Leading Men by Christopher Castellani

Author:Christopher Castellani
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-02-11T16:00:00+00:00

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THE NEXT MORNING, Frank called Anna. “Here is the program,” he’d said. “It’s time for you to meet our runaway.” He didn’t let on what had happened with Visconti the day before, as he didn’t want to prejudice her first encounter with Anja. He suggested they meet for pizza at a place near Piazza Navona, just the four of them, at eight o’clock.

“Here is a better idea,” Anna said. There was a filmmaker she’d been avoiding, someone trying to seduce her to star in his next project. He was a young Dane, reportedly handsome, with lofty ambitions but only a single film credit to his name. Had Frank heard of Mirror? No, he hadn’t. No one had, and yet Mirror had earned heaps of praise from the French, which was Anna’s main reason for putting him off. “He sounds to me like a better fit for your little Garbo,” she said. “Unless I fall for him myself. Oh, Frankie bello, what do you say we all have dinner insieme, and we make it a little contest?”

“Anja can’t compete with you,” Frank said. “She’s never acted a day in her life!”

“Meglio così,” said Anna. “I prefer games I’m guaranteed to win.”

“We were hoping you might help her, if you could, not intimidate her.”

“They are the same,” she said.

“Her mother does think she needs to be toughened up,” Frank said. “But in my opinion, she’s too tough as it is.”

“Basta!” said Anna. “Enough of the trailer. I want to see the movie for myself. I will tell this Martin Hovland to meet us at the Osteria al Fontanone at nine thirty. Excellent fish. The owner is an old lover, Don Umberto. He is in Ostia, worth the drive. There is a bus but don’t take it, it never comes. Hovland will pay the bill. In my experience, the auteurs who cry poor are always the ones with money. Ciao ciao bello Frankuccio. With me, you always do better than a pizza shop in Piazza Navona. Come at eight thirty, do you hear? We need time together before the Dane ruins the night. Bah!”

For two women whose names were off by only a consonant, Anna and Anja were more different than Jersey and Jupiter. It was something to walk with them around the courtyard garden of the Fontanone restaurant—Anna with her polio limp and full-bosomed laugh and those permanent smears, dark as bruises, under her eyes; impish Anja in her demure dress of pale roses, her face stretched tight from the pins pulling back her hair—an ox and a plover struggling for a common tongue. A native Italian, Anna could speak pidgin English but was uncomfortable doing so; Anja, a native Swede, spoke a botched Italian and an overly formal and heavily accented English she learned from a posh British tutor. They kept turning to Frank for help. He knew Italian and English well enough to translate, but he was keeping his distance so that the two women could forge a friendship separate from the ones they had with him and Tenn.

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