He’s seen it dozens of times in X-rated movies. Sometimes, it’s done with two men and a woman; sometimes, two women and a man; he’s only rarely seen three men. Instead of hearing about it from the girl’s lips, the screenwriter would rather be watching from behind a screen, or by applying his eye to a peephole. Even a photograph would be better than a verbal account of her sexual encounter with the young conductor and brilliant composer. She asks him to imagine her naked on her knees, straddling the young conductor, while the brilliant composer probes her from behind with his tongue. They begin slowly, gently, gradually becoming more frenetic, while their breathing gets heavier, their moans louder, until their movement, breathing, moaning, seem to synchronize, as if they were performing one of the brilliant composer’s pieces, in which each has their own part to play, but all have the same end in mind. The girl plays with the young conductor’s penis, occasionally putting it in her mouth, and the screenwriter imagines her doing so wildly, hungrily, as if her life depended on it. The brilliant composer maintains his position behind her, holding her legs with one hand, since she keeps moving about uncontrollably, while using his free hand to pleasure her. Finally, she gets on her back and lets the other two cum on her face. And thus the performance concludes. The screenwriter can’t take any more. A mixture of love and anguish is causing his stomach to churn, and he feels like throwing up. He hasn’t felt this sickness in years, he thinks, this pain. And yet, he searches her features, replaying in his head the scene she just described. The two of them lie back on the sheets. Weren’t you fighting with them? he asks her. The girl says they were all drinking and taking drugs when it happened. Perhaps they were taking revenge on me, she speculates, although she says it without conviction.
The first thing he does in the morning is call the producer. Money, another advance, I’d appreciate whatever you can send, he keeps repeating to himself, as if every time he calls he needs to persuade himself of his desperate situation in order to sound more convincing. Oh it’s a magnificent screenplay, he murmurs, I’d say it’s as good as anything written in the golden age. Then, he changes his mind. His insecurity always causes him to change his mind. But he doesn’t think the producer wants to hear about the golden age, and he doesn’t want any magnificent screenplays either, unless, by “magnificent,” the screenwriter means a guaranteed box-office hit. In fact, nothing would delight the producer more than talking about a potential box-office hit. The screenwriter knows he’s gone through this scenario before, had the same thoughts about money and the producer the last time he tried to call him. He hangs up and goes down to have breakfast. Afterward, in the lobby, he’s reading in the paper about a Nobel Prize winner who’s died. The screenwriter doesn’t recall ever reading his works. But there are so many great books that reading them all would leave him with little time to do anything else in life. After perusing the personal ads, he gets up and limps to the elevator. Damn leg, he grumbles on the way to his room, impatient to get back to his writing. Today, the girl’s wearing sunglasses. It seems the circles around her eyes, which the screenwriter finds so endearing on a teenager’s countenance, are now looking particularly bad to her. She’d prefer not to linger on the events of the past few days. She likes to think they were part of a game; that everything’s part of a game; the game of the world, the universe perhaps, but a game nonetheless. She’s repeated this same mantra ad nauseam. Everything’s a game, life’s a game. If nothing exists, or if nothing is true, then why not think of it as a game? Her theory’s plausible. She could return to the hotel and speak with her father, offer to help him, but she has her own plans. She wanders the streets of the neighboring country’s capital immersed in her usual thoughts about her novel, about her mother, and the young conductor. . She should’ve gone to rehearsals but was too lazy. So she goes into a library instead, and walks past books of every sort, from well-thumbed new releases piled up on tables near the front, to dusty old classics on inconspicuous shelves in the back. She’s baffled at not knowing any of the fashionable authors. Their new books are always announced with fanfare and tickertape, because in the neighboring country’s capital, there are authors who sell in the hundreds of thousands. The girl has certainly not sold so many records. She wonders which contemporary authors she should read, how to separate the grain from the chaff. She’s always avoided reading her contemporaries. But a writer should know the works of other writers, both old and new, develop a kinship with both the past and present. She doesn’t recognize any of their names. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism, a means of avoiding a contest with the living. It’s easier if the opponent’s already dead. She takes a book from a shelf and reads the beginning: “One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch. .” Then she reads the beginning of another: “In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together.” There’s a writer whose name has a K or Ka, and he happens to be one of the most important writers of the century; who knows, perhaps the voices she hears are directing her on a literary path, pointing out new things for her to read, new approaches to writing, new perspectives on literature in general. This writer may in fact be an extraterrestrial. She checks a book with a photograph of him, but it must’ve been retouched, because she can’t decide whether or not she sees a faint halo around him. She reads the beginnings of several more books before leaving the store and continuing on her way, a way without a particular end, for she hasn’t one in mind — the way of a vagabond, in other words. A foosball bar would be an end, she thinks, but she can’t think of any that are nearby. She starts walking in the direction of the river, but then changes her mind and turns back. Maybe she should just go to rehearsals after all, shut herself away in a rehearsal booth with the Little Sinfonietta and the young conductor’s latest conquest. She doesn’t know why she mentioned the group and the conquest as separate entities. It seems the girl still can’t accept her as a member of the group, as she’s yet to even set foot onstage. Perhaps she’s more of a member than the girl at this point — or at any point for that matter, for the girl has never really conformed to the role of orchestra member. Being the concert starlet she is, perhaps she thinks she’s different from the rest. Perhaps she didn’t want them having too great an influence on her. She can’t remember who was responsible for inducting her — her mother, the young conductor, or the brilliant composer: it was probably all of them, but she always felt that being an orchestra member stifled her individuality and creativity. The girl is at a counter writing a personal ad to be published in all the major newspapers. She has trouble with the text of the message, though, because it should be phrased in a way that disguises its meaning to all but the intended recipients, a code that only the aliens are able to decipher. She decides to leave it as simple as possible, and writes: “I hear voices. 1. The No World is all that is the case.” Then she debates whether to sign it K. or Ka. She hears Ka instead of K, hears the difference between them, perhaps it’s a clue. She signs her name Ka. At the exit, next to a window, a shadow tries passing her unnoticed. The girl walks into its path and the hairs on her arms bristle, detecting a presence. Suddenly, she has the feeling again of being followed. She decides, once and for all, to get to the bottom of the mystery, so she turns around and goes back to where she felt the presence. She then considers if it’s ill advised to confront an unknown entity unarmed. But it doesn’t matter. When she reaches the agency window, the unknown entity’s already vanished. For how long has it been following her? she wonders as she heads for the next block to hail a taxi. The rehearsal space isn’t far, but she asks the driver to take a detour. When she passes the classifieds office again, she can’t help darting another glance at the window. A few meters further on, she sees cousin Dedalus strolling casually while reading a newspaper. She watches him, wondering if he’ll catch sight of her. But he doesn’t see her — or if he has seen her, he’s doing a good job pretending he hasn’t.