Nailing Down the Saint Read online

  Hollywood, fatherhood, levitation. This smart, funny, thought-provoking novel is full of surprises.

  Duncan Blake is a Kiwi filmmaker whose move to LA has not gone to plan. After a series of setbacks, he’s working at a chain restaurant, his marriage is on shaky ground after a porn-related faux pas and his son won’t stop watching Aladdin.

  When Duncan gets the chance to scout locations for a fêted director’s biopic of Saint Joseph of Copertino, it’s the lifeline he’s been searching for. But in Italy, in the footsteps of the seventeenth-century levitator, he must confront miracles, madness and the realities of modern movie making.

  A novel about the pursuit of dreams, the moral calculus this entails, and the possibility that the rational, materialist worldview isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

  REVIEWS OF PREVIOUS BOOKS

  ‘This book is of the moment, and is rightly at home on a global platform. Cliff is a talent to watch and set to take the literary world by storm.’ — Commonwealth Writers Prize judges on A Man Melting

  ‘A Man Melting heralds the arrival of an electrifying new voice on the New Zealand writing scene.’ — New Zealand Herald

  ‘Craig Cliff adds to the canon, but with such ambition, creativity and sheer energy.’ — Charlotte Graham, New York Times on The Mannequin Makers

  ‘This is an engaging and deadly smart novel.’ — Sam Finnemore, New Zealand Listener on The Mannequin Makers

  Contents

  PART ONE: MAY 2017

  HOLLYWOOD/BABYLON

  RETURN TO CASTLE WOLFENSTEIN

  ADULT-FILM-ACTOR

  MACK ATTACKS

  COLONISTA

  TINSELTOWN IN THE RAIN

  ERGO

  OSIMO

  PART TWO: MAY–JUNE 2017

  OUT OF THE NOW

  AN INCREDIBLE ROMANTIC

  TRINITY-LITE

  DOWNSIZING

  ABSOLUTE ELSEWHERE

  CURIO BAY

  TOÄD

  THE ROAD

  MANSPREADING

  PIETRARUBBIA

  ZERO G

  SCRUTINY OF HEARTS

  DEMOLITION MAN

  THE WHEEL AND THE TELESCOPE

  SASSI

  ABOUT US

  FUCK NAPLES

  ASSISI

  SIGN OF THE TIMES

  DEUS EX

  DAY FOR NIGHT

  THE BATON

  SISTER SILVER SHOES

  LOOKBOOK

  NAPOLI

  FLOWERS

  SERENITÀ

  THE LENS CAP

  STREGONERIA

  RITZ

  THE NAMES

  SOLLEVARE

  STENDERE

  SVAGO

  MARTINA FRANCA

  STRANGE TORPEDO

  THREE CALLS

  STAY LOST

  PLAYLIST

  GRACE, TOO

  THREE NAILS

  COPERTINO

  PART THREE: SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2019

  THE MAN IN THE BROWN DRESS

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  FOLLOW PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE

  A portent … does not occur contrary to nature, but contrary to what is known of nature.

  — Saint Augustine (354–430 AD)

  I think that it is a different climate today. I do not think Oliver Stone gets JFK made today. Unless they can make JFK fly. If they can’t make Malcolm X fly, with tights and a cape, it’s not happening. It is a whole different ball game.

  — Spike Lee (2012)

  LA VITA DI SAN GIUSEPPE DA COPERTINO

  THE LIFE OF SAINT JOSEPH OF COPERTINO

  1603 — Giuseppe Maria Desa born to Felice and Franceschina Desa in Copertino (sometimes spelled Cupertino in English), in the southern Italian province of Puglia.

  1614–19 — Bedridden and unable to attend school until he is healed by a hermit in Galatone.

  1620 — Applies to join the Order of Friars Minor Conventual (aka Conventual Franciscans) at Grottella, near Copertino, but is rejected as a simpleton incapable of being educated. Joins the Capuchins at Martina Franca as a lay brother.

  1621 — Asked to leave Capuchins after eight months. Returns to Copertino.

  1625 — Finally accepted by the Conventual Franciscans at Grottella. Begins by tending the stable but is eventually allowed to study for the priesthood.

  1628 — Ordained as a priest. His extraordinary feats — levitation, reading minds, predicting the future, being in two places at once, miraculous cures — become more frequent and widely known. These will continue, barring a few dry periods, until his death.

  1634–35 — Forced to travel around Puglia with the Father Provincial. Accused in Giovinazzo of acting as another Messiah. Ecclesiastical tribunal in Rome begins looking into his case.

  1638 — Appears before the Inquisition in Naples.

  1639 — Rome declares Giuseppe’s innocence, but orders him to live secluded from others in the Sacred Convent in Assisi. Despite orders forbidding it, an audience with Giuseppe is highly sought after among the nobility of Europe.

  1653 — Sent to the Capuchins in Pietrarubbia, but lasts three months before his popularity forces another move, this time to Fossombrone.

  1657 — Giuseppe’s final move: to the Conventual Franciscans in Osimo.

  1663 — Death of Giuseppe in Osimo.

  1735 — Beatification.

  1767 — Canonisation of San Giuseppe da Copertino.

  PART ONE

  MAY 2017

  HOLLYWOOD/BABYLON

  It might never have happened — the return of his flying dreams, the bursts of precognition, his entanglement with a cult of levitators — if Vilma Vegas hadn’t stepped into his path as he carried a stack of leather-bound menus to the host’s podium at Sforza’s. ‘After tonight,’ she said, slipping a clear plastic sleeve on top of the menus, ‘you might be interested in these.’ He looked down. Headshots. Hers was an invented name, he was convinced, but both her waitress résumé and now these headshots said the same thing: Vilma Vegas. Total commitment to the role. Admirable.

  ‘You can’t—’ he began.

  ‘I know who you are, Duncan Blake.’

  ‘I’m not hiding.’

  ‘You’re not exactly broadcasting it, either.’

  For a moment Duncan wanted her to articulate it. What light was he concealing behind this stack of menus, beneath his company-issue black and white checked shirt? And how did she think he should broadcast whatever it was? Have his IMDb profile (KNOWN FOR: FURY’S REACH — PRODUCER; CURIO BAY — DIRECTOR; MIST (SHORT) — DIRECTOR) tattooed across his forehead? Tell everyone he served, every jobseeker he interviewed, every delivery person and observer from Corporate that the CIA’s file on him was probably still open? That two years ago he was unceremoniously dumped from the director’s chair of his first major motion picture after three days of principal photography and he hadn’t made anything since? That Echo Park’s parting gift — letting him retain a producer’s credit, thus keeping his name forever associated with the train wreck that was Fury’s Reach — now seemed their final cruelty?

  He exhaled and nudged the sleeve of headshots with his chin. A deliberately awkward gesture that meant: Must be getting on …

  Vilma didn’t budge.

  Ten seconds passed and they were still standing there in the aisle between the server station and the bar, Vilma trying to catch his eye, him staring at her name badge, thinking about how he must appear to her. A straight-laced assistant manager, tattooless, on the slight side of medium build, short black hair hinting at curls, his two-week beard greying at the chin. Vanilla, vanilla, vanilla. Perhaps she’d watched one too many episodes of Undercover Boss and thought this was a disguise. That surely someone with any talent c
ouldn’t look so ordinary, so at home with Sforza’s embroidered on his left breast. That if she confronted him he would give up the ruse, pull off his hairpiece to reveal a Lynchian pompadour, grow six inches, and let out the corset that was concealing his true and imposing heft.

  ‘I’m wasting my time, aren’t I?’ she said and reached for her headshots. ‘At first, I thought: surely this is part of a plan. Your plan. At least research for a film. But now, that look, your eyes—’ She held up her hands as if framing a close-up of his baby blues that were more like murky greys these days, each iris radiating tiny red bolts of parental sleep deprivation and service industry shit-taking. ‘I can’t see it.’ She contracted her hands, two sudden implosions. ‘I just can’t see it. And it’s such a fucking downer, man, to think LA, for you, has come to this. Fucking America, man.’

  ‘Is this your break?’ he asked, knowing her shift had only started ninety minutes ago. He could initiate an employee counselling session for this breach of the Staff Manual. Could cite any number of clauses. Conducting Personal Business. Solicitation and Distribution of Literature. Throw the fucking book at her for this.

  For what?

  He rolled his head from side to side. To ease the tension from holding two dozen menus so long and so pointlessly. To keep from losing his religion in a Michael Stipean fit of elbow knocks and yelps. Nothing pissed him off more than people seeing his current situation as an apt metaphor for the state of the movie business, or the US, or the whole fucking world.

  His dad did it on his last visit from New Zealand (and in every Skype call since).

  His sister did it in her handmade cards for birthdays and wedding anniversaries.

  Mack, his lone female friend from high school — the one who’d dropped out of his life until a fresh email ribbing him about the Fury’s Reach debacle — seemed to do little else. ‘You’re a creative genius, babe, working in a restaurant franchise that never had a heart to begin with.’

  But when his co-workers did it? That was the worst.

  It was true that he had gone from directing a decently backed adaptation of the first book in a successful young adult trilogy to working at Sforza’s North Hollywood in the space of nine weeks. And it was true that the chain of Sforza’s Cucinas that had emerged over the last decade was — no argument here — heartless. According to online and fry-station scuttlebutt, the whole concept was dreamed up by GastroCorp’s VP of Product Development rather than sprouting organically from a single successful Mom-and-Pop. Not that GastroCorp hadn’t tried that route when its board commanded diversification of its fast-food-heavy portfolio. It’s just that every two-bit restaurateur with a local following dreamed of franchising their concept to fuck and had over capitalised to the point they all proved impossible to fleece. Enter Sforza’s, with its table service, tightly restricted bar and wholesome food just like Nonna used to make. Four Sforza’s ‘units’, as restaurants were referred to by Corporate, appeared in LA in such quick succession that no one could remember which was the first. Each unit was engineered to be identical and timeless. The way the decor blurred the boundaries of kitsch and bland. The reproductions of Old Country monuments shot with Old Timey filters on every wall. The red and white tablecloths. The wax-drooling candles set in straw-wrapped Chianti bottles. The looping soundtrack of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Louis Prima, Buddy Greco, Vic Damone and Jerry Vale. The prevalence of pretty servers in tight brown blouses because isn’t that the kind of thing dads like? So yeah, no one was going to dispute that Sforza’s, as a concept or a reality, wasn’t deeply troubling and maybe even symptomatic of a wider malaise that the American people had wilfully ushered in by driving out to the nearest interstate for $7 baby back ribs on Wednesdays, constantly demanding more for less, preferring forced geniality over genuine interaction, and believing — still — as evidence to the contrary continued to gather in the periphery of their lives like a huddle of homeless people beneath an underpass, that all it took to succeed in America was the right work ethic and, come to think of it, good teeth. Yes, all right, that much Duncan was willing to lay at the many identical feet of Sforza’s. But to bring him into it? As if his current lull was:

  a) totally foreseeable,

  b) somehow linked to the perils of late capitalism, and

  c) he had no plan to get out of it?

  C’mon!

  ‘Well, when are you on a break?’ Vilma asked with narrowed eyes, ‘coz I got more to say.’

  ‘Two,’ he said.

  ‘Out by the dumpsters?’

  He gave a tiny nod, as if they were organising an illicit rendezvous.

  Despite the fact Sforza’s was genetically engineered to colonise every community with twenty-five thousand or more potential diners, GastroCorp’s rush to bring the concept to market meant there had been oversights. The Staff Manual, for example, was pretty much a straight copy of an old Applebee’s Employee Handbook, with identifying brands and phrases changed but slapdash pagination errors and flat-out inexplicable omissions. Like, somehow, the section forbidding visible tattoos or body piercing. The responsible drudge at Corporate was fired, no doubt, and the oversight amended in the second-tranche roll-out of twenty-five units across Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico, but by then Sforza’s LA locations had become the refuge of recent arrivals with showbiz aspirations but too much ink. It lent the family restaurants an edginess that, against all logic, seemed to work. A slice of Portland inside a slice of Little Italy in the city on Earth most immune to irony or cognitive dissonance.

  Vilma was new — a month or so into her year-long haul before she’d start accruing vacation leave and another year before she could take any of it — but she could have been Sforza’s LA poster child. The big Mattel eyes. Her pinch-of-this, pinch-of-that ethnicity. The snakes, ’forties pinups and frangipani-blossom tattoos that emerged from every opening of her tight brown Sforza’s shirt. Fun, flirty, a whiff of dissolution. She looked like the first girl to get it in a slasher flick, which is a role she’d absolutely take if given the opportunity. Even as he had this thought, Duncan cursed the ease with which he’d fallen back into this LA-induced cycle of chauvinism, misanthropy and — here it comes — apathy.

  He spent the rest of the lunch service inside the giant carved-out melon that was his head concocting better versions of the day’s dialogue, better ways to block each scene, while his autonomous vessel smiled, frowned, apologised and appeased until he found himself out on an upturned San Pellegrino crate between the cardboard dumpster and the food-waste dumpster. Vilma arrived a minute later, carrying her own plastic crate.

  ‘You don’t mind me saying Fury’s Reach sucked hard, do you?’

  Duncan closed his eyes.

  Vilma continued, lighting a cigarette. ‘I mean, it clearly wasn’t your fault. Who knows what might have happened if they kept you on. But in the first place, the studio should have, you know? Why get someone with your eye for landscape, your less-than-mainstream leanings, to kick-off a franchise set entirely on a spaceship?’

  That she had seen Curio Bay, his first feature, and maybe his shorts, took him aback, made him bite.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘why would I accept the job?’

  ‘You’re not serious, right?’ She took a drag from her cigarette and exhaled, going for something, some look. Maybe Gilda. Maybe Basic Instinct. ‘After what I’ve been saying “yes” to in this town, and you feel sorry for yourself for signing on to make a movie for Echo Park?’

  ‘What have you been saying “yes” to, Vilma?’

  ‘Look. Maybe you blew it and that’s that. Finito. But maybe you’ll get another shot. I’m coming from a place of pure self-interest here. I don’t know anyone else who’s ever had that kinda bank behind them, even if it was for a nanosecond, even if they were using you. They were, weren’t they?’

  It was Duncan’s turn to shrug.

  ‘Because,’ Vilma continued, ‘maybe you will turn it around somehow, get on board something else. All I’m saying is, r
emember me. Maybe you’ll write something—’

  ‘I’m not writing at the moment.’

  ‘When was the last time you got laid?’

  ‘And that has got what to do with—’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I’m married.’

  ‘I know that. You got a kid, too. I asked around. You’re not hiding, remember? I wasn’t propositioning you, Duncan Blake. This isn’t that kind of intervention. You should fuck your wife. It’ll do you both the world of good.’

  ‘Her parents are staying.’

  ‘Jesus. The insurmountables. Might as well curl up and die.’

  ‘I don’t know why you think you can read me, Vilma. That you can talk to me like this. As if you understand.’

  ‘You’re right. I don’t get you. Do you even want it anymore? Is there any hunger left? Like —’ she paused, pushed one hip higher than the other and rested her hand on it, a power pose ripped straight from a Beyoncé video — ‘I saw you that time Frank Motta came in, my first week.’ The way she said his name. Like a detonation. ‘You greet him, you bring his ravioli—’

  ‘Manicotti. Always the veal manicotti.’

  ‘—and you don’t drop a fucking hint you’re this talented guy?’

  ‘A talented Assistant Manager?’

  ‘Stop. You shit on yourself and you’re shitting on all of us too, white man. There ain’t no one here that doesn’t want to make movies, be in movies, do soundtracks for movies.’

  He lifted his eyebrows to mean both Whatever and Sorry.

  ‘You see that article in the Reporter?’ she said, dialling down the fierce. ‘Says that Motta’s back in town?’

  ‘Huh?’

  She pulled her phone from her Sforza’s-branded server’s pouch, ignoring the Cellphones and Other Devices clause of the Manual that demanded phones remain in a server’s locker until end of shift. ‘Killian tweeted it this morning. Here—’ She passed him her phone. It was a typical breadcrumb of a Hollywood Reporter article. Frank Motta was seen in LA yesterday and expects to be here till Wednesday. Word is Tirami Sù, his forever-delayed Saint Joseph of Copertino biopic, is back in pre-production. No actors are currently attached to the project. The article ended with a hyperlink to a longread about Motta’s infamous, unfilmable passion project, which Duncan didn’t need to click.