“That makes sense.”
He was looking at a sheet of paper.
“I see you’ve done a lot of theater here.”
She nodded.
“And some TV,” he said.
“Some bad TV, I’m afraid.”
He smiled and put the sheet away.
“Don’t worry. A lot of good actors end up in bad shows; it’s not their fault. My assistant showed me a couple of scenes on YouTube from that crime series you were in.”
“Oh, no.”
“Why? You’re good. I couldn’t understand much because my Italian isn’t as fluent as it once was.”
That sounded like an invitation to ask him about how he had learned it.
“Do you speak Italian?” she asked.
“Un poco. Ma ora ho dimenticato quasi tutto.”
His accent was thick, but Valeria encouraged him.
“Non è vero, hai un buonissimo accento.”
“No, I don’t. And I forgot most of it. My family moved to Rome for three years when I was about nine.”
“Really? How come?”
“My father worked for FAO, the food and agriculture organization of the UN.”
Valeria felt the conversation was veering away from the reason she had come—her character, the audition, the hair. But this friendliness was a good sign, she thought. She hadn’t expected that he would be so chatty and relaxed.
“And where did you live?” she asked.
“Near the Aventino. My sister and I went to the international school nearby.”
She hesitated, imperceptibly.
“Saint Stephen’s?”
“Yes. You’ve heard of it?”
Valeria shifted in her seat.
“Yes….I mean…I know where it is.”
“It’s a small school—not many people know it.”
“Well,” Valeria said uneasily, eager to get back to the previous conversation, “I guess Rome feels pretty familiar, then. It must be nice to be back here to shoot a movie.”
“Yes and no,” he said, and for a split second he paused as if he had lost his line of thought. “We left right after Maya…”
He shook his head lightly, looking away, as though he wanted to backtrack from whatever he was about to say.
“Maya?” Valeria’s voice cracked as she repeated the name.
They looked at each other, and for a handful of seconds they remained silent. Valeria felt the density of the air around them begin to alter, till she felt it pressing on her chest.
“Yes. My older sister. She was in a…” Julian’s voice faded as he attempted to complete the phrase.
Valeria stared at him, without answering. Her face had turned ashen, and her whole body had stiffened.
He studied her more closely. “Are you okay?” he asked, then stopped himself. Suddenly his expression changed too, as if a blinding flash had erased everything he had been thinking about till then.
“You are…?” he started, then put his elbows on the table and rested his face behind his hands.
“What?” she said.
He raised his head. His features had softened; he was more permeable now, had lost the formal mask of courtesy and seemed younger, almost boyish.
Valeria started to shoot frantic glances all around the room, while Julian closed his eyes for a moment. Then their voices merged, crossing over each other.
“Are you…?”
“Oh God.”
“Sorry, I know this is crazy.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Are you that Valeria?”
Blood started rushing through her—she felt it flowing in her wrists, in her throat. Her head was spinning. So she bent over and this time it was her turn to cover her face with her hands.
“Oh God,” she repeated.
“I’m sorry,” Julian said. “I didn’t know. When I asked to see you again…Believe me, I had absolutely no—”
“No, I…I mean now, how…how did you…?”
“I just had a feeling. I don’t know why. Suddenly I knew it was you. When I mentioned her name, your expression…I just knew.”
She couldn’t hide anymore, so she lowered her hands. Her eyes were moist, her cheeks flushed.
“No. It’s okay. It’s just that…it was so unexpected. You caught me completely off guard.”
Julian seemed lost, his body slumped on the chair.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” he said.
* * *
So this is you, he thought.
You’ve been just a name for all these years, like a character in a novel. The bad character, in fact. And now here you are, in this cheap coat, with the lifeless hair I asked you to bleach in a color that doesn’t suit you. You are taller than I expected, you have thick eyebrows, light eyes and small hands that keep fidgeting. You are that name. Valeria.
Julian watched her as she heaved and leaned with her head toward her knees as though she might black out.
“Can I have a glass of water, please?” she whispered.
* * *
Apparently, the actress in Julian’s office was having something akin to a panic attack, the receptionist told the assistant director, a young woman with a mass of curly blond hair and round glasses, who ran into the room in order to relieve Julian from this inconvenience. She escorted the actress to the restroom so she could splash her face with cold water. Valeria kept shaking and saying she was sorry while Julian stood outside the bathroom, distraught. He knocked on the bathroom door a couple of times.
“Is she okay? Shall we call a doctor?”
When the two women came out, the assistant noticed how his face had undergone a drastic transformation in the space of a few minutes: his features had collapsed like a sandcastle smashed by a wave.
Julian insisted that somebody drive Valeria home. There were a couple of drivers on hand, but she said no, she just needed to be outside, she wanted to walk.
“I’m okay now,” she said to him, and turned to the assistant director. “I’ll be fine, I promise. I just need to breathe and be alone.”
After she left, Julian sank into a chair in the middle of the office corridor. The assistant director asked him if he needed anything and he said she should cancel whatever meetings were scheduled for the rest of the day because he was heading back to the hotel.