David Cronenberg: Consumed

“I am preparing to perform a multiple lumpectomy. The patient has many discrete tumors in her breasts, but they are not very aggressive, and so, flying the pink flag of breast preservation, I shall remove only the tumors, thus sparing the breasts. Accordingly, I am about to inject one hundred and twenty radioactive pellets, which are radioactive iodine isotopes—iodine-125—encapsulated in these titanium seeds, into each breast, surrounding the tumors that are growing there.” Molnár gestured expansively at the machines and monitors surrounding the table. “This is our three-dimensional ultrasound guidance system. We must locate each lump to within hundredths of a millimeter of exactitude within a chaotic inner space. I feel like I’m flying an airplane with only radar to guide me.”

Nathan worked his way around behind Molnár. He found a lovely angle which included Molnár’s hands and the shimmering pan in the foreground and Dunja’s bewebbed breasts in the background. The light over the table combined with the D3’s exquisite low-light sensitivity gave him enough depth of field that he could just hold both the foreground and the breasts in focus. As he fired off his shots, the Kevlar/carbon-fiber composite shutter hammering echoes off the blasted tiles of the room, Molnár shouted out for all to hear, “It’s a good thing you are not shooting film, I must admit to myself. Her breasts will soon be radioactive, and your film would be fogged as a result!”

NAOMI THOUGHT SHE WOULD end up meeting Hervé Blomqvist at a little brasserie somewhere near the Sorbonne, something appropriate to a Truffaut film, something with small marble-topped tables and in keeping with the Léaud French bad-boy image she had taken from Blomqvist’s various web manifestations. Instead, she found herself sitting in L’Obélisque, one of the restaurants of the Crillon, the only place the kid would meet her once he heard she was staying at the hotel. Fortunately, he did not seem to know about the hotel’s other restaurant, Les Ambassadeurs, which used to be the ballroom of the dukes of Crillon and was even more expensive. L’Obélisque was described as informal and bistro-like in the hotel’s brochures, but for Naomi its wood paneling and black-suited waiters with their gold Crillon pins—an art nouveau capital C topped by a crown—were intimidating and a bit of a strain, wardrobe-wise. She had unrolled her emergency no-name black cotton T-shirt dress and dug out her strappy, wedgy heels, the ones that weren’t stilettos and didn’t get trapped by Euro cobblestones and grates. And now she sat there, burning.

Earlier that day, she had been standing just outside the ornately formal entrance of the hotel, leaning against what she thought was a green metal electrical junction box across the street from the American embassy compound, madly texting Blomqvist about their imminent meeting, when she felt her shoulder being nudged. She turned to find herself facing a French cop carrying a submachine gun. He had walked across the narrow road behind her from his post at the corner of the embassy and now stood, just off the curb, forbidding and incongruous in his sunglasses and his dark-blue uniform complete with bulletproof vest and lobster-like body armor covering his shoulders, legs, and feet. Lying against his collarbone were two looped plastic zip-tie handcuffs held by flaps on his shoulder plate, ready for instant action. All that was missing was a helmet, but instead he wore a soft canoeshaped garrison cap. “What are you doing, standing there playing with your cell phone?” he asked. He was very young and very handsome, and he smiled, but he was not friendly. A white-and-red shield-shaped emblem on his chest plate read “Police Nationale, CRS.” Their specialty was riot control, Naomi knew, but the street, which ran into the Place de la Concorde, was absolutely serene, and the square was thronged with oblivious tourists. There was even a farcical group of Americans balancing uncertainly on two-wheeled gyro-stabilized Segways, listening to a briefing from their Segway tour leader before setting off into the crazed traffic.

“I’m waiting for a friend,” said Naomi, her French more hesitant than it would be in a week’s time. “I’m staying at the hotel, the Crillon, right here,” she added lamely, gesturing behind her, and then was immediately angry with herself for giving him anything for free.

He took one hand off his weapon and made a flicking motion, shooing her away like a child. “Wait for your friend over there, on the other side of the hotel entrance. Away from this control box.”

Naomi now realized that she had been leaning against the controller for a huge steel cylinder that would rise out of the tarmac at the swipe of a security card, blocking all traffic from the side street between the hotel and the embassy. The American embassy compound, ringed with metal barriers and tightly spaced concrete bollards topped with brass acorns, was a wasp nest. Agitate it at your peril. In silent revenge, Naomi had taken many long-lens photos of the windows of the embassy from a corridor window on her floor at the Crillon. Most of the embassy windows were opaqued, but she had a shiver that soon there’d be a kicking-down of her attic-room door and a brutal arrest, complete with those no-nonsense plastic handcuffs and perhaps a hood over her head. The incident had rattled her for some reason, but did it have to do with America in France, general outrage against authority, hot policemen, or just bondage/victim/humiliation fantasies? She resolved to research a piece on the eroticism of the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité. There was a glossy Paris-based gay magazine that would die to have it—if they hadn’t done it already.

The Jean-Pierre Léaud clone swept into her space and sat down. He smiled and—of course—swept back his unruly lock of straight dark-brown hair. To her shock, he was wearing a narrow-fitting suit and a skinny tie. And a white shirt. And he was carrying a conservative dark-brown valise, which he carefully placed on the floor, propping it against the table leg. He watched her closely for a moment, then stuck his hand out across the table, weaving it neatly through the red- and yellow-tinted water glasses and the candles to reach her. She was not surprised at the tentative, intellectual’s handshake. “Hello,” he said. “You are Naomi Seberg—that’s a nice moviestar name. I’m certain you have guessed that I’m Hervé Blomqvist.” They had agreed, in the text messaging that had followed their first, relatively public, contact on the Célestine A. forum, that they would speak English. He needed the practice, he said, and would not speak French.

“I didn’t have to guess,” Naomi said, “because I’ve seen videos of you. In fact, you sent me a couple.”

He withdrew his hand, unweaving it carefully. His brow furrowed in mock intensity and his lips pouted. He knew how to work his cuteness. “I always had the illusion that I was impossible to capture on video. My essence, I mean.” He felt so young to her, even though she was only six years older than his twenty-five. He had had a precocious passage through French academia, but, as was often the case, maturity in other matters had not kept pace, had most likely been sacrificed. All this from the forum, delivered to him by well-wishing but critical friends and to any troll who cared to absorb it. Like Naomi.

“I think you’re right about your essence,” said Naomi. “I have no insight into that. But your face… I recognize that. What I don’t recognize is the suit and tie. You’re always in jeans and a T-shirt on the net. Did you dress up for me?”

“I’ve never even walked past the door of the Crillon before. I was afraid they would discover me and throw me out. I borrowed the suit from my brother. He’s an advocate. It’s unusual for a journalist to stay at the Crillon, isn’t it?”