Looking for a distraction, he opened the tin again and took out the postcard, noting once more the deliberate way in which the words “silver” and “rain” had been underlined. If “silver rain” was indeed a message—and he had no real evidence that it was—what did it mean to the mysterious Caliskan, to whom the postcard was addressed?
He put the card aside as Greta came into the bedroom.
“I told you not to wait,” she said.
“It’s still raining,” Floyd replied. “Anyway, I was just going through this stuff again.” He looked into Greta’s face, noticing that her eyes were wet with tears and fatigue. “How is she?” he asked.
“She’s still alive, which is something.”
Floyd smiled politely, although privately he wondered if the kindest thing would not have been for the woman to have died before Greta arrived. “I made some tea,” he said. “The kettle’s still warm.”
Greta sat down next to him on the bed. “Do you mind if I smoke instead?”
Floyd stuffed the postcard back into the tin. “Go right ahead.”
Greta lit her cigarette and smoked it wordlessly for at least a minute before speaking again. “The doctors call it a respiratory obstruction,” she said, then took another drag on the cigarette. “They mean lung cancer, although they won’t come out and say it. The doctors say there’s nothing anyone can do for her. It’s just a question of time.” She laughed hollowly. “She says it’s all the cigarettes she smoked. She told me I should stop. I told her I already had, for the sake of my singing voice.”
“I think we can allow you one or two white lies,” Floyd said.
“Anyway, maybe it wasn’t the cigarettes. Twenty years ago they had her working on the armament production lines. A lot of women her age are unwell now, because of all the asbestos they had to work with.”
“I can believe it,” Floyd said.
“Sophie spoke to the doctor yesterday. They say a week now, maybe ten days.”
Floyd took her hand and squeezed it. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what this is like for you. If there was anything I could do—”
“There isn’t anything anyone can do,” Greta said bitterly. “That’s the point.” She took another hit from the cigarette. “Every morning the doctor comes around and gives her some morphine. That’s all they can do.”
Floyd looked around the dismal little room. “Are you going to be all right here? You don’t sound as if you’re in the best state of mind to be cooped up in here. If you’ve said goodnight to your aunt, she won’t know if you leave and come back first thing in the—”
She cut him off. “I’m staying here. It’s where I told her I’d be.”
“It was just an offer.”
“I know.” Greta waved her cigarette distractedly. “I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. But even if I hadn’t promised to stay here, I don’t need any more complications in my life at the moment.”
“And I count as a complication?”
“Right now, yes.”
Without wanting to sound confrontational, Floyd said, “Greta, there must have been a reason for that letter. It wasn’t just because you needed a ride to Montparnasse, surely?”
“No, it wasn’t just that.”
“What, then? Something to do with the way you spoke to that jackass at the checkpoint?”
“You noticed?”
“I couldn’t help it.”
Greta smiled thinly, perhaps remembering the way she had spoken: that small, meaningless instant of triumph. “He said that mouthy German girls might have trouble with their passports in a year or two. Well, he’s right—I’m sure of that. But it won’t matter to me.”
“Why not?”
“Because I won’t be here. I’m taking the flying boat to America as soon as I’m finished here with my aunt.”
“America?” Floyd echoed, as if he might have misheard her.
“I knew it wasn’t happening with you and Custine. As I said, that’s why I left Paris. But what I didn’t count on was getting the same feeling with the other band.” Greta rubbed her eyes, perhaps to keep herself from sleeping. “We were in Nice one evening. The show had gone well and we were sitting around in the bar afterwards, accepting drinks from the clientele.”
“Nice work if you can get it,” Floyd said. “After Custine and I finish, we usually go out of our way to avoid the clientele.”
Greta shook her head. “Always putting yourself down, Floyd. Always living in the past and clinging to your own cherished sense of inadequacy. Is it any wonder things don’t work out for you?”
“About this meeting in the bar.”
“A man was there,” Greta said. “An American: a fat man with a bad suit, a worse haircut and a very thick wallet.”
“There are always consolations. Who was he?”
“He didn’t tell any of us at first, just said he was ‘in town’ and that he’d parked his boat in the marina at Cannes. He told us he liked the band, although he made a few pointed remarks about how we needed to keep up with the times if we were ever going to ‘get ahead.’ He meant we were old-fashioned, but good at what we did.”
“I hear that a lot as well,” Floyd said.
“Well, the man kept us in drinks for the evening. But you know what those guys are like—after a few hours they barely knew what planet they were on, let alone what club they were in. With them taken care of, the man started concentrating on me. Said he was a television producer.”
“Television,” Floyd echoed, as if it was something he vaguely recalled someone mentioning once.
“It’s bigger in America than it is here,” Greta said, “and it’s growing by the year. They say that if you can afford a new auto, you can afford a new television.”
“It’ll never catch on.”
“Maybe it won’t, but the point is that I have to try. I have to see for myself if I have what it takes. The man said they’re crying out for new talent.” Greta reached into her jacket pocket and handed Floyd the business card that the television producer had given her. It was printed on good card stock, with the man’s name and business address next to a pair of silhouetted palm trees.
Floyd scanned it for a second and gave it back to her. “Why would they want a German girl?”
“I speak their language, Floyd. And the man said there’d be novelty value in it.”
“They’ll use you up and burn you out.”
“And you’d know, would you?”
Floyd shrugged. “I’m just being realistic.”
“Then let them use me up. I’ll take that over a slow death in some dead-end jazz band, playing music that no one wants to hear any more.”
“You really know how to wound a fellow,” Floyd said.
“Look,” Greta said, “the fact is that my mind’s already made up. I’ve saved enough money to take the flying boat. I’ll give them two years. If it hasn’t happened for me by then, maybe I’ll return to Europe.”
“It’ll never be the same,” Floyd said.
“I know that, but I still have to try it. I don’t want to be lying on my own deathbed fifty years from now, in some damp old house in Paris, wondering what would have happened if I’d taken the one chance life offered me.”
“I understand,” Floyd said. “Believe me, I do. It’s your life and it’s none of my business what you do with it. But what I don’t get is why you’re telling me any of this. You still haven’t answered my earlier question. Why did you send me the letter?”