Reilly 13 - Dreams of the Dead (24 page)

Maybe she should swing by with something to eat, get a better bead on things? He loved her showing up with food.

En route, she passed a sushi place. Perfect. She swung into a sharp left across the highway.

Thirty minutes later, loaded with ebi, tekka maki, and California roll, she arrived at Kurt’s apartment house. He lived on the second floor. She could see the living room light glowing. Pulling into the parking area, she located his car parked almost directly opposite his apartment.

A revamped motel from the sixties, the apartment house featured concrete stairs that seemed to hang in the air. The heavy material suggested stability. The creaking of her steps exposed it as risky and cheap. She climbed carefully, watching that she didn’t catch a heel and go flying with all that good fishy stuff. She hadn’t done anything like this with Kurt for a while, showing up spontaneously, and she felt cheerful at the thought. She’d keep the conversation light and go on her way to the next hungry male on the list, Bob.

Kurt’s door hung ajar. She knocked.

Kurt stuck his head out.

“Look!” she said, smiling. “Sushi! Get out your chopsticks.” She started inside.

“Hey, thanks.” He stepped forward, blocking her. He took the bag and opened it. He sniffed. “Umm. Good stuff. But, uh—”

“Can I come in?”

An unfamiliar female voice spoke from somewhere inside the apartment. Before Kurt could answer, a girl appeared beside his, young, as tall as Kurt, pale and delicate, with long, shiny, light hair. The girl scoped out Nina from head to toe. “Hello, I’m Dana.”

Nina blinked.

“Would you like to come in, Nina?” Kurt asked.

Nina knew she should go, but found herself unable to. She shifted from one foot to another. Her high heels hurt, suddenly and painfully. She wanted to sit down, but instead she and Dana looked at each other in an age-old way for which there are many names, Nina cursing herself for not putting on lip gloss before she had come. She licked her lips, noting that Dana did not need to lick her lips. She had the gloss thing down.

Kurt’s intent eyes captured Nina’s. “Dana arrived an hour ago. Unexpectedly. Please. Come in.”

Nina entered Kurt’s modestly furnished living room, where an overnight bag with those wheels that rotate all the way around was propped against the couch, a wad of ticketing stubs hanging off its handle. A huge, battered leather purse and a computer case leaned against the bag.

Kurt went to the table and set down the bag of sushi. Nina felt Dana looking again at her body, making comparisons.

“Wine,” Kurt said. “All I’ve got is Sangiovese.”

“An excellent wine,” Dana said. “You should try it.”

She had an accent. Well, she would. She was from Europe somewhere, Sweden or Germany, Nina couldn’t remember what Kurt had said when he had nonchalantly first mentioned her sometime back, or later when he had equally nonchalantly mentioned they were corresponding.

“I’ll take some water,” Nina said.

Dana wore a white T-shirt and low-slung jeans held up with more battered leather. She smoked indoors, in California an act of such eco-evil, Nina could hardly take her eyes off the burning tip of the cigarette, the languid arm, the anachronistic romance of it all.

Dana went to the couch and curled up, holding an ashtray. Nina took a seat at the table, about ten feet away, and Kurt went to his tiny kitchen.

Glasses briefly clinked in the distance.

The two women sat together in excruciating and suggestive silence, Nina riveted on Dana’s smoking, breathing in and out. Nina hadn’t witnessed such blithely negligent inattention to personal health and the general welfare in years. Dana couldn’t seem to take her eyes off Nina either. Her eyes fastened on Nina’s shoes. Foot mutilators, yes, but red and oh so beautiful. Nina crossed her legs to show them off, enjoying her burning feet, reveling in the insane height of her heels. Dana, though, was making bare feet look chic.

Finally, Kurt came back to dole out drinks.

“In case you’re wondering,” Dana said to Nina, quickly touching Kurt’s hand as he gave her a glass, shaking the ice, “he wasn’t overjoyed to see me. I forgot to call, too. I think our Kurt”—she gazed steadily at him—“doesn’t welcome surprises.”

“Where do you come from?”

“Stockholm.” Dana took a long drag and tapped the cigarette out into the ashtray. “Flew into Reno. The taxi up here cost a fortune.”

“With notice,” Kurt said to her, “I could have picked you up.”

“Then it wouldn’t have been such a lovely surprise.” Dana’s shining, poreless cheeks dimpled when she smiled.

“Cheers,” Kurt said. He raised his glass in the air, looking uncertain, younger somehow.

They all raised their glasses, but to what? Their mutual destruction?

“God, I’m tired,” Dana said moments later, her glass already almost empty, yawning. “I hope you’re not going to turn me out, Kurt.”

Like that, Dana had set forth her plan. She expected to spend the night with Kurt. Nina set her glass down, awaiting his response.

“Let’s talk about that later,” he said, voice almost a whisper.

The burr in Nina’s stomach moved around. He should blow this interloper off in front of her, shouldn’t he? Nina, never afraid of confrontation in the courtroom, ought to fight back, shouldn’t she? Nina asked Dana, “What exactly brings you here?”

“You’re a direct one, aren’t you?” Dana took a handful of nuts from a bowl on the table. Nina saw that Dana didn’t know what to say either, in spite of her cool expression.

“I find it better than being circuitous.”

“Circuitous.” Dana played the word like a dirty marble in her mouth. “Something to do with circles? Anyway, Kurt and I have been sitting here having a chat. That’s why I came here, to chat. Like you, I’m direct. I prefer face-to-face.”

“And then I come along to interrupt absolutely everything.”

Kurt sat down on the other end of the couch, his voice wobbly. He had tossed off a double in one gulp. “Should I feel I did something wrong?” he said.

“You did do something wrong. You don’t belong here.” Dana waved a dismissive hand around. “I can’t believe this.” They all looked around at his place, at the generic rented furniture, boxy beige. They regarded the shabby droop of curtains that never got washed. They observed how the grubby clutter on the kitchen counters competed with a leggy plant sporting unhealthy, brown-edged leaves. They probably all came to the same conclusion, Nina decided. Kurt simply didn’t care.

Nina thought back. Kurt’s place in Wiesbaden had been airy and light with high ceilings, windows overlooking a park, and sleek but comfortable furniture and striking artwork on the walls that showed how much he cherished his home.

“Mine own,” Kurt said, emptying his glass fast, staring at the threadbare rug. “My life to date.”

Dana sniffed, looked down at her drink, held it up for a refill, and said, “You’ve been here for months, yet you’re not working.”

“Jobs aren’t easy to find these days. They never have been. Now’s even worse.” He scrambled for the bottle, like someone grabbing for something left floating after a boat capsized.

The two women watched him. Dana began smoking another cigarette and said to Nina, “I thought you were taking care of him.”

“And I thought you were out of his life.”

Dana ran a hand along her calf as if it ached after her long journey, or else to draw attention to its long slimness. She wore a gold anklet with a charm in the shape of a cross.

“Until last week,” Nina continued. “So, Dana. What brought you all this way from Stockholm?”

A long draw, a final tap of ash. “I know you are an attorney. I suppose that means you’re like a bulldog and can’t let a delicate question go. What brings me here? Hmm, I haven’t really put it to
myself in those terms. I suppose I came to fetch him. I love him so much. Do you?”

Kurt got up. He provided refills for all, then plopped down on the couch opposite Dana. He had adopted the wooden face of the alienated male in a group of females. He would tolerate and he would survive, but he clearly did not want to participate, not at all.

“We have been calling each other,” Dana said to Nina. “Right, Kurt?” She yawned deeply and unself-consciously, like a kid. “A couple of hours a night. Thank God for Skype.” She quit pretending to sit and stretched the length of her body out on the couch. Her sunny hair spread out over the pillow. She placed her bare feet across Kurt’s lap. Her eyelashes closed as lightly as expensive feathers over her cheeks, and she yawned hugely again. It would have been charming, this little-girl act, in some other scene.

“Can we talk?” Nina asked Kurt, jerking her head toward the door. He nodded, extricated himself from underneath Dana, and got up from the couch. Dana didn’t open her eyes. She was moving into the deep sleep of the jet-lagged traveler and would be hard to budge now. Kurt spread a woolen throw Nina had given him over Dana’s slumbering form.

Nina led him through double doors to the outside landing. Night had arrived and the usual astonishingly clear stars danced in the sky.

“Dana’s always been spontaneous, but I never dreamed she’d fly all this way without telling me. I suppose our last conversation got a little out of control.”

Our last conversation
confirmed the many intense ones that must have come before. Nina wondered if they had been the controlled conversations of two people trying to make peace with an awkward breakup, but suspected they had edged more toward emotional cliffs, injuries, recklessness.

“She’d call me at midnight her time when we were both half in a dreamworld. Things got said.”

How reminiscent of a politician waffling, playing with meaning
through the detachment of passivity. He did not say, “I said something painful and intimate I had no business saying and so did she.” Nope, things got said in that world and somehow things went awry.

“Remind me,” Nina said. “How long were you two together?”

“For four years in Stockholm, right before I moved to Germany. She was a violinist in the same orchestra as me. Those paintings of hers you noticed on the walls of my place in Wiesbaden—she’s a painter, too, as you know.”

“So—Dana’s going on that tour you’ve been invited to join. You didn’t mention that. Why not tell me that?”

He said nothing for a few moments, just placed his hands in his pockets and stared up into the sequined black above them.

She judged his reluctance to answer and didn’t like what she was thinking. “I’m not an enemy, Kurt. No need to mess with my mind.”

“Of course we aren’t enemies,” he said finally.

“What exactly did Dana have to do with your invitation to this European excursion?”

“You’re so quick, Nina.”

Jab. He complimented her, and, oh, how betrayed she felt, recognizing the stall for what it was.

He gave himself another few seconds to think. “Dana knew about my money problems. She knows people. She promoted my involvement in the tour.”

“Huh.”

“I didn’t know that until just now. I swear.”

“You told me you broke up before you came back to me. Was that true?”

He nodded, grimacing.

“Why did you break up?”

“Who knows why women break up with men.”

Nina steadied herself on the patio railing. If you felt low enough to consider jumping off a balcony, was that love or psychosis? So Dana had broken up with him.

“She’s volatile. We fought constantly. Now she says she’s got that all under control. Oh, why should you care? It’s nothing to do with you, Nina.”

“She’s got things under control,” Nina repeated. Her voice, usually so reliable, sounded cracked and troubled. She struggled to get a grip. “How old is she again?” Nina didn’t really need to know. Dana was much younger than Nina, fresh, in love, tough. Nina needed a minute to pull together the vying parts of herself. She wanted Kurt. She didn’t. Maybe she no longer had that first option.

“Dana’s twenty-five,” Kurt said uncertainly. “Maybe twenty-six?”

“I want to do this situation justice, so please, correct me if I’m wrong. Since your return to Tahoe and to me and Bob, you’ve continued to communicate with your old girlfriend, reigniting a relationship you told me was over but wasn’t.”

“Don’t blow this out of proportion. You make me feel like I’m on the witness stand.”

“You want her back?”

“I can’t answer that! Everyone does it nowadays, staying in touch with old lovers. It doesn’t have to mean anything. You work so much. I get lonely.”

He said that last calmly and in a deep voice.

Nina pulled her coat around her. “You’re hurting me.” The old Kurt would never have been able to stand seeing her in pain. He would gather her in his arms, hold her, and whisper in her ear that he loved her, that he’d get this all sorted out.

He didn’t look at her. His eyes flicked toward Dana, asleep in the other room.

“So, she’ll stay with you tonight. Maybe again tomorrow night?”

“I guess.”

“You guess.”

He tore his eyes away from the vision lolling in his living room, back to Nina. “Now that she’s here, I need to talk to her. She’s an old friend. I’d like to know how things are going with the orchestra.”

“Look at what you’re giving up. Look at me.”

Kurt shook his head, looked down. “I’ll call you later.”

Nina allowed him to lead her back toward the front door. Dana snored away softly, a tousle-haired, gangly girl, a girl who had known Kurt longer and apparently better than she, Nina, ever had.

Walking back down the unforgiving concrete steps toward the SUV, Nina thought about Dana. Would Dana have got on a plane and flown six thousand miles to talk to somebody if she didn’t love him a lot and if Kurt had not encouraged her?

No.

On the way home, she picked up barbecued chicken at a drive-through. Bob was waiting, and he needed his supper. They ate in the warm cabin, then took Hitchcock out for a walk.

Only when she was brushing her teeth to go to bed did she think about the thing she had done at Kurt’s apartment, a thing that went against all her principles, all hard-won wisdom, all morality, and all maturity.

On the way out, while Kurt was distracted, she had tossed the sushi bag behind the couch, inches from Dana.