"Thank you very much. You speak English?"
"Yes."
"That's so good. I'm so tired of speaking other people's languages. Are you going to Frankfurt? It's a long trip, isn't it?"
An hour after the train started, Kiko had told me all about her modeling jobs in Europe, an Italian boyfriend who didn't appreciate her enough, and how lonely her life was. She asked if she could sit on my side of the car, and after she did, every few words were accompanied by a touch on my hand, my knee . . .
If it had happened before Maris, I would have been a happy man. As it was, I smiled and was a sympathetic listener, but made no attempt to reciprocate her warmth. Plainly, she wasn't used to that, and her face grew more and more puzzled. After another ten minutes of long looks and long fingernails on my knee, I touched her hand and said I was married.
"So? Is your wife on the train?"
"No, but she's in my mind and that's enough."
Angry as a swatted bee, she stood right up and went for her suitcase. I offered to help, but she gave me the evil eye and said no thanks.
She was a small woman and had to reach all the way up to get hold of the suitcase handle. Giving one hard pull, the bag came flying off the shelf, knocking her back against the opposite wall head first. The bag hit the floor. She cried out and slumped crookedly into the facing seat. She'd cracked the back of her head against one of the metal coat hangers screwed into the wall. Blood was everywhere – dripping down the leather, spotting her white hands, the gray silk blouse.
Her eyes were closed and she mumbled in either shock or pain. I leaned over, put my hand on the top of her head and said it. One moment I felt warm blood and wet sticky hair under my fingers. The next moment I felt only warm, dry hair. I pushed her head up and told her to open her eyes, everything was okay.
I sat there awhile calming her, telling her she'd fallen asleep and cried out something about her suitcase falling. But I told her to look – there it was up on the rack. She'd only had a bad dream.
When it was clear she was all right, I got my bag and left the compartment. Before going, I put her to sleep. Nothing was simpler.
In Cologne the next morning, I had a two-hour layover before my next train left. After a bad cup of coffee in the station restaurant, I found a phone and called Maris. I told her I was in the hotel and they'd given me a nice room overlooking the great cathedral.
"How does it look? Is it like St. Stephen's?"
I had never been to Cologne and knew nothing about it. The only things I saw were trains and tracks and commuters. Closing my eyes, I said it again and vivid pictures of the Gothic cathedral, the fourteenth-century stained glass windows, and the Magi's shrine inside the church came sliding into my head. I went on to quickly describe parts of the city, including the Roman-Germanic Museum and its million-piece "Dionysus Mosaic," even the cable car over the Rhine. She told me I sounded like a travel guide and she was jealous.
I got off the other train in the afternoon. I needed only three hours to do what was necessary. The only real problem was finding the place.
On the train back to Vienna I didn't dream, but looking out the window at the sun rising over the Austrian countryside, I let my mind go its way and this is what I saw. Or felt. Or knew somewhere inside.
It is summer in East Hampton, Long Island. Victoria Marshall's parents own a house there by the ocean and invited me down for the weekend. That evening we'd gone to a play at the John Drew Theatre. It was boring, but the interesting part of the two hours was Victoria's hand on my thigh. It wasn't like her. At college we'd spent months rolling around on my narrow bed, touching and pushing clothes aside, getting too hot and too frustrated for our own good. She wants to be a virgin when she gets married, but she also loves me and doesn't know what to do. She wants us to sleep together, but she also wants to keep her promise to herself. I love her but she is beginning to confuse me.
Her hand rubbing my thigh in the theatre, inches away from the eyes of her High Episcopalian parents, tells me something is very different tonight. Is this it? Is she saying yes?
The parents know their daughter and don't worry that anything untoward might happen if they're not around to keep an eye on my shenanigans. They have one drink with us after the show and go off upstairs to their bedroom.
Victoria and I are sitting on the couch. I have a drink in my hand but things have gotten so heated in me that the ice has melted. She waits until the toilet flushes twice up there and the familiar sounds of people getting into bed are over before she turns to me, her eyes full of smoke and promises. She says nothing, but when she reaches over to touch me, I almost pull back because the moment has really come and I can't believe it. Not only does she touch me, but pulls me to the floor with her.
She whispers, "Do you have something with you?"
"Yes."
"All right." She begins to take off her clothes. Me too. When we're naked I remember at the last minute to take it out of my wallet. Hands trembling, I tear it open but leave it in its wrapper. I am afraid the floor will squeak and tell on us, but it is a silent conspirator.
We kiss and touch and everything is hot. Plus, everything is not just this, it is leading up to the moment I've been waiting for almost a year. I touch her between her legs and she is wetter than I've ever felt. This is unbelievable. Moving away, I reach for the rubber. It comes gliding out of its envelope and expands into a circle in my hand. I have no trouble putting it on. Turning to her, she is more beautiful than ever. I rise up and gently part her legs. They move open quickly, and already she is moving her head from side to side.
I can't get in. I move and use my hands and she does what she can, but it is no use. I simply can't get in. Her eyes are wide open now and they say something I can't hear. Is she afraid? Have I scared her into thinking she is too small and will be this way forever? Is it disgust? How could I be so bumbling and inept? How could I do this to her?
We try more and more until my penis gives up any hope and says good night. We lie on our sides, fingertips still touching, but we are lost. What now?
I see all this, but it's nothing new. I was there and remember too well that embarrassing night. What is different is something else I see with my new eyes. Something outside the house, sitting on top of the Marshalls' Cape Cod roof.
He has been up there the whole time, watching. Squatting like a Fuseli creature, his hand over his mouth, he's laughing and snickering, trying to keep quiet so that no one inside will know something is up on the roof listening to the hopeless silence of two nineteen-year-olds.
I called him on the phone.
"How'd you get my number?"
"I'd like you to come to dinner."
"When? Where'd you get this number?"
"Can you come tonight?"
He was silent, suspicious, but there was nothing he could do anymore. I knew that, but he didn't.
"Tonight? Why tonight?"
"I have to talk to you."
I convinced him. We'd have his favorite meal, done the way he liked it. I told him I'd had a dream and remembered how to cook it. I even called him Papa once and that must have done it. He agreed. Seven o'clock.
I called Maris and told her I'd be home a day early. Then I went shopping.
They wanted to help, but I said they were my guests and I wouldn't hear of it.
At the market I bought Tafelspitz, Kren, applesauce, the makings for tartar sauce. Two bottles of good red wine from Styria. An old menu but one all of them would feel comfortable eating. If we ever got around to eating. No matter what happened, I didn't think it was going to be a long evening.
They loved television; couldn't get over it. They watched a documentary about famine in Africa, a Bud Spencer film, a choral group from the Vorarlberg that sang some songs they knew. That made them especially happy.