Prague is eight hours ahead of Portland, or maybe it’s nine. I e-mailed Charlotte at 1 a.m. so she would think I was writing to her first thing in the morning, when I arrived at the knob factory. The factory was in a suburb of Prague. I told her I had to take a bus to get there, along with the other workers. I even had a lunch pail, filled with sandwiches made with dark bread. In the evenings I strolled along the Charles Bridge. I saw the world famous astronomical clock (Wikipedia has a good picture) and discovered a great bar called the Clown and Bard, where the barmaid admired my tattoo and served me some dill soup, on the house.
Charlotte started writing,
One rainy night after work I went to Holman’s, around the corner from my apartment. The storm drains were clogged with soggy Cornflake-looking leaves. My Vans got soaked. I ordered a patty melt and a Bud Light. A woman a few tables over was wearing Happy. I smelled it over the cheap disinfectant and grilled onions. Ah hell. I used my calling card to call Charlotte from the pay phone.
She answered on the first ring. I told her I was calling from the Clown and Bard.
“Ray, are you all right?”
I loved that concern in her voice. I said I was fine, while making sure I didn’t sound fine at all. I wanted her to think that maybe I’d had some food poisoning. Maybe a worker on the bus beat me up for being an American. Maybe I was dying of loneliness. Anything could happen in Prague.
“It’s 3:30 in the morning. I thought you didn’t have a phone in your flat.”
“You were being missed,” I said. A roar went up from the bar. Monday Night Football on the TV. “I’m at the Clown and Bard. They’re watching football. You know, soccer.”
She didn’t understand what I was doing at a bar at 3:30 a.m. I told her I couldn’t sleep.
“So, what, you’ve just been out walking the streets?”
“I was hungry.”
There was a long pause, as if she’d never heard anything so ridiculous in her life. I covered my mouth so I wouldn’t laugh. Then it all went bad. It was the beginning of how I find myself at this moment, with her laying unconscious on my bathroom floor.
“Is it that woman?” she asked. “The one with the learning disability? Is that why you’re out so late? You’ve been out with her?”
“What are you talking about?” What was she talking about?
“The one you sent the hand lotion to?”
I forgot I’d told her Agnessa lived in Prague.
The more I denied seeing Agnessa while I was in Prague, the more Charlotte believed I was lying. I said, “I haven’t seen her. And anyway, we’re non-touching friends.” Charlotte went bat-shit crazy when I said that. It was true. I’m a good man. I don’t lie unless I have to. When I was in Chelyabinsk, Agnessa let me hold her elbow when we crossed the street. Donnie said that’s how these Russian women are. Until they receive a victory rock, there’s no hope of any action.
“I haven’t seen Ag in months,” I said. “She’s a friend. She reminds me of you. She’s got that sense of humor, but not so cutting. And answer me this, why are Slavic women either as short as they are wide, or super models?”
“She’s a super model?”
“It’s usually the really old ones who are short and fat. The ladies who sweep the streets.”
“Ray, just tell me. Is there anything going on with this woman or not?”
“Did you know they serve patty melts at the Clown and Bard? Bizarre, huh?”
Charlotte hung up on me. I paid for my half-eaten melt and walked home. If I left the lights off I could sit in the living room and drink a beer and watch my landlady paint her nails in her thong and T-shirt. Charlotte had given me an idea. As soon as Agnessa’s fiancee visa came through I’d tell Charlotte my work in Prague was finished. I’d tell her I was coming home with my friend Agnessa, who wanted to start a new life in the States. Of course, she would stay with me until she found a place of her own. Charlotte would lose her mind. Maybe Agnessa and I could double date with Charlotte and the film critic. It would be fun.
My calls to Charlotte started going to voice mail, my emails went unanswered. My landlady got curtains. I took Ray Jr. to IMAX to see a movie about coral reefs. He vomited into my lap. I was counting on associating with Lorna a little, but she clapped her hand over her nose and told me to go home. There was a message on my voice mail from Agnessa, wondering whether I’d made her airplane reservations. Nothing from Charlotte after two full weeks.
I decided it was time to come home.
The forced-air heat comes on. Outside, big messy snowflakes blow out of the sky. From my window I can see across the snowy street into the Noble Rot, where wine is a meal. Once Charlotte stops playing possum and gets up off the bathroom floor I can take her right over there. Show there are no hard feelings. She thinks I am a vengeful type, controlling, but she has me all wrong.
Playing possum. I have to laugh. It is how we met, how she fell for me. I was still at the pest control company out on Foster Road. One spring morning she’d called up fairly hysterical. There was a dead possum in her tulips. A few of us were in the break room, shaking the snack machine to see if we could free a half-released bag of Doritos. The supervisor came in and thought we might want to draw straws. Charlotte lived in Lake Oswego, where the ladies tend to have nothing better to do than go to yoga, get their nails done, and flirt with the hired hands. Sometimes you can even get lucky.
Charlotte came to the door wearing baggy shorts and a University of Michigan T-shirt. Reading glasses on her head and a pen and sheaf of papers in one hand. Mint-green toenail polish. She held the backdoor open for me.
“I would have just tossed him in the trash but the garbage isn’t until next Wednesday. That didn’t seem very, I don’t know, hygienic.”
But when we got to the side yard where the tulips grew there were only a few flattened stalks, a petal or two strewn about.
“He was just here,” she said, then whirled on her heel and startled me by punching me in the arm. She had a great loud laugh. “He was playing possum. Oh my God.”
She offered me a beer for my trouble, and I told her that possums don’t actually play dead, that they’re so frightened they fall into a real coma. Then, after a few hours, they rouse themselves and go on their way. Charlotte thought that was fascinating. She made me sit down at her kitchen table and tell her more.
Not many women have ever looked at me that way.
Tonight she came over to my apartment uninvited. I’d sent her an e-mail two days ago telling her I was home from Prague, in case she cared. I didn’t tell her where I live. I figured I’d let it slip next week, after Agnessa arrives from Chelyabinsk.
“Hello!” she said, stomping the snow off her red cowboy boots before coming right on in. She walked around my front room. Touched the DVDs stacked on top of the TV, picked up the empty Czechvar bottle on the desk beside the computer. Flipped through a stack of mail on the end table beside the couch.
“You settled right in here, didn’t you?”
“It’s good to see you,” I said. It was good to see her. She wasn’t wearing any perfume.
“I got your new address from Elaine,” she said. “How’s the jet lag?”
“Who?” I knew who. Elaine was the only person who was aware I’d moved to Southeast Ankeny.
“I had a dream about you last night.” I didn’t know where I was going with this, but chicks always liked to hear that you had a dream about them.
“I came to get my ring back,” she said. She was in one of those moods. Fine.
“Why don’t you sit down and I’ll get it.”
She pulled her hair out of its scrunchie and pulled it back up on top of her head. She didn’t sit down.
I took my time. I walked down the long hallway to my bedroom. I sat on the bed in the dark. It occurred to me that Agnessa was going to need someplace to put her clothes. I didn’t have a bureau, but instead used the top two shelves in the closet. I walked back down the hallway. Charlotte wasn’t there. From the kitchen I could hear the freezer door open, then Charlotte’s loud laugh.
I stood in the middle of my front room, stared at a poster I’d taken from our old house, black-and-white, a young couple kissing on a Paris street. It had some name in French.
“This wasn’t something I wanted to tell you over the phone, but one night someone broke into my flat in
