White Apples (10 page)

"Don't." She quickly pulled her hand out of his.

That word and her gesture blindsided him. "Why? Why not?"

"Because that's not why I'm here, Berndt. I thought that was understood. I'm not looking for anything like that." "Like
what!"

"Like what's in your heart. I don't want to know that." Beginning with her mouth, the skin on her face tightened. Ettrich had seen it happen many times before. It meant, she was shutting down, closing off. Isabelle was looking at Berndt now, telling him with her eyes and blank, taut face that he was walking across a minefield.

Berndt's anger showed by the way that he slowly spread the fingers of both hands to their full length over the table. One index finger touched the other and began tapping the fingernail, as if it were sending Morse code. Innocuous as the gestures appeared, it was clear this man was gathering himself to do something.

"There was no reason before to tell you this, but obviously there is now: I'm very much in love with someone. I'm pregnant." Isabelle said it firmly, only stating the fact.

"Pregnant?"
The index finger tapped the other faster and faster. Berndt kept shifting his eyes from his busy finger to her face and back again. Then he began to nod his head. From afar it looked like he was only agreeing with something his dinner companion had said. But he didn't stop nodding, nor did the finger stop tapping. "Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"I just said why, Berndt—there was no reason to. Whenever we met it was nice and interesting. For me that was all."

"That was all?" he repeated, head and fingers moving, big em•phasis on the last word. "Yes." She did not stop looking at him.

"That's interesting. I had a very wrong impression." "I'm sorry if I misled you."

"I'm sorry too. Really sorry." Berndt chuckled but it sounded more like something was stuck in his throat.

If this guy
did
start something could Ettrich stop him? Did he have any power here? Isabelle had stared straight at

him before but not seen him. Did that mean he was (1) invisible and (2) useless?

"I'm really angry now. I'm really very angry at you." Berndt looked at his hands and slowly closed one into a fist. Alarmed, Ettrich got up from his seat. At the same time, mega-dog rose like an extra table coming up from the floor.

Staring at Berndt, it began to growl at him in a voice of gravel and blood that would have scared the shit out of the dead.

No one in the room even looked their way. It was amazing because the dog was snarling very loudly now, its head up and tipped to one side, mouth drooling white foam and strings.

This monster was about to attack Berndt but nobody was paying any attention, much less trying to stop it. Even the dog's owners ate their meals in happy oblivion, the old woman slurping up green spaghetti, her husband taking a long drink of wine. People in the room laughed and ate and shook their heads at good stories. Only Berndt, Isabelle, and Ettrich seemed to notice that one of them was about to be devoured.

"Anjo, stop." Isabelle spoke quietly to the dog. It continued to growl and slobber but did not move any closer to Berndt. Its gums were the purple of raw liver. Its teeth were long and white. They could do anything; they could bite off an arm.

Meanwhile, the diners dined. Ettrich finally understood that somehow these others could not see what was happening here. Only the three of them and the dog were involved in it.

Why had Isabelle called the dog Anjo if that was the name of their child?

"Were you going to hit me, Berndt? If the dog weren't here, would you have
punched
me? Or slapped me? Is that your style when you don't like hearing something? Don't shake your head no—I saw what you did with your hand." Slumping back in the chair, she threw her napkin on the table. The dog stared and growled at the petrified man.

Berndt didn't know where to look. He simply could not process all that had happened in the last five minutes: Isabelle said she was not interested in him. And she was pregnant. Then his anger erupted like a volcano. Then this demon dog appeared, ready to bite him. And to top it all off, no one else in the room was even looking! So he did the only thing he could—he cried, "Help!"

"Shut up, Berndt. No one can hear you. They don't even know we're here anymore." To both men's great surprise, Isabelle took her glass and tossed the water in it on the old woman at the next table. It splashed across her face and elegant red silk dress. The woman continued eating as if nothing had happened, although water dripped from her face and her dress was ruined.

Berndt was barely able to whisper, "I don't understand this."

"There's nothing to understand. You were going to hit me be•cause I said no. But Anjo won't let you do that." She looked at the dog. The way it looked back at her said there was no question that this animal understood exactly what she was talking about.

"But what about them—" Berndt gestured around the room. "Why can't they see this?" She looked at the dog and smiled.

Berndt licked his lips and swallowed hard. What would happen now? "Can I go, Isabelle? Can I just leave here now? I'm sorry. I promise never to bother you again. Please let me go." He twitched when the dog let loose a high unhappy yip. Even if she let him go, would the dog?

"Remember Olga, Berndt? That sweet woman who loved you so much? Remember the way you used to treat her when you were angry?"

"You know Olga?" He was dumbfounded. How was it possible?

She looked at the dog again. "I do now. You're a terrible man. Now I know some of the things you've done and you are an awful person."

"But how? How do you know about Olga?"

"Anjo. Anjo told me. You're a piece of shit, Berndt. Leave. Go. Get out of my sight."

After her date had raced out of the restaurant, the dog came over and put its head in Isabelle's lap. She stroked it absentmindedly. It let loose a long contented sigh, like a man putting his cold feet into a warm bath.

Ettrich approached her slowly. "Isabelle?"

Ignoring him, she continued petting the brute and staring into the off. Even the dog didn't open its eyes. Ettrich sat down in Berndt's chair. "Fizz, can you hear me?"

"What a stupid thing to do! Look at what I did to myself." At the next table the old woman started dabbing at her face and blouse with her napkin, as if the water there were her fault. When she was finished she noticed where her dog was. "Anjo! Come back here. Stop being a pest."

Isabelle waved the order away and said she liked having the dog visit.

The old man piped in, "He doesn't realize how big he is. He imagines himself a cat."

The dog opened its eyes for a moment but, seeing the world was in order, closed them again. For now it could rest. "You call him Anjo. Where does that name come from?"

The old man made as if to speak but stopped, stumped. He looked wide-eyed at his wife who looked back. Then both of them broke out in similar bewildered smiles. He shrugged and gestured for her to talk.

"We don't know. He was always Anjo. Isn't that funny? As I remember, that's what his name was when we bought him as a puppy and we just accepted it. No?" She looked at her husband who nodded. "Are you sure he's not bothering you? We can pull him back over here if he is. He's big but when my husband scolds him, he becomes timid as a mouse."

"No, he's perfect. We're very happy here together."

To protest that, Anjo squeaked again because she had stopped petting him.

The couple went back to eating their meal. "Isabelle, do you hear me?"

She did not. She picked up a fork and speared some food; she raised her elbow high so as to avoid bumping the big brown head on her lap. Ettrich watched her eat. The way she cut food into the smallest pieces, the slow-motion trip from plate to her mouth. Without question Isabelle was the slowest eater he had ever known. It was a running joke between them. She used to say she could go to a restaurant half an hour before him, order, and start eating. Chances were he would still finish before her.

But those hours spent over meals together were some of the greatest times of his life. All the things they'd discussed, the jokes, the great and small anecdotes that described and highlighted their lives to each other. Once in the OXO Tower restaurant in London she stood up in the middle of their meal, came around the table, kissed him on the lips, and said in a lewd voice, "I
love
this. I love this more than anything." And he knew what she meant. He knew one hundred percent what she meant by it. Two feet away the view out the window was of all London, glittering. This woman was a city in herself—teeming, confusing, exhilarating, sometimes one big traffic jam.

Ettrich closed his eyes when he felt tears coming. Isabelle could do that to him so quickly and easily. Sometimes he only had to look across a table at her and he would feel them begin. Was that what real love meant—tears? Such promiscuous things—they came when you were happy
and
sad, but for Vincent Ettrich only when it had to do with this woman.

How long did he close his eyes, four seconds? Long enough to touch his thumb against one eye, his index finger against the other to push the tears back. In that momentary dark he heard a familiar sound—the thin tinkle of a small bell. Opening his eyes, he saw he was back in the diner with Isabelle, far away from Vienna, Berndt, and Anjo the dog. She was holding up that bell and grinning.

"Did you order spaghetti al pesto?" "What?"

Her smile was a mischievous child's. "At Stella Marina. That's your favorite meal there. Did you order it?" "You know where I was just now?"

"Sure. You watched Berndt and me in Stella Marina."

His head dropped back, he locked his fingers behind his neck and looked at the ceiling while he spoke. "Are you going to explain all this to me, Fizz?"

She didn't answer. He continued looking up and she continued not answering. The silence between them wasn't uncomfortable be•cause it was intermission. They both knew the next act was coming.

"Anjo told me you were sick that same night. It was one of the first times he ever talked to me. He said you had cancer and were going to die. But that you didn't know it yet."

"You knew I was sick before I did?" He lowered his head slowly and looked at her. His eyes were flat. All that she had said was history but in his heart it felt like right now.

"Yes, I knew, Vincent. Everything Anjo told me came true." "A dog told you my future."

She shook her head. "Anjo isn't a dog. He's whatever he wants to be, whatever is convenient for him. He goes in and out of things—animals, people. He has that power."

"Who is he?"

She shook her head again. "He's our son. More than that I don't know. He won't tell me." Ettrich looked out the window and then back at her. "Did he make me sick?"

"Oh no, Vincent! Anjo brought you back from the dead."

Fifteen minutes after Berndt fled the restaurant, Isabelle walked out of Stella Marina smelling her hand. Before leaving, she had taken the small flacon of Royal Water she always carried in her purse and tipped some of it onto the back of her wrist. After what had just happened, she needed to smell Vincent's beautiful cologne. What she really needed was to smell Vincent but that was impossible. The Royal Water would have to suffice. She needed him there after what had just happened. But even his smell did something good for her; that small trace of him brought her a piece of peace. It never failed—some drops on the back of her hand, close the eyes, deep breath—Vincent.

Where was he now? What was he doing? She wondered that ten times a day. She thought about him twenty. More.

Did he hate her for running away again? He had every right to hate her, espe•cially now. He had left his family and moved into Margaret Hof's apartment. Only until he could put his life in order and then he planned to move to Vienna to be with her. He already had a ten•tative job lined up with a German public relations firm that had offices here. It would be a huge salary cut from what he was re•ceiving in the United States but he didn't care.

Vincent was not like other men—he had never made promises to her but then reneged on them when it came time to act. He told her only once that he could not live without her and would leave his family when he felt he had sufficient strength and resolve. She never doubted that he would do it because Ettrich always kept his word to her. But he acted much sooner than Isabelle had envisioned. It came as a shock when he called her and said, "It's over. I'm alone." His voice was breathless when he told her; it sounded as if he had been running for miles.

She already knew she was pregnant then but didn't tell him. She wanted to see his face when he heard the news. They arranged to meet in London that weekend. Isabelle asked if one of those nights they could have dinner at the OXO Tower because of the incredible view it offered of the city and the Thames. She wanted to tell him there. The beauty of the place, the convergence of their lives, and the secret she was about to tell Vincent so overwhelmed her halfway through the meal that she got up, walked around the table, and kissed him. "I love this," she said an inch from his de•lighted face. "I love this more than anything."

Half an hour later their relationship was finished as far as she was concerned. Until that meal, the subject of Ettrich's leaving his family had been left to cool on a side table, as if it were a dish just taken out of the oven and too hot to eat. They spoke of other things; they spoke of what had happened in their lives since they'd last been together. All the time though they kept looking over at that dish wondering if it was cool enough yet to try a first bite. Almost casually he brought it up by saying how weird it was to live alone again in a very small apartment after all those years of space and a noisy family. That began the discussion. Way too soon they were both sitting stiffly in their chairs staring at each other as if they did not like what they saw.

To her dismay, Vincent said he had left his family for her. To his dismay, she glared at him as if he had slapped her face. It was one of those conversations that became an argument that became a bleeding disaster. None of it ever should have happened. These people simply missed each other's points, and because they had brought separate but very charged hearts to the table that night, everything said from that point on was distorted then exaggerated then misunderstood and finally used as ammunition to shoot point blank at each other. It was the worst discussion they ever had. They got up from the table, no, they
staggered
up from the table like dazed survivors of a tornado that had killed their families, flattened their house, and left them with nothing but the breath in their lungs.