Rushil Kateb

I had no clue as to how I got there, nevertheless , there I was, surrounded by famous journalists, waiting for Rushil Rune Kateb’s press conference, where he would would present his latest book. It had only been released that morning, but Kateb had given to the media a copy earlier, so that we could prepare questions about it.
"The Daily Mail" had picked me to attend to the conference two weeks before, after my boss had seen me going through the last of Rushil's best-sellers. However, I was still an intern, getting coffee for the higher-ranking journalists as soon as they desiredit, and for the most part I pretty much kept my head down and stayed in the shadows.
Suddenly the idle chater in the room stopped, to be replaced by flashes and microphones being turned on. Rushil Kateb had just made his way into the room, nervously. I got up, for some moments, as every other journalist in the room and tried to see the man in stage throught the space between the BBC reporter and the one from "The Times". My trying was in vain, but the journalist sitting next to me most certainly thought otherwise, as she stopped a giggle with her hand full of jewelry.
I sat without looking to her, pulling out my notebook while my colleague, Gail Newton, moved excitedly in her chair with a recorder in the her left hand.
‘This is it, Tati, your first big piece for the newspaper is about to begin.’ Muttered Gail, pinching my arm, before giving all her attention to what was happening on stage.
Now that everyone had sat down I could see Rushil, sitting on the middle of a big desk, intimidated by half a dozen of microphones that crowded his desk, each one showing off its own media brand.
‘Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.’ I scratched the paper with the pencil, not willing to lose a piece of his speech. ‘Here we are today, for the first press conference on my latest work, Moonlight without you. Erg… Maybe you would like to make some questions...?’
He had just made a huge mistake by giving them a blank check like that. What was this thing with famous people and this question?
There was a tumult, the noise of chairs being moved, journalists’ hurried voices, cameras’ flashes and the rustle of pages turning in notebooks in search of questions.
‘Please, one at the time. Let’s start by the front.’ Rushil pointed a nervous man, in the first line, that was hopping up and down while trying to make his question over all the noise. ‘Could you repeat your question, please? So that we all can hear it.’
‘Good afternoon. "The London Review of Books" would like to know if the story is true or pure fiction.’
‘Erg…’ Rushil seemed to be nervous. He moved his fingers over the table, trembled on his seat and, in every ten seconds, touched his own hair. Could it be so hard to talk about his own work?
Kateb was fifty, even though he looked no older than forty, and his hair was still black and his eyes as dark as night. He wore a suit and tie, both in dark shades, contrasting with the spotless white shirt. He didn’t seem to be tall, with his round face and his double chin.
‘Pure fiction, pure fiction. Any connection with true stories are coincidence, just coincidence. Any other question? So, Mrs., could you make your question now, please?’
As soon as the journalist from "The Mirror" stood, I stopped following the conversation, just kept copying what I heard mechanically. A man on the right side of the stage, leaned against the wall and hidden by the shadows observed the scene, moving his head even before Rushil answered.
He seemed to be tall, with large shoulders and a very upright stance. I couldn’t see him very well and, if it wasn’t for the look that the writer gave him seconds before answering the first question, I wouldn’t have even noticed him.
I searched for Gail, to point out the figure, but she had turned her back to me to face our photographer, asking him for a special photo. I waited for her to finish, but, for her giggles and for the hand she kept moving along her blond hair, I soon found out I should quit. Gail trying to flirt with Richard? Was she blind and deaf? He was married! And she was almost as old as his mother!
Between doodles and unfinished sentences – amazing how the human being can talk so fast – the conference was over and Rushil left the room, in a hurry, muttering with the figure I had spottedearlier who started walking away before the writer could reach him. Could that be his manager? Maybe it would be useful to the newspaper if I could get him and ask him some questions.
‘Tatiana? Are you coming?’ Gail asked me, touching my shoulder.
Most journalists had already left.
‘You know, I think that Kateb’s manager is here. Would it be good to find him?’ I asked, for my curiosity's sake to see who had been hidden, instead of the newspaper's sake.
‘Tati, the managers are always here. But if you want to interview them you have to make an appointment, and I don’t think he has many things to tell us.’
‘Besides, I don’t think he would make a good cover’ Richard added, removing the objective from his camera.
I nodded patiently, and followed the professionals outside. Guided by Gail I went to the newspaper car and allowed Richard to open the back door for me, still thinking about who would have been being a script.
‘You know, Tati, you should dye your hair! That color makes you look so pale!’ Gail told me, gazing at me in the rear-view mirror.
‘It is great, Gail, and it’s my natural color, I won’t ruin my hair dying it.’ I fought back, brushing my hair with my own fingers. My black hair! Even though it could be hard to comb, and for as much as the hairdressers said, I wouldn’t let my hair to be ruined. It was mine!
‘But, dear, you look as white as a sheet. Maybe it’s a matter of makeup. Have you ever tried a bit more blush?’ She insisted, turning back constantly in a vain try to make a perfect revert.
I didn’t give her an answer, looking outside the window.
I could swear that, when I looked, someone who looked like the figure I had seen in the conference room walked with Rushil, patting his back and laughing, hiding his face in his free hand. It was just a one-second-view but I saw the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen. They were shinny deep blue.
‘Gail, do you know the man who is walking with Rushil, on the right?’
‘Who, dear?’ Gail asked, watching Rushil entering his limousine alone.
‘Hum… nobody.’
‘So, Tatiana, what are your thoughts on the conference?’ Gail kept on, as if I had never asked about someone that didn’t exist.
‘Rushil seemed a little nervous. Is he afraid of the audience?’
‘Petrified, I would say. Could we put that in the news? I think I captured the fridgeting he did with his hands and got more than thirty photos of him drinking water. That must be the reason why he left the room running.’
Gail and I both laughed, forgetting about the mysterious man.
‘I don’t know, Richard, wouldn’t that make him too similar to Paul?’
Gail laughed alone, this time, while Richard and I gazed each other in the rear-view mirror.
Paul was one of the reporters on our floor. He had recently had, a bladder surgery, and he needed to go to the bathroom every ten minutes. When someone pointed that out, there was the usual gossip, but no one knew Paul had had an surgery. The gossip faded away when Paul spilled the beans and told Kevin, his intern, that he had had surgery. Since that day, the only one to mock Paul’s problem was Gail, often joined by Christina, her best friend.
When we got to London, it started raining. Fortunately I was in the newspaper’s car, or I would have had to walk in the rain from the underground until I got to the newspaper.
‘Good afternoon, Tatiana.’ Michael greeted me when he saw me coming out of the lift.
His curly blond hair remembered me little Jesus, but his faced had straight and hard lines, so those thoughts where put aside as I looked at him twice. With 30 more centimetres than me, straight nose and wrapped up in scarves, Michael was the other intern on my floor.
I saluted him, seeing Gail jumping over her own desktop, starting to type her news.
‘Gail? Would you like to see what I got?’ I asked, with a bit of shame.
I already knew this was how it went when I worked with Gail. We both went to the place, saw the same things, each one did her own research, and Gail wrote the article without even asking my opinion.
‘Sure, dear, sure. Could you send it for me, please?’
I sat in my own cubicle, opened up my laptop and typed everything I had gotten from the conference.
‘You must have just received the file,' I told her, putting the screen down and watching Gail working, with a bit of envy.
‘Ei, Tati, would you like to come with me to the dark room?’ asked Richard, after uploading his photographs to his computer and sharing them with Gail.
‘Are you sure?’ I asked, not believing his words. I had always wanted to go down stairs, to meet the mythic dark room, where all our photographers developed their master pieces. ‘I would love to!’
The room was in the basement, where there was no problem with the windows, and that was the only place where no one was allowed, not even the cleaning staff, without a photographer there.
‘It'is moments like this that I don’t to be married’ Richard jocked, turning the lights off.
I looked around, trying to adapt my eyes to the dim red light.
There were, behind me, in a drying string around twenty photos, some of them duplicated. In front of me, there was the projection machine and on the table by its side some basins with the development liquids.
I knew them all, and I know how to develop a photograph, but being in that room made me feel small – even smaller than what I was – and meaningless.
‘Surprised, hem?’ Richard asked, taking from his ladder jacket inside pocket a small box with a film in it. ‘Would you like to help me with developing this film?’
‘Really?’ I smiled like a child who is given a sweet. I was going to develop a film in there! In that room! That was more than I could ever have dreamed of.
‘Sure. Just click on that button right besides you to turn on the light outside, so that no one opens the door by mistake.’
I did what he told me to and then got closer to him and the machine.
The photographer took the film softly and was about to open it, but he thought twice, smiled, and put it in my hands with a smirk.
‘Let’s see what you can do.’
I started my work shaking, but as soon as the film was fixed and I could put it in the projector I calmed down. I couldn’t ruin it anymore.
‘Joane is pregnant!’ I shouted as I saw the fist photo.
Taken in front of a beautiful sunset, Joane, standing half faced to the camera, showed off her round belly. Her delicate light hair was falling down her back like a cascade and, even though it was impossible to see, I was sure that her eyes were glittering and that she smiled, looking to her husband.
‘It’s a girl. We’ll call her Anne Rose,' He told me, smiling. ‘My first daughter.’
‘I’m so happy for you, Richard!’ I smiled.
I kept on developing photos even more pretty than that one. In some of them I could see Key, Richard’s Labrador, in others landscapes that I couldn’t believe to be England’s, and even some photos of people I didn’t know.
‘The next time I need to develop a photo, I’ll ask you to do it’ he laughed, when I finished my work. ‘You can even be faster than I am!’
‘Don't you say that! I was just anxious to see the masterpieces you had captured with your magic machine!’
Richard kept laughing and opened up the door for me and, in the lift, he asked me to have dinner at his house. On the following night they would already have detailed Anne Rose echographies.
‘What an honor, to be invited to have dinner with the parents-to-be’ I mocked as we went through the lift’s doors.
‘You know that Joane loves you. You’re like the little sister she never had. And you like to hear my jokes.’ He blinked at me. ‘So, are you coming?’
‘I would love to, but if Stephenie wants to stay at home tomorrow night, I’ll have to ask her first.’
‘You’re sister seems to be your mother,’ Richard said. ‘Do not introduce her to your boyfriends or they will run away when they understand they get two mothers-in-low in the same package.
I laughed, getting back to my compartment.

---

Author's Note: A HUGE thanks to Tiara Bounds (NeoBANANA) who is now my english-beta-reader and who corrected this for me. Sorry for all those mistakes. I promise I'll improve while translating the 2nd chapter )