Why did I feel I would be trespassing if I interrupted them? Sophie had forced me to come with her here. Didn’t that make me as much a part of the strange adventure as either of them? No. Because my blood and love weren’t involved. I was doing Sophie a favor, and grudgingly at that. I was in Vienna because of a best friend. As my part of a long-forgotten deal struck on a mountaintop in Switzerland. I was here not because I was concerned or felt compelled to be here, so I hesitated to go forward and make my presence known. But what were they talking about so animatedly? What new thing had come up since we boarded the plane in L.A. that forced us to be meeting her here rather than in her apartment?
Trespasser or not, I couldn’t stand not knowing what was up, and I walked over. Caitlin turned and saw me. Springing up, she raced over and hugged me. I knew for a fact that Caitlin Chapman was not a hugger. Normally she was a kind, albeit reserved and quiet woman who spent most of her life in the shadow of her outgoing and aggressive husband. Another thing that took me by surprise was her embrace. It went on so long that I started looking over her shoulder at Sophie, who gestured with her hands for me to put up with it and let the poor woman squeeze as long as she liked.
“Wyatt, it’s good of you to come! So generous.”
“Caitlin, what’s happening? What’s the problem? Is it something new about Jesse? Have you heard anything?”
“Yes, I was just telling Sophie. Can we go back to the table so that she can hear too? Jesse’s back! He came home this morning.”
After hitting me with that left hook out of nowhere, she took my hand, and as we walked back to the table I looked at Sophie and mouthed the words “He’s back?” She nodded.
“Sit down, Wyatt. You have to hear all this because you’re important to it now.”
I was in the middle of sitting, but stopped halfway after a line as ominous as that. “More than before?” The women looked at each other. I got the hint. “Obviously more. Go ahead, start from the beginning.”
Caitlin was sitting opposite Sophie and me. I still couldn’t get over how neat and ordered she looked. Nothing frazzled or frizzy, not one hair out of place. I know people deal with their problems in different ways, but how could she go days missing her partner, terrified every minute that he might be seriously hurt or dead, yet still look as if she’d just come from the hairdresser’s?
“Wyatt, you know my husband pretty well—”
“No, he doesn’t,” Sophie interrupted. “They’ve met only a few times. You were there when they had that stupid fight. Jesse doesn’t like Wyatt because he’s gay.”
Caitlin’s eyes widened as she snatched a quick embarrassed look at me to see how I responded to that. Sophie waved it away impatiently. “Look, there’s no time for decorum now. My brother Jesse is a decent man. Too much of the time he’s a stiff tightass who refuses to accept that he could be wrong about things, but that’s his failing. We all have ours. What you’re going to hear now you have to put in that context. What I mean is, here’s a guy—Wyatt—who is the original skeptic. He believes a deal is real only when the contract is put in front of him to sign. He doesn’t like French restaurants because he can’t understand the menu. You get the drift. Seeing is believing. Go ahead, Cait.”
Her friend looked at me and began again hesitantly. “About a week ago, Jesse got up one morning and went into the bathroom—to wash up and brush his teeth, I thought. He’s almost always up before me and starts making breakfast for the two of us. This time—I don’t know how long it was, but I’d guess half an hour later—I got up and went in there. He was sitting on the toilet with his head in his hands, not moving. I thought he was sick to his stomach and had been throwing up, but then I saw that the seat cover was down. I went over to ask if he was all right but the moment I touched him, he pulled back as if he’d been stabbed. And his eyes were as wild as a horse’s in a fire. The only other time I’d seen him that way in our whole marriage was once when we were in a bad car accident. Jesse’s the ultimate Mr. Dependable; nothing rattles him. But he was badly rattled that morning.
“When I asked what was wrong, he wouldn’t say. I asked all the wifely questions, but that did no good; he wasn’t going to tell me anything. Maybe, I thought, he was too embarrassed to talk about it. Fine, leave him alone; let him handle it. I went out to the kitchen.
“Jesse is a creature of habit and always eats breakfast. One of his rules: always go out with a full stomach. I expected he’d at least have something to eat, a banana or a glass of milk to calm his stomach. But he didn’t, and the funny thing is, that worried me more than anything. I didn’t even hear when he left the house. A few hours later I did call him at his office and he sounded okay. And that night when he came home he seemed fine, but he still wouldn’t talk about what had gone on that morning. You know how it is—life is full of weird things, and you try to let them slip by without a fuss if possible. Because if you take note or complain, they stick around. So I pushed this thing aside and blamed it on a full moon or whatever. Fine.
“Until the next night, when I woke after hearing him in the bathroom crying out, ‘I don’t want this! I don’t want it!’ Again and again. It was the middle of the night, two or three, that time when things scare you most and not just because you’re coming up out of sleep. I went in and saw him standing in front of the mirror, staring at himself. Again, when I asked what was going on he wouldn’t tell me. He was shocked that I’d come in while he was doing whatever he was doing, and said only he’d been having nightmares. I knew it wasn’t the whole truth, but what could I do? He told me to go back to bed; he’d be in soon. I wanted to stay with him, but he wouldn’t allow it. God, it was horrible and I felt so helpless…
“I waited for him in bed and he came soon enough. What was strange, though, was that when he got there, he grabbed me roughly and made love to me as if we were two high school kids in the back seat of a car. All kinds of fumbling, flipping around, and rough, much too hard. When he… when he came, he cried out again, ‘I don’t want this!’ but before I got up the nerve to ask what, he fell asleep. Absolutely exhausted. Jesse only snores when he’s totally pooped, and that night he sounded like a truck with no muffler.
“Next morning he was business as usual, although I kept waiting for him to tell me what the hell was going on. At least tell me something! But nope. He left for work and that was the day he disappeared. Walked out of the house, went straight to the airport, and flew away.”
“But now he’s back?”
“Yes, he came this morning. I was out shopping, and when I got back, there he was, sitting in the living room in his yellow bathrobe, drinking coffee.”
“What did he say?”
“Not a thing. And I was so relieved that I didn’t press him about where he’d been. He was very calm and didn’t say much except that he was okay and glad to be home.”
“But you did ask again?”
“Yes, finally. And then he said he’d been to London and Venice.”
“Did he tell you why?”
Sophie interrupted again. “First tell him about the bandage.”
“Okay. Well, the sleeves on his robe are long, but once when he made a gesture I saw all the way up the left one. There was a flash of a big bright white something. I asked whether it was a bandage, and he said he’d done something to his arm while he was away. I didn’t ask about it because there were too many other questions.”
I looked at Sophie. “What does it mean, this bandage?”