A Cage of Bones Read online

  In the streets he listened to voices murmuring in the falling darkness. The words were unfamiliar, yet they held a comforting rhythm. Twilight overtook him as he drank in the sights of the city, its newness engraving on his consciousness more deeply than the half-habitual memory by which he knew his own home.

  He wandered a while, arriving eventually at a crowded piazza at the city’s heart. The space opened before a giant cathedral. Warden gazed up at the massive shape dominating the square. A greenish glow illuminated the stiletto spires of its stonework. Across the piazza, contrasting the old world with the new, a neon billboard gleamed with electric intensity. It struck him as he stood there that in the whole country there wasn’t a single person who knew him. Loneliness touched him with its cool hand.

  Back at the albergo, which had been empty when he left, he found a gathering of young men surrounding the parlour TV, their figures draped and folded over sofas and chairs. He wondered if they all spoke Italian well enough to understand it, but it turned out to be a program of English music videos.

  Other young men wandered in and out of doorways he passed on the way to his room. Heads nodded in greeting. Warden lay on his bed. It was just 10 o’clock. He wondered what to do. Too early for sleep, he thought. With the time change and the excitement, he’d lie awake for hours. He went and sat at the edge of the room where the faces crowded listlessly around the TV, too tired or too vacant to turn their gaze away.

  Not all of them were American, he soon discovered, though most spoke English. There was a Norwegian boy named Jörn and a French boy named Jean-Luc, as well as boys of other nationalities. They were all varied and all good looking. Warden felt as though he’d landed in a roomful of specimens of the prototypic male. He watched their wan faces in the light of the TV screen. They accepted him freely, without curiosity as to his presence among them.

  Someone conquered inertia long enough to change the channel. Warden chatted a bit, then said good night and went back to his room. He put on his sweater and took paper and pen out onto the balcony. He sat with his arms pulled inside his sleeves, so that the pen point protruded in the cool air, and began to write his mother a letter. A low, salty moon hung on the horizon like a stepping stone into the galaxy.

  3

  He woke from a sleep that was deep beyond any remembrance. The albergo was empty except for a maid going from room to room, cleaning and changing the linen.

  Warden showered and shaved, then dressed to meet Sr. Calvino. His roommate still hadn’t returned. He left a note on the bed opposite: “Howdy, neighbour. I hope you like company, because you’ve got some.” He signed his name on the bottom.

  He tried phoning the agency to find out when they expected him. Once he made his travel arrangements, there’d been little communication except for an odd exchange with Calvino urging him to “Come soon, baby,” though he couldn’t have come any sooner. He tried calling several times from the room phone but the line was busy. He was getting restless. At the reception desk, Irena told him there was a payphone in the café downstairs. He could also get breakfast there.

  The café was filled with morning sunlight. A handful of customers sat around drinking coffee. Warden chose a seat near a window and stared at a menu written in Italian. At the far end of the room a jukebox spewed current American love songs. When the waiter came he asked for “un cappuccio” and hoped he was getting some variant of a cappuccino.

  He found the phone and attempted to call again. Still busy. He dialled the other two numbers he’d written in his daybook with the same result. He kept trying until the waiter arrived with a steaming cup piled high with stiff white foam. A pungent whiff of coffee hit his nose.

  “Grazie,” he said, one of a handful of words he’d memorized from the phrase book the night before.

  “Prego,” the boy said, and wandered back over to the counter.

  Warden drank his coffee and listened to the music. In a few minutes he tried the phone again. This time it rang. A woman answered.

  “Maura’s Models. Can I help you?”

  “May I speak to Sr. Calvino, please?”

  “But he is on another line. You will please have to call again very soon. Thank you. Grazie.”

  The voice hung up. Warden tried several more times in the next half hour. Busy again. He ordered another cappuccio and managed to indicate to the waiter to bring him some pastry. When he finished eating, he tried calling again. Finally, it rang. A different voice answered.

  “Maura’s Models. Hold, please.”

  The line clicked to a hollow hum. He could hear ghost voices talking faintly over the wires. On the jukebox, a country singer was drawling something about a lost dog. The waiter wandered among the tables, clearing up. The voice returned.

  “How may I help you?”

  “I’d like to speak to Sr. Calvino, please.”

  “He is very busy. Can you call back?”

  “No!” Warden shouted before he realized the voice wasn’t going to hang up on him. “I’ve been calling for nearly an hour,” he said, trying not to whine.

  “He’s very busy right now,” the woman insisted.

  “Would you please tell him Warden Fields from Toronto is calling and I’d like to speak to him before I have a caffeine attack.”

  “One moment.”

  The line clicked off. In seconds it was picked up again.

  “But, darling...you should have told me it was you!” gurgled the warm salty voice he’d first heard over the line at Christmas. It sounded much closer, no longer drowned under an ocean of water.

  “I’ve been trying,” Warden said. He visualized an overweight middle-aged man sinking into a plush office chair in a spacious boardroom in the middle of the city.

  “Where are you right now?”

  “I’m downstairs at the hotel you sent me to.”

  “You’re not at the American Hotel?” Calvino asked suspiciously.

  “No, why?”

  “Never mind—it’s not a good place for you.”

  An odd answer. Warden didn’t pursue it. “I’m at the Albergo Sirtori.”

  “Well, get here as quickly as you can.”

  “Where?” Warden interjected, still afraid of being disconnected.

  Calvino gave him the agency address along with a command to appear soon. “Ciao, baby. And take a streetcar—the taxis will take you the long way around and charge you too much.”

  He hung up abruptly before Warden had a chance to say anything more. Italians were a hurried race, he thought, as he left the booth.

  He looked around for a streetcar, wondering how he’d know which one to catch. He wandered for several minutes, aware he was incapable of asking even the most basic directions in Italian. He couldn’t even see a taxi. Finally, he recognized a face from the albergo walking toward him. He asked how to get to the agency.

  “Turn left here and take the number five streetcar at the end of the street,” the boy said, pointing.

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem, dude.”

  At the stop a small crowd stood waiting as a car rolled up. Warden boarded last and asked the price of a fare in English. The driver scowled and said something in Italian. Warden pulled out a thousand-lira note and offered it to him.

  “This much?”

  The driver scowled again and threw his hands in the air.

  Warden pulled out two more bills. “This much?” he asked, thinking the cost was quickly becoming exorbitant or else he was being taken advantage of because of his inability to communicate.

  The driver turned to the carload of passengers. Warden heard him use the word “Americano” in a surly tone. People were laughing. A young boy came toward the front.

  “He say you have to buy a ticket,” the boy informed him.

  “How much is it?”

  “You cannot buy here. You must buy it in a…” the boy hesitated. “You must buy it in a storm!” he finished proudly.

  “In a store?” Warden asked.


  “Yes, in a store!”

  The driver barked something at the boy.

  “Come!” he said, taking Warden by the hand and pulling him off the streetcar. “I show you.”

  The car rolled away from them.

  “He doesn’t like for you to make stop the streetcar,” the boy explained.

  Warden followed him to a corner store. The boy paid for a ticket with the money he offered. It cost less than he expected.

  “Now we go back,” the boy informed him.

  They waited for another streetcar. When it came, the boy showed him how to use the punch clock in the middle of the car.

  “Now you can ride for this much of minutes,” he said, showing Warden the number 75 stamped on his ticket.

  Warden thanked him, complimenting his English as they rode along. The boy blushed.

  “I am learning in school,” he explained.

  Warden showed him the agency address written in his book.

  “Do you know where this is?”

  “Yes,” the boy said. “It is three stops ago.”

  Warden got off and walked back till he found the street. He saw the number 17 in brass figures on a new stucco building and entered a lobby filled with elaborate iron filigree. A grey-haired woman sat knitting at a desk. She glared at him over her glasses, raising a finger to her lips as though he might break into a racket at any moment.

  “Due piano,” she said, pointing above. “Second floor.”

  “Grazie.”

  Warden climbed the stairs to a nondescript door with an opaque window. A small sign read “Maura’s Models—Avanti.” He opened it and found himself in the middle of a busy room. Faces moved in every direction, hands clutching portfolios, envelopes and photographs.

  In an office across the way three women sat speaking rapidly into telephones, banging the receivers down then answering them again almost immediately. As they spoke they scribbled notes on large desk calendars, hardly noticing the swarms of young people parading in and out of the room. One of the women waved a sandwich in the air as she exclaimed into the mouthpiece.

  A face that looked oddly familiar went by in the chaos. It belonged to a tall gangly youth clad in jeans and a sweatshirt.

  “Excuse me, are you Jimmy Caitlin?” Warden asked.

  A straw-coloured head of hair turned toward him. “You bet!”

  “Hi. I’m Ward Fields. I’m your new roommate.”

  The boy’s face metamorphosed into a grin, scattering his freckles.

  “Good to meet you, Ward,” he said. “I was wondering if they’d turfed me out yet. I haven’t been home in three days.”

  “I just got here yesterday,” Warden explained over the noise. “I haven’t even met Sr. Calvino yet.”

  “He’s not here. Talk to Maura,” Jimmy said, pointing to the woman with the sandwich. “She’ll help you out. Hey, Maura!” he yelled.

  The woman looked up. Jimmy pointed at Warden.

  “Gotta go. I’m late for a go-see,” he said. “Catch you later, Ward.”

  Warden watched Jimmy’s wide shoulders move through the crowd and out the door. Maura screamed one last phrase in Italian and slammed the phone onto its cradle.

  “I tell them always not to call at lunch time and they call always at lunch time!” She looked up at Warden and smiled. “Yes, how can I help you?” she asked, her voice suddenly pleasant and courteous.

  “I’m looking for Sr. Calvino.”

  The phone rang and she picked it up, answering in Italian. A woman approached and placed an envelope in front of her. Three photographs of a girl in jeans and a skimpy blouse slipped out. Maura flipped through them and pointed to the middle one, all three coming perilously close to being spread with mustard from the omnipresent sandwich.

  “Questo—this one,” she said.

  The envelope vanished from under her nose as she nodded into the phone. “Si, si—ciao!”

  She hung up and looked back at Warden. “Sr. Calvino is not here now,” she said.

  The phone rang again. She picked it up. “Ciao. Maura’s Models…” Her eyes flamed. “Why do you call me now?” The hand with the sandwich went up in the air. “I told you never to call me when it’s busy!”

  She slammed the phone down and looked back up. “Sr. Calvino has gone for lunch. He leaves me when it’s busiest and expects me to look after everything!” she complained, as though the two women answering phones beside her didn’t exist.

  “I’m Warden Fields,” he said. “From Toronto.”

  “Warden? Oh, yes, I remember. You’re late. One moment,” she said, as she answered the phone again. The caller was put on hold. “We were expecting you much sooner.”

  “I had some difficulty getting here.”

  “Sr. Calvino was hungry—he couldn’t wait. I am Maura,” she said, extending a hand over the desk. Her face bore a smile that could have killed a cat. Both hand and smile vanished in the same instant, retreating somewhere behind the desk. “Sr. Calvino went next door to buy a panino,” she said, indicating the rolled-up sandwich. “He will be back in fifteen minutes. In the next doorway is his office. You can wait there.”

  She pointed the way. The phone was ringing again. Warden went out through the lobby to the next room. It looked identical to the one he’d just left except it was empty. The walls were cluttered with photographs and calendars. A wooden rack displayed a collection of faces on four-by-six composite cards like a catalogue covering the spectrum of human features. Warden wondered if they’d all been summoned by the salty voice offering to lay continents at their feet.

  He sat and leaned his head against the coolness of the wall. Everything seemed to slow for a moment.

  Shadows passed over the opaque windows. He expected any one of them to walk up to the door, open it, and he would finally find himself in the presence of the plump middle-aged man who belonged to the gushing voice that had beckoned him across continents. He could hear Maura on the phone in the next room. More shadows. Noises. His watch ticked.

  “He’s waiting in your office,” he heard Maura say.

  Footsteps. A single, thin shadow approached. The door opened to admit a slim young black man with his head completely shaved.

  “Man, I thought you got lost,” he said, coming over to shake Warden’s hand.

  “Sr. Calvino?” Warden asked in surprise.

  “Yes, baby—ciao!”

  Behind him a crowd of six or seven heads had formed and stood at the door to his office. Calvino turned to them.

  “Out, out, out!” he shouted, waving them away. “I have to talk to the new boy from Canada.”

  “I need to know where the M Agency is,” a young man shouted from the doorway, as if afraid of being hung up on.

  “The M Agency! What’s that?” asked Calvino, stiffening at the continued affront.

  “You told me yesterday I had an appointment there at noon today,” the face explained. “I can’t find it on the map.”

  “I told you before to ask Maura these things,” he said, taking hold of the door.

  “She told me to ask you!” protested the boy.

  “Well, ask her again,” he said, closing the door, shutting out the offending face. The noise and confusion settled like dust in the room. Calvino turned his attention to Warden. “What took you so long?” he asked.

  “I had some difficulty getting here.”

  “Well, never mind that now, darling. Let me see your card.”

  Warden hesitated. “I—I don’t have a card.”

  Calvino looked shocked. “You have to have a card, baby. Who told you you could come here without a card?”

  “You did.”

  “I told you you could come without a card?” he asked, incredulous that anyone should suggest such a thing. “Well, you can’t,” he said, flatly contradicting his own authority. “You must have a card. We will send you to a photographer tomorrow. You will have a card by next week. Now, stand up.”

  Warden stood while Calvino looked him
over.

  “You’re too skinny,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, I…” Warden began.

  “I want you to go out and eat. You have money for food?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. And get some sun, too. You’re too pale. You look sick.”

  He ran a hand through Warden’s hair.

  “Very fine. We will have to see how it holds up. Remind me to send you for a haircut.”

  He walked back to his desk. As he did so the door opened a crack. A perky face peered in.

  “Hiya, Mr. C! How’s it goin’?” said the face. “Hi,” he said, nodding to Warden.

  “Hi,” Warden replied.

  “I need to talk to you for about five minutes, Mr. C,” the boy said in a thick Brooklyn accent.

  “Not now, Joseph,” said Calvino. “I’ll talk to you in a minute when I’m finished.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  He disappeared out the door. Calvino turned back to Warden.

  “Now, darling, what do you know about modelling?”

  “Not a lot.”

  “Then we will have to begin at the beginning. Now, watch me.”

  He began an elegant ballooning stride with shoulders held back, carrying him gracefully across the room. He stopped just short of Warden, turned with a whirl and wafted back to his desk.

  “That,” he said, “is how you walk when I send you to a go-see appointment.”

  The shoulders slumped. He sighed and sat facing Warden in the desk chair.

  “Basically, darling, they don’t care. You’ve got the face. That’s all that matters. Just say ‘yes’ to everything and if anybody asks, say your cards were held up at customs. It happens sometimes if they think you’re trying to come into the country to work illegally.”

  Warden remembered the guard who’d questioned him at customs.

  “You mean I’m working here illegally?”

  “Of course, darling. Don’t worry—nobody cares,” Calvino said, waving away the question. “It’s only a problem if the Mafia get involved,” he said cryptically. “But that hasn’t happened for a while.”

  Calvino had him fill out a form of body measurements and particulars. He proffered a small booklet across the desk.