When Nicolo was a teenager, Father Xavier had collected the boys of the church together once or twice a year, in the same basement reception room in which coffee and tea were served on Sundays—had gathered them on chairs arranged in semicircles in ranks that became decreasingly ordered over the course of the hour, to caution them that touching themselves and all the rest were as dangerous as having anything to do with girls, and perhaps worse because God had at least designed girls for a purpose. The boys needed to take every care possible to avoid this kind of behaviour; any deliberate exercise of sexuality must be reserved to a regular, approved, sacramental relationship—holy marriage in short, ideally to a faithful girl who understood this too: that the pleasures of the body were to be postponed, suspended and safeguarded for the future and then turned only and always to their proper use. Nicolo had thought, listening to this lecture at age twelve or thirteen, of a brilliant blue and green beetle he had seen on a school trip to the museum. The iridescent insect had been trapped and preserved for the edification of future schoolchildren, intact, immobile and changeless, in a sleek candy-like globule of translucent amber.
Worse than this sin, which was one he could at least contemplate with an endurable level of regret since the weight of it was not overpowering, was the second category—his list of sexual encounters. There had been six of these acts or sequences of unchastity since the age of seventeen. He accepted that they were the consequence of having, on each such occasion, wilfully turned away from the route God wanted him to follow. He had confessed most of these to the younger of the two current parish priests (and he knew that his avoidance of the other, older priest was yet another category of uncategorized and unatoned-for sin, related to sex although not in itself sexual) and had been, in response, exhorted to strive to live a life of the spirit and to resist temptation by means of devotion to the Virgin Mary, regular confession and frequent attendance at mass.
“Evil doesn’t exist in and of itself,” Father Bem told him. “God wouldn’t permit that. No, evil grows out of our inadequate consciousness or mindfulness of God. Evil comes from ourselves alone.”
On the night after he had agreed to go with Patrick on his trip to Las Vegas, Nicolo lay in his bed after turning off the light and reviewed in turn these six events of active sexual transgression.
First, a week or two after his seventeenth birthday in the shower of a hockey rink in a more northern suburb—he had avoided playing there ever since—with a soft-skinned boy whose long halo of blond curls almost entirely concealed his face and whose name he had not known and had not been at the time concerned about. This memory made him burn when he considered it, but, on the other hand, he had been taken entirely by surprise, and the interaction was over before he could come up with any thought of, or plan for, demurral.
Second, about two weeks later, in the washroom of a bar, after another hockey game, with someone dark, short and slim whom he assumed the first unknown boy had told since he was approached with such open and ready confidence, and although the boy had departed instantly, he had done so without furtiveness. This second boy had even kissed Nicolo’s cheek as Nicolo rezippered his pants closed. A quick, guiltless, efficient kiss on a spot that had prickled ever since whenever Nicolo placed his fingers there. He had time, but only barely, to contemplate violence—a knee to the groin, fingers into eyes, an elbow to the throat. What had held him back was the silken thrill that he remembered from the time before, like being jolted by electricity and then, almost simultaneously, enfolded in satin.
Third, at nineteen, once only, with a woman who worked at the bakery, Talia Carrara, aged thirty or so, near the end of a fourteen-week friendship. She had been fired a week later for being overfamiliar with customers and had moved back to Montreal. Talia had responded to a question that had been left hanging as heavily as a medicine ball: he had found her wiry, muscled body beautiful, including her breasts, like golden oranges, and her ballet-slipper-like vagina.
Fourth, at twenty-one, over the space of a week, with another woman, his own age, Stefania, visiting from Melville, Australia, a sub at the gym. Stefania was the first person who had taken any time at all. She had examined every part of him and told him, in case he was interested, that he was perfect.
Fifth, with Camila, who was younger by a year or two, in a bedroom at a house party at which they met and had too much to drink. Afterward, when they were sitting on the front steps, she cried and began to tell Nicolo that she had issues, father issues, but partway into her story, a girlfriend interrupted and took her home.
And then Stefania again, for three months, when she came back to teach yoga while Barb was on mat leave from the gym.
Sixth, and most recently, rarely but over a longer period, close to an almost-chaste half-year, quiet Francesca, twenty-three years old, who was plump and modest, but who grew even less talkative than usual toward the end of their five and a half months, and who finally told him gently but firmly on the telephone that the widower who owned the garden supplies store where she worked had asked her to marry him and that she had decided to say yes for the sake of his three young children whom he neglected and who needed her.
When Nicolo disclosed this breach to Father Bem, the young Nigerian priest at St. Francis, Father Bem, whose skin was so dark Nicolo could never interpret his expression or mood, asked whether he too intended to marry, a question that Nicolo found impossible to answer. He didn’t know, he said. He wasn’t sure. Then, in response to Father Bem’s furrowed forehead, he went on to say that he thought he might—because, after all, although he didn’t say this part aloud, wasn’t this what everyone did in the end; how else was it possible to live your life?
“Best get on with it, then,” Father Bem counselled, and his tone might have had in it impatience or humour or both. “These bodies that God himself saw fit to give us can be a serious source of trouble unless brought early into harness.”
Nicolo thought of this exchange with Father Bem when he went to borrow a suitcase from his older brother Enzo, a black, zippered case on wheels that Enzo had bought for his honeymoon trip to Montreal with Mima. He asked younger Enzo for advice on what clothes to take with him. Enzo looked up the question on the Internet. “It’s already hot there. Much warmer than here. Take one pair of long pants and a light jacket in case you get called into any of Patrick’s meetings—even if that’s not very likely, it’s always better to be prepared—a few decent shirts, one pair of real shoes, a pair of shorts, a couple of T-shirts, sandals, a bathing suit. Socks and underwear. A toothbrush and toothpaste. Shaving stuff. That should about do it. I can’t think of anything else.”
“Statti ccu dui piedi intra ’na scarpa,” said Nonna at dinner. Keep your two feet in one shoe—a saying meant to ward off imprudence.
He asked Carla, the woman in his psychology class, if she could take notes from the class he would be missing, and she smiled self-consciously at the request.
“I don’t take the best notes,” she said. “But I’ll do my best and I’ll make you a copy. Maybe,” she added, and she touched the sleeve of his shirt on his upper arm, “maybe we can get together after you’re back, to study for the next test.” Nicolo nodded although he felt that Carla was not the kind of study companion that Enzo had had in mind. He would, he thought, be distracted by Carla’s mind, which seemed not quite settled, and by her hands, which were red and rough. Her bitten nails were both repellent and fascinating. He had the strange feeling that he could mend them if he held them for long enough between his own.
Zoe telephoned Nicolo to thank him for taking her to the play, and he let her know that he would be gone for three days. He wanted her to understand, although he did not say this, that he would have liked to see her again, if he had not agreed to go. Nicolo told her what Massimo had said when Nicolo told his father about the trip: “Chine ’un fha pazzie in gioventù, e’ fha a ra vecchjaia.” If you don’t do foolish things in your youth, you’ll do them when you are old.
“The
best advice I ever heard was not to take anyone’s advice,” Zoe answered. “But for what it’s worth, my dad’s advice is always that we should try to learn from everything, good and bad. He says that way nothing in life is wasted.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The first sight of Las Vegas at night was startling: uncountable lights throbbing and wheeling below a wide, bare blue-black desert sky. Enormous, brilliantly lit hotels and billboards could be seen through the airplane window, quite close, as if the pilot intended to land the plane on a thoroughfare in the centre of the city. Nicolo thought of what his nonna had told him about the cathedral in Naples, the one time she had seen it, on her way to the ship that took her away from Italy—that she was fortunate that she had heard it described in advance by the village priest since its magnificence could otherwise blind the unprepared eye. The plane banked and then dropped upon the runway at a high rate of speed and with a roar of the engines that seemed to create or restrain stresses that threatened to pull apart rivets and bolts. When the brakes were applied, hard, with another intense throb of noise, the passengers were thrown forward in their seats, and as they fell back again a collection of young women toward the rear of the airplane broke into cheers.
These women surged down the aisle before Nicolo had undone the buckle of his seat belt. They were dressed in short pleated skirts and brightly coloured T-shirts, many of them with slogans and illustrations. Catholic Girl Gone Bad. Little Miss Naughty. If I Can’t Set a Good Example, Then I’ll Settle for Being a Warning to Others. If You Aren’t Living on the Edge, You’re Taking Up Too Much Space. Two or three of the women slowed when they passed Nicolo’s seat and gave him appraising looks. “He’d do,” he heard one of them say. Nicolo was left in a cloud of their sharp mingled scents and the echo of the purposeful slap of their sandals against their bare feet.
Inside the airport he followed the signs toward the luggage carousel, passing banks of slot machines, at some of which people were playing intently, hunched close so that the fortune disgorged by the ringing, blinking machines, good, bad or fair, could not be discerned by passersby. He found his bag easily—Enzo had advised him to mark it with a length of yellow twine around the handle. When he turned to search out where he might be able to get a taxi, a sign with his name caught his eye. At the front of a waiting throng, a small, thin man wearing a dark and oversized suit stood holding up a piece of cardboard with PAVONE handwritten on it.
“Are you looking for me?” Nicolo asked him.
“Mr. Pavone? In that case, yes. My name’s Mick. Mr. Patrick Alexander from Pure Lane Productions has sent over a car to take you to your hotel. You have all of your luggage already?”
Mick led Nicolo past a slowly snaking taxi queue to a silver Lincoln Town Car. He held open the back door for Nicolo, clicked it closed behind him, and flipped Nicolo’s suitcase into the trunk. He left open the sliding window between the driver’s seat and the back, and provided observations as they drove.
“First time here? Okay, I’m going to give you all you’re ever going to need to know in five minutes or less. A free service that I throw in for the unenlightened and the uninitiated. Take it or leave it. No charge. See, even though Las Vegas means green grass, there wasn’t enough water here for a city until they built the dam. That’s the Hoover Dam, a make-work project to keep people working back in the Dirty Thirties. Some people go out to see it, but to me it’s just a big wall and a lot of water, always makes me thirsty just to look at it. Aside from the dam—and that’s outside of town, remember—nobody and nothing here is exactly real. Everything is a replica or a reproduction or a representation of somewhere else, or of some other time in history. Some people get into the back of my car and the first thing they ask is they want me to take them to see the ‘real’ Las Vegas. They want to know where it is, like there’s some secret place where the locals keep the true, authentic place stashed behind all the scenery. But there isn’t one. This is it, as real as it gets. The settings are fake and the history is fake, even the grass is fake, most of it. You can have a good time while you’re here, but it’s all flim-flam, you got me?”
“But what about the people who work here?” said Nicolo. “They must have homes and go to stores and send their kids to school, and get married. Isn’t that all real?”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Mike. “I guess that’s true, as far as it goes.” His tone was dubious, but then he brightened. “Yes, there’s something to what you say, but that part, where people live, that isn’t Vegas.” He stopped the car. “Here we are,” he said.
Patrick rushed at Nicolo as soon as Nicolo stepped through the heavy door into the cavernous air-conditioned hotel lobby, in which several dozen people milled. Signs overhead pointed in a dozen directions—POOL AND SPA. BELL DESK. REGISTRATION. RESTAURANTS. CASINO. MEETING PLACE. TERRACE BISTRO. SYBARITE’S LOUNGE. SILHOUETTE BAR. GUEST ELEVATORS. SELF-PARKING. GAMES ROOM. LAUGHING STATUES. Patrick rose up on the balls of his feet and he waved his arms like the blades of a windmill. He was grinning.
“Everyone’s up on eleven. We’ve been at it for a day and a half already, pulling the show apart and dissecting it with tweezers, atom by atom by agonizing atom. It’s as painful as having your chest hairs yanked out one by one, but it has to be done, there’s no way around it. There’s something missing in the show. You know, that thing, sprezzatura—artlessness, guilelessness, innocence. It’s all too contrived and heavy somehow, like an overweight, middle-aged bride in a corset and pancake makeup. We’re trying to figure out how to turn it from a lump of lead into something weightless, effortless—a balloon, a feather, a soufflé, the lightest possible, most fleeting notion, a dream. It would be pure alchemy if we can do it, base metal into gold. There’s still no guarantees at this point. I made sure they paid me in advance, if you know what I mean. And, meanwhile, I’ve got this killer stress headache in a knot at the back of my head, which might be the first signs of a brain tumour for all I know, and tension all through my shoulders, they’ve completely seized up, so I’ve booked an appointment in an hour with this masseuse in the spa. I can’t tell you how good he is. Hands like absolute Roto-Rooters; he gets into every muscle. It feels like getting worked over by the more vicious kind of debt collector, but it is so, so worth it. We’ll have to get you an appointment for tomorrow. His name’s Dylan, can you believe it? One of those names ditzy parents gave their kids in the seventies. But you’ll feel like butter afterward—melted butter. Did I mention he’s an Adonis? An absolute feast for the eyes. I promise you’ll fall in love with him. And after that, we plan to work late, so you and I will have to get our workout in first thing tomorrow. I’m up at the crack of dawn, nine or a bit later—that counts as early around here. We can get started then. Maybe you can try to chase down Timothy while I’m at the spa. But first, you have to come up. Come up, come in and see where the so-called magic happens. I’ll introduce you to everyone.”
Nicolo felt—as he often did when he was with Patrick—swept up into the windstorm of his energy and enthusiasm. Patrick was hard to resist. Nicolo followed Patrick into a mirrored elevator, which took them to the eleventh floor, and then along a hall to the meeting room. The room had a high ceiling and an enormous window with thick drapes, and it held a dozen people sitting around or near two long tables that had been pushed together. On the tables were pens, highlighters, stacks and loose sheets of printed paper, half-filled glasses, and plates with scraps of food—sandwich crusts, fruit peels, shrimp carcasses, broken potato chips. One of the men was drawing intently on a large pad of paper. Over beside the window two women with very short hair were leaning toward each other talking intently. Everyone else was sitting on chairs, not obviously engaged in any activity.
“Nicolo, this is Dawn, Derrick, Leesa, Claudia, Steven M., Steven S., Walt, Marshall, Tatiana and Jean-Pierre, and over there are Marlene and Steph. Everyone, this is Nicolo, my trainer. He’s the best there is. He’s helped me to see the light. Healthy mind in a healthy b
ody. So trite and yet so true.”
Nicolo sat down in an upholstered chair in a corner of the room. Jean-Pierre, the man who had been drawing when Nicolo and Patrick came in, held up his sketch and delivered to the group a short lecture on the importance of vanishing points. Perception and perspective were everything. If tickets were two hundred dollars and up, the audience needed to be visually inundated if they were to feel as if they got their money’s worth. The current sets were too small, too monochromatic, too lacking in drama. Patrick entirely, completely agreed with him. Marlene and Claudia were concerned about the music. There was too much reliance on Frankie’s old hits from the eighties. For what people were being asked to fork out for tickets, they were entitled to expect something new, even if they were mixed in with the standards. Patrick thought this was a brilliant, and easily overlooked point. Walt was worried about pacing. We can’t let the momentum flag for so much as a heartbeat, not for an instant, he warned. Patrick tugged on his chin and looked worried as well. Marlene and Steph thought it might be wise to get Bianca out from New York to jazz up the choreography. Patrick said he would call her immediately to see if she might be able to pop out for a few days. Patrick also shared Leesa’s quietly stated concern about the lighting—too dim, too diffuse, too pastel—and was inclined to see the point of Tatiana’s much more vocal objection to the use of multiple projected images of Frankie’s twin daughters when Frankie sang that song about childhood.
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