No World Concerto by A. G. Porta

that. He’s touched up another person’s screenplay, extemporized new dialogue to satisfy the whim of a producer, but he’s never started from scratch using someone else’s set. He isn’t sure he could improvise to that extent. I suppose you should just throw yourself into it, he says to himself. Once in the thick of it, you’ll learn quickly enough. He can see himself sitting in a corner dashing off the final parts of a script while the actresses are drinking coffee and the director deliberates about how to conduct the day’s shoot. The long and short of it is there’s not much dialogue to write, and the actors have neither the time nor the acting skills to memorize and deliver their lines the way he’d want. It can’t be much different from churning out scripts for TV shows, although in TV, writers tend to work in teams. The screenwriter considers the scene that’s playing out on his TV set: an attractive, respectable-looking woman enters a shoe-repair shop, limping, shows the broken stiletto heel to the cobbler, and requests he fix it immediately. The screenwriter once toyed with the notion that his scripts punctuated different stages of his life; like his offspring, each child belonging to a different era, with its own individual memories, specific mental states, favorite colors, lovers. . yet, for the line of work the screenwriter’s considering, such complicated entities would have to be conceived on a daily basis — different sets, eras, mental states — a different lover every day? — how could he take stock of all that? Yet, he’s still thinking about a possible career as a porno screenwriter: arriving early on set; making up a script on the spot that can employ the sets of other films; perhaps he’d come up with a story on his way to work, or while drinking coffee in the café on the corner; perhaps he’d have written one the night before, after sleeping with one of the actresses. There’s a new idea running through the screenwriter’s head that seems brilliant to him, and quite original, an idea to rival even the great dramatist’s work, something he himself might have written had he lived at a different time. Amorous scenes between a king and queen talking at length about their eccentric son’s future — about whether they’ll end up having him murdered somewhere far from their kingdom — while they spank each other, revealing to the audience another side to the familiar story. He’s even thought of the title he’d give to a series of such films:
Hidden Scenes from so-and-so’s Work
. Or if he changed the author and work in question:
Leon Kowalski, the Hidden Years of a Replicant
. It would be a matter of putting false memories into the mind of a movie character, although of course it wouldn’t make a difference if the memories were true or false. It’s all the same in fiction. The screenwriter puts the matter aside for the moment and continues watching the TV. The lady has finally made her way to the back of the shoe-repair shop. Looking closely, one can clearly see a halo of light around her body. The screenwriter doesn’t understand why no one else can see that she’s an alien.

It is well after midnight, and the screenwriter is speculating about the No World. What does No World mean? It’s not the first time he’s asked the question. The girl no longer remembers the answer; that is, if she ever really had the answer. What
does
No World mean? she asks herself in turn. Where does a game lead to in the end? Perhaps it leads to the young orchestra conductor, the screenwriter thinks. For him, the girl’s writing is very arid, too descriptive and plain, and he doesn’t know how to encourage her without lying. They’ve just made love: slowly, at his pace. Sometimes they do it more energetically, the way she likes it, sometimes not. The screenwriter feels as if his soul has climbed up to heaven and is looking back on Earth. Lying on the bed next to the girl, looking pensive, he