by Audrey Braun
Petra laughs. “Genau.” Exactly. “A woman before her time,” she says in English. And then she switches back to explain that Annaliese’s diaries clearly indicate that she was trying to help Walter as much as she was trying to help herself.
I can’t believe what I’m hearing.
“Ja,” Petra explains. She later wrote that she believed her husband’s inability to perform stemmed from his inability to tell the truth.
36
Herr Freymann meets me at the door.
“A visitor for you,” he says in German. A man waiting in the front room. He arrived not long after I peddled away.
I unbutton the pea coat, feeling as if I’ve just stuck my head inside a furnace. I unzip the top of my backpack and hold it down at my side.
Move, move, I tell my feet. The Freymanns are in the house. I’m safe. I can handle whatever he has to give.
I round the corner to find my visitor sitting in the winged back chair directly facing me, his arms lining the rests, his ankles crossed on the floor. He’s dressed like a European, leather shoes and jeans, his jacket open, exposing the crisp white dress shirt against his lean torso.
His face comes alive when he sees me.
I don’t trust my legs to hold me. I can’t keep my bottom lip from trembling. “You clean up nicely,” I say, oddly, my voice unsteady, my eyes quickly filling with tears.
He stands, and the sunlight catches his amber eyes.
I lock the door to my room and brace my back against it.
“I took the first flight I could get out of Guadalajara just like you,” he says.
“How did you find me?”
“An e-mail from Willow when I got in.”
I slip off my jacket and toss it to a chair.
He takes my hand, and a ribbon of heat travels across my skin.
For a moment it seems all we can do is stare until we’re sure the other isn’t some kind of apparition born of all the yearning.
His hand shakes as he unwinds my scarf.
“Jonathon is here,” I say. “He tried to make me get in a car with him at the bank yesterday. He could turn up any second.”
“It’s quite possible.”
I grab his hand. “Why? What exactly is he planning?”
“I’ll tell you everything I know.”
“You lied to me.” I let go his hand.
He returns to my scarf, unwinding. “There were things I should have told you.” He drops my scarf to the floor. “I will tell you everything right here, right now if you want.”
He caresses my lip with his thumb. His eyes search my mouth. The bruises are nearly gone from his face. Only the small bump on his nose remains.
He slides his jacket from his shoulders and tosses it on the bed. “Do you want to sit down?”
“No.”
So many mistakes have been made. I’ve wanted to be so many things. Benicio, too. But we’ve failed, over and over. I’ve been lost in a fog of apathy and grief. He’s been trapped beneath the weight of decisions he can’t change.
What we need is a second chance.
I reach for him and he pulls me close. The days we’ve been deprived of one another have been like going without food or water. I’m starved for everything he has to give.
We devour one another on the bed, greedy and loud, our clothes snatched from our bodies as if by storm. I clutch his skin. I dig into the blanket when he slides down and spreads my legs and touches me with his tongue. I become aware of everything in the room, my senses heightened to the pulse of every living thing. I squeeze his hair as if through a dream.
When it’s over I lay my head on his chest, but every part of me is still making love to him, my breathing not yet calm. I gaze through the window as Freymanns’ sheep graze on the hillside like fluffs of white clouds floating against the green. Behind them mountains, the color of my eyes, tower like hulking guards.
“It was his plan for me to come here from the beginning, wasn’t it?” I say.
“Yes.”
“This is why you planted the seeds of Switzerland in my head.”
“Yes, but that was before…”
“Is anyone helping him?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Two.”
“Please tell me it’s not the Freymanns.”
He laughs. “No. One is a doctor.”
I press my lips into his smooth chest, tasting the salt of his sweat.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
My eyes swell with tears.
He holds his lips to my hair and breathes deeply.
“Has he been watching me this whole time?” I ask. “Does he know where I am?”
“How did you find this place?” Benicio asks.
“The tourism counter in the train station.”
“All he’d have to do is show the guy your photograph. There’s no doubt he’d remember your face.”
“Easier than that. I told the guy who I was.”
37
I want to feel Benicio in all the ways I never felt Jonathon. It’s as if I’ve spent eighteen years in a box, a coffin, and now I want out. I want daylight on my skin, rich food in my mouth, ice-cold water down my throat. Benicio is all of these. I want to bite him, devour him, absorb him through my skin. I want to hear the sound of his voice, his breath, his moan, his cries inside my own head. I want to give him everything he gives me. I want to give him more.
No one comes for us. We make love until we can no longer speak, our hearts and bodies raw, seized so thoroughly that I wonder if there’ll be anything left of me in the morning. I could die doing this. It feels this way, as if I’m disappearing with every touch, becoming the feeling itself, ethereal as smoke.
I lie back on the bed to catch my breath, watching him as he watches me, our bodies soaked in sweat, throats pulling for air. Within moments I feel a struggle inside me, the wanting, the need to touch while thinking it impossible, even as one or the other slides a finger across a collarbone, a hand on a belly, a cheek, the pull begins all over again.
By evening Frau Freymann gives a double knock. When we don’t answer she says she’ll leave our Abendessen on the table in the hall near the door. Peppermint tea begins to waft beneath the door. I rise naked from the bed and open the door. The long waves of my hair twist and hoist around my head. I tame them back and collect the tray with red and white napkins, fresh Brötchen and cheese, prosciutto and melon, and of course the peppermint tea. I lock the door and carry the tray to the bed.
“Most of our lives together have been spent locked away eating bread and cheese from a tray,” Benicio finally says.
I watch as he chews, the small bump on his nose interrupting the elegance of his face. I search his features for some other imperfection, or perhaps the combination of what makes him so attractive nonetheless. I find him even more interesting to look at now. Flawed. Complete.
“We graduated to prosciutto and melon and tea,” I say.
“True.”
He kisses the line of sweat on my forehead. And then he peels a string of hair from the sweaty crease of my lid and places it where it belongs.
I turn my face and press my lips into his hand. He smells of sex and sweat and melon. “Do you know how much money I have?” I say into his palm.
“I have a good idea.”
“Am I supposed to believe that you’re here for me, not the money?”
“Money can’t buy this.”
“Sure it can.”
“No, not like this.” He kisses my neck.
I tilt my head back, feeling him between my legs before he even touches me. I feel his warm breath in my ear. I close my eyes. My mouth falls open and I feel the stretch of my lips, now raw. I feel drunk. Woozy and content. My tongue flushes with its own juices, readying for his mouth, his sex. He races through my veins. He’s inside me, his breath, his sturdy beating heart.
38
Every hour together feels as if it’s been stolen from some a
lternative life where the two of us never see each other again. But what now? We run through scenarios of where to go and what to do next, but nothing holds any weight. We’re citizens of two different countries, and neither is a place we can call home.
“Do you like dogs?” I ask.
We’re punchy, having spent the morning much the same way as the day before, only now we find the whole situation ridiculous in our delirium. We’re sleep deprived, terrified, traumatized by our own good fortune lasting into another day. We can’t stop laughing.
“Yes. But only brunette dogs with long ears.”
“What the hell is a brunette dog?”
“The color.”
“I know what brunette means, just not on a dog.”
“Does it mean something different on a woman?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well,” he says.
“So, any dog with long ears?”
“Yes.”
“All right.” I shake my head in quick, little bursts. “What’s your favorite color?”
“Orange.”
“Orange? Orange is not an option.”
“What’s wrong with orange?”
“I don’t know. It’s not right.”
“You expected me to choose red, didn’t you? Mexican guy, Latino, red.”
“Hot Mexican guy.”
“Don’t try to woo me away from orange. It won’t work. She is mine. I love her.”
“I love the smell of puppy paws.”
Benicio raises himself onto an elbow. “Santa Maria. What does a puppy paw smell like?”
“Puppy paws. They smell like puppy paws. That’s it.”
“They must smell like something.”
“Why? You wouldn’t ask what a lemon smells like. Or what color orange looks like. It is what it is.”
He lies back onto the pillow with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling as if thinking this through.
“When this is all over,” I finally say, “I want to get a dog.”
“What kind of dog?”
“A brunette dog. You know the kind.”
“Yes. Yes I do.”
By noon we’ve kissed our way into the shower and then finally outside. I bring my backpack just in case. The open air seems to contain Jonathon, his little angry eyes piercing the trees. I feel them on my neck as Benicio and I stroll toward Hagen Haus.
On the way, I tell him how eerie the resemblance to Annaliese is. I tell him about Petra and the diaries, the Viagra Annaliese invented a century ago, the feeling it gives me to sit at my great-grandmother’s desk. And then I watch the look on Benicio’s face as he studies the pictures of my family. He squeezes my hand, and I can see his heart fill with my own happiness.
By the time we return, the weather has cooled and the pension smells of firewood and cooked meat.
We share our wine and stew with the Freymanns, though everything seems to take place backstage, behind my anticipation that Jonathon is only hours, if not seconds, from walking through the door. I translate the Freymanns’ story for Benicio, about how they came to live alone again, just the two of them. They married another set of twins and the four of them lived in this house for decades, fifty years, in fact, running the place, keeping one another company during the low seasons. Several years ago Herr Freymann’s wife passed away from heart disease. Less than a year after that, her brother, Frau Freymann’s husband of fifty years, died of the very same.
They must see the sad expressions on our faces.
“Wir sind nicht hoffnungslos,” Herr Freymann tells me. We aren’t hopeless. He goes on to say they’re grateful to have had such wonderful friends and spouses for so many years. Not many can say such a thing. Grateful that they still have one another.
“Das Leben geht weiter,” Frau Freymann says with a smile. Life goes on.
I wake to the sound of a thud, as if something large and soft, a pile of blankets, has fallen from the top of a closet and hit the floor somewhere in the house. I reach for Benicio. He’s already sitting, and then off the bed, pulling on his clothes.
“What was that?” I whisper.
“Get dressed.”
I slip into my clothes and peer out the window. A half moon dims the cloudy sky. From where I stand there’s no clear view to the drive in front of the house. It’s impossible to see if a car pulled in.
The closest house is acres away. We’re on the second floor. I’m sure to break an ankle if I jump from a window.
“What time is it?” I ask.
Benicio lifts the clock from the dresser. “Five thirty in the morning.”
I feel the exhaustion of our lovemaking, the residue of jet lag still behind my eyes. Like a drug, a sedative, shortly before it knocks you out. “You don’t suppose one of the Freymanns got up to use the bathroom and then dropped something, do you?” I whisper.
“No.”
“Me neither.”
I fumble for my backpack in the dark.
“What are you doing?”
I retrieve a black pistol with an orange tip.
“What is that?”
Footsteps lead down the hall toward us. Heeled shoes not even trying to be quiet. The knob jiggles. Someone bangs on the door.
A woman cries in a distant room.
Someone bangs again.
Benicio’s head snaps toward me.
Whoever is out there is still standing on the other side of the door.
“What do you want?” I suddenly call into the dark.
Benicio shoots me a glance. He shakes his head no.
“What kind of coward waits outside a door, saying nothing?” I yell.
The steps stomp away down the hall. They quickly return with a set of others, though the second sound barefoot. The woman’s cries are now muffled right outside the door.
“Bitte,” Frau Freymann says. “Mein Bruder. Die haben Ihn geschlagen.”
“What?” Benicio asks.
“They hit Herr Freymann,” I whisper.
Frau Freymann continues to weep. “Er hat ein Messer.”
Benicio looks to me for an explanation.
“He has a knife.”
“Wer, Frau Freymann?” I call out. Who?
“Der Mann. Ihr Mann. Er sagte, dass er Ihr Ehemann ist.”
“Jonathon,” I whisper. “He’s here and he has a knife.”
“We’re coming out!” Benicio yells.
If Jonathon didn’t know before that Benicio’s here, he certainly knows now.
He reaches for me. I lean into his ear and tell him I love him.
He pulls me close and tells me the same.
Steps flee from the door. Frau Freymann cries for someone to please let go.
I open the door into the dark silence.
I flip the hall switch but nothing happens.
We slowly make our way into the hall, the old pine planks groaning beneath our bare feet.
At the end of the hall near the top of the stairs a dark shape lies on the floor.
Benicio puts his hand up to stop me but I creep closer, already sure of what I’ll find.
A light from the kitchen sends a dull beam up the stairs. Herr Freymann lies on the floor at my feet, blood coming from the side of his head.
I fill with rage. “Get me a towel.” Benicio grabs one from the bathroom.
I wipe the side of Herr Freymann’s head. It’s difficult to see, but the wound doesn’t appear quite as deep as it might seem with so much blood.
He moans. He’s alive. “Help me get him to the bedroom.”
Someone is rifling through the kitchen. Furniture shifts; drawers open and close.
“They’re going to come back,” Benicio says.
“Help me,” I say, and together we pull Herr Freymann into the bedroom across the hall.
I grab a pillow off the bed and place it under his head. “He needs a doctor right away.”
“If I’m not mistaken ther
e’s one in the house.”
My head shoots up. “Stay with him.”
“Celia!”
I take off running down the stairs.
Frau Freymann sits at the kitchen table, her soft body shaking everywhere. Jonathon stands at the sink with a blond, bold-faced man, a business type in a jacket similar to Jonathon’s.
“Hello, Cee,” Jonathon says with clear, honest anger in his tone.
“I’ll sign whatever you want,” I say. “Just let them go.”
“If only it were that simple.”
I pull the pistol out from behind me and point it at Jonathon’s acquaintance. “I understand you’re a doctor,” I say. “I want you to go upstairs and take care of Herr Freymann’s head.”
Jonathon laughs. I point the pistol at him.
“I wouldn’t point that toy at me if I were you,” he says.
“You’re not me.”
“True.” He nods to the man beside him, gesturing to the pantry door.
The man makes a move to open it.
“Don’t,” I say.
“I have something for you,” Jonathon says. “Something that I think is going to simplify everything.” He gestures to the man again. “Go ahead. Open it.”
I take a step back as the pantry door swings open.
My eyes are playing tricks. What I see can’t be there. I gape into the dim pantry, but it won’t go away. It won’t turn into something that makes sense. There’s no trick of light, no optical illusion. It’s there. He’s there.
Oliver.
My son is tied to a chair, his mouth gagged with duct tape, his eyes sluggish and red. He doesn’t seem to see me. He doesn’t seem to see anything at all. Behind him stands the man who drove Jonathon to the bank. He has a kitchen knife in his hand. It rests on Oliver’s shoulder.
My mind struggles to take this in, but my heart refuses to accept it.
Jonathon’s acquaintance lets go and the door swings shut.
“Oliver!” I jab the pistol in the air at Jonathon. “He was in Minneapolis! He was with Seth!”
“You remember Maggie? Couldn’t wait to tell me everything so I could bring her boyfriend home.”
