Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen : A Novel (9781101565766) by Thomas Caplan Page A

“There!” he exclaimed, as though relieved to be done with whatever preparations he had undertaken. “You are obviously Mr. Hunter, about whom Isabella has told me so much.”
    Ty shook Ian Santal’s extended hand and, as he did so, stole a glance at Isabella, who seemed unembarrassed. He supposed she was used to her godfather’s candor.
    â€œOr about whom she knows less than she thinks,” Ty said.
    â€œAre you a keeper of secrects, then, Mr. Hunter?” asked Ian Santal. His tone was genial, teasing.
    â€œOn the contrary, my life’s an open book.”
    â€œCalled
People
magazine,” Isabella appended.
    â€œWatch her.” Ian smiled. “She’ll have you wangled into one of her adverts before you know it.”
    The thought had not occurred to Ty, and he studied Isabella, evaluating her flirtatiousness in a new light. Since fame had become a salient fact of his life, he’d met most types of starstruck young women: true fans as well as those merely infatuated by image, silly ingenues, blatant starfuckers, even desirable young women intent, owing to some unobvious insecurity, on proving their desirability at ever more rarefied levels. He’d thought that Isabella might be among the last group, or simply a rich girl at play in a world of men. He had guessed that she was available, if not exactly easy to acquire or hold on to. Now he wasn’t so sure. Clearly she was setting him up—but for what?
    â€œAre you interested in masks?” Santal asked.
    The question took Ty aback—until he followed the older man’s line of sight. Flanking the entrance to what appeared to be Santal’s quarters were two vivid theatrical masks, the one on the right primarily magenta with chalk-white lips and brows, that on the left primarily turquoise with identical features.
    â€œThey are Venetian, fifteenth century,” Ian Santal explained.
    â€œThey’re lovely,” Ty replied.
    â€œWhat do you collect, Mr. Hunter? May I ask?”
    â€œSo far mostly memories,” Ty answered.
    Isabella smiled.
    â€œI’ve just bought my first house,” he continued, “but I haven’t thought much about how to fill it.”
    â€œAnd why is that?”
    â€œTime,” Ty told him.
    â€œAlways the problem,” Santal agreed. “Truth be told, I didn’t take you for a collector—or, should I say, someone especially intent on seeing and appraising the collections of others.”
    â€œWhy is that?”
    â€œIn my experience most such young men are either poofters or thieves. You do not strike me as the former, and clearly you’ve no need to be the latter.”
    Ty forced a smile, then hesitated. “I take it you collect masks.”
    â€œHe collects everything,” Isabella interjected.
    â€œIt’s a disease, I fear,” Santal elaborated. “One that afflicts those of us whose talents fall short of our aspirations. I suppose one might say we are aesthetes rather than artists. What we cannot create, we purchase. Sometimes, however,
if
we manage to do it well, we bring things together in a way that produces something if not entirely then at least in some part original.”
    Ty shook his head, as if to dismiss Santal’s self-deprecation, but he took the older man’s point. The movie business was filled with people who, having tried and failed on the creative side, had hung in—as executives or agents or even grips—simply to be near it. “Everything?” he repeated, glancing first at Isabella, then at her godfather.
    â€œYes, or almost,” Santal conceded, “although of course in different places. Aboard
Surpass
I have only works of art from civilizations that border the Mediterranean: Venetian, Roman, Neapolitan, Greek, Turkish, North African, French, Spanish, you name it. Here they are together, as though the Pillars of Hercules were still one mountain, as though time and