“I know who he was.”
The waiter brought the drinks in Jules’s widemouthed martini glasses and he gulped his, managing half before it burned.
“So how did you meet him? After the girlfriend threw you out.”
“Well, that’s the funny thing. Jiri let me stay there — I think it was her idea, actually. To torture him or something. But I really didn’t have anywhere else and I’d already exchanged my money, so I just hung out and saw Prague. They took me places. To tell you the truth, I think Jiri liked the idea of people thinking he was with both of us. You know, that he had some menage a trois going.”
“Did he?”
“No.” She glared at him, then let it go. “Anyway, they took me to a party one night and that’s where I met him. Your father.”
“At a party,” Nick said. “When was this?”
“Last month.”
“You took your time.”
She shrugged. “I went back to Paris. I wasn’t sure what to do. But I kept thinking about it. So.”
“So here we are.” He paused, looking down at his glass. “How did you find me?”
“Oh, he knew where you were. He knows all about you. I guess he keeps tabs.”
For a second, his life seemed to tilt on its axis. He kept tabs. He never left.
“How is he?” he said finally.
“He’s fine,” she said, which told him nothing he wanted to know. “I mean, I guess he is. I only met him once. Well, twice.”
He looked up at her. “Go ahead.”
“I met him at the party. I knew who he was. And I thought, well, maybe there’s a story. Maybe he’d talk to me-you know, give me an interview. He’s never given one.”
“No, never,” Nick said.
“So I thought there’d be a piece in it.”
“For Rolling Stone,” Nick said sarcastically.
“For somebody.”
“They weren’t even born,” Nick continued. “Do you honestly think anyone cares?”
“Are you kidding? Walter Kotlar? After all these years? Everybody’d want that piece.” She paused. “It would be a huge break for me. Anyway, I thought it was worth a try. So I asked him and he agreed to meet me.”
“You must have made some impression. He’s never talked to anyone before.”
“He didn’t then, either. Except about you. We met on the Charles Bridge and then we went for a walk. That’s when he asked me to get in touch with you.”
“On a bridge. Just like in the movies. In your trench-coats.”
“Well, it’s like that there. You have to talk outside.”
“And maybe somebody was putting you on. How do you know it was him? How do I know?”
“He said if you asked that to tell you he always remembered how you helped with the shirt. Whatever that means. He said you’d know.”
He felt his stomach move again, another tilt. The snowy street. The drain.
She looked at him. “It was him, wasn’t it?”
Nick nodded and then signaled to the waiter for another round. “Now what? I’m supposed to call him up and chat about old times?”
“No, he wants to see you.”
“What makes you think I want to see him?”
“Don’t you?”
“No.”
“Oh,” she said, at a loss.
“What did you expect? I’d be so thrilled he wants to see me after twenty years that I’d catch the next plane?”
“I don’t know what I expected. I thought you’d be-I don’t know, curious.”
“Curious. Is that how you’d feel if you saw a ghost?”
She looked at him for a minute, studying his face. “No. I guess I’d feel scared.”
“I don’t feel scared,” he said, taking a sip of his drink. “Let me tell you about my father. He walked out on us. Just left. Defected. That’s the word everybody prefers. Gives it a sort of ideological cast. But what he really did was run. And we had to clean up the mess. My mother. Larry. Christ, not to mention the country. Sometimes I think that’s the worst thing he did. That stupid fucking committee-he made them legitimate. They got something right finally. They just stepped right into it, and after that there was no stopping them. There were Communists in the State Department. Well, one. And they couldn’t get him. So then how many others? And on and on. That’s another little gift he left us.”
“You can’t blame him for that,” she said quietly.
“But he did it,” he said, placing his hand on hers for emphasis. “That’s the point. They were right. Before him they had nothing. And then-” He caught himself, pulled back his hand, and took another drink. “We had to pretend he was dead. And after a while he was dead. I don’t want to bring him back. You saw a ghost, that’s all.”
He stopped, waiting for her reply, but she said nothing.
“You know what I did the day he gave his press conference? That was the first time he came back from the dead. I played baseball. There was a game that afternoon and I saw him on television and I thought, Oh God, it’s starting all over again, everybody will know, they’ll throw me out of the game or look embarrassed or something. They’ll know. But they didn’t. I went to the park and nobody said a thing-the kids, the coaches, nobody. We just played ball, as if nothing had happened. Because it hadn’t. That’s when I realized it was over. I wasn’t his son anymore. I was somebody else.” He looked at her. “I’m still somebody else.”
“If you say so.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means I don’t believe you.”
He felt the lurch again, found out, back at the table with Doris Kemper.
“Have it your way. You delivered your message. Why did you, anyway? I mean, why bother? What’s in it for you?”
“I told you. He promised to talk to me.”
“And you believed him? He’s been known not to tell the truth, you know. In fact, he’s famous for it.”
“He’s not like that.”
“Really. What is he like?”
“He’s-” She searched for a word. “Sad.”
Nick looked at her, not quite sure how to take this. “Am I supposed to feel sorry for him? Forget it.”
“Old-sad,” she said thoughtfully. “He’s old. Don’t be angry. He just wants to see you.”
“So why not pick up the phone? They have phones there, don’t they? Why you? I don’t get it.”
“He wants me to bring you.”
Nick stared at her, dumbfounded. “Come again?”
“He said you’d need a cover. I guess that’s me. You’d be with me. He told me you had a different name. I didn’t realize it was that Warren.”
“Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. He walks up to you at a party and says go get my son and I’ll give you an interview. But don’t tell anybody, because I’m being watched. And you agree to do it? This doesn’t strike you as a little crazy? If you’re that hard up for a story, why not interview Barbara Hutton? Nobody remembers her either.”
“I’m just telling you what he said.”
“But why go through this? He’s not a prisoner, you know. He’s allowed visitors.”
“I know. I kept wondering about that too. What I think is, he doesn’t want them to know who you are. I don’t know why. He wants them to think you’re somebody else.”
“Your fiance.”
“Look, I thought it was crazy too. All the cloak-and-dagger stuff. Why do you think it took me so long? But I
