INT. CAFÉ ON KARL-HEINE-STRASSE — AFTERNOON

The recorder is placed between two espressos in a small café on Karl-Heine-Straße. RUSSO is in dark wool. MIAMO is in something pale and unplaceable — a garment, he will say, that excites him. Outside, the trams go by every ten minutes. The afternoon light is the kind that makes Leipzig look like it was lit for a film. Families pass by. MIAMO's gaze drifts, already — to the door, to a girl at the counter, to a man crossing the street. He notices everyone. RUSSO waits, then begins.

Salvatore Russo

Alfredo. We are exactly sixteen days out. Look how serious you are.

Alfredo Miamo

I'm ready. Martinsplatz is the perfect arena — the uneven ground, the stones, the wild bushes. We're going to play with the frictions. Have a bit of fun, no? Right where the wanting meets the resistance.

Salvatore

Before we bring them to the park on the 27th, I've heard your new audio release. The critics are whispering that it is a plagiat — stolen. I want to read your lyrics to you as poetry:

Come, come closer
I want to touch you
To be close to you

MIAMO's eyes have already left the table. A young woman has come in for cigarettes. He watches her order, watches her leave. Only then does he answer.

Alfredo

Plagiarism — it's a word for people without inspiration. Those words are mine. Look, out there we play with encounters. What does reaching do? Is it union, or is it total destruction? On that uneven ground everything tilts. And my Ash Silk — in the sun it goes from opaque to translucent. You see the body underneath. That's the whole point, no?

Salvatore

But the observers might hesitate to engage with something so raw. As the poem continues:

No, don't tell me no
That you're afraid of suffering
Of feeling something for me

Alfredo

They have to feel. Lust is never symmetrical — it's a fight you can't win. The audience has to come open. Otherwise the gap stays closed. The wanting and the having — they don't meet. I'll show them the conflict with the body. With the torsion. The muscles say what I can't.

Salvatore

You challenge their hesitation further. You say:

You see, if you don't have the courage
You'll never know what's inside you
No, don't think that I haven't been
There too, waiting to come out

A man passes outside, slowly. MIAMO's head turns. The recorder is on. He turns back.

Alfredo

Because I've been there. I went through your methodology — the whole thing. I know that pressure, just before the self explodes. I'm here to show them how to break the inertia. How to move what you want from far away to close — to yours.

Salvatore

And then, the invitation to the peak. You sing it twice — once to ask, and once to insist:

Come, climb onto my cloud
I'll be waiting for you
Floating, enjoying
The ecstasy of being here

Salvatore

Who do you think of, when you write that?

A second woman, by the window, with a book. MIAMO does not answer the question. His eyes track her until she sits down. Then, almost as if he had forgotten there was a question, he carries on — about something else.

Alfredo

Look — we have to push past the forbidden. The uneven ground at Martinsplatz, that's the springboard. It's all sprezzatura1, you understand — you make the difficult look like nothing. At the end of the demonstration, I'm going to do a sudden —

Salvatore

(lifts an index finger to his own lips; holds it there; his eyes go, briefly, to the window)

A family passes on the pavement outside — a stroller, two small children, a balloon tied to a wrist. Then another. It is a Saturday afternoon on Karl-Heine-Straße; the café windows are wide open. A waiter brings the second coffee. RUSSO does not lower the finger until the second family has gone past. He studies the contact sheet from last week's rehearsal — three pages of SAM KIONI ROBERTS's frames, the meadow in low afternoon light — and lays one print flat between the two espressos. A tram changes line. Almost two minutes pass before either of them speaks.

Salvatore

The Ash Silk. Tell me about the weave. The critics will want a sentence they can quote.

Alfredo

Aschseide — we make it at a small couturier in Babelsberg. They'd rather not see their name in this. Anyway. It's really just a question of fabric. I asked Silk: will you confess? And after enough weaves, Silk said yes. Opaque, when a stranger looks. Translucent, with us. You can't lie inside it.

MIAMO's eyes drift again — the woman with the book, the door, the window, the door.

Alfredo

It's perfect for demonstrating lust. The masterclass isn't the pose. It's the adjustment.

Salvatore

(smiling coldly)

Well. You don't get to absolute glory without making a few poses. We will see you all at Martinsplatz.

· · ·

RUSSO closes his notebook. Stands. Gathers his jacket. Makes a comfortable caress around the neck and shoulders of MIAMO. Then begins to walk away.

Alfredo

Salvatore — one more.

Salvatore

(turning)

What?

Alfredo

I have a question for you.

Salvatore

(a beat — he comes back and sets down the pen)

Alfredo

Does it still work for you?

Salvatore

Let me tell you something off the record.
/ / / / / / / / / End of recording.

FADE OUT.

  1. Sprezzatura (n., It.) — a word coined by Baldassare Castiglione in Il libro del cortegiano (1528). The art of making a studied difficulty appear effortless; a deliberate, almost contemptuous nonchalance. English has no single equivalent; “studied carelessness,” “nonchalance,” and “effortlessness” each catch only one face of it. We have left the word in the original. ↩

Chapter II — Lust

Feeling Already
Lighter

Saturday 27 June 2026, 19:00. Martinsplatz · Kleinzschocher — going south. The night opens.

Join the next chapter