Prague (64 page)

"That is one hundred percent nonsense. Categorical lies."

"Delicious. A stirring denial at last. Felonious sexual blackmail? Sort of. Violation of this paper's trust? Yes, but it wasn't serious, more a matter of tone. Stalking? Definite no. Mistah Proyce. are you still here?"

Finally, no. John wasn't. The large clock that hung in the newsroom comfortably settled its minute hand, with a booming click, on the number three, fifteen minutes after his arrival, and John walked out the front door with the three items he could rightfully claim as his own. fust outside the door. Karen

Whitley stopped him, kissed him, whispered, "If there's anything I can do ..." and hurried back into the office.

Despite several efforts over several hours, no one answered at her strangely empty bungalow, and so, with dreamy speed and sudden nightfall, the set changes and John is now knocking on a door back across the river, in Pest. (He took a different route on the return; he couldn't risk seeing the cat.) He realized—with that evanescent clarity which could be forgotten an instant later—that he had made a mistake of categorization: Emily was not serious but a little off balance. He knocked at the door of the only serious person he knew. She would provide unemotional, even-keel straight talk, shower cold reality on the gooey unreality of the day.

She opened the door and left it open. Without a word, she walked back across the room to her work. She perched atop a paint-stained wooden stool, picked up a brush but immediately put it down again. With a twist of her hips, she spun the stool to face him. "So what happened last night? Did you fuck the farm girl? Did you?"

"Why are you mad?"

"You did. I can't believe this."

"Stop it. I came here because I, I just need to talk. I just got tired, I'm a little—"

"Please. Stop. Just stop. Steady that little waver I hear, okay? Explain something to me: How did / become the person you come crying to? Once, okay, but that was a weird little exception. I'm the least qualified person in the world for the Job. I don't think there could possibly be anyone less interested in it, okay? This is exactly why we have house rules." She spun from her hips again and picked up her brush.

"Are you jealous?"

She threw the brush end over end across the room, where it struck a dirty full-length mirror with a feeble tick-click-tick and two smears of blue on the glass. "Oh my God. You people kill me. You people fucking kill me. If I'm jealous, believe me it's nothing to be proud of, stud. I couldn't be more disgusted with all of us."

"Please talk to me. I feel like—"

"Really, John, whatever you fee], well, that's life, and not even nearly the most interesting part. So spare me."

He fell backward onto her bed and tossed a crusty, paint-splattered tennis

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ball at the ceiling, catching it just above his face. "Since you ask, no, 1 didn't 'fuck the farm girl,' though why you of all people would care, I'm at a loss to figure. I've known her longer than I've known you. I've always felt about her. I don't know, like—"

"Christ almothcrfuckingmighty." With a clatter, the easel dove to the floor and slid along its back into its fast-approaching reflection. John caught the falling tennis ball and remained paralyzed, one hand clutching the yellow fuzz as if he were a yarn-batting cat turned to stone. "Listen, dumb-ass, we're all in love with someone else, okay? Everybody is. Every last idiot I know. It's a bit of a bore. If we all talked about our secret little aches, they wouldn't be secret anymore and we'd all be so similar, we'd probably kill ourselves." She stared at him and took a deep breath. Her tone changed to something quieter and forcibly kinder: "Please, please, please, get out of here and let me work."

He lay in his own bed. Emily's bungalow had persistently proclaimed its emptiness, and her telephone its unreceptive solitude. His own answering machine played no less than fifteen clicking hang-ups and one long, menacing message from "Lee Reilly. want to converse with you about some complaints from a numerous number of the female-gendered members of the embassy staff, had several complaints, in fact, sir, filed by many of our ladies regarding what can only be termed—" He shut off his machine. He lay in his own bed. and the words of that favorite song ran through his head, albeit with a Hungarian-accented voice he didn't recognize. He dipped in and out of sleep, like a child negotiating cold seawater. Nadja entered through the French window from his balcony, and she carried moonlight with her. "It's a matter of willpower, John Price," she said in her leathery movie-star voice. "Because strong people just don't." "Which?" he asked her. "Don't feel it or don't talk about it?" "Exactly," she said, and sat on his chest with a faint but distinctive cracking noise. Slowly, caressingly, she ran her young, transparent, moonlit finger over his closed lips. Slowly, gently, she worked the finger into his mouth, using first her transparent, moonlit nail, then her ancient fieshlcss knuckle—at first a gently sexual probing. John suddenly began to grow fearful, but he did not know how to manipulate the muscles in his jaw to prevent her intrusion. She sliced her fingernail through his tongue with a ripping noise, then, with the lightest of glancing touches, caused his teeth to crumble. With his punctured, twitching tongue held in place, the teeth tumbled down his gagging throat, except for one outsize molar atop two arching walrus-tusk roots, which she pulled from his mouth and held between thumb and forefinger for his widc-

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open, weeping eyes. "Something to include in the report," she whispered, and brushed an elderly hand over his groin, walked out the way she came, through the closed French window, taking the moonlight with her.

He slept a great deal, often but not exclusively at night. Lee Reilly left him several messages, as did Karen Whitley. From Lee Reilly's gravelly Deep South voice and ornate G.I, phraseology he tried to reconstruct the man himself; he crafted a bald, portly, squinting, mustachioed ex-marine (who resembled a television private detective now in dubbed syndication on German cable). He saw several different flesh approximations of this composite sketch on the streets of Budapest, and tried, always too late, not lo make eye contact. It would be difficult to find her without running into Reilly or his men. How would he bear up under a beating? Would his assailants whisper hot threats or merely rely on the irresistible force of unincriminating wordlessness? Would they declare themselves or pose as Hungarian toughs, hopped-up club kids, Gypsies? Black eyes. Broken nose. Kicks in the ribs or the crotch. And then into Boris Karloff Memorial for some recycled stitches from a smelly, smoking nurse.

Still she did not come home. When her bungalow door opened after a painfully long closure and he vaulted up from the wooden bench across the street, he only came upon an exiting Julie. "Hey. you! We haven't seen you in ages." she cooed, so entirely normal. "How've you been? No, she's on a leave. Like, two weeks is standard, but 1 don't really know. She didn't say. But, hey. I'll tell her you came by. But you should come out with us sometime soon, even ihough she won't be there, hmm? Oh, I'm sorry, honey, that was mean, wasn't it? Between you and me, I think you guys would be really great together. Well of course we talk about it. silly. But there's no telling Emmy anything, you know? I'm sure you know. She's like. well, whatever. Anyhow you should come. Julie and 1 arc going out tonight, to the new ..."

He sat in the Gerbeaud—if not that same day, then a day very much like it. He had time to kill, and it was obediently lining up for execution. The days lazily refused to differentiate themselves. She might come to the Gerbeaud, maintaining fine old traditions.

Reilly had stopped leaving messages and so, his collar high, John braved the embassy lobby again. A different marine (or the same marine with a different mask) said. "MissOliver'sonleavesiry'allwannaleaveamessage?" John shook his head at the metal speaker. He left the building as a discreet limousine was discarding its passenger onto the sidewalk. John recognized the ambassador. Robin Hood from Halloween. remembered her hands tightening the

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laces of his T.incoln-green jerkin. "Sh-sh-sh-she's on leave, son," he stuttered at John's sudden sidewalk question as machine-gun-toting Hungarian police circled them, facing outward for potential attackers, a cocoon of blue-vinyl backs providing sudden and disorienting outdoor privacy for their impromptu interview. "Where did she go?" John demanded. "Y-y-you sound like the French am-am-arnhassador's wife. 'Whc-whc-where is zee lovely Emilie, htirit We are wccshing to make a deen-air of 'er?' But, son. as I t-t-told Madame Le-Le-Le-Le, leaves are pri-private matters." Cued by signals too subtle for John to notice, the shell of policemen opened at one end and the ambassador was absorbed into his building. John watched the black wrought-iron trellis shut as the diplomat graciously acknowledged Old Peter's creaky but formal bow. The police melted away into slim booths and around corners. The Andean band was somewhere close by, guitars and pipes, mountains and condors, love and vengeance, cassettes for sale.

The doorbell rang, was ringing, had been ringing, would soon stop ringing—a spray of verb tenses showered his sleep until he stumbled blearily to the door. "Dummy, don't you have an alarm clock?" Charles was dressed in sneakers, torn jeans, and a T-shirt of a rock band long oul of fashion. "Wake up, dude. You can sleep in the van and smash it on your way home. Not my problem at that point."

The orange van, MEDIAN HUNG ARIA painted in black on its flanks, held Charles's possessions in its belly. Charles drove, hunched forward, his chin on his knuckles on the wheel as the radio crackled in and out of AM range. "You seem triumphant," John said as they merged onto a highway indistinguishable from the highways of Ohio. California, Ontario, Nebraska.

"I only seem that way because I'm triumphant."

Charles was the first person whose elevation to minor celebrity John had ever witnessed (or helped effect). The young powerhouse who made his name in the Wild East was going home to a plum job with some New York VC firm or investment bank or hedge fund or something, some financial nonsense the details of which John could not trouble himself to bring into focus. Charles was hailed as the only hero-survivor of his old firm's fast and self-inflicted decline. even in articles John hadn't written, planted, or inspired. And now he was returning to his world, via Zurich, like a Crusader (a white crucifix on a tail fin gules) back from a conquered Holy Land, coming to reassure his people that their Gospel is true and powerful, the Red devils convert with ease. "Did you see Imrc to say good-bye?"

"Yes, Mom. I said good-bye. You know, his vaunted 'communication skills' "—Charles released the wheel to provide visual quotation marks, and the van veered into the slow lane—"are greatly overstated. I mean, 1 asked him, 'Imre, is it not true that, barring great fluctuations in the value of the forint— and interrupt me if that seems more or less likely to you than I'm assuming— then the value of the press's Viennese holdings in relation to its Hungarian holdings will only steadily rise over time, even assuming Hungary were accepted into the European Union in the next ten years, or not?' And, John, he blinked twice, which I'm told means yes."

The last of Pest's buildings approached, passed, ceded the field to the steady hum of power lines and fences interrupted by eager emerald signs, each correcting its predecessor as to how far away the airport lurked.

"Will you miss Budapest, considering your big triumph here?"

"No."

"No, really. Will you?"

"Really? No."

"Charles, please. Aren't you sad to leave? You must have some feelings about, about . . ." John trailed off. and Charles honked and eloquently condemned another driver's crimes.

"I have to admit to being a little disappointed in you. JP. When I met you, I had high hopes for you, but listen to you now. You've allowed yourself to become one of those boring little beggars who goes around pleading with people to share their feelings. You're a horrible little feeling-beggar, rattling your can. The world does not need more discussion of our feelings. That's not a good route; it doesn't work. Trust me. I've looked into this. I've given this some very concerted thought. The people who talk about their feelings are miserable. I'm not for repression, but really, you can't possibly lake feelings seriously. Trust me. this is the best advice I can offer you as your friend." He tapped the wheel pensively in rhythm with the British pop pushing through the AM static. "You're very much like me, you know, as much like me as anyone I've met in Hun country, fust without the focus and, and the willingness to pay certain prices. And the charisma, obviously. The fact is—and this is science, John—the less you talk about them, the less you even notice them, until finally, you can become a real human being and not some ball of feelings bouncing up and down all day staring at your own ass." He looked over to John, and the van veered to the right. "But fine, my little beggar, fine, here they are then, my handsome feelings: I hates it here. I hales this filthy li'l town. I hates the Hungarians, chum.