Kiss Me Twice

by Thomas Gifford

  But when he arrived at the massive arch in Washington Square at the foot of Fifth, he paid the driver, got out, and realized he didn’t want to cage himself up in the apartment. He started across the park, kicking his way through the first big harvest of autumn leaves, and suddenly felt very tired, as if the weight of the past that had been loosed by seeing Karin had finally come crashing down on him. He sat down on a bench, pulled his trench coat tighter, tugged his hat brim down on his forehead, and plunged his fists deep into the pockets. He was looking through the trees toward the black windows of his apartment. It might have been the day Cindy Squires, one startlingly beautiful autumn day, had walked all the way down Fifth Avenue from the Plaza and made love with him for the first time in that same apartment that had changed so little since. She had been unlike any other woman he’d ever known, as beautiful as Karin, but shrouded in her own fatalistic vision of her life. When he remembered Cindy—and he did, still, every day of his life—he saw her as if she were standing alone, her fate clinging to her like a cloak, as if she had always known how it would end. He could recall everything about her, the ash-blond hair, the tiny breasts and solid, wide hips, the low husky voice, the way she’d had a final burst of hope near the end, hope that maybe her life—their life—could endure happily … but at the end, the very end, with Max Bauman’s gun pressed up under her chin, she had known it was a frail, hopeless dream, and she had said good-bye to him with her eyes. … And the memory of her eyes had never dimmed for him.

  That day she’d met him at the Plaza and taken the long walk down Fifth … it seemed a lifetime ago. … It was a lifetime ago. Hers, Max’s, Bennie’s. Lifetimes ago.

  Cassidy shook himself out of the reverie and stood up, feeling the needles of mist in his face. Slowly he set off to circle the square, still in the grip of the past, listening to the tapping of his stick on the damp sidewalk, a wet leaf occasionally adhering to the ferrule.

  He crossed the street in front of his apartment, pushed through the black wrought-iron gate, and went inside, accompanied as always by his platoon of ghosts.

  He was sitting in the twilight of a cloudy afternoon, nursing a scotch on ice, and he hadn’t bothered to turn on the table lamps. There was a steady throbbing in his leg, annoying, like waking yourself up by snoring. The window shades were drawn and he yanked the cord to pull them open. He was looking out at the square. The fallen leaves were glued to the sidewalk and he wasn’t really seeing the square, he was seeing Cindy and Bennie and Terry Leary and the news from Europe wasn’t so good and Karin was dead and it was a long time ago. He was stuck in the clouds of memory and he hadn’t been paying attention to the view across the square because he hadn’t seen anyone, but now the doorbell was ringing.

  He got up, set the drink on an end table, went to the front hall, and opened the door.

  She was standing in the doorway wearing a green trench coat and a black beret at a cocky angle, at variance with the huge tan eyes, which didn’t look cocky at all. She wore tight leather gloves that stretched across her knuckles. She let her hand drop from the buzzer.

  “Mr. Cassidy … it’s just me.” A smile darted across her mouth, as if she’d remembered how to do it and then as quickly forgotten again. She looked back at the square as if trying to fix the coordinates so she’d remember the place. “I’m very … confused.” She turned back, searching his face as if an answer might be hidden there, like one of those “What’s Wrong with this Picture?” puzzles.

  “You’d better come on in,” Cassidy said, standing aside. They’d lived in the apartment together for six months before she’d gone back to Germany to see her sick father. He watched her like a laboratory attendant watching an animal in a maze, wondering if she’d remember the course. She pulled the beret off and stood holding it, looking into the darkness of his living room. She was a stranger in an unfamiliar room. He closed the door behind him, followed her in, switched on a lamp. She looked at him as if she needed instructions. She ran one hand, the glove off now, through the curtain of her hair and he saw the scar again. She saw him looking at the scar and nodded, slowly letting the hair fall back into place. “My souvenir of the war,” she said tonelessly “I was lucky.”

  “Can I get you a drink? A Sea Breeze? It’s the latest thing.”

  “No, thank you. I don’t quite know what I’m … doing.”

  “Are you all right? How did you get here?” She suddenly put out a hand and steadied herself on the back of an overstuffed Morris chair. “You’d better sit down.” He took her hand and she sat down, sat staring out the window. A car went past and as it did the driver turned the headlights on. “How would a cup of coffee suit you?”

  “American coffee—” She looked up, innocent expectation. “Of course, it would be American. …” She was speaking softly, as if she were reassuring herself. “I’m in America. My God, I’m so tired and confused. Forgive me. I’d love some coffee.”

  He went to the kitchen, loaded the basket, and put the percolator on the gas ring. “So how did you get here, Karin?” Her name almost stuck in his throat again. He was going to have to get over that.

  “Why, I … I drove.” Her voice coming from the living room carried a note of surprise, as if she’d said she’d just trekked across the Sahara. “I just walked out the door and got into one of the cars and no one was around, I think Colonel MacMurdo was having a meeting—he’s a great one for meetings. …” She sounded as if she were recounting a dream.

  “You drove. How did you know where to go?”

  “Well, I looked in the telephone book. … I’ve been so worried, we hadn’t heard from you since you were at the house, I had to talk to you—” She was unbuttoning the trench coat, stood up and slipped it off. She was wearing a gray flannel dress, a jumper with a blue and gold blouse under it. “Then, when I was in the car, I drove into the city. … I suppose I was following road signs. And then it was all so strange, I can’t explain it, Mr. Cassidy—”

  “Call me Lew.”

  “Lew,” she said softly. “Lew. Don’t be angry with me—”

  He smiled. Behind him he could hear the bubbling of the percolator. “I’m amazed you didn’t get lost.” She moved toward the window, turned to face him with the faint light behind her.

  “I was, too. I just seemed to come here, it was as if the car … well, knew the way. I came here, there was a place to park, I got out of the car. I was in a fog, I just came to this building, this doorway.” She clasped her hands at her waist in a characteristic gesture that had once indicated something like girlish excitement.

  “You saw the number on the gate, that’s all.” He turned back to the coffee. The hair on the back of his neck stiffened. Had memory overtaken her? He took cups and saucers from the cupboard. They rattled like a Gene Krupa riff and he put the damned things on the counter. He took cream from the icebox and sugar from the cupboard, put them on a silver tray that they—they—had received as a wedding present.

  He took the tray into the living room and put it on the coffee table. She was staring out the window chewing on a knuckle, eyes narrowed to slits. He went back and brought the percolator and a cast-iron trivet, set the one down on the other on a little Duncan Phyfe table she had seen and bought on Madison Avenue one day. There were tears trickling down her cheeks. He poured two cups of coffee, put cream and sugar in his own, just sugar in hers, without giving it a second thought. She wiped the tears away with her fists and sniffled, looked at the tray. “Sugar, please,” she whispered.

  “It’s already in,” he said.

  She nodded, took a sip. “Just right.”

  “I know.”

  She held the cup in both hands as if it didn’t have a handle. He watched her blow the steam across the surface as he had a thousand times before. “I felt as if I’ve been in New York before. I felt like I’d been possessed by the spirit of another person. …” The cup began to tremble in her hands, some of the scalding liquid sloshing over the edge. She put it down and dabbed
her fingers with a napkin. “Oh my God, what if I’m going mad? I don’t know how to handle all this.” She couldn’t stop the overflowing tears again.

  There was a cool breeze fluttering the Venetian blinds. All the streetlamps were lit and night had slouched into Washington Square.

  “Have I been here before?” He could barely hear her. She looked at him, imploring. “You can’t imagine what this is like. … I’ve lost so much of my life and I sometimes have visions, like a crazy woman, it’s so frightening, I wake up screaming. …”

  Cassidy took her hand in both of his and held her still.

  “And I felt like I know you.” She swallowed hard, concentrating on looking anywhere but at him. “It’s just a flash, then it will be gone.”

  Cassidy shook his head, reached thankfully for his coffee. Something to do. Anything.

  “I had a dream about you, after you left the house that day.”

  “What sort of dream?” He wondered if he should be asking. No, he probably should have shut up.

  “We were just talking somewhere. There was a huge ship, like an ocean liner, sea gulls flapping around. … You were talking to me, I could see your lips moving and the gulls swooping but I couldn’t hear anything, I couldn’t hear what you were saying, and then you kissed me and I was crying and I hugged you. … It was just a dream, I know that, but why? I’d only just met you and I was dreaming about you. … It was so real … so very real … and then I woke up and I was soaked with sweat and I’d been crying into the pillow and I felt faint, I couldn’t remember where I was … Do you know how terrifying that is for me? Not remembering, even for a few seconds? They seem like hours and I think it’s all happening again, that I’ll never remember anything again. …” She shook her head and made a face to banish the fear. “What’s happening to me? What’s going on inside my head? Look at me, I’m exhausted, I’ve never been so tired. … I can’t sleep, I have these flashes. … When I saw that huge arch out there,” she pointed out the window where it loomed in the lights, “I … I thought I’d seen it before. I thought I had been there, standing under the arch in a snowstorm, looking up at the snow swirling all around it, blowing down from the sky and there was a Christmas tree. … I’d seen all that, the lights bright on the tree and the snow and a choir of kids singing carols. …”

  She was right, of course. Everything she had just described had happened. They had walked down Fifth Avenue in the snow and watched the arch and the Christmas tree lights come into view and then heard the piping, trilling voices of the children singing “O Come All Ye Faithful.” Christmas of 1938, almost seven years ago. It was the last Christmas they’d spent together. And it had come back to her, like a tableau seen by lightning flash, as if the lightning were ripping at the shroud surrounding her memory. He had no idea how to handle it. He was afraid she might shatter if he weren’t careful. Rolf Moller had said it was so dangerous to push her. He didn’t know what the hell to do.

  But this woman, this was Karin. His Karin. Behaving the way Karin would behave being Karin. It wasn’t some other woman they all called Karin.

  “You poor man,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have come here bothering you this way. Sometimes I panic. I realize I have no memory of my life and it’s like being closed within an unanswerable question, a room without a door and only some bad magic could put you there. So, I panic, I cry, I can’t breathe. … Rolf says it’s hysteria and I have to learn to overcome it … and I try, I do try, but it’s like being an orphan, adopted by nice people who give you a good life but you desperately want to know who you really are. …”

  Standing by the window in the darkened apartment, she turned toward him, whispered: “Why do I think I knew you once?”

  “I don’t know why.” He smelled her, felt the warmth of her breath, saw the tears dried on her cheek, and there was nothing he could do but kiss her. This Karin was as much his wife as anyone else’s and he turned her face toward him and put his mouth on hers, as gently as if he were making a wish. She trembled, then parted her lips and he tasted the tip of her tongue and she clutched him, kissed him hungrily before turning away, still in his grip.

  She was gasping for breath, shaking her head, eyes closed. “What am I doing? What’s going on here—”

  “Don’t talk. Just wait.”

  “No, no, I can’t. What’s happening to me? I’ve done all this before—” She pulled away and he let her go. “I’m doing this because I’m thinking about you the way you think about someone you know, someone from a previous life … like the sleeping princess in the wrong fairy tale. … Why do you want to kiss a madwoman? I’m like Frankenstein’s monster, I’m not even human, I’m a woman without a life, most of me, all of me that should matter is missing.”

  “Well, maybe you’re right about one thing. Maybe we knew each other in another life.”

  “But we’re stuck with this life, aren’t we?”

  “You never know—”

  “And everything depends on you, depends on your finding my husband—”

  “That won’t bring back your past, Karin.”

  “I’m worried just as much about the future. My future depends on finding him—”

  “Why? You have a future whether I find him or not—”

  “No. No, I don’t.”

  “What are you telling me?”

  “I—I can’t say any more than that. But believe me, if you don’t find him, I—I—you must find him. Elisabeth … no, no …” She came back to him, huddled against him, and he put his arms around her again.

  “Elisabeth? Who’s Elisabeth?” He stroked her hair.

  “Oh, I don’t know … no one. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

  “Don’t worry,” he whispered. She was shaking. “Don’t worry. I’ll find him.”

  “Oh, thank you,” she whimpered, as if she’d been beaten. “I believe you.”

  He was still holding her when the telephone began to ring.

  “Jesus, pard, I’m glad you’re home.” It was MacMurdo and he wasn’t happy. His voice sounded like somebody was rubbing a raw nerve. “This is gonna sound funny but, ah, is Karin with you?”

  “She’s right here. We’re having coffee.”

  MacMurdo made what Cassidy figured was some kind of rustic cry of relief. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph send their thanks, pard. Honest to God, they do! She just wandered off like some old kitchen mammy hankerin’ for the bright lights. She all right? She didn’t wreck the car? Hurt herself?”

  “No, she’s just fine. Parked right outside. She wanted to find out if I’d made any headway—”

  “She remembers how to drive a car—is the telephone too tough for her? I ask you. We’re all going crazy up here. Believe it. Then old Rolfie says maybe seeing you sort of … She can’t hear this, can she?”

  “No.”

  “Well, Rolf, he was thinking that seeing you might have poked a hole in the curtain between Then and Now. One smart kraut, Rolf. So how is she? You know what I mean—”

  “She’s all right. You want to talk to her?”

  “Christ no, I might yell at her. Was Rolf right? About her memory and seeing you?”

  “She’s just worried about finding her husband. She wondered if I’d turned anything up. She found me in the phone book, couldn’t get an answer, said everybody up your way was in a meeting so she just drove on down—”

  “Jesus wept,” MacMurdo murmured.

  “Everything’s fine.” Cassidy smiled at Karin. She was carrying the tray of coffee things back to the kitchen. He’d seen her do precisely that a hundred times but, of course, for her it was the first. MacMurdo was saying something and Cassidy was sure he wasn’t going to tell the Colonel about Karin’s dreams and questions.

  “The woman has the guts of a second-storey man. The brains of a pigeon, however. Well, you must think we’re a bunch of assholes up here, lettin’ her wander away—well, won’t happen again, you can bet the farm on that. Look, my man, I’ve got somet
hing new to tell you. You think you could drive her back? I’ll have one of my men take you home. Could you do that?”

  “Sure. I’ll bring her back.” Karin had gone into the bathroom. “By the way, Harry Madrid’s on the case. He’s up in Maine.”

  “Damn! That’s good news, Lew. None better than old Harry.” Most of the tension had seeped out of MacMurdo’s voice. “You guys, you’re aces with me. See ya soon.”

  Cassidy hung up and Karin was standing behind him getting into her coat. “I’m so tired,” she said softly. “I get headaches when I’m tired.” He helped her with the coat, wishing he could kiss her again. Something told him it would be all wrong. “You’re so kind to me,” she said.

  She curled her feet beneath her on the front seat of the car and Cassidy got some dance music on the radio. Pretty soon she was sound asleep.

  He looked over at her every so often, wondering. Was he falling in love with her all over again?

  CHAPTER SIX

  MACMURDO AND ROLF MOLLER WERE standing outside on the long stonework terrace that ran the width of the library and the long parlor across the front of the house. The lamps on top of the poles every few hundred feet of driveway were glowing through the mist and the house was ablaze with lights, as if it were a landing field Cassidy might miss or overshoot in the night. Wisps of autumn fog clung close to the damp earth. Cassidy pulled to a halt in the portico and waited for the welcoming committee to reach them.

  MacMurdo came to Cassidy’s side and opened the door. Moller headed straight for his patient, who was just waking up, groggy. Cassidy watched her yawn, patting her mouth with one hand, then stretching. She’d always awakened the same way, the same stretching and the same faces and head-shaking. She caught his eye before she got out, blinked, smiled tentatively, and was gone. Cassidy was remembering kissing her an hour before, but what was she thinking?

  “Come on inside and let me pour you a stiff one.” MacMurdo’s huge hand clamped down on his shoulder. He was wearing a heavy oiled sweater, black, and dark corduroys, so that only his face and hands were entirely visible in the darkness. A little lampblack and he’d be ready for a sortie behind enemy lines. Cassidy was still wearing his dark blue chalkstripe and trench coat. He felt like he’d come to the wrong party. “Thanks a million for bringing her back, pard. Goodness me, goes to show you you never know what’s coming next.” He chuckled to show you that, as far as he was concerned, you’d better be on your guard where women were involved. Cassidy nodded and followed him up the steps to the fieldstone terrace, on through the French windows into the library. “Name your poison, Lew.”