"I've never doubted it, really. I don't know why." She looks out from this brightly lit urban cave, past the queue of customers and the sounds of steam, to the strangers passing steadily in the rain.
"And you're over here working for Blue Ant?" He's shot several commercials for them. A Bigend favorite, she's heard. "And in Tokyo?"
She turns back to him. "They wanted me here to tell them whether or not a new logo worked." She names the company and he nods. "Then it all went sideways."
"Can't say you sound happy about the kind of sideways."
"No. You haven't asked me why I changed your locks."
"I wondered."
"Visitor. Uninvited. I wasn't there."
"Someone broke in?"
"Nothing broken, that I could see. But the door was locked when they got in. Any chance anyone else had a key?"
"No. I'd been careful with that. Had them changed just as the reno was completed."
"And there's a chance your computer's been compromised somehow." Thinking of Boone checking her iBook.
"A lot of good that will do anyone. Any idea who it was?" More curious than angry. In fact not angry at all. She'd known he wouldn't be. People fascinate him, in some peculiarly abstract way: the things they do, though not so much why they do them.
She tells him about Dorotea and the Rickson's and Asian Sluts. The changing of the locks. Then her second encounter with Dorotea. The Michelin Man in the meeting, and then the doll on the doorknob.
"Wait a minute. You don't talk about that, really, do you?"
"No."
"Who knows, then?"
"Well—you, a very few other close friends, three or four ex-boyfriends I regret having told, a psychiatrist, and two psychologists."
"And why were you in Tokyo?"
"Bigend. He's after the maker of the footage."
She watches him take that one in. He's one of those people apparently immune to the lure of the footage; in his case, she knows, it has to do with his being his own maker, with his own obsessive need to generate his own footage. "Does he say why?"
"Not exactly, but he's convinced that it's big, in some entirely new way, and he wants to get in on the ground floor."
"So you're working for Blue Ant, on that?"
"No. Bigend describes it as a partnership. With him. And an American computer security consultant named Boone Chu."
"Boonchoo?"
"Boone as in Daniel. C-h-u."
"And you're getting somewhere with it?"
"Irritated, mainly, though if I weren't so jet-lagged I'd have room for serious paranoia." She quickly outlines her experience in Japan, not going into detail about Parkaboy or Taki, just a thumbnail of the supposed Italians, and Boone.
"You nutted him?"
"No, I smashed him in the face with my forehead."
"No, that's what we call that, here. Or used to, I think. Amazing. Never imagined you'd have it in you."
"Neither did I." Around them, people with damp, loosely furled umbrellas are chatting and sipping coffee. Over them, now, she hears an amazing Glaswegan accent order a quadruple-shot latte. Damien hears it too, and grins.
"What about you?" she asks. "You're obviously fully engaged in project, more than somewhat with producer."
"Sometimes I think it would be easier if I could sleep with her father instead. He's an old New Russian. Made it looting his own economy, basically, but there's no long-term future in that. Russia's had a GNP on par with Holland, but that's changing. The new New Russians are into transparency: companies that actually have books, pay taxes. They've figured out that you can make even more money, that way. It's no accident that Putin always describes himself as a lawyer. He is. But Marina's dad is old school, and that's what we need in this particular situation. Square it with the people who actually control the land we're digging on, keep the local militia away." He raises one hand, fingers crossed. Raises his cup with the other, to sip.
"Fergal said you were back for re-funding?"
"Done. We met with the moneymen at the Brasserie."
"You don't want old New Russian funding?"
"Very last thing I want. I think we've got another three weeks, shooting."
"You aren't worried, getting hooked up with the don's daughter?"
"He's not mafia," Damien says, very seriously, though she'd meant it only jokingly. "A lesser oligarch. We're okay, Boris and I. I think he's glad to have her out of his hair, actually."
"Then you don't want him to get too used to it, do you?"
"You're scaring me." He finishes the last of his latte. ''But I'd be more worried if I were you. Working with Hubertus Bigend would be a scary proposition at the least complicated of times." He stands up, then, and so does she, taking her Luggage Label bag from the back of her chair.
"What's the rest of your day?"
"We're on Aeroflot to Saint Petersburg this afternoon. I have to get our freight on, plus the additional cameramen. Plus Marina. It's a TU 185. Getting Marina on a Russian plane can take some doing. Fergal's got a very tight rein on budget. I have to come out of this owning the film, and that's a stretch. What about you?"
"I'm going to a Pilates studio. When's your flight?"
"Two twenty-five."
