White Apples (11 page)

What's worse, they foolishly returned together to the hotel room in Chelsea that Vincent had rented for the occasion. They thought they could fix things up in bed. It didn't work and both of them ended up looking at the ceiling, not wanting to touch the other.

Exhausted by jet lag and all the recent upheavals in his life, Ettrich did not awaken when Isabelle rose very early the next morn•ing, packed her few things, and left. She did not linger at the door hoping for his voice, or look back over her shoulder to see if he was watching. She only wanted out of there. Downstairs in the lobby she wrote him a quick note, intending to write more later when her head was clear and no longer muddied by emotion. She gave this short note to the clerk at the front desk. He looked at her dubiously, as if she were a prostitute finishing up her shift. Any other time this misunderstanding would have delighted Isabelle and made her laugh. Instead she began to cry as she turned away and walked toward the ornate front door.

What Vincent said last night still burned on her heart like slow acid. He had left his life
for her.
Not for himself, and not because he finally realized being together meant more than anything did. His great "gift" to her. She smiled bitterly thinking that the word
Gift
in German meant "poison."

Hailing a maroon cab, she told the driver to take her to Heathrow. She had no idea when the next flight back to Vienna was. She would find out when she got to the airport. The important thing now was to get moving, get away from him and this hotel and city, which a night ago, eight hours ago, had held all the promise in the world. God damn him! Damn him and his "I did it for you."

She knew running away wasn't the answer. Knew it was an immature and cowardly thing to do, but Isabelle Neukor was a coward. Much as she would have liked to change, she did not have sufficient inner strength.

She was thirty-one. She had lived a privileged life that had given her character but no backbone or real inner strength when she needed it. She knew this but often pretended otherwise, fooling many people over the years. But those who knew her well knew that Isabelle was a paper lion. They were amused when she roared because it was only tricky sound effects she had devised, much like the Wizard of Oz hidden behind his curtain, furiously working those myriad levers and buttons.

Having money in the family was like cigarettes—the trouble with both was that they were always there for you. It didn't matter if you were happy or sad: They were always at your fingertips, ready and eager to make your life better even if only for a few minutes. Too often in Isabelle's life when the going got tough, she went to the bank. She was thirty-one and had run from too many things. She had severe panic attacks and often took pills to quell them. Once when he was overwrought. Ettrich took half of one of those pills. It was the strongest thing he'd ever ingested and he came close to keeling over. He could not believe Isabelle took a whole one almost every day.

But none of this mattered to Vincent Ettrich. He loved her without reservation. In college he'd had an Italian girlfriend who would say "I love-a you like-a crazy." The sentence always pleased him but he didn't believe the woman for a moment. Until he met and fell for Isabelle Neukor, that is. Then he knew one hundred percent what it meant to love someone like-a crazy.

Within four days of their first meeting, Isabelle had told him almost all of her secrets. She was astonished at herself and thrilled. She told him about the sedatives she took and the neuroses they were meant to diffuse. She told him her fears and her hidden hopes for the future. She wanted to have a child some day. She had never admitted that she wanted to have a child, much to her mother's despair. Although she had certainly had her share of lovers, Isabelle had never met a man she wanted to have children with. Next she told Vincent her deeply ambivalent feelings about her

interesting, difficult family. She continued telling this stranger things she had never told anyone, not even the

good-hearted boyfriend she had lived with in New York for three years. And when she discovered how good it felt to talk to him, she told Vincent Ettrich more.

Half an hour into their first formal date she already wanted to touch his hands to see if he had cold or warm ones.

Instead she asked what he thought was the most important thing in life. She hoped he would say something wonderful or at least stunningly dif•ferent—not "love" or "freedom" or "individuality." Please, not those lame lumps. She wanted Vincent Ettrich to be creative and imagi•native; she wanted to be in awe. If to "love like-a crazy" was Et•trich's goal, then Isabelle's was for just once in her life to be in awe of a man. He sensed that a great deal hinged on his answer to her question. After looking at his hands a long time he eventually said, "To be understood."

How could the man who said
that
have so misunderstood what she needed/wanted to hear at the critical moment last night? Why couldn't he have said, "I left that all behind because you are my life now." Or "Only you, Fizz—you and nothing else." Those would have been fine. Although they sounded a little purple she still could have lived with those sentiments. But
"I did it for you"!
The sound of the guillotine blade slamming down across their relationship filled her ears the moment he said the sentence. That was the correct word for it—sentence. Vincent sentenced their relationship with one sentence.

She looked out the window of the taxi at London, the traffic in Hammersmith, the morning after. What would she do now with her life?

Her cell phone rang. She crossed her hands over her purse to try and smother the shrill sound. She was sure it was Vincent calling and she didn't want to be tempted to answer it. What would he say, come back? What's wrong? Come back and let's work this out. Don't be stupid. You're letting us go to hell because of one sen•tence. Don't be childish, Isabelle. Don't be a coward. For once in your life stay and fight for what you believe. The phone rang and rang. It seemed to grow louder by the second. She pressed her hands harder onto the purse, as if that might somehow help. What else could she do to make him go away? Shut up. Shut up. Go away. Be quiet. Leave me alone—I'm not coming back, Vincent. She hap•pened to glance in the rearview mirror. The cab driver was looking at her, obviously wondering why she didn't answer her phone. Shit!

She opened the purse and groped around in it for her phone. She'd turn the damned thing off and shut it up altogether. Ring Ring. It was at the bottom of the bag. She pressed the off button and held it down.

The green screen went blank but somehow the ringing contin•ued. She frowned. How could that happen? How could the phone be off but still keep ringing? Ring Ring. She undid the battery and disconnected it from the back of the machine. When she had the battery in one hand and the telephone in the other it continued to ring.

The driver said loudly, "Pardon me, missus, but would you mind answering that? The sound's driving me corky."

She stabbed the on/off button again, then stabbed it six more times. The phone continued ringing, but suddenly the sound changed. It became the famous signature phrase of Strauss's "Blue Danube" waltz.

Daa-daa-daa-daa-daa/dee-dee/dee-dee. The screen lit up again, orange this time. It had never before been orange. A small black logo of a dancing couple moved around the screen in time to the music. Then they disappeared and the sound stopped. The words "call anjo" replaced the dancers on the screen.

Staring at this, Isabelle slowly shook her head, denying the whole thing. She said as much out loud. "Who's Anjo?" "Thank you."

Befuddled, she narrowed her eyes and looked in the rearview mirror.
"What?"

The taxi driver tipped up his chin. "Thanks for answering your phone."

Isabelle stared at him, trying to get her mind's lens to focus properly on all this. At that moment she had no idea what the man was talking about. Her haunted telephone was in one hand, the phone battery in the other. The driver was talking gibberish and she was supposed to call Anjo, whoever that was.

Isabelle stopped to take a long drink of water. She watched Ettrich over the edge of the glass, her eyes wide and happy now. She had been speaking a long time. He hadn't interrupted once. He had watched her face, the changing expressions there, the beautiful small mouth and wet dart of her tongue forming the words. Listening and watching, he was remembering her again even though she sat di•rectly across the table telling him this mad story about phone mes•sages from their unborn child.

"So the first time Anjo made contact was when he paged you that morning in London?" She put the glass down on the table with a small clink. "Page?"

"Uh, SMS. He sent you a message on your cell phone?" "Right."

They looked at each other and what passed silently back and forth between their eyes was "This is nuts." And "I know, but it's the truth."

"Your phone really started playing the 'Blue Danube'?" "Yes, and
has
been ever since that morning. I can't change it.

"I tried." She laughed. "I hate the 'Blue Danube' waltz. Do you know how many times I've heard that thing in my life, living in Vienna?" Isabelle looked over Vincent's shoulder and saw the waitress standing in a corner scowling at them. She knew why: Because the woman was afraid of them, afraid of what Isabelle had said earlier about her family.

It was probably the same sort of fear she had felt when Anjo first appeared and began harassing her. Or was it teasing? She could never decide which it was—clever or cruel—because sometimes when he came it was this, the next time that. Always unexpected and unpredictable, he entered and exited her life either like a sur•prise bouquet or a violent shove from behind.

"When did he first actually talk to you?"

"At a café in Vienna. Would you like to see?"

"No!" Instinctively Ettrich threw up both hands to ward off her invitation to "travel" to her past again. "Just tell me about it,
Fizz."

"It doesn't matter. What is important is when Anjo told me about you and what was going to happen to you." "Tell me about that." Ettrich caught himself starting to hyper•ventilate. He rolled his eyes in disapproval. Another

one of the conspicuous changes in growing older—his body had become more emotional than ever. It had its own way of reacting passionately to things now. Fierce feelings arose over situations or events that would have drawn barely a shrug from him in the past. Listening to the radio last month, he'd heard The Blue Nile singing "Midnight With•out You," their brilliant jazzy ballad about the end of a relationship. Thank God Ettrich had been alone because seconds into the song he began to cry.

These days when he got nervous, he would start breathing strangely or clench his fists until they hurt. Or else he immediately felt the need to take a wicked piss. In certain vivid ways his body was regressing back to childhood where things are simple action/ reaction: You're sad, you cry. You're scared, you piss your pants. Maybe growing older meant becoming a prisoner to your body's whims.

"—walking down Windmuhlgasse—"

"Wait, Fizz, stop. I didn't hear the first part. Please go back and say it again."

"When I left Stella Marina, I realized that if I went home I'd just sit in my apartment and be jittery after what had just happened. It was only nine o'clock but I didn't feel like going downtown. Then I remembered the Café Ritter is open late. It was only a five-minute walk so I decided to go there.

"You know the Ritter: it's a big place with a real 1950s feel to it—very smoky and full of shadows even in the middle of the day. It was almost empty. When I first walked in I noticed a baby stroller next to one of the tables. I thought that was strange because it was pretty late in the evening to have a baby out. I sat at a window table toward the back and ordered a glass of wine.

"Cora called me on my pocket phone. I guess I got lost talking to her and staring out the window. Anyway, something touched my knee. I looked down and saw a child leaning against it; a little boy was looking up at me. He was dark—looked either Turkish or Yugoslavian—with thick curly black hair and big brown eyes." She bit her lower lip and giggled. "He was also ugly. I know you're not supposed to say that about children, but this one looked like the kind only a mother could love."

Ettrich envisioned a gnome, a troll living under a fairy-tale bridge. "How so? Weird-ugly or just ugly?"

"Nothing-special ugly. Flat nose, big droopy mouth. Ugly. You'd look at him and think, Well, maybe when he gets older he'll get better looking. But you know he won't. That's why it always touches me when I see women fussing over ugly babies. God bless them, you know?"

Ettrich couldn't resist a jab at her. "Snob. Elitist."

Isabelle nodded and grinned. "I'm just calling a spade a spade." He kissed the air between them and gestured for her to con•tinue.

"The first thing I thought was that the baby stroller must be for him. I looked toward the table for his parents, but I sat at an angle where I couldn't see them. So little Mr. Ugly and I kept staring at each other. He was very small; you've got to keep that picture in your head. He was barely big enough to waddle when he walked. If you gave him one of your fingers he would hold it with his whole hand.

"After we'd watched each other a while I smiled but he didn't smile back. Instead he said quietly but very distinctly, 'Pick me up and put me on your lap.' He spoke in a baby's voice, Vincent, but it was no baby speaking."

"Jesus Christ." Ettrich sat back and rubbed his hands fast up and down his arms as if trying to brush the cooties off.

"Yes, I know how you feel. But you've got to remember Anjo is naughty or sometimes just playful. After a while you get used to his tricks."

"No, Fizz, I'm sorry. In the same night, he came to you as a hundred-pound guard dog and then as a talking baby half an hour later? There's no
way
I would ever get used to that."

"If you had to you would and I did. I picked him up and put him on my lap. He told me to play with him like a normal baby so the people around us wouldn't think it strange I was talking to him."