White Apples (13 page)

On the windowsill was something that made her smile as she sipped the drink. It was an object of real importance to both of them. Ettrich kept it in plain sight at all times. His apartment was empty, sterile, and depressing. He knew that. The only reason why he'd rented it was because he was exhausted from his separation and needed anyplace to call home for the time being. He only breathed here, ate take-out food, slept fitfully, and spent way too much time thinking of all the other places he would rather be. That object on the windowsill, silly as it appeared, was his talisman. It comforted him and gave him hope for the future. It had been the first gift Isabelle ever gave him.

About ten inches high, it was a green rubber frog dressed in a white ballet dancer's tutu. Arms arched over its head, it stood on one big flat green foot in a classic ballet pose looking both ridiculous and engaging at the same time.

Isabelle bought it for about a dollar at the Viennese flea market when she was twenty-four. It had traveled with her whenever she moved around the world and was one of the first things she un•packed and strategically placed when settling in. She judged people by the way they reacted to it. If someone thought it a silly girlie thing, she wrote them off without a second thought. If they were considerate or delighted or quizzical in their reaction, then she let them come a little closer to her heart. She never explained why she owned the figure until she'd heard what they thought of it.

The first time Vincent Ettrich saw the frog he picked it right up, turned it this way and that, and said quietly to himself, "Ain't it the truth." Intrigued, Isabelle asked what he meant. He made it dance in his hand a while before answering. "This guy is
us.
All us silly frogs dressed up in our tutus trying to dance
Swan Lake.
It's so sweet and sad. The Frog Ballet, with a cast of thousands. No, millions and billions!"

Several days after they slept together for the first time, Isabelle surprised herself by giving him the frog. She was embarrassed by the intensity of emotion she felt handing it to him. Her voice was almost trembling when she said, "I would like you to have this."

He took it and brought it close to his chest but said nothing.

"Giving that to you means a lot more to me than giving you my body. Do you understand?"

Ettrich understood. She saw it in his face. It scared the hell out of her. She hadn't felt this open, vulnerable, and happy with anyone in years, much less a lover. It had happened so quickly.

These memories piled up fast in her mind as she stood with the whiskey in hand, staring at her frog perched on his windowsill.

She pointed at it with her glass. "Did you ever give it a name?" "No! That would be sacrilege. He's
Jederfrosch."

She chuckled at his bad joke in German. "But you keep him around?" "Always. He's my sidekick. And in this apartment he's the en•tire decor."

Her head moved from left to right, slowly panning the room. "I noticed that. But you love beautiful things. Why do you keep this place so empty? So ... barren."

He made a face. "I did have a photograph up on that wall but it depressed me because it was beautiful so I took it

down. Fizz, this ain't my home. Home is in Vienna with you. Or at least it was supposed to be before I died." That amused him and he smiled.

"Why are you smiling?"

"Because I said that without thinking. Like it's the most natural thing in the world, no big deal—
before I died."

She put her glass on the windowsill next to the frog and moved up close to Ettrich. "I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm here now. We're together again."

He put his hands on her waist. "Thank God for that."

She reached up and began to undo the top button of his shirt. He hesitated, then put his hands over hers, warm over cold, stopping her.

"Do you think Anjo will mind if we make love?" He meant it; his voice was worried.

She gave him a luscious smile. She loved him for being con•cerned. "That's very sweet of you but I'm not that fragile yet. I'm only three months pregnant. It'll be fine; we have plenty of time. Plus, if he feels cramped for space he can move back further in his room." She undid buttons number two and three on his shirt, watch•ing her fingers do the necessary twist and slide. "Your apartment needs furnishing."

"But I just told you—"

She gently butted his chin with her forehead. "I mean now, tonight. It needs to be filled with life. I hate thinking of you sitting here alone night after night. It gives me the creeps."

"It's not
that
bad." He watched her fingers work on the last button.

"It's horrible." She pulled off the shirt and, putting her hands on his shoulders, made him turn around, away from her. He knew what she was about to do. It made him so happy.

When Ettrich was a child, his mother would come into his room most nights as he was preparing for bed. After he'd washed his face and brushed his teeth, she would have him pull up his pajama top and lie facedown on the bed. Sitting next to him, she would run her long red fingernails slowly slowly slowly, lightly lightly lightly up and down and all around his back for a long time. She called them her fingersnails. Some nights they would talk a little while she did it, but most of the time it was done silently and both of them preferred it that way. Minutes of quiet together, both of them think•ing their own thoughts but joined by those beautiful small fingers skating smoothly, dreamily, here and there across his back. It never failed to calm, comfort, and finally hypnotize this jumpy little boy's skin into submission. Invariably he fell asleep while she was doing it. As a grown-up and parent, what touched him most about the memory was how carefully she must have pulled his pajama top down and somehow gotten him under the covers without waking him.

Ettrich told Isabelle about the fingersnails one morning while he was cooking breakfast in her apartment. He was wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt. She loved hearing stories about his childhood and invariably sat rapt whenever he remembered a good one to tell. But this time while he spoke she snuck up behind him and, without warning, pulled his T-shirt up and put it like a hood over his head. He stood there frozen, one arm up holding the spatula in midair with the shirt completely covering his head and face.

Isabelle did not have long fingernails like his mother. Hers were short but what she lacked in nail length she made up for in a mar•velous, shivery touch. Starting at the base of his neck, she slowly moved all ten fingers down his back. Their sliding, tickling lightness gave him goose bumps all over his body, despite the fact he was hooded, blinded, and holding an eggy spatula in the air, looking like some kind of insane Statue of Liberty.

"Don't you want to hear the rest of my fingersnail story?" he asked from beneath his full-head blindfold. "Nope. Because I'm about to update it." Her fingers were trick•ling down his spine like rain just beginning on a

window. A moment later so was her tongue.

Ettrich twitched like he'd gotten an electric shock. "Oops! The following program is not recommended for viewers under eighteen. Can I at least put the spatula down?"

"No. If you move I'll stop." Her tongue slid lower. She pinched his ass lightly, then again harder. His breath caught in his throat and then left in a careful hiss. He didn't know what she would do next. He loved that. The bites hurt and were wonderful together. She pulled his shorts down with one hand while stroking his bare stom•ach with the other. Standing there covered by his shirt and his underpants puddled on the floor, Ettrich looked ridiculous. If Isabelle had looked up at him she would have laughed for five minutes. But she was too busy to do that. Starting at his ankle, she slid her thumb so lightly and slowly up the inside of his right leg. "I bet your mother never did
this
to you."

He dropped the spatula on the counter; its loud clatter meant nothing. Both arms hung helplessly at his sides, bystanders.

Many months later in a city very far from Vienna, Isabelle's fingers were again moving across Ettrich's back. While she did it, both of them stared out the window. A number of planes passed low over•head, making their final approach to the airport. Ettrich remembered how many nights alone he had watched these planes and thought wouldn't it be the greatest thing in life if she were on one of them? Totally unexpectedly she arrives, just like that, and knocks on the door. I'm here, Vincent. I had to come. We have to talk. I love you. But she never did that. And even with her here now, her fingers on his back, the memory was so painful and lonely that Ettrich had to blink hard a few times to push it away.

After a long and peaceful silence, she began to speak in a low voice:

My love, we have found each other thirsty and we have

drunk up all the water and the blood,

we found each other hungry and we bit each other

as fire bites, leaving wounds in us.

But wait for me,

keep for me your sweetness.

I will give you too a rose.

She put her forehead against his bare back and her palms flat on his shoulder blades. "I read that poem for the first time a week after I ran away from you in London. It destroyed me because it's exactly about you and me. And Anjo is our rose. So I made myself memorize it, like a punishment."

Ettrich did not turn around. He couldn't say what he needed to say now if he were facing her. "I hated you, Fizz.

Some part of my heart still does. For giving up so easily like that. I can't imagine what I would've done if I'd known then about Anjo. You just took off again. Never even gave me a chance. You never gave us a chance. Just
took off.
You heard one stupid insensitive sentence you didn't like and zoom—out the fucking door.

"It would have been so easy to resolve. We were
there.
We had it—everything was in place. God damn it!" . She nodded into his back, both of them swaying forward with her push.

"And then you found out I was dying but didn't tell me?" His voice was incredulous.

"You don't remember any of that, Vincent. He took away all of those memories." As if for emphasis, she pushed her head harder against his back.

He tensed. "That doesn't matter. I know about it now. I know you weren't there for me." "I couldn't be. I told you—Anjo wouldn't let me."

"Why?"

She remained silent. He knew she would. It made him very angry and he wasn't going to let it pass this time.
"Why?"
He started to turn but she quickly grabbed his shoulders and stopped him. He sucked in his lower lip. Outrage was in the back of his throat and out to the tips of his fingers.

More uneasy time passed until Isabelle said abruptly, out of nowhere, as if she had snatched the sentence out of the air as it flew by, "Because
I
had to go get you, not Anjo."

"What? What do you mean?" "I had to go there and get you."

Ettrich shook his head—he didn't understand.

"After you died, Vincent, I had to go into Death and bring you back."

The next morning Vincent Ettrich woke up next to a woman he had never seen before.

He came to consciousness slowly, feeling drugged, feeling like his head on the pillow weighed three hundred pounds. Had he slept at all? It felt like he had been awake for days and only fallen asleep five minutes ago. Even opening his eyes and keeping them open required major effort. Had he dreamed? He vaguely remembered something but it was evaporating from his mind like morning mist under a hot sun.

The ceiling helped. Ceilings could be good compasses. They could tell you where you were. Ettrich had spent so much time in recent months lying on this bed, staring at the ceiling, that he knew its every detail. Prison inmates and the brokenhearted often have Ph.D.'s in the study of ceilings.

Almost directly above him was a small brown mark he had come to think of as the potato because he could find no other description for its shape. A result of water damage from the apartment above, the building owners had asked when he moved in if he wanted them to repair it. The thought of painters tramping around his new place and the stink of fresh paint lingering for days convinced him to say no, the stain didn't bother him. Since then he had even grown fond of it during his staring bouts. It was brown Potato Island in the middle of a boring blue ceiling sea.

So now that he had registered Potato Island above him, Ettrich knew that he was in his own bed. And it must be morning because the room was filled with light, the only time that happened in a day. With those facts in mind, he slowly rolled his head to the right and saw a very good-looking blond woman asleep next to him. He froze. After a good number of beats a wicked grin came to his face. Ettrich really had no idea who this cutie was but that was okay. Like a ventriloquist, his lips did not move when he said very dis•tinctly albeit quietly, "Hot dog!"

Unable to think of anything else to do at the moment, he rolled his head upright again, looked at Potato Island and wondered who is she? What did I
do
last night, for God's sake? Where was I? How did we meet? How did I get her here? He knew he could probably slip out of bed without waking her, but what for? Right here was the place to be at

the moment. There was no doubt about that.

He turned again to study her face. She really was lovely— absolutely his type. His eyes moved across her face and down her neck to where the lemon-colored bed sheet covered the rest of her. By the glorious look of things, Miss Mystery didn't have any clothes on. To check that assumption, he slid his leg oh so slowly over toward her and as subtly as a leg can explore another body under•neath a sheet he put it to work. Legwork. And indeed he was right—she was naked all over.

There had been many firsts in Vincent Ettrich's life when it came to women. God knows there had been a lot of them.

A lot of romances in a lot of places under a lot of sometimes wonderful, sometimes peculiar circumstances. But this really was a major event: The first time he could not remember
anything
about a woman lying in bed next to him the morning after, much less what they'd done together the night before.