The Lady Waiting

Zyzak (The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel) returns with a rollicking tale of sex, money, and art theft. One afternoon in Los Angeles, Polish immigrant Wioletta picks up a glamorous hitchhiker, a woman named Bobby Sleeper. Wioletta introduces herself as Viva, and Bobby offers her a job as her live-in assistant. Bobby; her retired filmmaker husband, Sebastian; and their flamboyant houseguest, a playwright named Lance, introduce Viva to sprezzatura (“the art of studied nonchalance,” Lance explains). She quickly takes to their glitzy lifestyle, striking up sexual relationships with both Sebastian and Bobby, the latter of whom uses Viva as an accomplice to “fake-steal” a valuable Vermeer from her ex-husband, a Russian oligarch. The painting itself is missing from a German museum, and Bobby and the oligarch have a scheme going to split the multimillion-dollar reward for its safe return. Things take a turn, however, when one of Bobby’s other ex-husbands, Łyski, sneaks into her home, steals the painting from her closet, and absconds with it to Italy. Zyzak constructs a playful narrative, shuttling characters across the globe and into each other’s beds, and she takes advantage of Bobby’s loose-cannon nature to raise the stakes again and again. This is great fun. Agent: Richard Abate, 3 Arts. (May)