Prague (43 page)

You 're common, you 're beneath me You 've nothing of value to bequeath me I've better choices for my bed Yet I can't get you out of my head.

Your crimes no one could defend

I often hope you 'II meet a ghastly end

Still, every night I think of better lines I might have said

Because I can't get you out of my head.

I have some sort-of friends who still insist and sing your praises They scold me and say I've misunderstood you They shake their heads at all my cool, cruel practiced phrases Then look away and sigh, "Oh, how couldyou?"

But I don't bother with them anymore

No friends of mine could defend such a ... [unintelligible moan]

Surely I can face the future without dread,

If only I could get you out of my head.

John was awoken, shaken, by the bartender, the last one there in the clean and well-lighted club, the man responsible for locking up and shutting off the stereo, the output of which John had just dream-requisitioned as his own composition, and the two of them walked out together into the first gray premonitions of dawn.

MONTHS
   
LATER,
  
ON
  
A
  
SMOOTH
  
BUT
  
NEVERTHELESS
  
STOMACH-CHURNING

flight home, examining a plastic-coated map of Budapest unfolded on her tray table, Emily found two possible, not quite mutually exclusive symbols for that day months before. One: It had been August 20, 1990, the first celebration of Hungary's national day under its proper name (the Feast of Saint Istvan) since 1950, a statement of independence and self-determination. Two: Her path that evening as traced on this map of the city—from 5 P.M. to 3 A.M., seven stops in the shape of a spiral, circling a drain.

Five o'clock, top floor of Liberty Square. In the spacious office, she held three different ties up to the ambassador's jacket selection for the festivities to be held at Parliament that night. "I think we have a winner here, sir."

"Thanks, Em, lost without you. Listen, we've had a lot of late nights in a row here. Why don't you take tonight off, celebrate with friends instead of me.

Watch the fireworks down by the river. You could use a break." A simple act of employer generosity, although of course she could not stop herself from wondering if she had complained or, worse, somehow unknowingly shown by her behavior that she needed his kindness.

"That's very good of you, sir. Let me run that by Ed." "Ed's not the ambassador, Emily. Take the night off." "Of course, sir. I'm sorry. Thank you."

Five forty-five, upstairs responsibilities complete, actions logged, down one flight of stairs, other boss's office. "His Excellency told you to take the night off?" Ed asked, loosening his tie and splashing himself a tremendous vodka tonic, beginning his changeover for tonight's events at Parliament. "That's a wee bit peculiar, lassie. And profoundly frustrating to my universe, because I had a particular po-faced Jordanian I wanted you to bat your innocent eyelashes at this evening." He regained his office face. "Did you tell the ambassador that you needed"—and here comes another scolding. I'm probably breathing wrong, callow, no tone color, still somehow not Ken . . . but no, squeezing his lime wedge directly into his mouth, Ed had already moved on: "Well, no matter. Take the night off, then. I'll talk to H.E. m'self. Say—so big day tomorrow! Ken Oliver in the flesh, eh? I know you'll bring him by. Lot of people around the joint want to make the hero's acquaintance."

Two hours later, ashamed of her no longer deniable desire that her father not visit, she walked through the gathering crowds and the chatter of firecrackers until she was hungry enough to eat, and she ended up in a little six-table place just off the Elizabeth Boulevard, mostly because she was curious about what could justify the sign claiming Tex-Mex cuisine. She ate paprikas with red beans and canned jalapenos, drank Bulgarian beer, and tried to concentrate on her evening read, Tactical and Strategic Elements of the Mujaheddin Victory over the Red Army, by Col. Keith Finch, U.S. War College. She brushed blue corn chip dust out of the surprisingly impenetrable book's center, ordered a second beer, and began instead to write down all the sights of Budapest to show her father in the coming week. She had thought of three he might enjoy when she realized that he had probably been to Budapest at some point in his opaque career, though he had never said so, probably knew it better than she, would find easy everything she secretly found hard.

At the Gerbeaud, she found the Julies already in hilarious possession of a dusky patio corner, and she joined them for the eightieth reanalysis of Calvin's potential as Julie's soul mate. When the life had finally bled out of that whim-

pering topic, the other Julie told Emily, "Eric in Consular asked me about you again today. But he really is too creepy-looking, so I told him you were going out with John Price."

"Oh no, no. John's a little out there for me, thanks. My family would think he was a Martian." And they talked about entertaining Mr. Oliver for the coming week. "Does he want to see a lot of, like, farming stuff?" asked a Julie.

Caffeinated and pastried, they wandered to the river to watch the fireworks blossom over the palace. "And it celebrates what, exactly?" asked Julie, and Emily effortlessly rattled off the history of violent, well-loved Saint Istvan.

Eleven o'clock, A Hazam. As she took comfort in the overwhelming noise near the bar, she recalled a snippet of last year's required reading: Crowded nightclubs offer the advantage of both noise—as it is difficult to be overheard or recorded—and excuses, as there are any number of people you might justifiably be there to see. She danced agreeably with an egotistical dolt from Commercial Section, easily identifiable by his eye movements and mistimed jokes as a would-be fumbler (there: not so callow a Motivation Analysis, thank you very much) and actually (as she looked at him sweating under the steaming spotlights) reminiscent of the JV football player/aspiring drummer who had quickly relieved her of her girlish burden the fall of her sophomore year at Nebraska.

She smoothly declined the dolt's offer to take a walk, babe, citing Julie's blues as her responsibility and excuse to stay upstairs on a sofa. She watched Calvin-less Julie chat up a goateed American P.R. executive while she bore the brunt, all alone, of another hour of Julie's Calvinomics. And then, nearly midnight, nine hours until her father's plane was to land at Ferihegy Airport, she stood to go, dreading the looming Calvin rehash surely still to come back at the bungalow when: "Hey, it's the farmer's daughter at last. You don't come here often enough."

"Don't I?"

"I've been hoping to bump into you since we met."

"You have?"

"What are you drinking?"

"Why bump into me?"

"Because I've been thinking about you. You puzzle me."

"Me? That's hilarious. I don't puzzle anyone."

"Okay, right there. See, this is going to be fun, because I can tell when you're lying. So what are you drinking?"

"My friends were just leaving."

"Great. Do you want to go with them, or do you want to talk to me?" And the Julies don't mind at all, catch you later, and two hours pass in inexplicably perfect conversation, never veering anywhere near work or anything threatening. Even better than being listened to attentively (which is joy enough at the moment, after weeks of Ed and Calvin-chatter and the attentions of tonight's dolt and his brethren) is savoring her companion's spicy stew of complaints, passions, self-criticism, self-love, self-interest, and the sudden, unstrained compliments for things no one ever noticed about Emily before. That's what a compliment should feel like, she thinks, nearly misty-eyed: completely motiveless.

One in the morning. Off the noisy square (more rat-a-tat firecrackers for Saint Istvan) and suddenly swallowed in the charm of the dark and decrepit Pest streets, Emily would do anything to keep the conversation going, but her effort isn't necessary: The conversation thrums on its own internal power. "But how did you become you?" Emily asks, wants to know this more than anything, hypnotized as she is by the girl's irregularly shaped personality, which seemed to take no notice of any functional requirements but was instead the purely ornamental, unashamed expression of what any right-thinking person could only call selfishness. But in this one case, selfishness was suddenly—no other word would do—attractive. "Everything about you is so ... I haven't ever known anyone like you, I don't think."

"Well, that's because they don't allow us in Nebraska, as a rule." "Oh please, but please let's not bring up Nebraska." "Oh no, let's. Absolutely let's bring up Nebraska. If Nebraska makes you that uncomfortable, we are definitely going to talk about Nebraska. Nebraska, Nebraska, Nebraska."

"My father's coming to visit tomorrow."

"Good or bad thing? Because if it were my father, I'd ask you to steal me a gun from the embassy."

Two in the morning, too tired to stroll in circles anymore. A dark little cafe-bar only two tables wide. Up three narrow wooden steps to the back section behind the hanging drapes, the tiny room lit with hooded green lamps, the velvet banquettes the only seats, so they had to sit side by side, squeezed close together to reach the pear brandy on the tiny carved table. (It's best to avoid quiet, intimate eating places, as they are easily surveilled, both visually and audibly, and there is no excuse for your presence there if there is no overt justification for the meet.)

"When did you know you were an artist?" Emily asked.

"When I was about four. I cried if my mom wouldn't take me to the art museum. I could copy anything there by the time I was nine."

"I'd love to see your paintings."

"Really? I'd love to show them to you. We're pretty near my place right now, if you want." And only just then did she consciously know: floating exhausted in the small hours of the night, having the first undeniable fun she'd had in ages, dead tired, dreading her father's arrival, irritated at the self-imposed restrictions of her work, owed something for—but she stopped creating false justifications. They were, she scolded herself, dishonest. More to the point, they were irrelevant, as she could think of no reason to resist this attraction (managing with almost no effort to ignore the risk to her work, her family, her carefully constructed public persona, even to what she had long considered to be her true private one).

At three in the morning an artist's studio has an overpowering effect on outsiders, even people who don't like art in general or the artist's work in particular: the unfamiliar smells, the physical evidence of frustration, the naked presence of some success but vast amounts of failure, the obvious sacrifice of conventional values (cleanliness, order, luxury) for others (space, ventilation, light), the merely functional furniture splattered and ripped. The unmade, squeaking single bed.

"I've never done this before," said Emily.

"I know. I would've remembered."

"You know what I mean."

"That's not a very interesting story, I have to say."

"You can't tell anyone."

"Oh, that's original."

"I am totally unoriginal, aren't I? Why don't you hate me? Don't answer that. I'm sorry. It's just, this isn't me."

"Really? This part here?"

"You know what I mean. I don't even know how I got here... What? What did I say? I didn't mean you should stop."

"That's pathetic. Don't be a chicken-shit with me. I didn't drag you here. You're not drunk. You can go home now if you don't like this."

"You're right. I'm sorry."

"Of course I'm right. This is obviously you. It's just no one has ever told you so before."

And only then she allowed herself to recall that this was reckless, a career-ending offense if discovered, but that didn't alarm her. What alarmed her was how little she cared, how much she wanted to be her own creation and judge, how much she wanted to be like Nicky.