"My father lived in Tennessee," Cayce says, feeling she sounds like a talking doll whose string has been pulled.
"You write he died, in the fall of the towers."
"Went missing, yes."
"Our parents died. A bomb. In Leningrad. My sister and I, my mother as well, lived in Paris. Nora studied film, of course. I, business. My father would not have us in Russia. The dangers. He worked for his brother, my uncle, who had become a powerful man. He told us in Paris we should be prepared never to return. But our grandmother died, his mother, and we returned, for the funeral. Three days only, it was to be." Her great sad eyes stare darkly into Cayce's. "The bomb is in a tree, as we leave our house, all of us in black, to the funeral. They detonate it with a radio. Our parents die instantly, a mercy. It hurt Nora badly. Very badly. I had only dislocations, my shoulders, my jaw, and many small wounds."
"I'm sorry…"
"Yes." Stella nods, though in affirmation of what Cayce isn't sure. "Since then, we live in Moscow. My uncle is often here, and Nora needs many things. Who are your friends?"
"Pardon me?"
"You write you look for Nora's art with your friends. Passionately." The smile, when it breaks through Stella's pale calm, is a miracle. Or not calm, Cayce thinks, but some hyper-vigilant stillness. Do not move and they will not see us. "Who is 'Maurice'? It is a beautiful name."
"He works in a bank, in Hong Kong. British. I haven't met him, but I like him a lot. You understand we do this through a website, and e-mail?"
"Yes. I have seen it, perhaps. I have software. I watch Nora's art move, through the Sigil numbers. It is very good, this software. Sergei found it for us."
"Who is Sergei?"
"He is employed to facilitate. A star at the Polytechnic. I worry that he will miss his career, because my uncle pays him too well. But also he loves what Nora does. Like you."
"Is the footage… Is Nora's art computer-generated, Stella? Are there live actors?" In fear that this is too direct, too blunt.
"At the film school, in Paris, she made three short films. The longest, sixteen minutes. This was shown at Cannes to good acclaim. You have been? The Croisette?"
Cayce bookmarking like the shutter of a camera. "Only once."
"After the bomb we were taken to Switzerland. Nora required operations. The blood here is not good. We were fortunate, there has been nothing from the first transfusions, done in Russia. I stayed with her, of course. She could not talk, at first. She did not recognize me. When she did talk, it was only to me, and in a language that had been ours in childhood."
"'Twin talk'?"
"The language of Stella and Nora. Then other language returns. The doctors had asked me her interests and of course there was only film. Shortly, we were shown an editing suite which our uncle had caused to have assembled there, in the clinic. We showed Nora the film she had been working on, in Paris, before. Nothing. As if she could not see it. Then she was shown her film from Cannes. That she saw, but it seemed to cause her great pain. Soon she began to use the equipment. To edit. Recut."
Cayce, hypnotized, is nearing the bottom of her cup. The waiter arrives, to silently refill it.
"Three months, she recut. Five operations in that time, and still she worked. I watched it grow shorter, her film. In the end, she had reduced it to a single frame."
In chilling apparent synchronicity, Caffeine falls momentarily silent. Cayce shivers. "What was the image?"
"A bird. In flight. Not even in focus. Its wings, against gray cloud." She covers her own empty cup, when the waiter moves to refill it. "She went inside, after that."
"Inside?"
"She ceased to speak, then to react. To eat. Again they fed her with tubes. I was crazy. There was talk of taking her to America, but American doctors came. In the end they said they could do nothing. It could not be removed."
"What could not be removed?"
"The last fragment. It rests between the lobes, in some terrible way. It cannot be moved. Risk is too great." The dark eyes bottomless now, filling Cayce's field of vision. "But then she notices the screen."
"The screen?"
"Monitor. Above, in hallway. Closed circuit, showing only the reception at the front of that private ward. The Swiss nurse sitting, reading. Someone passing. They saw her watching that. The most clever of the doctors, he was from Stuttgart. He had them put a line from that camera into her editing suite. When she looked at those images, she focused. When the images were taken away, she began to die again. He taped two hours of this, and ran it on the editing deck. She began to cut it. To manipulate. Soon she had isolated a single figure. A man, one of the staff. They brought him to her, but she had no reaction. She ignored him. Continued to work. One day I found her working on his face, in Photoshop. That was the beginning."
