“What is the purpose of this inquiry?” Gorbachev-Pavel said with grim faces.
“It is to raise the question of the value of human life,” Nero Golden said.
“And what is your view on the subject?” the two Gorbachevs asked.
“Russians have always taught us,” Nero said, and now there was no mistaking his deliberate hostility, “that the individual life is expendable when set against reasons of state. This we know from Stalin, and also the poison-tipped umbrella murder in London of Georgi Markov and polonium poisoning of KGB refugee Alexander Litvinenko. Also, this journalist hit by a car, that journalist also accidentally deceased, though these are of secondary concern. Regarding human value, the Russians show us the road to the future. In this year events in the Arab world confirm, and will soon further confirm this. Osama is dead, I have no problem. Gaddafi is gone, poof, let him go. But now we will see that the revolutionaries, their end too will come soon. Life itself goes on, unkind to many. The living are of small importance to the business of the world.”
The table was silent. Then Gorbachev’s second head spoke even though Gorbachev himself said nothing. “Georgi Markov,” the second head said, “was Bulgarian.”
Gorbachev answered very slowly, in English. “It is not an appropriate forum for this conversation,” he said.
“I will take my leave,” Nero answered, nodding. He raised an arm and his wife at once rose from her friends’ table and followed him to the door. “Magnificent evening,” he said to the room at large. “Our thanks.”
WIDE SHOT. MANHATTAN STREET. NIGHT.
A YOUNGISH MAN, tall, muscular, maybe forty, with hair oddly, prematurely white, wearing aviator shades even though it is night, a person who could be a tennis coach or a personal trainer, walks with his date, a petite BLOND WOMAN with a resemblance to another personal trainer, down Broadway toward Union Square, past the AMC Loews at Nineteenth Street, past ABC Carpet, past the third, penultimate location of the Andy Warhol Factory at 860 Broadway and then the second location, in the Decker Building at Sixteenth Street. Considering their solitude, the absence of security, he is probably not a billionaire, and does not own a large red yacht or a one-and-a-half-million-dollar hypercar. He is just a guy alone with a girl in the city after dark.
Music is playing. Unexpectedly it is a Bollywood song, “Tuhi Meri Shab Hai,” and the lyrics are subtitled. You alone are my night. You only are my day. The song comes from a film released in 2006, starring Kangana Ranaut. The name of the film is Gangster.
NARRATOR (V/O)
According to The New York Times, homicides in America reached an alarming peak in the 1990s but are now near historic lows. There are fears that the heroin epidemic and a resurgence of gang violence may push the numbers up again in some cities: Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Dallas, Memphis. However, more optimistically, in New York City there has been a twenty-five percent year-on-year decrease.
The man in the aviator shades and the woman with the highly toned arms are crossing the park now, walking between the statue of George Washington and the entrance to the subway station.
The song continues, growing louder, with no need for subtitles:
SONG
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
As the YOUNGISH MAN and the BLOND WOMAN pass the subway entrance, a SECOND MAN comes out of it, moving fast, wearing a motorcycle helmet, pulls out a handgun with a silencer, shoots the YOUNGISH MAN, once, in the back of the head; and as he falls and the BLOND WOMAN opens her mouth to scream he shoots her, too, very fast, once, between the eyes. She falls straight down onto her knees and remains like that, head bowed, kneeling, dead. The YOUNGISH MAN lies facedown in front of her. The SECOND MAN walks away quickly, but not running, to the corner of Fourteenth and University, past the chess players’ zone, still holding the weapon. There are no chess players, it’s too late at night. There is however a MOTORCYCLIST waiting for him. He drops the gun in the trash bin on the corner, gets on the man’s motorbike and they leave. Only now, when the motorbike has gone, do POLICE OFFICERS emerge from the squad cars stationed around the square and move quickly to the kneeling woman and the fallen man.
Cut.
INTERIOR. NERO GOLDEN’S BEDROOM. NIGHT.
VASILISA is fast asleep in their large bed with its ornate, gilded rococo headboard. NERO’s eyes, too, are closed. Then, in an EFFECT SHOT, he “steps out of his body” and walks to the window. This ghost-self is transparent. The camera, behind him, sees through him to the heavy drapes, which he slightly parts, to look down at the Gardens. The “real” NERO continues to sleep in his bed.
NERO (V/O)
I say this while I am still in full possession of all my mental faculties. I know that at a later point in my story the soundness of my mind will be called into question, and perhaps rightly so. But that is not now, that is not just yet. There is still time to admit my foolishness, and to accept also that it reflects poorly on me. To have my head turned so easily by a pretty face. I understand now the depths of her self-interest, the coldness of her calculations and therefore of her heart.
The ghost-NERO walks calmly back to the bed, and “sits down” into the “real” NERO, and then there is just one NERO, with his eyes closed, beside his sleeping wife.
Her cellphone begins to ring, on “vibrate.” She doesn’t wake up to answer it.
It vibrates a second time and this time NERO, without moving, opens his eyes.
The third time, VASILISA wakes up, groans, reaches for the phone.
She comes fully awake, sits straight up in bed, and with her free hand clasps her cheek in horror. She speaks rapidly in Russian into the phone, asking questions. Then she becomes silent and puts the phone down.
For a long moment they remain as they are, she sitting up with horror on her face, he lying back calmly with his eyes open, looking up at the ceiling.
Then, slowly, she turns to look at him, and her expression changes. Now the only emotion on her face is fear.
They do not speak.
Cut.
REGARDING MICE AND GIANTS, PERCENTAGES, AND ART