MR. BAD GUY (ENGLISH VERSION)

BACK CHAT

A couple of reporters walked up to them with their mikes at hand. Carl as driver and bodyguard tried to keep them at bay.

- Enzo, is it true that your AIDS test came back negative?

For some seconds that Enzo felt like centuries, he kept in his mind that cannonball made question. Aids? What are those two talking about? After the hesitation he recovered quickly pretending that real blow they gave him was not there at all. Tarek, just some steps behind him, as usual, grabbed unconsciously Taron's waist to not fall. What was it all about?

It was no mistery that British press always attacked him. As the rest of the world adored him and regarded him one of the best actors of his generation, in his own country the tabloids always spoke badly of him. Not even in the twenty-first century people could be ambiguous without paying the price for it.

- I don't know what you're talking about. Let me fucking walk.

His publicist was going to get mad for not keeping his mouth shut. But as soon as he laid eyes on her, he also had one or two things to tell her. How the hell nobody had told him about that information in the press? Did he pay her fortunes only to show off among the elite not doing her fucking job?

Enzo arranged an emergency session at home as soon as he arrived. With his agent, manager, publicist, lawyers. He was going to fire them all, on the spot. He called Pauline to rip her to shreds as his manager. But with that misterious telepathy they shared, she send him a short and firm whatsapp that don't need reply. "Enzo, come home as soon as possible".

Enzo, intrigued, did it. He got into the car and Carl drove him the ridiculous distance that kept her flat apart from his. Enzo didn't walk anywhere around London since years. No matter he was only going round the corner as now.

Getting into the cosy Pauline's apartment, he found her very serious. She invited him to sit down the sofa in the living room and offered some tea. She handed him a big envelope with somber face.

- What's this?

- The tests results of your sperm donation.

- What's wrong?

- I didn't open up. I just know it's impossible you can be the donor of my child.

- But, what the hell...?

Enzo ripped eagerly the envelope off. He put out the papers and started to follow with his big eyes line by line the relevant explanations in that medical report.

- What is it, Enzo? Please, tell me.

Pauline had seen just a few times Enzo's face so transfigured. He was trying to cope with that medical diagnosis.

- Talk to me, Enzo. I beg you.

Enzo grabbed so firmly that roll of papers, that he clenched them on his long fingers.

- It's not possible being your donor, indeed.

- What's wrong?

- The tests came back positive in HIV and hepatitis C.

For an instant Pauline was agape with frightening astonishment.

- Let me read it -she mumbled with trembling voice.

As Pauline watched with her baffled blue eyes the medical words, Enzo couldn't react. It seemed they had injected him heroin and his limbs were numbed. At the end Pauline threw to his arms crying and then he could react to her touch. She felt him shivering and more fragile than ever. But she only allowed herself two tears against his neck before trying to recover and saying something sensible.