A man clad in a suit of shiny material of gunmetal hue with the profile of an iguanodon turned to his golden-crested mate.
"It's that Saffy Prus!"
"It's what?"
"The Prus creature. Lord how she's aged."
"The who?"
"Your batteries are low, dear, or you need to TURN THE VOLUME UP!"
"I can hear fine. You just need to stop mumbling into your beard." She cupped a leathery claw, tanned a shade of deep mahogany to her shriveled ear.
"Saffy Prus just walked in."
"What? That old thing? I thought she'd died a decade ago."
"No, she just goes on and on. The bits that fall off, they keep reattaching. Oh my, look at that botox!"
They craned their necks to get a better view of Prus as she stalked between the rows of tables, stopping every few yards to scan from side to side. She paused for a full five minutes beside a floral display, examined each leaf with a critical air, snuffed at a canna lily and surreptitiously nibbled a yellow anther, emerging priapically from the white sheath of a bloom. She resumed her progress and put on a sudden spurt - she'd spotted a vacant seat beside a dark-haired young man. She had an eye for milk-white skin and could spot a well-turned ear-lobe at fifty paces.
She lowered herself onto the plush seat, breathed, peered round as if waiting for some sign of recognition but the other guests were preoccupied with proceedings on the stage. The host for the award ceremony was Rex Tyrone, all-round he-man.
"It gives me great pleasure to announce the winner of this year's Golden Scarf award for Best Actor…"
[fumbling with envelope]
"And the winner is…"
[simpering]
"Agatha Graham!"
An ash-blond girl of sixty uttered a muted scream and dropped her napkin in a show of overwhelming shock and surprise.
"And to present the award I'd like to invite Serafina Prus, that veteran of the movie business, the star of over 200 major feature films."
Prus juddered into action, clamped a bejeweled claw on the sleeve of the nearest tuxedo whose occupant winced and levered herself onto her stilettos.
"They've asked Saffy Prus to present the award." The iguanodon snorted into his wine glass.
"They have? Well, this could be interesting."
"I'd better ask the waiter for another bottle of Chardonnay. We could be in for a long wait."
Tyrone watched Serafina Prus get to her feet. Everyone watched. He made a mental calculation, glanced at his autocue.
"Well, while we wait for Miss Prus, let's have a look at some of the highlights of Agatha Graham's career to date."
The audience endured two substantial tranches of film sequences interspersed with ejaculations from Tyrone: awesome, amazing, incredible; in no particular order.
Saffy Prus reached the stairs leading onto the stage. A pair of burly stagehands hauled her the last few feet.
There was a collective intake of breath as Prus stumbled, grasped a handrail, steadied herself, fixed her gaze on the distant podium and set off once more. Tyrone and Agatha Graham stared, their smiles congealing.
Finally Prus collided with the microphone, caught her breath and began:
"You know, when I was your age…" She placed a curving nacreous fingernail under Agatha Graham's chin. "I had been an opera singer for 25 years. Why, I hadn't made my first feature."
Miss Graham beamed and wondered if she dared move her chin without risking a severed jugular.
"I had a career spanning many years. But let me tell you, it was hard work: decades of hard work. Fame comes at a price… we cannot afford to rest on our laurels. No, we can never rest."
Rex Tyrone placed a hand in the small of the Prus back. The pressure just enough to pass on the coded message: Get on with it!
"But this isn't about me! It's about you, you adorable child. You have your whole life ahead…"
There was a flash, which Serafina Prus took to be a press photographer eager to get the scoop, then a blast. She had a momentary vision of the open mouth of Rex Tyrone, then his face disappeared and all was darkness. Someone cried out.
* * *
The explosion hurled Prus twenty feet, off the stage and, as fate would have it, into the arms of a certain pale-complexioned young man where she lay in state of comfortable stunned repose while around her chaos unfolded. Finally, she regained the power of speech and heard her own rich contralto breaking a temporary silence.
"It's very difficult when I can't go out without someone trying to blow me up."
She gazed up into the man's face, thinking that he really was handsome in a wan and interesting kind of way. Eventually she sat up in the young man's lap and began picking bits of debris off her dress.
He shook some plaster dust from his hair and queried huskily: "Why do you think you were the target?"
"I'm always the target. It's probably the Juvenihilists again. They are far too young to understand but when they have lived as long as I have…"
"Surely, not so very long?" interjected the young man with well-timed, if slightly unconvincing, disbelief.
When the dust began to settle, the wreckage of the stage became visible. One red velvet curtain hung in tatters, the podium where Agatha Graham had stood was no more. Paramedics were dealing with a mess of limbs and the sack of a torso that may have been what remained of Rex Tyrone. A team with a stretcher lifted the body of a woman. Agatha Graham was carried past, alive but with half her face hanging off.
"I know an excellent plastic surgeon," called Saffy comfortingly as the stretcher passed.
"As for you," she murmured to the young man, whose name she'd discovered was Seamus Greeney, "I'll look forward to our becoming better acquainted but over the next month I must make a trip."
"Anywhere nice?"
"Oh, nowhere special, somewhere I go from time to time to recuperate … to shed my burdens," she added enigmatically.
"I shall long for the hour of your return." Seamus gritted his teeth as she grazed his chin with a fingernail.
* * *
Later, he would carry out a little investigation of his own to ascertain the wisdom of involving himself in a liaison with Prus. From a close interrogation of his android assistant, he winkled out some tantalizing tit-bits:
La Serafina triumphed again last night at La Scala with her superb rendering of Wagner's heroine, Brünnhilde. Resplendent in a crimson gown studded with rubies, La Serafina held the audience spellbound, delivering top E after top E, delicious chromatic runs...
La Serafina appeared once again in Bellini's 'Norma' with a display of aural fireworks to match her glittering costume…
…But there was a brittle quality to her performance at times, reminding us of the all-too-human qualities concealed under the bejeweled exterior which caused her to storm out of the production of Rossini's 'Der Rosen Cavalier', declaring that she would never again work with the Italian tenor Roberto Allegro. What more can the public expect from this brilliant but temperamental diva, whose tragic private life has become the focus of every poison-penned gossip columnist and gutter-press reporter?
According to an interview for a Times Magazine spread [during which the young reporter lost part of his right ear]:
Men threw themselves at her feet. Once, literally, owing to unstable scenery, a baritone fell ten feet to his death, expiring on stage. Madame Prus with monumental self-control not only completed her musical phrase but delivered the rest of her aria, continuing to sing even when the orchestra had ceased to play.
When criticised for her callous temperament, her indifference to the suffering of her fellow performer, she commented:
I am an artist. I live for my art. I live for love.
From Opera News 2092:
At the Met Serafina developed a thick skin. The audience hissed and booed as the famous voice wobbled on a top E, dropped to a B flat. They hurled vegetables: cabbages, courgettes, a bunch of carrots. But La Serafina ignored them and ploughed on with the performance. Her mascara-rimmed eyes turned cold.
A little later, Seamus Greeney unearthed this report from the Juvenihilist archives, dated 2nd May 2104:
CalInc have created a monster in human form. In their latest batch of life-enhancement programmes they have 'transformed' the operatic diva La Serafina, using a combination of stem-cell and lab-cultured tissue therapy. This, at the cost of thousands of infants' lives. All for the sake of a celebrity who refuses to accept her allotted life-span. CalInc proudly trumpeted La Serafina's relaunched career as a silver-screen siren with a lavish reception…
…But the Juvenihilists condemn this 'success story'. For decades CalInc have concealed their delusory and unethical practices with a series of expensive, publicly-funded press campaigns. It is nothing but a cover for a bunch of infanticidal maniacs and their cold-blooded and narcissistic clients.
* * *
"Will that be all Madam?"
"Have you packed my bags and the medicines? My cosmetics?"
"Yes Madam, it's all done. The cases are in the hall."
"Very well, Valeria. Have you booked me a taxi?"
"Yes, ma'am, for 08:00."
"Then you may go. Do take care to water the salads while I'm gone."
"Goodnight Madam."
The maid backed out of the door. She knew to keep her distance. She was well aware of her employer's habit of peering in a myopic way, as if wondering if she were edible.
Saffy threw herself down on the couch with a plate of salad which Valeria had left in the kitchenette. She flicked on the TV monitor but quickly tired of a re-run of The Golden Girls. Switching off, she began thinking of her first love, Karel.
When the world was green. Now the only green in her grey-tinted life was the salad:
Iceberg, cos, little gem.
She tore at a leaf of spinach.
There were times when, taken by a train of maudlin recollection, she could squeeze a tear. The ducts, not quite seized up by the frozen years, could exude a saline dampness.
She remembered Karel, his face, very very handsome - in the pale, sharp-featured way of young Czech men.
His voice, cracking with emotion: "I adore you Serafina. I must spend the rest of my life with you. Without you I will never be happy. I will devote myself to you entirely. Please consent to be my wife."
But she knew, even then at the age of only 37, that he would never be able to give her what she needed - adulation - the admiration of two and half thousand pairs of eyes, focused on her. Rejected, Karel had blown his brains out.
There was nothing else I could have done, Saffy mused. I lived for my art.
And for many years she'd enjoyed fame. With her marvelous constitution and her ageless beauty she'd been able to continue for decades until eventually time and a punishing work schedule took its toll. She had begun to age - the creams and potions, the diets and exercise regimes were no longer able to conceal the truth.
And so she'd sought out Dr Cohen.
*
