Nicknomen

In the cabin, sitting on a window seat while people around settle briefcases and check the latest emails. Bea has not had time to drink a coffee or buy a book. The queue was incredibly long: new scanners, long conversations with the staff hired to explain how to use them, jams and unexpected problems that had forced everybody to go back to the old system, more than once. Her briefcase had passed three times inside the MRI-like reader, to then be opened and examined manually by an austere woman that weighed in her latex covered hand, one at a time, all the lenses, scrutinizing them with tightened eyes as if they were disgusting insects.
“Photographer, huh?”
Bea could do nothing but nod and shrug her shoulders.

The woman who is going to sit next to her has grandiose cheeks and pointy lips that could come into existence only in the sphere of extreme cosmetic surgery, and a unique expression of round suspension and waiting, which makes it difficult to look at her, and impossible not to look at her. She doesn’t seem repentant or disturbed by her transformation. She seems happy with herself, unaware of her irreparable mistake; looks as though she is feeling accomplished, being exactly as she imagined and wanted to be.
Her high heels give her a soft gait sideways and a rigid one frontally, small steps on her slightly bent knees give a jerking motion to the fair locks of hair on her temple, but not to her granite breast. On the seat she puts her shopping bags with the logo of the duty free and looks annoyed and lost at the thought of having to find a place for them.
Just a sigh and three seconds of helpless looks, within the limits of her expressive possibilities. A man forces his trolley into a corner with a vigorous push, makes signals to pass him the packages, takes them with a smile and arrange everything in the overhead compartment. While the two keep smiling, Bea hurriedly removes her phone which she had placed on the seat beside her and turns it off. From the woman’s handbag, open on her arm, a boarding pass falls to the ground. Bea picks it up and hands it to her.

“Thank you, sweetie,” The woman sits with a smile. Perhaps in her fifties. Maybe more. No wrinkles there to determine it with more certainty. American. Not surprising, on a Miami – Los Angeles flight.
“What’s your name ?” She adds.
“BEA-TRICHEH. Bea.”
“Beatriz. Cute name! Where are you from, dear?”
“Italy”.
“Oh, Italiana! You speak great English!”
“Thank you.”
“And this laddish hair, isn’t it delicious? Can I touch it?”
She passes her hand over Bea’s head before she can protest. Bea closes her eyes and shrugs like one expecting to be hit, and finally sports a resigned smile while the lady settles a maternal caress ruffling her tuft.
“All yours? It this red natural?” Bea nods. Suddenly, the nap she had planned seems quite unlikely.
“Very nice. Deep, dark, unusual. Our redheads are different, they look like wild boys. Ah, Italians! Special in everything.”
Then she brings her hand to her heart.
“Sorry, I haven’t even told you my name. I’m Nick.”
“Nicky ?”
“Nick. My mom was half Italian, too. My father, Irish. Mom: half-Italian, half-Russian, half-Greek,” she lists, regardless of the sum total.
“My full name is Nicola. In English, Nick is a man’s name.”
“It’s a boy’s name in Italy too. With the emphasis on the o, Nicòla”.
“Really?” She seems to think seriously about it for a moment, as if the detail could open Freudian shutters on her childhood.
“Well, as I said, she was half Italian. Are you on vacation?”
“No”.
“Oh, work?”
“Yes. Almost. I’ve been called for an interview.”
“From Italy?” Bea nods, Nick nods too, pouting her lips in an appreciative expression.”You have got to be really good”.
Bea shakes her head as she looks out the window. The scary tropical storm seems to be over. Over the hangar, the tops of palm trees are dripping water.
“I’m nothing special,” she says in the tone of one who wants to close the topic.
“And the flight, the hotel? Did you pay for them?”
“They did. I don’t have any money.”
Nick shakes her head with half-closed eyes, lowers her voice slightly.
“Not to mind your business, my dear, but that,” and indicates Bea’s case, wedged under the seat in front, “Costs exactly $4,699. I have got the same. And those shoes, so discreet and unassuming…”
“Gifts. Case, shoes. All gifts.”
This time she grabs the tiny pillow, turns away, leans against the window, closes her eyes.

Nick exhales a soft sigh and looks around. The man who helped her is now reading a newspaper. He feels that Nick is looking at him, turns and smiles at her, but immediately returns to reading, marking the exact extent of his interest. Cute. More suitable for Beatriz that for me, Nick thinks. She turns to look at her companion, curled up with closed eyes. Even disguised as a man, this girl is a knockout, she thinks with another sigh. The plane starts to move, in reverse, the flight attendants begin, without enthusiasm, their safety pantomime.

Bea takes off her shoes, puts her feet on the soft leather briefcase that contains a MacBook, a Sony Red Epic and four high-quality lenses. A gift. A gift from Xavi, to remove her from the state of depression into which she was falling again. She remembers when Xavi had unceremoniously pulled it out from the large white plastic bag he had brought from the hotel and put on a terrace table, in that cafe in Nice. “This is for little Bea. Happy Birthday.”

She remembers to have thought that the case itself was the gift. One of those strange gifts from Xavi. To have brushed her fingers against that curious, soft skin, searching for the right words to thank him. To have heard his impatient voice: “Come on, open it, what are you waiting for?”
The gift was inside. Unintelligible pieces of equipment. Computer apart, she just did not understand what they were. Modular pieces of what looked like an absurdly complicated camera. She looked up to Xavi, who was ordering croissants and coffee for both.
“My gift. For you, but even more for myself”, he began to explain with a satisfied sly air. “The best camcorder on the market, they tell me,” he said, shrugging his shoulders to indicate that he, too, knew nothing about those things.
Croissants and coffee were brought to the table.
“I need you to record our weekends,” he said, biting into a pain au chocolat and getting, as usual, a dark spot on the corner of his lip. Bea did not bother to remove it as she usually would. She was listening.
“I want you to create a short film for each of our trips. Make stories of them. And that you post these stories on the Internet. Search how, you’ll find the best way, I trust.”
“Why?”
“For two reasons,” he said in the meantime signaling Bea: drink, eat, don’t just stand still gazing at my lips smeared with chocolate.
“First: P.R. I think seeing Xavi Echeverría while he buys antiques and works of art around the world with his girlfriend can create a positive buzz, will be good for my image.”
“Do you want everyone to see the expensive pieces with which you indulge yourself. The money you spend. The girlfriend half your age. Are you sure people will love it? And how about taxes ?”
“To hell with taxes. It is not your business, don’t you worry,” he said placing the cup on the saucer, a little too heavily.
“And the second reason?”
Xavi took her hand and held it for a while. Beatrice thought that the answer was all there, when finally he simply said, “The second reason: it is for you.”
It was not necessary to elaborate further. A toy. To distract her, get her out of the depression she was about to slip back into. An expensive way, in the manner of Xavi, to avoid the worst. To help her heal, maybe.
The case was still open in front of them. Bea stroked once again the content.
“I’ve never picked up a camera. This seems too…”
“A smart girl like you. “He said with a humorless smile.”Before evening you’ll have mastered all its secrets.”

That day Xavi had to go somewhere alone and she immediately went back to the hotel. Once in the suite she opened the suitcase, put all the pieces on the table and began to read the instructions.
The secret of that machine: an unprecedented density of frames. 320 per second. Which allows a superb definition, and an extremely slow motion, with exceptionally vivid images. A camera apt to transform into a richly detailed story the path of a bullet tailspinning into a wall. A life, in an instant.
She tried to hold it in her hand in front of the mirror and looked. It was not so bulky. It felt light and easy to carry. Finally, she turned it on. She shot the fruit basket. Shot the rectangle of sunlight on the floor. Shot herself: still at first, then she remembered she could move. It occurred to her that she could look at herself in slow motion, read later into the endless temporal folds of her own mimicry. She went out onto the balcony and tried the different lenses. A ladybug was dancing among the flowers on the railing. Bea came up and began to focus on it. It felt like looking right at its eyes, like grasping its expression, its simple thoughts. The ladybug began to fly and ended up leaning right on the center of the lens, a huge stain that covered almost the entire glass and looked like a gray throbbing heart.

Before dinner, Bea, leaning on her computer, had almost completed the editing of her first video: Traveling with Xavi: Nice, which began with a ladybug landing on the lens and ended with the slow fall of a tear on the marble edge of the bathtub. A tear of happiness bouncing and generating six small droplets that went up in a slow curved symmetry.
Only Xavi was missing, he had not yet arrived. She was ready. She would film him as he entered, just two seconds of his unfailing smile, his hand still attached to the door handle.

The plane has taken off, bouncing through the dark clouds.
The storm is not over, it has only moved a little to the west, they can hear two thunder claps in the distance.
Then a third, much closer, strong, accompanied by a flash of lightning, whitening the entire sky.
Bea is thrown forward with a scream, her eyes wide, restrained only by the belt.
“Quiet, darling, it’s just a storm. It woke you up. Here, you dropped the pillow, take it.”
Bea looks at her with a fixed expression. Trembling. Her hands do not move. Her brow is covered with beads of sweat.
“But you’re sick! Wait, I’ll call the hostess…” Bea stops her, shaking her head. She does not talk, just Mmmm. Nick gives her a hand, Bea squeezes it with desperate strength.
“You are afraid of storms, honey. Look, I have some water, drink it. Sure you do not want me to call… No, I get it, okay, I am not calling anyone. Quiet. Drink. Drink some more. Come here, rest.”
They remain still and silent for a while, until Bea, her cheek against Nick’s shoulder, stops shaking. She seems to notice just now that she is holding Nick’s hand. She lets it go, straightens a little against the seat, runs her fingers through her hair.
“I’m sorry…” she finally says. “That thunder… I can’t control myself.”
“I understand, dear. Phobia. For me, spiders…”
“It’s more than a phobia.”

A moment of silence between the two women. Now Bea reads an expression that seemed not to exist before. She grasps the wordliness in the eyes of Nick: balanced, practical, under a make-up intended to hide their penetrating power, eyes that must have seen a lot and have come to terms with experience. Eyes to which she can talk.
Nick reaches again for her hand.”Are you seeing someone? A doctor…”
“I was a year in a hospital. I thought I’d never be out of there.”
She takes another sip. And a third, drinking all the water.
“I had just finished college. I.T. I was able to graduate ahead of time, worked hard. I was exhausted. Had some crises, sometimes I did not know where I was, I was just lost. Blamed the stress for my final exams. My friends wanted to organize a holiday. I said okay, but I could not think of any future event. I could not think of anything. Always tired.”
A hostess comes with drinks. Water for Bea, white wine for Nick.
“Then came the panic attacks. First one a month. Then one a day. Eventually, a permanent state. I wasn’t good for any activity. I could not be with others. I could not imagine… Any action, scenario, nothing. I stayed in bed for days. I found myself in that hospital.”
Another rumble of thunder far away. Bea gives a start, but keeps talking.
“I was lucky. I found a doctor… She would speak with me, every day. She tuned in on me.”
Bea moistens her lip with her tongue, passing a hand over her forehead. She’s scared that facts about which she has not spoken to close friends can pop out like a cork, without control, to the first person that she meets. She is also thankful that Nick is just looking without a smile and simply listening.
“After a year I was out. I did not want to go back to my family. It’s a complicated story. A friend hosted me. I started looking around, looking for a job.”
“And you met a man,” Nick interrupted.
“Yes,” says Bea amazed.”How did you…”
“Nothing. You did the face of one who met a man.”
Nick thoughtful sips her white wine.
“A rich man. One that gives you pretty shoes and briefcases.”
“Yes.”
“And now it ‘s over.”
“Yes.”
“And you are done with him.”
“I did the face, huh?” She smiles, looking down. ”Yes, I’m done.”
“Then, no more shoes and bags. Now you have to find a job. You haven’t got a dime, you said it.”
“That’s right.”
“And you have been offered a job. In another city. Away from the hospital, the family, away from your ex… the perfect opportunity.”
“So it seems.”
“Then why you do not seem at all enthusiastic about it?”
Bea snorts, slowly shaking her head. “I do not know if I’ll take it. I do not know if I am any good. I do not know if that’s what I want.”
“May I ask what it is? The job”.
“Editing. For a television series.”
Nick laughs, almost spilling her wine.
“And in Hollywood they do not have enough editors? They call you, in Italy? You have to be really special, kid! What have you done in Italy? You Fellini’s granddaughter?”
“Nothing. Never worked in the cinema. Never worked in television. I just created a Youtube channel. Inside the suitcase there is a video camera. The most expensive that there is. Yes, that too from my man. I filmed all my weekends with him.”
Nick opens her eyes wide. “Erotic videos…?”
“No! Not a single frame. Stories made of innocent details. Our beautiful life. Beaches, city walks. Dinners together. Above all, him buying objects and ancient statues.”
“And someone is interested to this stuff…”
“It’s not the topic. It seems that I possess a rare ability to synthesize. So I’m told. They called me. Two weeks ago, at an ungodly hour. They said they want to start a television series. Something historical, They wouldn’t say what it is. Secret. They analyzed my little films. They told me that they have not found anyone able to render long events in such a few frames. They said that they tried everyone. People working in movies, music videos. They wanted me. They want me. Epic language, they said. My little film about a man who buys Greek vases and Russian icons, ordering a drink at the restaurant, stifling a yawn. They offered me a salary… Astonishing.”
“So you would have accepted less.”
“Yes. I would have. I did not accept. I’m just going to an interview. In terms of money, I would have accepted half of the half.”
“I understand. You do not have money. It’s an opportunity. It’s your passion…”
“It is not my passion.”
Nick does a quick nod to the hostess to fill her glass again.
“I’ve lost you, sweetie. Editing is not your passion?”
“No. Looks like I do fine, that’s all. So they say. I do not know.”
“Oh, I get it. Your passion is not editing. It must be the creative part…”
“No”.
Bea looks at her, undecided whether to speak or not. Then she makes an expression that seems to say: to hell, I told her about the hospital…
“My passion is Medieval symbolism.”
“Your passion is what?”
“Medieval. Symbolism. Hidden details. Symbolic messages in texts and images of the Middle Ages.”
Nick looks at her. Seems to say something. She hesitates, then thinks better of it and finishes her wine.
“I’ve got a taste for it traveling with my man,” she adds simply. “Ex”.
“And… After studying computer science, after the hospital, after a rich man who takes you around, you end up interested… In the dark ages?”
Bea bows her head, exhaling a long breath. She waits several seconds before answering.
“The Middle Ages is a an extraordinary time. Nick, this is the dark ages, can’t you see?”
“Girl, I gotta go to the bathroom. Keep the rest for later. I’m all ears.”

Nick reappears with a new smile for the man who helped her – quickly retracted – and a question.
“Honey, the Middle Ages must be a wonderful time as you say. But nobody cares about it. This can only mean: no friends. No boyfriend. No social life. Is this the recovery that your doctor has suggested?”
“You’re right. Today it is just like that: no friends, no boyfriend. Maybe Los Angeles is really my opportunity. Starting from scratch. But it’s always been that way since childhood: the things that I am passionate about, I can not share them. I’m used to it, I have weird tastes.”
Bea fixes her partner with an almost hostile gaze.”I can’t give up what I really love just to be in the company of others.”
“No?” Nick asks with a curious smile. “Are you sure?” She seems to reflect on something, then she asks:
“How old are you, honey?”
“Twenty-seven”.
“Maybe you’re right. I guess you’ll keep straight on your way. Usually, at your age one has already decided to give up what she loves, to be with someone. The first and fundamental characteristic of women.”

Both remain in silence for a few minutes. Bea looks out the window. The plane has settled at an altitude well above the clouds, where here and there gleam distant flashes of lightnings.
Nick pulls out a box of chocolates from her purse and offers it to Bea.
“I would like to see the letter of these people in Hollywood. Maybe I know them. I work in entertainment too…”
“How do you know that there is a letter? I told you they called me…”
“There is always a letter.”
Bea picks up the phone.”Here is the Email.” They skim it together.
“This is a major production house” Nick says, impressed. Bea swiftly browses the text.
“As I told you. Ability to synthesize speech… Epic language… we need to summarize in a few seconds… big events… contract for one season with option for four years… meeting Wednesday at 11… we are excited to meet you…”
“Oh, look!”Nick says with delight, pointing to the signature in the letter. Nick Assante O’Reilly. “Nick, like me.”

Bea stops, no more laughs. She is blushing violently.
“Wait a moment.”Beatrice whispers.”Nick Assante O’Reilly. I have seen this name.”
She stares into Nick’s eyes, exhaling in disbelief, until Nick looks down.
“It’s the name on your boarding pass.”
Furious. Shocked. She seems to want to pop out from the seat in which she is confined. Crosses her arms, runs her hands over her face, crosses her arms again.
“I can’t believe it. All planned. You have taken this flight, booked this place…”
Nick swallows. Now she is the one with a dry mouth, to moisten her lips, while Bea keeps repeating to herself: “Incredible. Incredible. I always meet manipulators…”
“Absolutely no. Honey. It’s  a coincidence, whether you believe it or not. It was Jo, my assistant, calling you. I listened to the conversation. We immediately thought that your style is special. You have a unique talent, sweet. The next day They told me that you had booked the Miami Los Angeles today. I had to take the same flight tomorrow. I just booked one day earlier.”
“Just a day earlier! And this is normal and innocent to you! You’ve squeezed confidences out of me that I would have never said! Things that I have not revealed to my sister! You have got to know my weaknesses… You saw me on my knees. This is inhumane and unfair. Coward. Coward.”
The man next to them turns to look at them. Nick does not smile back.
“But not to deny you the job. It is normal that you have your weaknesses. Seeing your videos, it was clear there was an intense life behind. I did not expect anything different, I was certain that I would find a story like yours. We talked, I have got to know you, as it would not be possible in a normal interview. That’s it. And I’m honored. I do not dig into the private lives of my future co-workers looking for reasons to discard them. Sweetie, the interview is over. The job is yours. You’re hired.”
Bea looks at her open-mouthed.
“Just remember that you will have to deal with people… Well, with people like me. I do not know if you’re prepared to do that. L.A. is like a slap. It takes strength. By the way, you have to learn to take better control of your judgments. On botox, for example. You didn’t see how I was before, right? And just wait till you see how I will be in a few days, after my doctor in Brentwood has done his job.”

Bea finally answers in a low voice, her face hidden in her hands.
“I do not know. I do not know if I want this job.”
Nick orders more wine. For two, this time.