look of a doe and the liveliness of a mime-artist. With sweet sad eyes she was like an orphan with a gift for happiness.
She was skittery and boyish. Her willingness to perform whatever task she was given made her an ideal camera assistant.
She was quite indefinable. When Riley stood still she had the uncanny knack of vanishing. She would simply melt, unnoticed, into a silent space, right before the eye.
Sam often had great difficulty finding her when she was right in front of him. It was a sort of trick she had. She would look straight at you and then she’d disappear. You’d be looking for her and then she would be right there again, like a magician’s conjuration.
She had a beguiling way of pulling at the heart, the cunning of a young fox, the swiftness of a desert snake, and the resilience of a whip.
Sam found her intriguing; he had never known anything like her before. Both her parents were alive and well, and yet she seemed like an orphan. She had a handsome boyfriend, and yet she was boyish. When she wore a sexy skirt and make-up she transformed into a head-turning beauty. She obeyed instructions without questions, and yet she had the air of an anarchist.
With an engaging smile that inspired confidence, she went about her mysterious activities, never offering any explanation of herself. She seemed to invent new tricks every day, as if she were not quite made of flesh but of some quicksilver element, some protean substance. More spirit than matter, she seemed a halfway Ariel trapped in a tough and fragile body.
Her facial neutrality was particularly disconcerting. It meant she could be in people’s company all day long and they didn’t notice. When they thought back on that day they would be struck by an odd note, the sense of a watchful presence which the memory could not quite resolve.
She made holes in time. She made a virtue of her absence, made absence into a kind of force. With her neutrality she turned the dramatic power of the mask into an enigmatic emptiness.
Sam found he had to rediscover Riley all the time. She was like an unfinished painting, alive with potential. Like a chameleon, she was attuned to every mood. And yet she had the strange ability to anticipate a person’s next move, sometimes miming it moments before.
No one was in more perfect resonance with Malasso than Riley.
17
Sam’s first encounter with Riley remained an unsolved puzzle. But it was the puzzle that got her hired.
She was the fifth person to answer Sam’s advert for a camera assistant. She left a message on Sam’s answer machine. It said:
‘I’m Riley, your camera assistant, I think. Am I the fifth? I’ll be wearing red. Goodbye. Oh, one more thing. I’m worried about my goldfish. Do you like goldfish?’
On the day of the interview, in Sam’s flat, only four people showed up. No one was wearing red. The four applicants, two men and two women, were eager and sold themselves well. After the interview, Sam thought any one of them would do. But he was vaguely restless.
He kept expecting the fifth person. He kept going to the door, checking his messages, looking out of the window. He felt twitchy and expectant. A little exasperated, he decided to go for a walk.
In the hallway he saw a boy sitting cross-legged in front of the lift. In his hands was a polystyrene bag in which a languid goldfish swam. The boy gazed at the iridescent goldfish with rapt attention and a half-formed smile. The boy seemed to find something both wonderful and humorous in the whirligig motions of the small fish.
As Sam got closer, the boy stood up. The lift door opened and the boy went in ahead of Sam, but when Sam stepped in he found the lift empty. Thinking that he was hallucinating, he stepped back out and looked around. No one was there. He noticed an empty sweet wrapper on the floor. There were no doors nearby, and the emergency exit was across the hall. It would have taken unnatural swiftness to get there so quickly.
Mystified,
She was skittery and boyish. Her willingness to perform whatever task she was given made her an ideal camera assistant.
She was quite indefinable. When Riley stood still she had the uncanny knack of vanishing. She would simply melt, unnoticed, into a silent space, right before the eye.
Sam often had great difficulty finding her when she was right in front of him. It was a sort of trick she had. She would look straight at you and then she’d disappear. You’d be looking for her and then she would be right there again, like a magician’s conjuration.
She had a beguiling way of pulling at the heart, the cunning of a young fox, the swiftness of a desert snake, and the resilience of a whip.
Sam found her intriguing; he had never known anything like her before. Both her parents were alive and well, and yet she seemed like an orphan. She had a handsome boyfriend, and yet she was boyish. When she wore a sexy skirt and make-up she transformed into a head-turning beauty. She obeyed instructions without questions, and yet she had the air of an anarchist.
With an engaging smile that inspired confidence, she went about her mysterious activities, never offering any explanation of herself. She seemed to invent new tricks every day, as if she were not quite made of flesh but of some quicksilver element, some protean substance. More spirit than matter, she seemed a halfway Ariel trapped in a tough and fragile body.
Her facial neutrality was particularly disconcerting. It meant she could be in people’s company all day long and they didn’t notice. When they thought back on that day they would be struck by an odd note, the sense of a watchful presence which the memory could not quite resolve.
She made holes in time. She made a virtue of her absence, made absence into a kind of force. With her neutrality she turned the dramatic power of the mask into an enigmatic emptiness.
Sam found he had to rediscover Riley all the time. She was like an unfinished painting, alive with potential. Like a chameleon, she was attuned to every mood. And yet she had the strange ability to anticipate a person’s next move, sometimes miming it moments before.
No one was in more perfect resonance with Malasso than Riley.
17
Sam’s first encounter with Riley remained an unsolved puzzle. But it was the puzzle that got her hired.
She was the fifth person to answer Sam’s advert for a camera assistant. She left a message on Sam’s answer machine. It said:
‘I’m Riley, your camera assistant, I think. Am I the fifth? I’ll be wearing red. Goodbye. Oh, one more thing. I’m worried about my goldfish. Do you like goldfish?’
On the day of the interview, in Sam’s flat, only four people showed up. No one was wearing red. The four applicants, two men and two women, were eager and sold themselves well. After the interview, Sam thought any one of them would do. But he was vaguely restless.
He kept expecting the fifth person. He kept going to the door, checking his messages, looking out of the window. He felt twitchy and expectant. A little exasperated, he decided to go for a walk.
In the hallway he saw a boy sitting cross-legged in front of the lift. In his hands was a polystyrene bag in which a languid goldfish swam. The boy gazed at the iridescent goldfish with rapt attention and a half-formed smile. The boy seemed to find something both wonderful and humorous in the whirligig motions of the small fish.
As Sam got closer, the boy stood up. The lift door opened and the boy went in ahead of Sam, but when Sam stepped in he found the lift empty. Thinking that he was hallucinating, he stepped back out and looked around. No one was there. He noticed an empty sweet wrapper on the floor. There were no doors nearby, and the emergency exit was across the hall. It would have taken unnatural swiftness to get there so quickly.
Mystified,
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