where Lars has marked his notes regarding their work.
“Lanfranco was thinking of a dolly,” I explain, interpreting the hieroglyphics marked in pencil. “But to keep within the budget, I suggested a cart.”
“Ah, great! That makes my job easier, thank you. And I think that also works very well in terms of storytelling, because I think that here Silvain—”
“So?” we hear someone thunder from the door. The director, a big man of about fifty, tall and imposing like Orson Welles, approaches us, taking off his glasses and scratching his beard. “Can you leave my girl in peace? Go on, Marietto, away with you!”
Mario bites his lip. “Sorry, Lars . . . um, Lanfranco.” Then he says to me, “Aren’t you going to eat?”
I lift up my bag with my lunch. “I brought a schiscetta.”
Mario frowns and I start to laugh, because sometimes I forget that I’m not in Milan but in Rome, and they don’t understand our expressions here.
“It means a packed lunch,” I explain. “In Milanese,” I add, playing up my nasal accent and giving them a wink.
“Bauuuuscia!” Mario yells from the door, trying to imitate my pronunciation. Then he laughs and disappears into the sunlight. I laugh, too, although I’m tired. We’re less than a week away from the end of shooting, and I’m practically sleeping on the set.
“Tell me everything, Lars.”
He grimaces as soon as he hears his nickname, but then claps me on the shoulder, winking. I am the only one here who can get away with teasing him and calling him Lars, without risking being hung from the dolly and publicly flogged in the style of that scene from I, Claudius.
“I’ll get the script with the notes. How about we go sit up there?” he proposes, pointing to the top of the fake hill where we just finished wrapping up the shooting-star scene. I raise an eyebrow.
“Are you sure?” I know him well enough to know that he usually prefers the comfort of his director’s chair, and I guess offhand that, although pretty much anyone would be able to climb to the top of that small hill, it would take a lot of effort for Lars, with the extra pounds he’s gained from years of pasta consumption.
“Yes, yes. Actually, take these.” He passes me the headphones and radio link that we use to communicate when we have to be at different points on the set. “Give me a hand to fix up the set—you and I understand each other straightaway. If I have to explain myself to Omar, it won’t be long before I get an ulcer.”
As he says this, I notice his eyes shining, and I see the tip of his tongue run across his lips, as if he were impatient about something.
“Are you sure you’re OK? You’re not going to have a stroke, are you?”
I’ve already pointed out to him, more than once, that with the pace we are working at, he should lose weight. But how do you sell that to someone who greets an oxtail stew with the face of a kid on Christmas morning?
“Hey!” he replies, giving me the evil eye. “Now someone is on the verge of a stroke because they’re happy about something?”
I frown. “What happened? News about the Delfino film?” I ask him hopefully. I know that he presented his project a few weeks ago. If it were approved, it could mean only one thing: movies! Finally.
“Uh, no. I mean, yes . . . Almost.” He is suddenly serious. “Alice!” he exclaims, in his gruffest tone, the one that he uses to avoid getting lost in too many pleasantries and explanations with the crew, who in fact think that he’s some kind of ogre, a heartless asshole. “Let’s not waste energy, OK?! You know that my triglycerides are getting high. Now, put on those headphones and do as you’re told.”
“OK, don’t get stressed out.”
“OK, OK,” he says, recovering with a smile and pinching my cheek. “If we don’t finish, how are you going to get to Milan for your special day?”
I snort. “My Sacred Day, Lars. My Sacred Day. I’m going to get my nails done, it’s not like I’m getting married.”
“Ugh. Whatever,” he replies, turning around and making a vague gesture with his hands. “You’re the only person who goes all the way to Milan to get her nails done. They do give manicures in Rome, you know.”
Of course, but Karin is in Milan. And most importantly, Paola is in Milan. And as much as I can’t complain about my life in the capital, I would never give up my Sacred Day with my best friend, even if I went to work in Hollywood.
Seven months ago, after Cristina embraced Carlo, after the paramedics gave up and realized that no one needed to be hospitalized, I went back to being the sole owner and tenant of my apartment, and I finally made that famous phone call.
Not even two weeks later, I was in Rome, with mother Adalgisa and father Guido in tow. Because even if your daughter is past thirty, you’d better make sure—in person—that the place that hired her is not full of sexual predators and hopeless drug addicts.
“People in television are like that,” says my father with a certain complacency.
“Dad, I’ve been working in television for ten years.”
“Yes, yes, but I mean people in serious television.”
“Ah, I see. Very different.”
I started out managing several different entertainment broadcasts until I met Lars at a production party, and it was love at first sight. Oh, please! I don’t mean that kind of love, but rather a sort of elective affinity. Lars is definitely a bit like me: he’s been divorced three times and no longer believes in love, but he vents his emotions by churning out the most saccharine nighttime soap operas that TV has ever seen, to the delight of every housewife in central Italy.
It hasn’t taken me three marriages or, thank God, having to sign three alimony checks every month, to understand that love is not everything in life. In fact, I can say that I’ve discovered how nice it is to live in the present, as a protagonist, without waiting for someone to choose me and then dump me as soon as I start to get used to him.
And, if I’m not like Lars—who vents with food and by writing dramas where, if he fights with one of the actresses, he can give her a heart attack or a car accident or, if he’s feeling generous, a sudden vocation to be a missionary in some pleasant land—it’s just because I am able to see love in many things. I like observing it when I walk through Rome. I see it on the benches, in the colors of the sky, and in glimpses of historic streets.
Tio repeatedly assures me that I just have to wait, that it will come . . . but I keep telling myself that we aren’t all lucky in the same way. It’s not written anywhere, let alone among the stars, that love will come to everyone. Nor that, like him, I will find my own Andrea, willing to follow me to Rome and to the end of the earth
if they offer me a job as a TV host, as happened to him. But even if my story doesn’t feature the words “and they lived happily ever after,” it doesn’t mean that it is sad.
Now that it’s spring, when I’m able to make it home before the sun sets, I go out onto the balcony of my apartment and watch Rome fading into so many precious colors, and I tell myself that, finally, this is happiness: a house, a dream job, a purring cat, and pots filled with geraniums. When you’ve learned to love yourself, it’s much easier to care for others, without ever losing yourself in the process.
I turn on the radio transmitter, and fix the clip into the waistband of my jeans, adjusting the volume, and then I face the climb.
“Alice? Testing. Testing.” Lars’s voice crackles in my headphones. “Can you hear me, Alice?”
I press the answer button. “Yes, yes. What is it?”
“OK, listen . . . erm . . . yeah, you should take that red blanket and position it better. And the picnic basket, turn it, please. A little to the right.”
I do as he says. “OK. And now?”
“Good. Yes. OK. Sit down. I’m coming. Eh . . . and keep the headphones on!”
I shrug and do as he says, sitting down cross-legged on the fake grass. As I wait for him, I nibble on my mortadella sandwich and start flipping through the agenda and the parts of the script that we still need to shoot.
Suddenly, I hear a thud and the studio has gone completely dark. I jump and raise my head, calling into the headphones: “Lars?”
No one answers. I start to get up, but without a reference point, I stagger. I realize this is not such a good idea, because I’m on top of a fake hill, nearly seven feet off the ground.
After a second, the moon and then the stars appear on the blue screen. Why do I get the impression that someone is playing around with the lights?
“Lanfranco! Hey . . .” I call again. “Come on, boys, you’re going to break the computer.”
I hear something croak into the headphones, but I don’t understand. It seems like voices, but they are very far away.
“Set . . .” I hear, and silence. And then, “Go.”
It seems like Lars’s voice, but it’s as if he is talking to someone else.
And now the stars start falling.
Of course, seeing it from here is a real spectacle. If I didn’t know that this was only a projection for a film, I would think I were actually in the mountains, under an Oscar-winning sky.
In the background, there is music. Hearing the first notes, I tense. The song playing is “Reality” from The Party, which, though you wouldn’t imagine it to look at him, is actually Lars’s favorite movie. I give in and smile. This is a classic prank that members of the crew play on each other. The only strange thing is that usually we do it when we are a bit more relaxed at work, not when we are behind with shooting. I’m surprised by Lars, I thought he would be more professional.
“Come on, guys . . . Good one, very good . . . I get it. Thank you very much. But come on, we’re behind.” I return to sitting cross-legged on the plastic lawn. I’m not a killjoy who doesn’t know how to laugh at herself, but I don’t really know what to do anymore. And unfortunately, “Reality” makes me think of something else . . . Of someone else, who by now is buried in the bottom of a drawer of memories.
I turn on the flashlight on my phone to start reading the script, or at least pretending to do so.
“Victor Hugo said that ‘the soul is full of shooting stars.’ ” Instead of music, there is a voice in the headphones.
“And perhaps, in attempting to be poetic, he wasn’t really so far from the truth.”
This is not the scratchy voice of Lars, but a voice that I don’t recognize. My heart starts to pound in my throat.
“You weren’t entirely wrong in thinking that we were children of the stars, in a sense, you know?” he says again, and I bite my lip, because deep down, very deep down, I do recognize that tone and it cuts like a knife.
“All the atoms that make up our bodies were created billions of years ago. The iron in our blood, the oxygen that fuels our lungs, the calcium that feeds our bones.”
As I listen to him, the stars in the sky in front of me keep shining, falling, pulsing, and seem as alive as a human body.
“Alice . . .”
Only then do I realize that the voice is no longer in the headphones but just behind me. When I turn around, I see a dark silhouette, just as I had envisioned for the film scene that we are shooting, the film scene that I wrote.
I squint to try and see better, because I tell myself that it is impossible, entirely impossible. And crazy. And wrong. The simple fact of him being here is something that cannot happen. Because . . .
I hate myself as I feel a tear roll down my chin in the darkness, and I say, “Davide . . .”
I tell myself, once again, that it can’t be true, simply because things never happen the way you imagine, like a scene in a movie. But here he is, coming up the hill (OK, the fake hill). He slides the headphones down around his neck and throws his jacket over his shoulder.
“Hi,” he says, with that warm voice that I have struggled to forget; that voice that is still a caress, in spite of everything he did and how much he hurt me.
“Hello,” I reply and my voice snaps, sharp as a whip.
Davide sits down beside me, as if we had a date to watch the stars.
“You look good,” he says, studying me while that scumbag Lars, perhaps in cahoots with the director of photography, puts on soft lighting so that Davide and I can look into each other’s eyes.
“Um, thanks.”
He raises his hand, but is unable to touch my hair because I push the errant strand behind my ear myself.
“Why the short hair?”
“It’s more practical,” I explain. “You know, when you have no time to keep drying and styling your hair . . .” I make a vague gesture. “Girl stuff.”
“Alice stuff,” he replies, smiling.
I divert my gaze, because his eyes are too intense. “Hmm, maybe.”
“But you are still beautiful. Actually, even more than before. You are . . . sophisticated.”
A loud laugh escapes my lips, because, in these Roman months of working and reconstructing myself, I seem to have done everything but become sophisticated. But then I shut up because he takes my hand.
“Davide, this is my life . . . I work here. Why did you come? Why did you show up here? Today—now—after so long?”
I see him bite his lip and look at the fake sky that covers us. “I miss you.”
I shake my head. “What do you miss? The goofy, hysterical girl that was desperate to be with you.”
“You were never like that. You are ironic and funny; intelligent, beautiful, sweet, caring . . .”
“And stupid . . . given that I kept on falling for it. Leave, Davide. You know that it can’t work between us.”
He smiles. “Because I’m a Leo with a Libra Ascendant?”
“Because you’re an asshole. Zodiac signs have nothing to do with it.” Davide takes the blow, closing his eyes and nodding. “Sorry. I dreamed of having this conversation with you months ago and saying that. I almost know the lines by heart. Now, I realize that it doesn’t really make sense anymore.”
“Because it’s not what you really think?”
“Because it doesn’t hurt anymore. And I’ve learned a lot, like not needing love or a man to be happy. And I’ve been much happier in these seven months than I ever was when I was someone’s girlfriend.”
“Mmm, I know . . .”
I look at him. “What do you mean you know?”
“I knew about your job. I knew that you had come to Rome, and I knew that you had left Daniele. No.” He stops me, raising his hand. “If you are going to accuse me of having followed you, or worse, of having interfered in your life, I didn’t. At least, not until now. But I was happy for you, for your success, for the fact that you spread your wings and finally wanted something for yourse
lf. Just for you.”
“And now, just for me, I’m asking you to leave.” I stand up because everything is becoming too painful, and I don’t want to feel like this. Not here, not now, not after all the effort I’ve made. “It’s too late. Maybe if you had come months ago, when you and Barbara broke up . . .”
“Alice, I left Barbara before Paris.”
I take a step back because I need to distance myself from what he just said.
“I wanted to be with you. I loved you . . .” he says, looking into my eyes. “I already loved you then, I had done for a while, but I had an unbearable fear of what would happen if I told you, after a lifetime of trying to be enough by myself, for fear of being abandoned.”
He tries to come closer, but I stop him. “No . . .” I whisper.
“I still love you now. And I know perfectly well how you feel.”
“Go away.”
“Alice . . .”
“You know perfectly well how I feel. Yes. Because you made me feel that way. You wanted it. You haven’t come to see me for months, even though you knew that I was here . . . alone . . . even though you knew . . .” Why the hell am I crying? Alice, knock it off. Alice, wake up! You’re not the same girl from months ago. You are a strong Alice, sure of yourself, a woman who knows her stuff, and who people respect.
“Go away, please. Leave me alone.” I sit back down and I put my head in my hands and let the silence and darkness wash over me. I don’t know how much time goes by, but it seems an eternity. Then a voice comes from the speaker in the warehouse: “Alice!”
“Why did you do this to me, Lars?” I ask him, drying my eyes and trying not to let my voice shake too much.