Free No World Concerto by A. G. Porta

intelligence is very different from other forms, the screenwriter thinks. Had she not been trained from a young age, she could have ended up like everybody else. But that’s irrelevant now. The fact is she was trained, she is a prodigy. Some guys are flirting with a girl next to him. The screenwriter watches them attentively for a few moments. It’s as if the young conductor has been erased from his mind, as if he never existed or had any relationship with the girl. Something’s throwing him off, so he starts thinking about the father again, who in his youth might also have wanted to be a writer. He knows nothing more than what the girl has told him and just uses his years of experience to figure out the rest. Actually, nobody knows very much about the girl’s father. What advice would he give her? He’d want his daughter to be successful. What father wouldn’t? Is he happy? Maybe he’s only pretending to be. They say being able to do this is the ultimate mark of success. And so the screenwriter begins to wonder about happiness, about success, about celebrity and wealth, and about whether happiness and stupidity go hand in hand. He thinks if the world’s so screwed up that certain things are mistaken for others, what sort of books will the girl write? Not necessarily now, but in a few years time. What kind of life would such a father want for his daughter? The life of a concert pianist? A writer, maybe? The screenwriter realizes he’s talking about himself, because he never knew what advice to give his own son. He doesn’t even know what advice he’d give himself. If he thinks about his work, he gets lost in the details; if he thinks about his life, he ends up blaming his misfortune on the cards he’s been dealt. Perhaps the girl’s father has never entertained such thoughts. Perhaps the only thing to do with a girl like this is to protect her. But protect her from what? he wonders. From herself, responds a voice inside him. The screenwriter looks for his glasses in his jacket pocket. The girl goes to visit her father at his hotel, but finds he’s gone out, so she decides to wait for him. She’s surprised he’s staying in such a dump, although she thinks it must be for a good reason. After waiting in the lobby a while, she decides to go outside and stretch her legs. The environs don’t compare with those of the hotel with the English name. When she returns, she sees there’s been a shift change at the reception desk, so she asks for the key to her father’s room — doing so with such aplomb, the new receptionist doesn’t hesitate to hand her the key. The screenwriter considers some other ways to get the girl up to her father’s room. He writes them down, seated on a riverside bench, under a streetlamp. On the bed, she sees a pistol, a passport, some credit cards, together with some old folders filled with documents, but it’s to the pistol the girl gravitates. She picks it up and examines it, gently caresses it, running her fingers along its grooves and edges, and also the butt. She finds it quite heavy. She holds it with both hands, aims it high and low, lining up her sight with one eye closed, and then pretends to draw it from a holster like a cowboy. She needs practice. In front of the bathroom mirror, she imitates the classic stance of a policeman aiming at a bad guy: squat, with legs apart, and aiming with both hands. Before putting it back on the bed, she holsters the gun in her pants, feeling the cold metal against the small of her back. Then she takes a look at the passport. She doesn’t recognize the name, but the man in the picture is definitely her father. For a moment she thought she was in the wrong room. She slowly reads the name aloud. There are numerous credit cards with the same name on them. The girl searches through the documents, all reports from the space agency about unidentified sightings. The girl is intrigued. She didn’t know her father had access to such information. There