Prague (62 page)

way back from a job that didn't matter to you on your way to wherever you were going next where it wouldn't matter if you were late or not, you could find very few places more pleasant to sit alone and have a coffee than the Gerbeaud, unless you were bothered by the unmistakable prevalence of noisy Americans having conversations like this one:

"Now. this is funny. Guess who turned up at my apartment last night. Slightly drunk. No? Krisztina Toldy. She threw herself at me. Threw herself. As in. 'Hey there, good evening, let's skip the drinks, just take me.' The classical model of throwing oneself. Wait, it gets significantly funnier. So I say, 'No, I'm sorry, old evil sorceress lady. I'll pass,' and she gets violent. Extremely. Like she threatens to kill me. 'Kill' me. She has a gun, she tells me, and she's going to shoot me. 'Shoot me? For not having sex with you?' Which, you know, is not unfunny. And what does she do? No? No guesses, Mr. Price? Fine: She starts to kiss my neck. Little nibbly things with dry lips. Like a rodent taking little bites to see if I was salty enough to store for winter. So, fighting down my red-blooded manly urge to throw up. I say. 'No, really, gunshots aside, I'm not going to have sex with you.' But what did our mothers teach us to say, John? 'Please.' she says. 'Please, please.' Which is what I like to hear from all my nympho-violent admirers. So I said, 'I appreciate the offer, and your politeness, your manners are impeccable, but really, I'm not going to—' and hey, presto! The gun is real They can be quite daunting, guns, you know, even little ones, which, to be fair, I think I have to admit might be the right description for (his one. 'What 1 said about your manners, Miss Toldy? You recall that comment? Well, under the new circumstances, I have to say—' but she tells me—and I am translating loosely, directly into English vernacular here—to 'shut my fucking mouth or I'—she—'will kill you.' "

"Kill me? What did/do?"

"No, I'm sorry, John, that was a poor translation. Ale. The point being, my mouth was now shut, so I can't ask what my other options arc, what her negotiating target is, as we used to say in b-school. couldn't plot out a road map for getting to yes. and so I swallow hard. I know what I have to do. I nod philosophically, under the circs, and I start to unbutton my shirt like. 'Okay, okay, we'll have sex and nobody needs to get shot,' and I admit the thought is going through my head a) things could be worse: it's conceivable she could be uglier, b) being this desirable is a cross I have to bear, and c) it's not completely out of the question that in the throes of passion, I may be able to disarm her. So I start to unbutton my shirt and give her a sort of basic, 'Okay, even though I'm doing

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it at gunpoint T'm not a complete spoilsport, so come hither' look. And she does what?"

"She shoots you dead."

"No, but a good guess. She lowers her gun hand and starts to cry."

"You're lying."

"I'm not. I swear to the filthy God of your afflicted, unpleasant people. She starts to just bawl. Which to me is a little much, because, hey, I was willing to go through with it. Sobbing now. Sah-Bean. So I button my shirt and, real delicatc-like, try to take the gun, as in, 'Hey, you're obviously pretty shook up, babe, let's put this away while you just have a good cry and we'll wait till you feel better before we call your country's corrupt and muddled law enforcement officials and sec who can afford to bribe them the most.' But, amazingly, she doesn't go for this and sort of feebly points the gun at me again. Feebly works as well as anything else, so f sal down on the couch and waited for her verdict on which way the evening was headed. As I said, I'm the sort of man who is willing to have sex with an ugly, middle-aged hag rather than being shot with bullets. One of those things that sets me apart."

"Everybody knows this about you. We admire this."

"I'm willing to believe that my grip on time was a little weak at this point. So I think 1 sat on the couch and watched this woman sob and occasionally wave her gun at me for, I'm thinking, let's say, twelve minutes. Sob. sob, sniffle, shake and point shaky gun at me, drop arm, sob, sob, sob, repeat. Like, fifteen minutes. And for what? Did she shoot me? No. Did she make me have sex with her? No. She cried and pointed and started to say she had a demand to make and then I'd start unbuttoning my shirt again and she'd say. 'No, not that, not that,' and star! crying again and then after a while she just leaves. I look out the window, and she's had the cab waiting the whole lime. That was my Saturday night. That and then German porn on cable."

"But why?"

"Because they all look like the St. Pauli girl."

"Let me rephrase: But why?"

"Oh golly, John. Gee, I have no idea. Let's ponder the possibilities. She'd had a really bad day? 1 remind her of the guy who killed her dog? She was raised in soul-crushing, loveless poverty? Hmm, it's an overwhelming mystery that will puzzle us to the grave. Oh, by the way, can you drive me to the airport in a couple weeks? I'll borrow a van for my stuff. I gol some funny news this week."

"Well, had you ever gollen around to telling her?"

"Me? No. 1 think you did. in your articles. I told him."

"Did you call the police?"

"Oh, but of course! That's exactly how I want to spend my last weeks in this shit hole. Oh come on, don't look so put upon. She didn't shoot me, after all— focus on the positive! It was meant to be a funny story. You are a vindictive race, you people. Poor woman was blowing off a little steam. In the end, no one got hurt and no one had to have sex with anyone old and haggy. I had already made sure to get her some money, too, you know. I went out of my way. Put a bonus for her in the agreement. She deserves it. Like you, by the way. Neville'11

be in touch."

The stuttering, half-formed, badly pointed questions that Charles would have mocked and left unanswered anyhow were spared their humiliating fate when a knock spattered against the window behind their own reflections and a bald head and portfolio were waved in. In the time it took Nicky to walk right to the door and then left to their table. John and Charles were unable to come up with a convincing lie or plan. "Hello, little boy." She kissed John on the mouth, and he smelled liquor. "Hey, I'm Nicky," she said to the man in the suit.

"I met you this summer, if I remember right," Charles replied.

"Oh hey. yeah, at A Hazam. that's right." She took Charles's hand and curtsied, dropped her stuff on an empty chair between them, and borrowed a coin to pay her toll Lo the dragon guarding the bathroom. "You speak Hun, right? Order me something good."

"Well, little hoy." said Charles when the white saucer clinked and the aged waitress atop the velvet stool nodded Nicky sternly past, "this is not a promising start to an evening of tender courtship. You want to run and I'll cover for you?"

"Too late. Let the tender courtship begin." And a few seconds later John was rising and Emily was descending into the other empty chair between the

two men.

"Hello, gentlemen. I'm very glad to see you maintaining fine old traditions."

He had smelled diesel fumes mixed with spring scents one recent morning and decided that he and Kmily were equals at last; having guarded her secret during the long, eventful winter proved something. Before his confidence faded, he had called her with an out-of-the-blue invitation a trois (on an unassuming Sunday, for heaven's sake). And in fact she had responded so eagerly that he had been briefly heartened, had put tbe phone down, lain back, and received some refreshed and nearly convincing visions of future Emilial bliss. And yet

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the sight of her now slumping into a chair and rebinding her ponytail was undeniably underwhelming. Her winter and spring appearances in his dream-life had been glowing, throbbing; she had been multiples, exponents of herself, a boiling, universal female essence barely containable, practically Hindu. In person, however, she was unable to change forms, did not glow, was plainly tired. She was as pale as every other nonstrippcr after a winter on the Central European plain. Her white oxford hung limp, defeated and unironed.

Nicky returned and kissed him again on the mouth, an entirely gratuitous gesture: He hadn't, after all, seen her since Nadja's apartment three weeks earlier, and besides, she had already kissed him a few minutes earlier. And so he thought for a moment that Nicky felt threatened by this unknown girl's arrival and was immediately making all relationships clear for the stranger, but he had to admit to himself that such things didn't really happen. He introduced the two women. Charles's face projected a favorite expression.

"Nice to meet you," said Emily, and John noticed a coldness in her voice, or (he corrected himself at once) merely hoped he had. He toyed with the corollary idea (hat perhaps she was jealous, and this time a different and better story might unfold.

"Yeah well, to be strictly accurate, we met this summer, at A Hazam." Nicky set her straight with a certain subdued irritability.

"Did we?" John saw Emily's momentary confusion. "Yes of course. I remember." He appreciated Emily's desire to make things easy for people.

Silence followed until Charles asked to see Nicky's portfolio and she withdrew from between the black cardboard flats a photo collage. "It's called Peace," she said, passing the picture to Emily, who held it for the two in-leaning men:

A family of four enjoying a picnic in a park. Arranged around a sky blue blanket, under a blanket blue sky, circling a wicker basket of shiny food, a smiling mother and father, a smiling young girl, and a smiling younger boy. Everyone smiled. The mother was in the process of smilingly unpacking the meal. The little boy smiled hungrily at the spread. The father, smiling, rested his hand on the mother's shoulder. The little girl in a little girl's dress lay on her stomach, resting her smiling head in her palms and kicking her bare legs and feet up behind her. The mother was missing a tooth. The little boy was drooling from the far corner of his mouth, and bleeding slightly from his near ear: his tan trousers were grotesquely soiled. The father was not looking hungrily at the food; follow his eyes: He was looking hungrily elsewhere. The little girl had three parallel bandages adhering to both of her bare soles. Partially obscured

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by a tree, a man—naked under a raincoat, fedora, and sunglasses—was squatting and defecating while photographing the family from his hidden vantage point. "That's supposed to be you, Johnny," Nicky explained, quickly and quietly, not wishing to belabor the obvious. In the upper left, bugs—"locust season," Nicky clarified—were just entering the scene: their densely spaced limited number implied a vast swarm croaking to appear from just out of frame. Finally, in the far-distant background, on a pond in the park, a rowboat with a figure standing unsteadily in it. The figure—too distant for its gender to be clear—held an oar over its head, caught in the backswing before clubbing something or someone either in the boat or in the water.

"It's basically a big fuck-you to my dad," Nicky offered offhandedly before adding, "or really anyone who tries to own me."

"It's very disturbing, as I'm sure you intended," Emily said a little prig-gishly. She passed the photo to John. "You obviously have a very active imagination," she backhanded.

John was disoriented. As usual, he hadn't the faintest idea what to say about one of Nicky's mysterious works, and suspected she had been trying to tell him something with the mention of people owning her, but Emily was undeniably hostile. He bad never seen two women detest each other so quickly, and he did not dare allow himself to believe what he so desperately wanted to believe. He had to bite his lips not to speak; he held power over her at last.

"So why does your father deserve a big... you know?" Emily asked, a society matron thrown into unavoidable conversation with a gate-crashing hooker.

"That's very sweet," Nicky purred. "You won't say 'fuck you.' That's very fucking sweet. That's the most fucking endearing thing I've heard in who the fuck knows how fucking long. I'm growing fucking misty-eyed, for fuck's sake."

"I'm sorry. I guess I'm funny to you. I just wasn't raised to cuss all the time."

"Cuss? You weren't raised to cuss? Oh my fucking Christ, that's delicious. Johnny, where did you find this angel? Whatever. My dad deserves a big you know because of the usual boring shit: booze, emotional 'n' physical abuse, incest, blah, blah, blah."