The two men kept staring at their glasses. Nick listened to the sound of Molly on the stairs, Anna rattling the dishes in the sink. “Ach,” Frantisek said finally, out of words, tired of it all. He poured again from the bottle, clearly determined to pass out. Now Nick could hear the clock. Neither of them seemed to notice when he got up and left the room.
Upstairs, a low room under the pitched roof, Molly was brushing her hair, already changed. Finally alone.
“We should go,” she said casually, nodding toward his clothes. “He’s here for the night.”
“Look at me. What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” A sharp tug of the brush. “Everything’s lovely. A perfect weekend.”
“Stop it,” he said angrily, then lowered his voice. “Why are you hounding him? What police report?”
She glanced at him, then picked up her bag. “Not now. Let’s just go,” she said softly. “I’ll help Anna finish up.”
Nick sat on the bed for a minute, frustrated, looking around the room. A heavy crocheted bedspread, like a giant doily. A few books. He picked up the picture frame on the night table. His father and Anna, younger, smiling shyly. He still had all his hair. They were dressed for snow, bundled up, standing in an empty city square. Moscow? He wondered what the occasion was, who had taken the picture, then put it back. Their life-still a blank to him.
When he went back down, Frantisek was laid out on the couch, not yet really sleeping but no longer there. His father was covering him with a blanket. “You’re leaving?” he said, seeing the changed clothes. “So soon.”
“We have to get back.”
“No, no, he’ll sleep now. One more drink.”
He moved unsteadily, a little tipsy. Nick glanced toward the kitchen, where the women were working, then shrugged and joined him at the table.
“No more,” Anna said from the sink.
His father winked and poured out a glass. When had the drinking started?
“ Na zdravi,” he said, raising the glass slightly, and Nick drank, trying not to cough as the rough liquid hit his throat. His father said nothing, just looked at him, his eyes gentle, a little clouded. Then he reached over and patted Nick’s hand, his touch as hot as the drink. “I knew you would come,” he said, his voice low.
Nick nodded. A few hours ago he’d wanted to walk away, right through the woods, but he saw in the face, so like his own, that he could never do it. Upstairs, a stranger in a picture, and now, suddenly, a touch he’d known all his life.
“You see what it’s like here.”
His color had begun to drain, a sickly pale. What would he become, another Frantisek, sleeping it off on the couch?
“What I see is that you’ve had too much,” Anna said, coming over with some water and his pills. She put a hand to his forehead, shiny now with sweat. “How do you feel?”
His father placed the pills in his mouth, the movement deliberate and slow. “Perhaps a little tired,” he said quietly.
“It’s late,” Nick said, standing, eager now to get away. “You should get some rest. I’ll help you upstairs.” Anna moved toward him. “No, I’ll take him.”
“I’m all right.” His father waved his hand, a mild protest, but allowed himself to be lifted up and led by the elbow across the room.
Nick followed him up the stairs, then turned down the bed as his father began to undress. His body was bony, frail, and Nick looked away.
“You see what it’s like,” his father said again. “I can’t stay here.”
Nick faced him. “It may not be possible. You know that, don’t you?”
But his father grabbed his arm, clutching him. “No. It is. You think I don’t know what they want? I know. Something valuable. I can pay.”
Nick looked at him, dismayed. There was no talking to him. “Okay. But now let’s get some sleep,” he said, a nurse.
“We’ll meet tomorrow-I’ll come back early. The Narodni Gallery.” He began to cough. “Go around noon,” he gasped, trying to hold down another cough, so that it came out a desperate wheeze.
He took off his shorts and moved to the bed naked, his thin legs and ropy behind as white and vulnerable as a child’s. Nick turned away, hanging things in the wardrobe to avoid the sight of his body, and when he finally looked back his father was under the covers, his eyes closed, his hands folded over his chest. In that instant, Nick saw him as he would be, lying in a coffin, and his own breath went out of him, an unexpected panic. He stood holding the hanger, utterly alone in the room, as if he’d been abandoned. It was only when he saw the blanket stir, a faint rise, that he could move to the bed and lean over to arrange the covers.
His father opened his eyes and smiled. “Nicku,” he whispered. He reached up to smooth Nick’s hair back from his forehead, the old gesture. “Now you tuck me in.”
Nick nodded, feeling his father’s hand slip back.
“Are you all right now?” he said.
His father smiled, closing his eyes. “As snug as a bug in a rug.”
Chapter 10
The drive back was long, slowed by patches of low-lying fog and wet mist that condensed on the windshield, forcing him to lean forward to make out the road. Occasionally tiny lights appeared in the darkness, like fireflies coming out of the woods, then joined the halting stream of cars inching toward Prague. He hadn’t expected traffic. In town, the streets had been almost empty, conduits for trams, but here in the country he saw that the cars had only been in hiding, parked in secret pockets of free weekend air.
Molly was restless, fiddling with the heater, then turning the radio knob to scratchy bursts of Czech that faded in and out until, fed up, she snapped it off and stared out the window. He could feel her next to him, bottled up, wanting to talk but not knowing how to start. He fixed his eyes on the road, where there were only red taillights, not old men with stories, a frail arm reaching up to him from the bed. Now she was rummaging through her bag, pulling things out as she dug deeper, crinkling paper, then finally extracting a thin, misshapen cigarette.
“Don’t say a word,” she said, lighting it. “Just don’t.” She drew on it deeply, and the smell of dope filled the car.
“I thought you left that in Austria.”
“I lied.” She rolled down the window, letting the smell escape into the air, shivering a little at the sudden chill. “Don’t worry. I just kept one. For a rainy day.”
He glanced in the rearview mirror, half expecting to see police lights, but there was only the dark. He rolled down his window a little, creating a draft. “What report?” he said finally.
She sighed. “The D.C. police report, from the night she died. I asked to see it.”
Nick looked at her. “Just a reporter doing her job,” he said, still angry. “Is that the story you’re writing? You want to make him a killer too? Great.”
“He did kill her,” she said quickly, then looked away, her voice apologetic now. “I’m not writing anything. I just said that.”
“Then why-”
She took another drag, stalling, then exhaled slowly. “Okay. She was my aunt. Rosemary Cochrane. My mother’s sister. That’s how I knew who he was. You’re not the only one who-” She stopped, looking over at him. “I know. I should have told you. I was going to. And then, things changed, and I thought, let it go. What’s the good? She’s dead. Why upset everything? Let him take it with him. And all the time here he is, packing his bags.”
Nick said nothing, too stunned to reply.
“I’m not writing anything.” she said again. “It was personal, that’s all.” For a minute there was no sound but the swish of the tires. Then she reached over and handed him the joint, a peace offering.
