Milena Migliari stands there staring at the little glass camera eye on the brass panel on the gate. She wonders if she should press the button again to explain herself, or give up, learn something from this experience, at least enough to avoid falling into traps like this again.
But then there’s a click: the gate begins to open, with the buzzing of well-oiled, high-quality machinery.
She hesitates for a moment, then gets back in the van. When the gate is fully open she proceeds carefully along the driveway, which after a while curves to the right. The asphalt is sienna-colored; it would look like actual earth if it weren’t so smooth and even. On the left is a laurel hedge, all too perfectly sculpted; on the right a row of cypress and oleander, delimiting a terraced hillside whose grass is all too perfectly trimmed.
Suddenly a large dark animal resembling a llama bursts out from between the trees, comes within inches of running into the front of the van. Milena Migliari slams on the brakes, almost smacks her head on the windshield, the two coolers slide along the flat surface in the back, bump into the backseats. Before she can recover, two more llamas jump out from the opening, race in front of her, and rush off down the driveway after the dark-colored one, in the direction she just came from. She’s so shocked by their apparition that she can’t move, heart racing and short of breath, she watches them disappear in cushioned bounds around the curve in the driveway. She wonders if there’s any chance they can get off the property, if they’re domestic animals; but the gate is no longer visible from here and there isn’t enough space to turn around and follow them anyway, so she goes forward.
The path continues curving up, still flanked by the high hedges like defensive barriers, then straightens out and the house appears, or at least the back of the house, yellow and wide, with a two-story central body and two single-story wings. In front there’s an open space, and a wooden structure with a slanted roof, beneath which several cars are parked.
Milena Migliari looks at the doors of the house, trying to figure out which to park nearest to. She can’t decide, so she stops the Kangoo in the middle of the opening, rolls the window up, rolls it down again. She wonders whether she should consider the order genuine since they eventually let her in, or if she ought to talk first with whoever answered on the intercom, figure out what’s really going on. Finally she takes the two coolers and goes toward the house’s main door, her stomach knotted with embarrassment and the doubts still plaguing her.
The door opens before she has a chance to ring the bell: a huge guy with a shaved head and a hard expression leans out and peers at her through barely open eyelids, looks at the coolers, looks at the van, looks back at the coolers, as if he suspects them of containing who knows what.
SIX
NICK CRUICKSHANK GOES toward the entrance. Aldino is talking to someone just outside the door, turns, and signals for him to stay inside. But he still feels like such a paranoid idiot after the incident in the olive grove; he pushes him to the side, sticks his head out to look.
Outside is a woman with a blue-and-green eight-panel newsboy cap, long hair, a checkered coat, loose-fitting pants, thick-heeled black boots. She has two hard-plastic coolers in her hands and her legs are firmly planted, but she’s leaning ever so slightly to one side at the waist: she seems determined to stay where she is, but also ready to leave. A few yards behind her is parked a small orange van, with La Merveille Imparfaite written in purple on the side.
“We jamais ordered any glace. Jamais. No glace. Okay?” Aldino’s French is even more limited than his English, which already isn’t great; but Nick isn’t worried, he’s long since realized that the big, threatening, and semi-illiterate Italian is the right man for the job. Once you get to know him he’s actually smarter and more sensitive than he looks, at least compared to his average bodyguard colleagues.
“Then who was it that called me and gave me this address?” The woman in the hat responds in Italian, with a strange mix of perplexity and combativeness. She points behind her. “And who opened the gate for me?”
“Not us, that’s for sure.” Aldino continues barring her way with his enormous body, extending a protective arm backward.
“Hey, relax, Al.” Nick Cruickshank knows he needs some protection, but an excess of preemptive defense has always gotten on his nerves, and continues to do so even in times like these. It’s true that on the Internet you can still find a video from twenty years ago where, in the middle of a concert in Glasgow, he whips off his Telecaster and smashes it over some guy’s head, but that was a case of actual defense: the guy had just thrown a bottle of beer at him, was yelling and spitting like a maniac, and trying to climb up onstage to attack him. For two decades he’s been trying to explain what really happened, but he’s given up; if they want to consider it a demonstration of his extreme rocker savagery, let them.
In any case the woman with the newsboy cap certainly doesn’t seem dangerous; judging from the look she gave him when he stuck his head out the door, she doesn’t even recognize him. No instant smile, no scurrying around excitedly. In fact, she seems quite annoyed by the situation, though in a pretty bizarre sort of way. She sets the two coolers on the ground. “But someone did open the gate for me, didn’t they? Otherwise how could I have gotten in?” She switches to English with ease, but from the way she spoke Italian with Aldino it’s clear that she must be Italian as well.
Nick Cruickshank has always had a passion for accents: for inflections, cadences, rhythms, the colors of voices. In England he’s almost always able to identify the region, the city, the social origin of his interlocutors within a few sentences; in America he has to settle for less precise coordinates, but he still gets pleasure from recognizing someone as being from Brooklyn or Boston or Houston. A result of his ear for music, sure, but also of his need to decipher the world.
“Yes, how did you manage to get in? You want to explain that?” Aldino peers at the Italian gelato lady, looks around; he’s unable to understand.
From the driveway Aileen’s red BMW Cabrio pulls up, too quickly, as usual; she slams on the brakes in the parking area. Aileen gets out, elegantly impatient: her bob polished as a horse chestnut, wraparound sunglasses, a piece from her own clothing collection, a red “Anti-leather” jacket, draped around her shoulders, her long legs in jeans torn at the knees by Chinese artisans working in Italy, blue boots—these, too, in Anti-leather, naturally.
Then come Tricia, her thin and bony assistant with the fish face, and Maggie, the makeup artist with the pug nose and the aluminum-colored crew cut: 50 percent appearance, 50 percent substance.
Immediately after comes the station wagon belonging to the photographer Tom Harlan, who gets out and slams the door: thick reddish beard like the fur of some cave animal, extra-short-brimmed hat, black Anti-leather jacket courtesy of Aileen: 60 percent appearance, 40 percent substance. From the other side emerges his assistant what-the-hell’s-his-name, thin and shambling. He passes his boss a duffel bag, starts gathering the umbrella lights, accumulators, and tripods from the backseat. The silvery Espace of the Star Life team pulls up as well: the editor in chief, writer, photographer, and cameraman get out, in a commotion of voices and gestures: 80 percent appearance, 20 percent substance.
Aileen looks at the Italian gelato lady, points to her little orange van. “Est-ce que vous nous avez apporté la glace?” Aileen’s French is perfectly natural, like her Italian, her Spanish, and her German: she has this knack for languages, the result of a childhood spent traveling the world with her diplomat father.
“Yes, but it seems like nobody ordered the gelato.” The Italian gelato lady answers her in English as well, more bemused than irritated, now that she’s surrounded by this chaos of people.
“What do you mean?” Aileen tilts her head; seeing her next to the gelato lady, it’s difficult to imagine two more different women: in features, proportions, ways of moving, dressing, being.
The Italian gelato lady points to Aldino. “They say they didn’t eve
n open the gate for me.”
“I’m the one who opened the gate! I was right behind you!” Aileen speaks in that extra-expressive, high-energy way of hers. “But I had to stop, because one of the white alpacas and the brown one were biting each other terribly on the neck. They were tearing each other’s hair out, so vicious. I tried honking the horn to get them to separate, but they were relentless. I had to let Maggie out to go chase after them with an umbrella!”
“They jumped in front of my van, they really frightened me.” The Italian gelato lady gestures to describe the jump: a nice gesture, in fact, very expressive. “I didn’t know what they were, I thought maybe llamas.”
“The two males need to be castrated, or else it’s like keeping two roosters in a henhouse.” Tom Harlan, the photographer, is ever intent on confirming his attitude of bristling concreteness; it’s always the first thing on his mind.
“Oh, come on, the poor things!” Aileen assumes a horrified expression, though it’s not like she’s ever shown much sympathy for the alpacas, and certainly not since one of them bit through the sleeve of one of her blouses; but she’s well aware that because of the whole Anti-leather thing, people expect her to be pro-animal.
Nick Cruickshank shrugs: the alpacas were a gift from that idiot Steve McAbee after they’d used them for a video in Scotland; he was convinced they’d do well here.
The Italian gelato lady now seems worried about the alpacas, as if their destiny is connected to a thousand other crucial issues influencing the fate of the world. She has this engrossed expression: firmly planted on her thick-soled boots, surrounded by people generally unaware of her existence. Then she remembers her reason for coming here, points to the coolers. “So do you want the gelato or not?” She hardly seems anxious to sell it; she seems more than ready to take it back with her.
“Of course we want it! We’re so sorry for the mix-up! I was sure I’d be able to get back before you arrived!” Aileen rushes over to shake her hand, in that very convincing way of hers.
“No problem.” The gelato woman smiles back, timidly.
Aileen turns to Nick Cruickshank. “Liam Bradford wrote on his blog that she’s incredibly talented! He says she’s able to capture the quintessence of each flavor, with the sensitivity of a true artist. And there are dozens of fantastic reviews on TripAdvisor. How come we didn’t know anything about it?”
Then Tom Harlan, his assistant, Tricia, Maggie, the Star Life team, even Aldino turn to look at him, waiting to hear him explain how come.
Nick Cruickshank shakes his head, opens his arms. “There are lots of things we don’t know anything about.” The truth is that they don’t know anything about anything that’s just on the other side of this gated property. The only places he can claim to know are the airfield; a couple of restaurants (the name of one of which he doesn’t even remember); and a few shops where he’s made brief incursions, hidden beneath his baseball cap and sunglasses so as not to be recognized by bothersome tourists. Instead of the Canton of Fayence, they could easily be anywhere else in France, Italy, Spain, or Portugal, as far as their relationship with the territory is concerned.
Aldino gestures toward the two blue-and-white plastic coolers, still unconvinced that they might not be full of explosives. “Is the gelato in there?”
“What do you think?” Now the gelato lady laughs, her eyes sparkle. Her eyes are many different colors, or maybe it’s the light of this November sun that’s creating the reflections; in any case they’re very attentive eyes, and slightly dreamy. She picks up the two coolers, one in each hand. There’s confidence in her movements, yet that outlandishness continues to envelop her in a slightly strange aura. She carries the coolers toward the house, shakes her head at Aldino when he tries to take them from her, heads straight for the main entrance.
“The kitchen’s over there, on the side.” Aldino escorts her, as if to ward off a dangerous violation of the domicile.
Nick Cruickshank looks at Aileen, who seems immobilized by all the interlocking expectations of the people in her entourage. “How did it go with the photos?”
“Ah, really well!” Aileen picks up speed again, as if she’s coming out of a freeze-frame: she smiles, leans forward to kiss him on the forehead, mobile on her pretty, nervous legs.
“We were able to create some really spectacular combinations, between the men and the women!” Tricia vibrates with enthusiasm, literally: her structure, composed of skin-nerves-bones, is shaking visibly.
Tom pulls the reflex camera out of the duffel bag, turns it on, brings the display closer to Nick Cruickshank’s face. “Look at this one. This one. This one. This one here.”
Nick Cruickshank looks, distracted in part by the photographer’s excessive closeness and smell: with each click there’s a procession of wizened vagabonds, chronic alcoholics, and other assorted wretches wearing jackets in fake tropical-green python, vests in fake shocking-pink ostrich, boots in fake fire-red crocodile, hats in fake electric-blue lizard. Tom Harlan’s photographic style aims to accentuate to the utmost the wrinkles and other signs of aging on their faces, creating the maximum contrast with the super-saturated pop colors of Aileen’s Anti-leather creations. The idea of using derelicts as models and paying them as such has turned out to be another stroke of genius: it’s a way to give concrete help to people in need, get media visibility, reinforce the politically correct image of a material that isn’t extracted from either animals or oil.
There are naturally those who accuse her of exploiting these poor souls for commercial ends, but it’s now practically impossible to do anything without someone rushing onto the Internet and turning every merit into a cause for shame. They even accuse her of being a leech, for the support he’s given to her Anti-leather business, participating in the earliest press conferences, accompanying her to the first fashion shows, letting himself be photographed with her. As if a man can’t support his woman because he believes in her, without being the victim of manipulation; the key is not to let all the crap they try to throw at you get under your skin, to ignore it. Just yesterday Linda at the press office in London sent him links to a couple of blogs that say awful things even about the Bebonkers’ concert on Sunday, claiming that it’s a way of usurping the painful emotions of the Paris massacre, et cetera. A concert against violence, whose revenues will go to the victims’ families? It takes an extremely robust mental shield to block out the hidden spite of anonymous imbeciles, seriously. In any case Aileen was undeniably far-sighted when she secured the exclusive production rights from Andor Kértesz, that crazy Hungarian genius who from agave leaves was able to extract a fiber that seems like leather and is just as resistant; and when she found the right name, in place of the hideous original Agavleder. Such a capable and enterprising woman inevitably inspires envy and jealousy, especially when her initiatives meet with success.
“So? What do you think?” Aileen too leans in to take a peek at the reflex’s screen: quick, impatient, with new ideas surely racing through her head already.
“Certainly more interesting than the usual models.” But Nick Cruickshank has to admit that he feels a little unease mixed with the admiration for her resourcefulness. Does it depend on the fact that she simply never stops? That no sooner has she achieved a goal than she immediately has to find another one to strive for? That ultimately there’s some truth to the claim that she’s using these wretches to promote her goods, even if she does pay them enough to live on for months? She doesn’t do it cynically, however; her desire to help people and contribute to the well-being of the planet is genuine. Last year she financed an elementary school in Burkina Faso and even provided it with a well for drinking water; the year before, she donated warehouses, equipment, and even a truck to a cooperative of small-scale coffee growers in Bolivia. Sure, in exchange she gets tax breaks and benefits to her image, but her help is real, tangible.
Aileen nods: she seems happy with the results, happy for his approval. “They were so into their roles, you should’
ve seen them.”
“Some of them were showing off a little too much.” Tom can’t help adding a note of disenchantment.
“Poor things, they were happy!” Tricia intervenes in support of her boss, as always. “We brought them some absolutely delicious croissants, they plowed through them all in a matter of minutes!”
“They’d have been happier with a few bottles of Calvados.” Tom persists in his role, manages to get a snigger out of the editor and cameraman from Star Life.
“Then we left the jackets and boots and hats and all the rest with the head of the center.” You only have to look at Aileen right now to realize that she is absolutely sincere: her belief that she is doing good is unquestionable, anything but an act. “They’ll auction them off at Christmastime, raise a ton of money.”
“Well done.” Nick Cruickshank wonders if his feeling of less-than-total involvement depends on a sort of growing disinterest for the affairs of the world.
Tom shoves the camera back into the duffel bag, goes toward the house, followed by his assistant, loaded down with equipment. Tricia and Maggie look at Aileen; they go inside as well, followed by the editor, writer, photographer, and cameraman from Star Life with all their odds and ends.
Aileen turns to examine his face. “How are things with you?”
“Great, except for the fact that there was a blackout and I almost killed myself with the Ape.” Not that Nick Cruickshank wants to be dramatic; it’s just that almost every time he sees Aileen return from an expedition he feels like he has been extremely unproductive, and soon feels the need to test how much she still cares about him.
“I’ve told you a thousand times to be careful with that stupid tricycle!” Aileen scrutinizes him from head to toe to be sure there’s no damage, but as soon as it’s clear there isn’t her gaze shifts to the house.
Nick Cruickshank shrugs: it’s tough to find someone more talented than he is at simulating nonchalance. The fact is that the very first thing that struck him about Aileen, when she came to Baz’s office in London to apply for the costume designer position on the 2008 world tour, was her attentiveness. Even now he remembers the way she listened to him as he explained what he was looking for: the constant variation of her facial expressions, her audible breathing, the tiny emotional waves in response to each new piece of information. No matter how much fuss and attention and how many acts of zeal and devotion and even adoration he had received until then, Aileen’s level of interest seemed of a clearly superior quality: more intelligent, more informed, more capable of making quick connections. That was the reason they began to draw irresistibly closer: because of her readiness to answer every question, her precision in always choosing the right option among the many possible. Because of her looks, too, of course: her eyes, her mouth, her hair, her legs, her way of moving; but what made her seem so special was the miraculous absence of any distraction or mental laziness. There was nothing inexact about her, nothing vague. Aileen’s concentration charged their exchanges more than any drug or combination of drugs, and with the advantage of leaving him in a state of total mental lucidity; every conversation became a kind of challenge in which to call on all available resources, including those he didn’t know he possessed. A Lennon/McCartney effect (he even said so in an interview in Rolling Stone) was forged between them, in which they would both push each other out of their comfort zones and force each other to attain a level they probably would never have reached alone. The Cruickshank/McCullough partnership has produced not so much unforgettable songs (she did inspire two or three of them, sure, but probably not his best) as intuitions and revelations, impulses for renewal and self-betterment. Was it inevitable for such an intense flow of energy, by its very nature, to dry up sooner or later? Or to mutate, at the very least, as they shifted from thrilling infatuation to serious relationship? He’s the first to admit that his need for attention is abnormally large, that he feeds off it, can’t do without it: it’s another reason why he’s in this business. Really, how long could a single person’s attention stand in for that of tens of thousands of people in a stadium? Realistically? Not even his most passionate fans would be able to maintain the same level of extreme focus they have during a concert, day after day after day, month after month after month, year after year after year.
Imperfect Delight Page 4