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It was all the fault of the jagged edge of the nail on his index finger.
George had tormented it back down there, in the endless queue of twenty-odd men whose faces looked like they had stepped off ancient frescoes touched up by a modern scalpel. Each possessed razor-sharp cheekbones, languid gazes, and that elusive aura of prosperity that makes a random passerby feel unkempt. Beside him stood an Italian cherub with a neck tattoo, scrolling through his phone with such lazy elegance as if time itself were doing him a favor by flowing past.
George stood there in his impeccably clean but hopelessly "wrong" jeans. He felt like an impostor. A bad idea? No, a bad idea is an expired yogurt for breakfast. This... this was a voluntary ascent to a scaffold made of chrome and glass.
Carmen’s voice had been haunting him since last Thursday. She had tossed the phrase out casually, without looking up from the paper chaos on her desk:
— "George, have you ever thought about modeling? With your looks, you’d go far."
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and walked away, leaving him alone with the flickering monitor. George had stared at the gray cells of the spreadsheets for a long time, and in their monotonous rhythm, he suddenly seemed to find confirmation of her words. He knew. He knew how eyes lingered on him in the tube, how strangers turned around, trying to recognize a famous actor in him. It was knowledge he carried within himself like contraband—just as carefully, and with a slight sense of shame.
Until this very Friday.
The queue crawled at the speed of a raindrop sliding down the glass of Waterloo Bridge. The "Wolff & Partners" agency smelled of ambition, expensive perfume, and fresh leather. From the walls, gods looked down at George: men who never knew the taste of cheap buckwheat and never counted pennies until payday.
When the secretary pronounced his name—"Russell, George"—it sounded like the dry click of a shutter. That same ill-fated nail finally gave way. George tucked the discarded fragment into his jacket pocket, a tiny piece of his old, ordinary life.
In a bright, furniture-less hall, they were dissected with stares. Three judges behind a long table chose faces like one chooses ripe fruit at a market: fastidiously, with a hint of professional boredom.
— "Walk. Stand in profile. Look at the camera."
George obeyed. At some point, the fear burned out, leaving behind a strange, ringing emptiness. He stopped mimicking confidence and simply allowed his face to be. It was this detachment, this cold "understatement," that set him apart. Out of thirty, seven remained.
And then he was invited into the inner sanctum. The director’s office was located at the end of a corridor where the carpet pile swallowed all sound, turning reality into a vacuum.
— "Come in."
The voice was thick. Toto Wolff didn't just sit at the desk; he dominated the space. An impeccable suit, an open collar, the heavy gaze of a man who sees through people to their very bone marrow. His face couldn't be called handsome in the canonical sense, but it possessed that commanding pedigree before which any symmetry pales.
— "Sit down, George."
No formalities. Wolff didn't open the folder; he looked directly into George's eyes, as if reading information straight from the retina.
— "Do you know what distinguishes you from those unfortunates in the corridor?" he asked, a shadow of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth for a moment. "They work. They sweat, trying to squeeze a spark out of themselves. But you... you simply transmit your nature. The camera doesn't love effort; it loves presence."
George remained silent, feeling the flattery soak into his skin, causing a slight shiver.
— "I am offering you a contract," Wolff leaned forward, and the air in the office seemed to grow denser. "We will start with companies that will make your face recognizable in every decent home in Europe. But I have a condition."
The world outside the window—gray, soaked London—suddenly ceased to exist. Only this table remained, and the man opposite who uttered his "condition" as casually as if reading a weather forecast. It wasn't a deal with the devil in the Hollywood sense; rather, it was a cold commercial transaction where the currency was something more personal than time or labor. George looked at the fogged glass of water. He thought of Islington, the smell of burnt toast in his one-bedroom flat, the endless cycle of "tube—office—sleep." He knew his worth. But now he realized that price isn't what you ask for, but what you are willing to sacrifice.
— "Are you serious?" George’s voice was dry and brittle.
— "One doesn't joke in this business, George. Here, people buy and sell. The only question is whether you are ready to become part of the major leagues."
George leaned back in the chair. Looking at the antennas of neighboring roofs through the veil of rain, he understood: this moment was the border. Either he returns to his spreadsheets, or he takes a step into this sterile, cruel, and dazzling world where the gloss of covers is paid for with the silence of one's conscience.
— "Fine," he said. The word dropped into the silence of the office like a heavy stone.
Wolff’s expression didn't change. He simply slid the folder and a heavy metal pen toward him.
— "Then let us sign now. Decisions like these shouldn't be left overnight. The night is a poor advisor for ambition."
George’s hand did not shake, but the letters in his signature came out uncharacteristically sharp and jagged.
— "Welcome, George," Wolff smiled, this time for real, and in that smile, Russell saw his future.
Stepping out into the corridor, George felt the shard of his nail in his pocket. He looked at this tiny symbol of his human weakness and carelessly tossed it into a bin. Behind the glass doors of the agency, London continued to drown in twilight, but for George Russell, the sun was now shining from a completely different direction. From studio spotlights.
The taxi drove in silence. George looked out the window. The address Wolff had handwritten on a slip of paper—neatly, in large letters, as if dictating to a child—led to Chelsea. George wasn't really surprised. Chelsea was quite logical. Wolff was a man who lived in Chelsea. As the sky is blue, as the Thames is dirty, so Wolff lives in Chelsea.
The driver didn't ask anything. That was good.
George thought about the half-eaten pasta sitting at home and how he probably should have eaten before coming here. Because now his stomach was empty, his head held a strange, quiet void, and he wasn't sure if it was nerves or just hunger, or both at once; in the end, it didn't really matter.
The house was exactly the kind of house a man who owns a modeling agency on King’s Road should have. Not loud, far from it. Just expensive, with that quiet confidence of wealth that requires no explanation. Light stone facade, wide windows, an intercom with a matte panel. No gold, no gaudiness. Everything was just right, everything was in its place, and that in itself was worth more than any showing off.
Wolff opened the door before George could even ring. That meant he had been watching the camera.
— "Found it without trouble?" he asked.
— "The navigator was invented," George said.
Wolff stepped aside. A "come in" gesture without words.
Inside, it smelled of something expensive and neutral. Not perfume, not food, just good air that only exists in apartments with proper ventilation and filters changed on schedule. The hallway was spacious and bright, the floor a dark parquet, almost black. No unnecessary items: a coat rack, one painting on the wall—a large gray-blue abstraction—and a full-length mirror.
George looked in the mirror. He looked at himself mechanically. His jacket had wrinkled a bit during the day. Nothing critical under his eyes, but it was clear it had been a long day.
— "Coat," Wolff said, and that too wasn't a question, but a simple "give it here."
George took it off. Handed it over. Wolff hung it carefully on a wooden hanger and walked deeper into the apartment. Without looking back. It was taken for granted that George would follow.
The living room was large. Not huge, but large. A light gray sofa, long, clearly Italian, clearly very comfortable. A bookshelf along one wall—real books, not decorative ones, some with bookmarks. A low table. A floor lamp in the corner, switched on, casting a warm light. Floor-to-ceiling windows, and behind them the London night, lights, rain on the glass.
— "Would you like a drink?" Wolff asked. He was already standing at a small bar by the wall. Quietly, like a master of his house, without haste.
— "Water, probably."
Wolff looked up. Lingered for a second.
— "Water."
— "I don't drink before..." George stopped. He finished differently: "Just water."
— "Sensible," Wolff said without a hint of irony. He poured the water. Placed the glass on the table. For himself, he poured something amber—not much, just two fingers' worth.
George took the glass. Drank half. Put it down. He stood in the middle of the living room, wondering where to put his hands. He shoved them into his pockets. Then took them out because it looked too relaxed for someone who wasn't relaxed at all. He crossed them over his chest. No. Finally, he just let them hang at his sides. Like a normal person.
— "You're nervous," Wolff said. A statement, not a mockery.
— "No," George said.
— "Good," Wolff said. "Then sit. Nervous people pretending they aren't always stand in the middle of the room as if they're about to be shot."
George sat on the sofa. The sofa was exactly as it looked: very comfortable. It was almost annoying. Wolff sat nearby—not right next to him, but not demonstratively far either. He took his glass. They were silent for about twenty seconds, and that silence was the only concept of silence possible in this situation. Just stillness. Outside, it rained, a car drove by somewhere below, the floor lamp shone with warm light.
— "How long have you been in London?" Wolff asked.
— "A year and a half."
— "From where?"
— "Cambridge." A pause. "Not the university. Just the town."
— "I understand," Wolff said. "You would have said so if it were the university."
— "Probably," George agreed.
Wolff turned his head. He looked at him not evaluatively, as he had at the casting, but differently. Without the professional distance. He just looked. And George, for some reason, didn't look away, even though he wanted to. Or didn't want to. He wasn't sure what he wanted anymore, to be honest.
— "Relax," Wolff said quietly. "I don't eat people."
— "I can see that," George said. "It’s just... this is..." He paused. "A strange situation."
— "Agreed," Wolff said. "But strange doesn't mean bad."
Then Wolff stood up. Set down his glass. He reached out his hand, and it was unexpectedly simple, almost disarmingly simple, and George took it. He stood up. He had expected—well, he didn't know what he had expected, but something like this: businesslike, fast, functional. A deal is a deal. But not Wolff. He was slow. Not in the sense of being indecisive, but in the sense of being in no hurry. Like a man who knows there is enough time and therefore doesn't waste it on haste. He took George’s face in his palms, gently, and just looked at him for a second. Silently. As if checking something. Or memorizing it.
— "What?" George said.
— "Nothing," Wolff said. "You’re just beautiful. It’s worth looking at."
George couldn't find an answer. It was awkward and simultaneously... not awkward. It was strange.
He stroked—that was the word George later, in the taxi, mentally applied to what happened. Stroked. Slowly, without haste: the shoulder, the temple, the jawline, as if he were doing something he enjoyed doing and wasn't thinking about anything else. No demonstrativeness, no performance. Just tenderness. Real, somehow. Or very well acted; George wasn't sure, and that in itself probably said something.
He kissed slowly, too. George thought fleetingly: he has no reason to do it like this. This wasn't part of the conditions. The conditions were entirely different. But Wolff did it. At some point, George stopped thinking about it.
Then, silence. George lay there staring at the ceiling. The ceiling was white, smooth, without a single crack. An expensive ceiling. People with expensive ceilings don't have problems with cracks; they have people who come and fix everything before a crack even has a chance to appear. Wolff lay beside him. Not touching. Not demonstratively far. George sat up. Found his shirt on the floor. Started to get dressed.
— "You're leaving," Wolff said. Not a question, not a reproach, just an understanding of the inevitable.
— "Yes," George said.
He waited for something else, some final remark that would put everything in its place, tell him who he had just been and who he now was. But Wolff remained silent. He stared at the same ceiling George had a minute ago.
— "I’ll call a taxi," Wolff said finally.
— "No need, I’ll—"
— "I already called it."
George looked at him. Wolff was holding his phone; he had already dialed. So he had started before he even spoke. So he knew. They walked out to the hallway in silence. Wolff took his coat off the hanger, calmly, without unnecessary movement, and handed it over. He didn't drape it over George's shoulders; he just put it in his hands. George dressed himself.
— "Four minutes," Wolff said regarding the taxi.
— "I’ll wait downstairs."
— "It’s raining."
— "I know," George said. "I’ve lived in London for a year and a half."
Wolff almost smiled. Again, just the corner of his mouth, nothing more.
— "Shoot is on Tuesday," he said. "I’ll send the address tomorrow morning."
— "Fine."
— "Fine."
George opened the door. Stepped into the corridor. Pressed the elevator button. The elevator arrived immediately; clearly, everything worked without delay here. Downstairs, it really was raining. George stood under the awning and watched the wet asphalt glisten under a streetlamp. The taxi arrived in four minutes, exactly as Wolff had said.
George got in. Gave his address. The driver nodded. The car moved. He thought not about what had happened, nor about whether he had done the right thing. Thinking about that was pointless because it had already happened and was already right or wrong, and his opinion on the matter changed nothing now. He thought about the shoot on Tuesday. That he needed to get some sleep. That there was half-eaten pasta at home and he probably would finish it after all.
And that Wolff had been tender. George hadn't expected that. That was, perhaps, the strangest thing of all.
The first triumph smelled of printer’s ink and the faint scent of someone else’s unattainable life. The magazine was called Urban Edge—a publication for those who measure time by the cost of the chronometers on their wrists and appreciate the aesthetics of the concrete jungle. The circulation wasn't massive, but for George, this gloss became his first mirror.
He bought three copies, as if trying to materialize his own luck. He kept one for himself as evidence. He sent the second to his mother; her voice on the phone, trembling with pride and lack of understanding, returned him for twenty minutes to the old world where he was just George. He listened to her, smiling at his own face on the cover, and felt a frightening thought crystallize inside: "It has begun." The third copy gathered dust on his table for two weeks before heading into the bin, but for those fourteen days, it served as silent proof of his existence.
Then came Brighton. A cold, salt-crusted wind from the English Channel, stinging sand, and a high-strung Italian photographer who darted around George, shouting his ecstatic "yes!" at every successful turn of the head. He was being paid. Not astronomical sums, but enough that in February, he closed the office door behind him. No farewell speeches, just a step out of the gray fog of quarterly reports into the dazzling void of a new career. Carmen sent a message: "Congratulations, you finally decided to be yourself." He replied with a dry emoji, then a minute later, feeling ashamed, added: "Thanks. It’s true." She didn't reply. Bridges didn't burn; they simply dissolved into the London smog.
His relationship with Wolff was built according to the laws of an unspoken code where words were superfluous. It was perfectly tuned mechanics: a call, an address, work. Sometimes silence, ringing like a taut string. George didn't immediately realize that he had begun to measure his life by these intervals. The realization came in April. He was sitting in his new apartment, eating a cold dinner under the flicker of a pointless TV show, and caught himself glancing at his phone every thirty seconds. The screen was dark, but in that darkness, George looked for confirmation of his necessity.
Wolff texted at eleven in the evening: "Free tonight?"
George’s fingers touched the sensor five seconds later: "Yes."
He looked at that instantaneous reply and felt a slight pang of nausea. It was too fast. Too honest. But he could no longer play at indifference. Wolff possessed a rare gift; he knew how to praise so that it felt like an initiation into knighthood. There was no saccharine or perfunctory flattery in his words; only dry, almost surgical precision.
Once in Chelsea, as the sunset died outside the window, Toto showed him a preview of the latest shoot.
— "Look here," he held the phone so their shoulders almost touched. "Your gaze is directed past the lens. The camera captured not your face, but your absence. That is high-level work."
George looked at his image and felt Wolff’s words transform an ordinary shot into something sacred. Toto’s approval had become his only measure of reality. Without it, success felt fake, like cheap costume jewelry under the spotlights. It was a dangerous foundation, but George preferred not to notice the cracks.
His name began to appear more often. First in catalogs, then in airport magazines, and finally, in British Esquire. Three spreads. A heavy, thoughtful photographer. The name "Russell" began to gain weight.
Three agents wrote to him, including one from Paris. George, without hesitation, forwarded the email to Wolff. No questions, just as a fact. The reply came half an hour later: "Good agent. But it’s too early for you." George immediately wrote a polite refusal to Paris. Only later, closing his laptop, did he catch himself thinking that he had replied with the word "early" without even trying to contest its meaning. Wolff said "early," so the time had not yet come. Toto was his compass, his clockwork.
In May, he swapped Islington for Shoreditch. High ceilings, industrial chic, a huge table, and plants that died in the silence of his loneliness. He furnished this space with manicured care, catching himself creating a set. Not for himself, but for a hypothetical guest who might stop by, evaluate, and approve.
Wolff never crossed the threshold of this apartment. Always Chelsea. Always his territory. It was part of their unspoken contract: George belonged to his world, but Wolff remained unattainable to his own.
The breakdown happened in June. The shoot went wrong from the first frame. George felt wooden, eviscerated. The spotlights seemed too bright, the clothes—alien. He saw the disappointment in the photographer's eyes, and it stripped him of the remnants of his will.
That evening, Toto called himself.
— "I saw the material," the voice was steady, like the surface of a night lake.
— "I know. It was bad."
— "You’re just tired, George. You need a week of silence."
— "I have a shoot the day after tomorrow..."
— "I cancelled it," Wolff cut in. There was so much calm power in that "I" that arguing was pointless.
George spent six days in a vacuum. On the seventh, he wrote: "I'm better."
The reply came instantly: "I see."
George stared at the screen, trying to understand how Wolff could "see" him through kilometers of London streets. Suddenly, he realized he was smiling. It was the smile of a prisoner who had grown to love his cell because it was always clean and predictable.
Nights in Chelsea became his only constant. Wolff was unchanging: the same slowness, the same frightening tenderness that didn't fit his image as a tough businessman. After these hours, George invariably left. A taxi always waited at the entrance; Wolff called it in advance, as if placing a period at the end of a sentence.
Once, already at the door, George turned around. Wolff was standing in the shadows of the hallway, watching him button his coat.
— "Why do you look at me like that?" George asked, feeling the cold air from the street rush into the hallway.
— "And why are you always in such a hurry to leave?"
— "I’m not in a hurry. I just... don't see the point in lingering."
He said it, and the words hung in the air like a false note. George stepped out, pressed the elevator button, and stared at his reflection in the mirrored doors. "Don't see the point in lingering." It was a lie. The point was only here, in this building, in this man who knew more about him than he did himself.
Downstairs, the taxi waited for him. As always. Cold. George sat in the back seat, staring at his phone’s empty screen. On Wednesday, there would be a call. On Thursday—the flashes of cameras. And then, perhaps, a message would come: "Free?"
And he would reply "yes." Within five seconds. Because this dependency had become the only thing that gave his life shape.
At first, it was once every two weeks instead of once a week.
George didn't count. He didn't count at all; it’s important to clarify that. He didn't keep any records, didn't mark the calendar, didn't build charts. Just at some point, he realized it had been a long time. Like realizing you haven't called someone in a while—not because you were tracking it, but because there’s a background sense of time in your head, and it says: it’s been a while.
Shoots went on. Work went on. Wolff wrote about business: address, time, details. Sometimes he called. Once he said "good work" after a major campaign for a watch brand, and George caught himself reading the message three times. Just three times in a row. As if upon the second and third reading, something else would appear. It didn't.
The "Free tonight?" messages started coming less often. Much less often. George replied "yes," always "yes," because he was always free when it concerned Wolff—it was a rule without exceptions—but sometimes the "yes" hung in the air and turned into just a read message. No reply. That meant he was just checking. That meant not tonight.
That meant not tonight.
George would put the phone down. Go to the kitchen. Drink some water. Come back. Watch some series. Go to sleep.
Fine. Everything was fine.
Kimi appeared in November.
Or rather, he had been at the agency before; George had seen him in passing: Italian, young, very young, nineteen at most, dark hair, a smile that looked like it had been painted specifically to make everyone around immediately relax. A beautiful boy. Obviously beautiful, without effort, as happens at nineteen when you don't yet have to do anything specific for it—it’s just there. In November, they literally bumped into each other in the agency corridor; Antonelli was leaving a meeting room, George was entering, and the door was shared by both.
— "Oh," Kimi said. "Sorry. I’m Kimi."
— "I know," George said. "George."
— "I know," Kimi said, and smiled. "You were on that Esquire cover, right? I saw it. It turned out great."
George wanted to say something neutral and walk past. But Kimi looked at him with such sincere, uncomplicated interest—not fawning, not calculating, just interest—that neutral didn't quite work.
— "Thanks," he said.
— "Have you been working here long?"
— "About a year."
— "I’ve only been here three months. I don't really understand anything yet, to be honest." Kimi scratched the back of his head. "Can I ask you about things sometime? Well, if you don't mind. You clearly have it all figured out."
George looked at him. Nineteen years old. An open face. No games.
— "You can," he said.
They began to occasionally grab coffee after shoots or meetings at the agency. Kimi asked questions—many of them, specific ones, without unnecessary words: "how do you work with photographers who don't tell you what they need," "how to tell if a contract is decent," "how not to look wooden when you’re nervous." George answered. It was unexpectedly pleasant. A kind of role he hadn't prepared for, but which fit him naturally: the elder who knows.
Kimi laughed loudly and a bit awkwardly, the way people laugh when they haven't yet learned to control it. He told stories about Bologna, where he came from, about his mother who still didn't understand what he did but supported him. Sometimes he said something so straightforward that George didn't have time to come up with a response.
— "Are you actually happy here?" Kimi asked once. Just like that. Between a sip of coffee and a sentence about some shoot.
George was silent for a second.
— "That’s a complicated question," he said.
— "Why complicated?"
— "Because there isn't a simple answer."
Kimi nodded, as if that were an exhaustive reply. Perhaps for him, it was.
George found out by accident. He wasn't eavesdropping, wasn't spying, wasn't digging into other people's business. He had just arrived at the agency earlier than scheduled—there were no traffic jams, which was a London anomaly in itself—and was waiting in the corridor by the meeting room. The door wasn't tightly shut. Voices drifted out. Wolff and one of the managers, a woman’s voice; they were discussing the schedule.
— "Antonelli on Wednesday?"
— "Yes," Wolff said. "After six. He’s with me."
He’s with me.
Three words. Neutral, professional, nothing special. George stood in the corridor and stared at the opposite wall—gray, smooth—and in his head, something very slowly and very carefully clicked into place. Like a puzzle piece that had been lying face down for a long time, and all that time you were looking at the cardboard side thinking: everything must be fine.
After six. He’s with me.
George turned around. Walked out to the street. Stood under the awning. It was cold, December, wind, the sky the color of washed-out laundry. He took out his phone, looked at the screen, not understanding why he had taken it out. Put it away. Then went back inside because there was a meeting, and the meeting had to be held. He held it. Held it fine, without complaints.
Then it got worse.
Not because anything changed on the outside. On the outside, everything was as before: shoots, briefings, money in the account at the beginning of the month. Wolff wrote on business. Sometimes very briefly, something like approval. Tiny. One word, two. "Good. Keep it up. Saw the material, not bad."
Not bad. It used to be good. It used to be "look at this frame, see," and they would sit side by side looking at the phone, and it was... something. And now it was "not bad" in a message, and that was it.
George realized it was ridiculous. That he was a grown man of almost thirty, worrying about the difference between "good" and "not bad" in a message from a man with whom he had no relationship. None at all. There was a professional contract with a condition he had accepted voluntarily, with open eyes, knowing what he was doing. He understood this. Understood it perfectly, logically, consistently. And yet, for the third night in a row, he lay in the dark thinking about the fact that Kimi was probably in Chelsea right now.
It was shitty to think that about Kimi. George knew it. Kimi was good. Sincere, harmless; he would come for coffee and say, "George, you really helped me then, thanks," and it wasn't for show; it was truly sincere. Kimi wasn't doing anything wrong. Kimi didn't know anything at all. Maybe he thought that "after six with Toto" meant a contract discussion. Maybe he knew and didn't think about it the way George did. He was nineteen. At nineteen, many things are simpler.
George lay and stared at the ceiling of his apartment in Shoreditch—a good apartment he now paid for himself, with his own money—and thought: I hate this ceiling.
He didn't hate it. The ceiling was fine. He just needed something to be angry at. He couldn't be angry at Wolff, or he could, but in short bursts, and then it would fade into something else. Dull. Like the ache of a tooth that is no longer sharp but just throbs. In the background.
He tried to be angry. He lay there and thought: Toto is a prick. Toto is a manipulator. Toto took what he wanted and switched, like switching a channel, and that’s normal for him; it’s not an event at all, it’s just the next person of the next season, and you thought you were...
What did he think?
That was the problem. He couldn't even articulate what exactly he thought. That he was special? Ridiculous. That there was something between them besides the contract? He was a grown man. He knew the conditions. But Wolff had been tender. That was the truth. It wasn't imagined or exaggerated. He had stroked and looked, and said, "you’re just beautiful, it’s worth looking at," and that was... you couldn't just take that and throw it away, because it was real; George was sure it was real, he knows how to tell the difference, he’s not an idiot.
Or he is an idiot.
He turned onto his side. Closed his eyes.
Kimi texted on Friday morning: "george are you at the agency today? want to ask about something"
George looked at the message. Kimi wrote in lowercase, with almost no commas, always like a person whose thoughts moved faster than his fingers.
He replied: "yes, I'll be there by twelve."
Kimi arrived with coffee for two, brought it without asking, and just set it in front of George. He asked about an agency in Milan, whether it was worth going there for negotiations or waiting. He spoke quickly, jumped between topics, laughed at his own incoherence. George answered. Answered normally, about business. And he looked at Kimi—at his open face, dark eyes, the smile no one had yet taught him to control—and thought: You aren't to blame. You have nothing to do with this. You’re just next.
And then he caught that thought. Next. That meant George was previous.
That word had a very specific weight. Cold, heavy, an awkward shape, like a stone in a pocket that you can't take out or move, only carry with you.
— "George," Kimi said. "Are you listening to me?"
— "Yes," George said. "Go to Milan. It’s a good idea."
Kimi nodded. Said something else. Finished his coffee. George looked out the window. Outside was the gray, cold December London, with a billboard on the neighboring building where some man in a nice coat looked into nowhere with the air of a person for whom everything was fine. George understood him. Sometimes looking into nowhere is the only thing you can do.
George dissected this conversation for eleven days. He hadn't planned this mental torture, but it grew within him—in the morning steam of the shower, in the clatter of the tube cars, at three in the morning when the ceiling of his bedroom stopped being just concrete and turned into a screen onto which his fears were projected. George rehearsed intonations, cut out unnecessary adjectives, sought that line between "I care" and "I demand an explanation" that would allow him to save face.
He tried sounding casual: "Look, I noticed the rhythm has changed..."—but the word "noticed" gave him away completely. It screamed that he had counted the days, hours, and missed calls. A person who counts always loses to the one who lives by their own clock. In the end, he gave up. No scripts. Just a short impulse sent on Wednesday evening: "We need to talk. Not about work."
The reply came forty minutes later, steady as a dead man's pulse: "Tomorrow at seven. Come over."
On Thursday, he changed clothes three times, and each time the reflection in the mirror seemed like a caricature. It was humiliating, picking a shade of knitwear for the execution he himself had scheduled. Finally, he pulled on a dark blue sweater, the color of which reminded him of twilight over the Thames, and stepped out into the night.
London outside the taxi window drowned in a viscous December haze. Yellow streetlamps blurred in puddles like egg yolks. The city seemed like a set for a movie whose ending was already known to everyone but the protagonist.
Wolff opened the door before George could even touch the bell. The same impeccable silhouette, the same unbuttoned shirt button, the same gaze—studious, like an entomologist before a rare but slightly too familiar specimen.
— "Come in."
The apartment held a sterile comfort. The same smell of expensive wood and amber, the same dimmed light. This suddenly scorched George with fury: how does everything here dare to remain the same? How can this sofa stand so still while a storm has been raging in George’s soul for eleven days, breaking masts?
— "A drink?" Wolff headed for the bar.
— "No."
Toto poured one for himself, the ice clinked against the crystal, the sound seeming deafening to George. Wolff sat in the armchair opposite the sofa. This was a shift in positions. A distance marked not in feet, but in status.
— "Well," Wolff said. His voice was deep and calm, like an abyss.
— "Well," George echoed.
Outside the window, the rain rustled—a monotonous soundtrack to their shared defeat.
— "You said the talk wasn't about work," Wolff reminded him. "So speak."
George looked at him and saw a mask. A perfect, expensive mask of "genuine attention." And at that moment, the realization hit him: Toto had seen this scene before. Hundreds of times. Other young men with the same burning eyes had sat on this very sofa, trying to bargain for a piece of his heart. For George, this was a confession. For Wolff, it was a routine inventory.
— "I want to understand what’s happening," George began. His voice barely faltered. "We’ve started... seeing each other less. Outside of shoots. I want to know why. Is it me?"
Wolff was silent for a moment, contemplating the play of light in his glass.
— "Everything is fine, George. The rhythm has just changed. It happens."
The rhythm has changed. That phrase dropped between them like a guillotine. It was polite, professional, and absolutely merciless. It turned their nights into a statistical error.
— "I see," George nodded slowly. "The rhythm."
— "You’re angry," Wolff stated.
— "No. I’m trying to reconcile reality with what I felt. It turns out we had different coordinate systems."
— "What do you want to hear from me, George?" Wolff set down his glass. He leaned forward, and his gaze grew heavy. It was the "direct contact" technique he used to suppress or enchant. Right now, it was suppression.
— "You want to ask about Antonelli," he spoke the name George forbade himself even to think.
The room became stifling. The word had been spoken. The boy from Italy, the new "golden face," whose rise was even more meteoric than George's. Now he was in Wolff's schedule. Now his taxi waited at the entrance in Chelsea.
— "That is none of your business," Toto added softly, almost tenderly. And it was worse than any shout.
— "I know," George exhaled. "Then why am I here?"
— "You’re here because you need confirmation," Wolff stood up. "You’re a smart guy, George. You know the answer yourself. I think very highly of you. That’s the truth. But don't confuse my feelings for you with something... eternal."
George stood up. His limbs felt foreign, stuffed with cotton wool.
— "I understand."
— "George..." something like weariness flickered in Wolff's voice. Or a spark of genuine regret. But George no longer wanted to decipher it. He was sick of this ambivalence, of this "almost humanity" that turned out to be just good breeding.
— "I’ll go."
— "George."
He froze at the door but didn't turn around. Was he waiting for Wolff to say something else? To break the rules of his own game? But there was silence behind him. Toto didn't finish the sentence. Or perhaps he had already said everything that was included in the price of his time.
— "Don't call a taxi," George threw out. "I'll walk."
It was raining outside. A real London downpour that washes the gloss from the pavements and turns the city into a collection of gray shadows. George walked, not feeling his sweater getting soaked. He needed this icy touch of reality.
He was angry. Anger was his only salvation from a faint of the soul. He cursed Wolff for his "rhythm," for his tenderness, for his ability to turn people into consumables. But the anger quickly spent itself, leaving behind a bare, ringing void.
"It’s my own fault," he thought, looking at the dark waters of the Thames from Westminster Bridge. No one had promised him love. The contract guaranteed only covers and checks. Everything else—the long looks, the touches, the whispers—he had constructed himself, building a temple on a swamp. Wolff was simply living his life, and George had made him his axis.
He imagined Kimi Antonelli. Young, bold, not yet knowing the taste of this December rain. Someday he, too, would be told about the "changed rhythm." Or maybe not; maybe Kimi would be smarter. Maybe he knows how to take the glare of the spotlights without giving up his right to sleep in return. George didn't know how. He always looked for subtext where there was only text. Looked for a soul in the business of bodies.
He stopped, wiping his face. Water ran down his neck; the cold seeped to his very heart. He took out his phone; the screen was blank. No one had called him a taxi. No one had asked if he made it home. He pressed the app icon himself. A car was found in six minutes. For six endless minutes, he stood alone on the bridge, watching the city swallow his reflection.
Tomorrow is a shoot. He needs to dry his hair and get some sleep. The camera doesn't forgive puffy eyes, and Wolff doesn't forgive lack of professionalism. George got into the taxi, closed his eyes, and pressed his forehead against the cold glass. London drifted past—indifferent, wet, beautiful. A city where everyone is just a temporary frame in an infinite film.
He just needs to get through this night. And the next. And then... then the rhythm will change again. George jerked his hand away from his lips. It was time to stop biting his nails.