When the Bus Stopped

Chapter 19

"Hello?" He answered the call.

"Where are you?" Nigel's slightly frantic voice came tumbling down the line. "We're having a few technical difficulties with the lights and to top that off the sound guy spat the dummy and has left us with only one usable microphone. So, tonight your background singers won't be seen or heard."

"Oh." Alessandro struggled to feel concerned. He didn't know what was the matter with himself lately. He was too young to be having a mid-life crisis and yet too old to be acting like a reckless child.

His whole life, for the last twenty years, had been geared toward world domination - well at least on a musical level. And now... he felt nothing for it.

"Do you know when you will get here?" His frantic PA asked.

"I'm just leaving the river now, I'll be there in five minutes."

"Right," the voice was judgmental.

He knew that they'd started wondering. When no one could find him propping up the bar in the Very Important Person section of the Manor, drowning his endless sorrows in aged whisky, he knew that they must have begun to wonder who the woman was.

Alessandro figured it would be a nice change for them, they had been baffled by his slight depression... like, with as much money as he had, how could he complain about anything?

He could understand that. They had to worry about important things. Like if they failed to impress their boss they might be down the street with no name to cling to - struggling to pay their power bill.

If someone canceled a contract with Alessandro then all he needed to do was sell a house or cash up some shares. If worse came to worst then he could sell his story of woe to a reputable newspaper and walk away with a tidy sum.

But what they forgot to consider was at the end of the day they went home to their partners and kids and no-one bothered them. He on the other hand went home to nobody except for (on the odd occasion) a mass of paparazzi hounding him. He was lonely. Achingly lonely. When women fell in love with him they didn't fall in love with Daniello Bellucci they fell in love with the enigma of Alessandro Magno. They saw him in cologne ads and modeling all kinds of men's attire and they thought he was something he was not.

Every woman he'd dated since he was sixteen years old imagined him to be some kind of demigod. The moment he'd failed to be as relaxed, charismatic and carefree as he came across in marketing - and instead was forever taking calls in the middle of dinner - they'd left him. Some silently left and others blackened his name in the process. Sure to line their own pockets one last time.

Alessandro's jaw twitched. He'd thought twenty years ago that it was all a little too much, but now he had social media to contend with and Alessandro Magno lookalikes determined to get their kit off and put his name to their naked photos. He had hired not one but three PRs in separate parts of the globe who were constantly contacting him about some new fiasco that was brewing. Lately he had even failed to take their calls.

He was forgetting about Alessandro and reconnecting with Daniello. Daniello the young sixteen year old boy that had been overwhelmed by the greatness of his alter ego. So oppressed that he'd almost disappeared.

And then she'd breathed life into that man again.

Alessandro's tyres crunched through the gravel as he steered his car into the vineyard's back entrance. He could see the stage and lights from all the way back here, snug in the midst of the vines of prime pinot noir grapes. He could see Nigel advancing quickly. In one hand he held a copy of the local paper and in the other a small glass of warmed cognac. Alessandro thumped his head on the steering wheel in shame. What would Lucy think if she could see the demands he made on his staff?