Free Straight Cut by Madison Smartt Bell Page A

languages. I found the line with “work print” on it and showed it to the man on the bed.
    “Si, Si,” he said, nodding repeatedly. “Yes, yes, yes.”
    “Well, get on it, then,” I said. I was too angry to have any more conversation at this point. I can take almost any amount of personal indignity, but abuse of equipment gets me badly annoyed. So I put the plug from the Steenbeck in my pocket and slammed out the door.
    Outside, I stalked along a cobbled street until I reached the river, fulminating silently against Dario, whichever one he was, and against Kevin and the whole enterprise in general. At length I reached the river, near the Ponte Umberto, and I walked a little way out onto the bridge. The water was low and there was a swath of brownish grass along the bank, below the heavy stone wall, which contained the river when the water was high. Looking at the river calmed me and after a little while I merely felt exhausted.
    I walked slowly around the bend of the river and then turned back into the city. It occurred to me then that I had left my belongings, practically everything, back in the QED madhouse and film butchery. Moreover, I did not know exactly where I was. Well, it would work out somehow. I finally stumbled into the Piazza Navona and found a seat in a sidewalk café on the eastern edge of it.
    It was a bright sunny day and there were many tourists milling among the assorted local hustlers in the piazza. Fatigue from the flight made it difficult for me to think, but my senses seemed abnormally acute and everything looked sharp and clear. Each sound, each sensation, was isolated, as though nothing resembling it had ever happened before;
    “The rough cut’s a little rough,” Kevin had said.
    I began to laugh out loud. People sitting nearby looked at me strangely. A waiter stopped by and I attempted to order a beer. What I got in the end was a glass of ice tea, but under the circumstances I thought that was just as well.

7
    W HAT HAPPENED NEXT WAS that I passed out in the café and slept there for nearly four hours. It was afternoon by the time I woke up, as I could see from the changed color of the light. I was stiff and sore from sleeping in the café folding chair, but my disposition seemed to be considerably more temperate than it had been that morning.
    The ice had melted in my tea, but no one had cleared it away. I drank what was left and put some money on the table. Then I picked my way back to the QED studio. This time around it was easier to get in, because someone was waiting for me just inside the door: a smallish dark young man with an anxious expression and a bow tie. He spoke English quite well, if hesitantly.
    “Excuse me, you are Mr. Bateman?”
    I agreed to that.
    “Ah, Dario sends his regrets, ah, his apologies. He wishes to apologize. If he offended you this morning.”
    “Please tell him that I apologize too,” I said. “The flight was long and I was tired and I lost my temper too easily. Also, I speak Italian very badly and that makes me impatient sometimes.”
    “Yes, of course,” the young man said. He was probably twenty-one or -two, I thought. “Excuse me, I am Mimmo. In future I will translate between you and Dario. I am also to help you with the editing. If you wish it.”
    “Praise the Lord,” I said. I leaned my shoulder into the doorjamb. The cobbles of the street were beginning to float gently up and down like billows on the sea.
    “I don’t suppose you know where I’m supposed to stay,” I said.
    “Yes, of course. Excuse me, one moment, I will get the key.”
    When Mimmo returned I found that I was sitting on the doorstep. I had been dreaming about a field of yellow flowers. Mimmo had my bag with him, I saw.
    “Is it far?”
    “A walk of half an hour.”
    “Perhaps a taxi.”
    I returned to the field of flowers. Mimmo roused me when the cab arrived. I dozed through most of the ride, though I did vaguely register that we had crossed the river. When I