Dante's Numbers

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Allan Prime peered at the woman they’d sent from the studio, pinched his cheeks between finger and thumb the way he always did before makeup, then grumbled, “Run that past me again, will you?”

He couldn’t figure out whether she was Italian or not. Or how old, since most of her face was hidden behind a pair of large black plastic-rimmed sunglasses. Even — and this was something Prime normally got out of the way before anything else — whether she was pretty. He’d never seen this one at Cinecittà, and a part of him said he would have noticed, if only in order to ask himself the question: Should I?

She looked late twenties, a little nervous, in awe of him maybe. But she was dressed so much older, in a severe grey jacket with matching slacks and a prim white shirt, its soft crinkly collar high up on her neck. It was a look out of the movies, he decided. Old movies from back when it was still a crime to be skinny and anything less than elegant. Particularly her hair, a platinum blonde, dyed undoubtedly, pinned behind her taut, stiffly held head in a ponytail that, as she walked into the living room of his apartment, he’d noticed was curled into a tight apostrophe.

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