by Joseph Kanon
Aaron said nothing, letting him wait.
“Well, but you’ll join us for dinner?” Markus said to Hanna.
“I can’t. Aaron and I were just about to go, in fact.”
“I meant both of you, of course. We’re dining here, so you see how convenient.”
“I know, but we can’t tonight. We’re meeting some people. So nice of you, though.”
“A ‘rain check,’ then?” Markus said, the slang in quotation marks. “And of course we’ll see you Thursday. You won’t forget?”
But Hanna was saying good-bye to Trude, and then, after another series of half bows, they were on the long runner carpet, through the revolving doors, and out on the porte cochere.
“I couldn’t face it,” Hanna said, trying to make light of it, but Aaron had seen the wariness. “Sorry to use you that way.”
“I enjoyed watching you in action.”
“Lying, you mean,” she said, a little flustered, but pleased.
“Who is he?”
“An old friend of my father’s. Waiting for the Fourth Reich. You can imagine what the dinners are like. So thank you.”
“Changed name,” he said, half to himself. “I haven’t heard that one in a while.”
“They’re like that. They still think— My father too. When I married Tommy—”
“He was Jewish?” Aaron said, surprised, another swerve.
“One grandfather. But that was enough for my father. A Mischling. Dr. Ortiz, my therapist, thinks that’s why I did it. My father didn’t talk to me for a year.”
“But then he did.”
“There was the money,” she said, a faint edge to her voice now. “He never had a problem with that—taking money from the Jews.”
Aaron looked at her. Not what he’d expected.
“I’m just down here.” She nodded toward the end of the street, a good-bye. “Tell your friend to call.”
“No, don’t go,” he said, meaning it. “Anyway, we have to have dinner now or your cover will be blown. You have to play it out.”
“Is that how it works? In your business?”
“My business? My business is sitting at a desk all day reading reports to guess what someone will say at a conference and then try to explain it when he says something else. You’re thinking of the guys in the field. They go to foreign cities—South America maybe—and women ask them out to dinner. Know anything nearby?”
She smiled. “Do you like steak?”
“Let’s go.”
“You’re sure? I really didn’t—”
“You just want me to ask you. The one and only time I’ve ever been asked to dinner. All right. Will you?”
They walked down the gentle slope to Posadas, past Aaron’s hotel and across Avenida Callao to a restaurant already filling up and noisy, soccer jerseys and team photographs on the wall, people in open shirts and summer dresses, regulars, the tables crowded with carafes of red wine. The waiters knew her and made a fuss, steering them to a table against a wall, away from the worst of the noise, her Alvear clothes now giving her a kind of regal presence in the smoky room. The waiter handed them menus.
“Don’t bother,” she said. “It’s all steak. The wine’s the thing here. I don’t know where they get it. Shall I order a carafe?”
She spoke to the waiter in Spanish, a fast exchange.
“What?” she said, catching him watch her.
“Your Spanish.”
“I grew up here.”
“No, I meant, did you ever notice how people become different in another language? Their tone, the way they move, everything. Different personalities.”
“Then I have three. Wait till I tell Dr. Ortiz.”
“All right. But there’s something to it. What if we think differently in different languages? You know, if the structure of it changes the way we think.”
“I’m not thinking much in any of them. This is good, though.” She moved her finger back and forth to indicate the conversation. “I need to think in English. I’m an American now. My passport is, anyway. The one thing I got out of the marriage.”
“But you moved back here.”
She shrugged. “I like it here. New York is—well, over for me. I can’t live in Germany. Given everything. It’s easier here. You can disappear from the rest of the world.”
“That’s what I thought the first day here. The distance—you feel forgotten.”
“Almost,” she said, then let it go, not bothering to explain. “Here we are,” she said as the wine arrived. They tasted it. “It’s good for house wine, isn’t it?”
He smiled. “You’re a cheap date.”
“Is that what this is? The interview’s over?”
“It was your turn to ask.”
She smiled a little, toying with her glass. “You said before ‘guys in the field.’ What do you call them?”
“Agents.”
“Not spies?”
“They prefer agents.”
She nodded. “OK. I’ve never had dinner with an agent before. Not that I knew of anyway.”
“You’re not having one now.”
She ignored this. “I don’t count Jamie. Everybody knows he’s— Anyway, you’re the dangerous one.”
“How so?”
“It’s easy to talk to you. So I keep talking. Isn’t that what every agent wants?”
“Probably.”
Another smile. “But you wouldn’t know.” She sipped the wine. “Anyway, you don’t get everything. The German me. Or the Spanish me. You don’t know how I think in Spanish.”
“I don’t know how you think in English yet. That’s why we’re here.”
Another sip of wine, the noise of the restaurant a buzz behind them.
“I’m not going to win this,” she said. “I’m enjoying it too much.”
He looked up, the gulp of wine spreading through him, warm, enjoying it too, the talk, just being in the room, at this table, away from the flow of Spanish and bright overhead lights, their space.
“Win what?” he said quietly, the cat and mouse of the Alvear becoming something else, so that two things were happening at once, a different rhythm, aware now of her perfume, lost somehow at the Alvear, of glances coming from the neighboring tables, as if they were meant to act something out, aware of everything.
“Whatever we’re doing,” she said, inside the intimate circle too, just their table.
“Having dinner,” he said, steadying himself.
“That too.” She made a toasting movement with her glass. “And I’m enjoying it. You can put that in your report. Subject enjoyed herself.”
“Then I’d have to say that I did too. They wouldn’t like that.”
“Better not then.” She paused. “I wonder what you really want.”
“Why couldn’t it be just dinner?”
“Because it isn’t. I’d know. It would feel different.”
“Maybe I’m not doing it right. How does it usually go?”
“Usually? We sit down. You’d say something about how I look.”
“How you look,” he repeated, now looking.
“I didn’t say it had to be true.”
He raised his eyebrows, playing. “You look—wonderful. But you already know that. Do I do it piece by piece? Eyes—”
She smiled. “Then tell me something I don’t know.”
“How about something I don’t know.”
She waited.
“Why you came to dinner.”
“A whim?”
“You?”
“Every now and then. Or maybe some reason of my own. Like you.”
“Like me.”
“Some reason you can’t tell me. Remember? Now we’ll both have one.”
He looked over at her, momentarily checked. Two things happening at once.
“But let’s pretend it’s just dinner,” she said. “And you think I look wonderful.”
They ordered more wine when the steak arrived, perfectly charred, spilling o
ver the side of the plate. Fried potatoes. He glanced around the room—did people eat like this every day? They talked about nothing, floating from one subject to another, the talk just an excuse to be there, across from each other. The neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, authentic San Telmo, leafy Palermo. A friend who knew Borges. Tango parlors, real ones. New York when the marriage was still fun. In the bright restaurant light her hair, deep gold at the Alvear, took on a white silver sheen, a film effect, her eyes dark, pooling. But brown, not Aryan blue, not her father’s Nordic dream. His daughter. Not giving anything away. But also this other woman, sipping wine, talking about—what? A new museum in Belgrano. Neither of them really paying attention. Putting the sweater behind her in the suddenly warm room, turning to hang it over the chair, the movement pulling her blouse against her skin. Where was Belgrano anyway? Laughing at something. All of it just an excuse to look. Not what he expected.
And then later, with the last of the wine, a new intimacy, not drunk or sloppy, but easy with each other, knowing, as if something had already been discussed and decided. Taking their time, tables emptying around them. For a few minutes they were quiet, not having to say anything. She rested her cheek on her hand, elbow on the table, looking at him.
“So what do you think? If I talk to your friend, do I bury him? Otto?”
“I don’t know.”
“No. I don’t know either. I thought I only had to do it once—but here he is again. And maybe again.”
“You can only die once.”
She looked at him for a second, then took her hand away, sitting up. “Yes. Once. You’re right. And he did. But the problem is he doesn’t go away. I’m Schramm, then Braun, then Crane and he’s still inside me—you know, his blood. My mother, I never told you—”
“No,” he said, the word almost a gulp.
“She died. But before she died—”
He waited.
“She was—not right,” she said, making a motion toward her head.
“I’m sorry.”
“So that’s what’s in me. Two sides. Damaged goods.”
“You don’t really believe that.”
“Why not? Who knows what’s in my blood?”
“It doesn’t work that way. You’re not them. Blood’s just—blood.”
“So genes, then. Whatever they call it. You don’t think I should worry.”
“No.”
“But you didn’t have such a father.”
He stared at her. Tell me where he is.
“It doesn’t bother you?” she said. “That he’s my father?”
“No,” he said, sliding now, unable to stop.
“Maybe you even like it. There are people like that.”
“No.”
“No,” she said. “So you don’t care.” She looked down at her wine. “Everybody cares. One way or the other.”
“I’m not having dinner with him. I’m having dinner with you.” He looked over. “And your genes.”
“And my genes. Whatever they are. So that’s nice,” she said, forcing a smile. She sat back, fingering her glass, looking at him. “Aaron Wiley. Mysterious Mr. Wiley. So is Markus right? It’s a changed name?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What was it?”
“Gelb,” Aaron said, pulling it out of the air, a yellow jersey on the wall.
“Yes? But it’s not so bad.”
“Not so American either.”
“Tommy’s was something I couldn’t pronounce. His grandfather’s, I mean. Lithuanian. Polish, maybe. From the East. Anyway, now Crane.”
“Did he think of himself as Jewish?”
“No. How could he—and be with me? Sleeping with the enemy.” She looked straight at him. “Maybe how you’d feel.”
He said nothing, the question lying on the table between them, but the image in it alive, something he could feel, as if she had reached across and touched him.
“How do you know he didn’t? Feel that,” he said finally.
“Because you know. No one lies in bed.”
“No one,” he repeated.
“Not the bodies. People lie, but not the bodies. You know.” Still looking at him, their eyes still.
“I wonder.”
“Because you did? But she knew. I’ll bet she knew.”
“But I didn’t lie.”
She tilted her head, a new angle. “It’s funny. I believe you. An honest man. Well, sometimes honest. That’s what makes it—”
“What?”
“Interesting. Someone you don’t know.”
“A stranger.”
She smiled. “No. Picking up people in bars, you mean? Not yet. You can ask at the Alvear. Tommy thought so. You know he hired a detective? Or maybe his father arranged it. Everywhere I went.”
“And what happened?”
“I slept with him,” she said, her laugh almost a giggle, young. “He wanted it. So he wrote a good report and they paid him. It was true, the report. He never found me with anyone. Except him.”
Both smiling now, the jokes not really jokes, just something in the air that no one else felt, a way of touching.
She moved in her seat, leaning forward. “Why am I telling you all this? I don’t talk to anybody about such things. Well, Dr. Ortiz. But that’s like the confessional. It doesn’t go any further. So why you, do you think?” A question to herself.
“I’m easy to talk to.”
She thought about this for a second, her own idea circling back.
“Because you listen. Nobody listens, but you do. Everything I say. Listening.”
“I’m being polite.”
“No. Listening. Anybody else, we would already be gone—your room, somewhere. But we’re here talking. That’s what you want.”
“And you?”
She caught his eye and then looked away, embarrassed, something new.
“I’d better get you home,” he said, signaling for the check. “Look, we’ve finished the wine.”
She watched his face, another direct look, saying nothing, as he paid the bill.
“Shall we go?” he said.
“You can’t come to the building. I don’t bring people home.”
He looked back, an uncontrollable shiver of anticipation, the second when you know it’s going to happen.
“Caesar’s wife?”
“Tommy’s wife. I got into the habit. It’s a small town.”
“I’m in the next block,” he said evenly. “My hotel.”
“Ah. Except you haven’t asked me yet.”
Not what he was doing here, what was supposed to happen. And then he was moving and it was too late. He reached across and took her hand, just grazing her skin, aware of it, helping her to her feet and collecting the sweater in what felt like one motion, a piece of choreography, his hand moving to the small of her back as they left.
In the street, a few steps away from the restaurant lights, she turned to face him, putting her hand at the back of his neck, faces close. Too late to stop now.
“Just tell me one thing. It’s not because I’m his daughter. Somebody did that once. I don’t know why. Get even, something like that.”
What had that been like, to remember it now?
“He’s dead.”
She looked away. “Yes. I keep forgetting.”
And then she pulled him to her, and all he could feel was her breath, hot on his face, her mouth opening, the little shocks of contact, not thinking anymore. He moved to her cheek, her ear, smelling her skin, excited by the tiny gasps near his ear, standing in the street, wanting it now. When she pulled away, just a little, it was only to catch her breath, his lips still on her, following some map of her face.
“It’s not a good idea,” she said, the words coming out in bursts, between kisses.
“What?”
“To go to bed with someone you don’t know.”
“No,” he said, still kissing her.
“But I’m the one who wanted to. All night. Maybe that’s why. To se
e what you want.” Her breath coming faster. “And now I don’t care anymore. I don’t care who you are.”
At the hotel, the desk clerk looked away as he handed him the key, concierge discretion. They had to wait for the elevator, a rickety iron cage, not looking at each other, waiting again as the door closed and the contact points met, the jolt of winches, the slow climb. When they were halfway to the first floor, out of sight of the desk, he pushed her against the cab wall, too late to stop now, a kid in a hurry. She laughed a little, surprised, then pressed back, the length of her body against his. He put his hands behind her, pulling her closer, excited now by where they were, the furtiveness, like teenage sex, something you weren’t supposed to do. Just being here against the rules. And not being able to stop.
In the room she put her hand on his arm, a slowing motion, then unzipped her skirt and pulled her blouse over her head, a show for him, almost mischievous, watching him watch. When she was naked, she stood still for a second, a provocation, then pulled his hand over to her so that he could feel her skin, her breast, then the rest of her, wanting all of it at once. A woman’s skin, the softness of it. No, hers. The way it smelled, moved under his fingers. Then she was at his belt, undoing it while he kissed her, and there was nothing to grab onto anymore. He thought of the cage elevator falling floor by floor, no stops, and when they fell on the bed it seemed part of the same fall, a kind of swoon, and she wasn’t trying to slow him anymore, falling with him, faster, grabbing at each other to finish before they hit bottom. When he entered her she was already wet, almost there, and they seemed to go even faster, urgent, both of them gasping but not crying out, as if they didn’t want to be heard, afraid of being caught, and then not caring, the pleasure rushing in, overwhelming everything. For one second, who they really were. Not thinking anymore, floating.
Afterward they didn’t talk, didn’t smoke, just lay there coming back. On the ceiling, there were flickers of light from the building in the next street. Where people were getting ready for bed, speaking Spanish, in their own world. Not looking for anybody. Maybe making love, clothes thrown on the floor. Then lying like this, at peace.
She turned onto her side and put her arm across his chest, letting it lie there, so they could feel each other breathing, then raised herself up, propping her head with her free hand.
