Younger

by Suzanne Munshower

  By the time she left, a chilly drizzle was making the cobblestones slippery. She walked in Kafka’s footsteps, taking care not to fall.

  Adam was a gangling, bearded, thirtyish Czech PhD candidate. “What you call poli-sci, yes? Political science.” The apartment, which he said had been his grandfather’s, was a sprawling four-bedroom space on the third floor of a classic mint-green stucco Liberty building close to the Náměstí Míru Metro station, from which reaching both the main train station and Old Town would be quick and easy.

  The place was opulent compared to the apartment in Berlin, with some of Adam’s grandparents’ antiques still in place. The other rooms were let to Tadeusz, an economist for a banking consultancy, and Heather, described by Adam as an “older, retired” Englishwoman. “She’s here until next week,” he said. “She came to study our medieval art.”

  The room that would be hers was charming, with a view over downward-sloping streets. “Vinohrady means ‘the king’s vineyards,’ which this land was originally. When you’re up high like this, you can see it’s slightly raised.”

  “This is perfect,” Anna said, “and the stairs will keep me in shape. I expect to stay a week or two, maybe longer, so I can pay you for two weeks now and whatever I don’t use, you can keep. How’s that?”

  “That’s excellent,” he said cheerfully. “You and Heather share one bathroom and Tadeusz and I another. We all share the refrigerator. I make sure there is coffee, fruit, and other food on the counter before I leave for class at seven-thirty. There’s a jar to put money in for what you use. Then we all take care of our own lunch and dinner. You can cook for yourself if you like. But there are inexpensive cafés all over this area.”

  Before he could ask for the dreaded passport, she fumbled in her bag for her wallet. “Let me pay you now.” She held up a two thousand Czech crown note, a lovely shade of lavender. “Your currency is so beautiful. I especially love this one.”

  “The euro is not so pretty, no? Nor the dollar: all one color, all one size. Strange for a country that celebrates diversity.”

  “American diversity rarely applies to money and success.”

  Adam nodded thoughtfully. “Funny. The land of freedom, America. Here, in the Czech Republic, we give thanks every day for our freedom. Because we lost it for so long, we value it more than riches.”

  A blush crept up from his beard to infuse his cheeks. “Sorry. I get too passionate sometimes. We Czechs can be very sentimental in our unsentimental way. Lugubrious rationalists, if you will. So, you can move in now, if you like.”

  “That sounds good. Do I need to fill out anything?”

  “Just write down your cell phone number and name, and I’ll give you a receipt and a key. Then you can relax, and I must be off to school. I have classes to teach.”

  “Oh, you teach, too?”

  “Just a remedial course today. Yah, I teach, I study, I work on my dissertation, and on weekends I drink too much and stay at my girlfriend’s place.” He grinned. “That’s my life. So, welcome to Prague. There’s a supermarket up on Slezská and a good pizzeria in Náměstí Míru. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Once the all-too-trusting Adam was gone, Anna—rather than stealing the valuable heirlooms—fixed herself a cup of tea, dropping change in the collection pot on the kitchen counter. After that, she collected her suitcase from the hotel and lugged it up the stairs to the apartment, then went only as far as the pizzeria for lunch. With Kelm closing in, she felt even more vulnerable on her own. She took off the black wig, then stretched out on the bed for a nap, too weary to plan her next move. She couldn’t contact David without a plan, but she couldn’t unmuddle her thoughts, and she wasn’t steeled to check the Drafts folder at her “studiocitygirl” account yet. She hoped she hadn’t put David in any danger. She didn’t know how she could live with herself if she had.

  Anna woke feeling less shaky and went into the living room to find Heather, the “older” woman, seated on the couch reading a guidebook to Milan. She’d called, “Hello?” before taking any steps down the hallway, and a slim woman with gray hair in a long braid smiled up as Anna entered the room. “You must be Lisa. Adam told me you were here.”

  “Hello, Heather.” She took a seat in a worn leather club chair.

  “Nice, isn’t he, Adam? So’s Tadeusz. Handsome young devil, too, that one. My second husband was a Pole, so I’ve a soft spot. And what brings you to Prague?”

  The fiction about being a budding novelist seeing Europe that rolled off her tongue seemed less like fiction than ever. Perhaps she really would write a novel when she got back to the States. She’d certainly developed a sense of plot and drama in the past months. Meanwhile, she tried to figure out just how old Heather was. About her own age, she supposed.

  “I took early retirement in March at age fifty-nine,” the other woman said as if reading Anna’s mind. “I’m a fiend for medieval and Renaissance art, and perhaps on my way to being a writer, too—which is to say I’m thinking of scribbling a book about contrasts in European religious art during the two periods.” She laughed. “It’s easy to be overly ambitious when one’s just thinking, rather than writing.”

  “Are you going to Italy?” Anna nodded at the book.

  “I started there, so I’m a bit Rococo’d out. Those churches in Naples and Rome! Like walking into overdecorated wedding cakes. I have to make my way back down south again, to Bulgaria to see their icons, but in the meantime”—she held up the book—“I missed Milan, and da Vinci’s Last Supper is calling me there.”

  The word supper did it. Anna suddenly noticed the time on an ornate antique wall clock. “Is it really six? Oh, dear, I’ll be up all night, napping like that during the day. Sorry, but I’ve got to run to the market to pick up some food. Need anything?”

  “I’ll come along, if you don’t mind. I can show you the way. Plus, I’ve figured out what some of the Czech words mean. The language makes grocery shopping an obstacle course.”

  After the supermarket, they stopped at a nearby café Heather liked, ostensibly for coffee, but once they sat down, for an early dinner of duck and red cabbage instead.

  What a pleasure to speak with someone her own age! Heather had been in Prague almost three weeks and knew it well. Anna, who’d run out of reading material—she was down to just her Czech and Italian guidebooks—was pleased to learn that Heather knew a good secondhand English bookshop. “It’s across the river, near the Kafka Museum. If you’re a fan, you could plan a whole day’s trip over there. See the Castle, too. Just take the tram in the square near the flat. I’d come along, but I was just there.”

  “I’ve gotten used to sightseeing alone. It’s not that easy meeting people when you’re on the move.”

  “Yes, and now that summer’s over, it’s mostly school groups and slackers in their twenties, isn’t it? Hard to find older people—well, very hard to find them my age unless they’re retired couples or Elderhostel groups, but even hard to find at thirty or forty, I’d imagine.”

  That conversation had Anna standing in front of the mirror when she got back to the apartment, where her eyes confirmed what Heather’s words implied. Cutting back on YOUNGER and then stopping it completely had already left its mark. She was definitely in the “Lisa” phase now—and going in reverse. She looked about thirty-five already, she thought, not forty yet. Still, at this rate, she’d be looking close to her real age within two weeks. What would she tell her roommates then? That she’d had a peel that was wearing off and was a fortyfivishsomething? She wondered how women with plastic surgery kept track of the lies about their age. It was work.

  Tadeusz—short, ponytailed, built like a dancer—was just leaving the apartment when they got back. His regal good looks were balanced by a charmingly goofy gap-toothed grin. “We’ll have a chat this week, Lisa. I want to hear all about you and your American life. Now I’m off to meet Tibor. It’s Blo
nd Night at the Barbie Club, all drinks for us blonds half price, Lisa. You should come, too.” He wrinkled his nose. “But why did Adam tell me you had dark hair?”

  “Oh, my hair was a mess from traveling so I put on this wig I have. Incognito, you know,” she joked. “And right now I’m too tired to go anywhere but to sleep. Have fun!”

  “I’ll be sorry to leave,” Heather said a few minutes later as she and Anna were sipping a last glass of wine in the living room. “These boys have been terrific. Czech men are so elegant, and the younger ones are all ravishing. Girls, too. The Czech Republic is the supermodel capital of the world, you know.

  “Anyhow, speaking of leaving, if you decide not to stay here long, you might think of coming with me. I’m renting a car and dropping it off in Milan—a little splurge so I can drive through the Austrian countryside. I’d be happy for the company, and you wouldn’t even have to share the driving. So, if you want to head that way, just let me know. I leave in a week.”

  “Can I let you know in the next day or so?” Anna said.

  “Not headed anywhere special?”

  “I think I’m going to try to hook up with an old boyfriend, maybe in Italy.”

  “Not Italian, is he? My third husband was Italian, and he was nothing but trouble.”

  “If it’s not prying, can I ask how many times you’ve been married?”

  “Oh, just four times, fewer than the old Hollywood stars. Gerald was the first; he’s a solicitor and the father of my grown-up twins, both of whom live in Norfolk, where I am most of the time. The second was the Czech dreamboat, exciting but easily depressed and sulky. The third was Francesco, the Italian, until his idea of fidelity turned out to be not sleeping with more than two of my friends in the same week. And the fourth is Stephen, who’s also a solicitor, but an easygoing one who’s happy to let me do my own thing.”

  “You’re married now?” Anna asked, bemused.

  “Oh, my, yes. Thirteen years. Stephen’s an angel, but he’s what my Italian husband would have called a ‘slipper man,’ happiest at home by the fire. This is a nice break for him—he gets to garden without someone telling him, ‘Plant that there.’ I tell him he’s my last husband, the keeper. You’ve never married?”

  “Once, but it was a long time ago.”

  Heather winked. “Never too late to do it again. Trust me, when you finally find the right one, it’s magic.”

  “Oh, I like my life the way it is,” Anna said quickly, at the moment as big a lie as any of the whoppers she had already told.

  The next day, Anna donned her wig and caught the tram at Náměstí Míru. It crossed the river, then zigzagged its way up the steep hill to Prague Castle. There, she stood gazing at the roofs below, then ambled down the tourist-clogged Old Castle Stairs, stopping to admire the views while checking for possible followers, relieved at seeing none.

  Down below, she picked up a couple of secondhand novels, then lunched at a small riverbank restaurant next to the Kafka Museum before going on to be inspired by the life of someone who’d faced much greater challenges than her own. Compared to growing up a Jewish outsider, laboring joylessly in an insurance company, then dying of tuberculosis when only forty, Anna’s life had been charmed. Yet Kafka had left behind a legacy of novels and short stories universally hailed as masterpieces. If Anna didn’t write a book soon, what would she be leaving? Marketing memos and PR plans?

  She felt almost serene when she left the museum, though increasingly aware that the possibility of being found grew stronger with each passing day. She found an Internet café next door to a shop, where she bought a Czech SIM card for the cheap cell phone in her purse.

  Online, she found nothing in the Hotmail account Drafts folder. Checking her BarPharm account seemed risky no matter how she did it, but she had to do it. She stayed in the café but pulled out her iPhone. Surely, the VPN was safer in keeping her location untraceable? She would have given anything to call Rob to find out, but she didn’t even trust him anymore. She was afraid to stay connected for more than a minute or two, so she ignored emails from Becca and Chas. But one couldn’t be ignored: from Marina.

  What she saw made her shiver.

  Anna, you must call me so I can help you. I will say only that some people, people you know, are not what they have seemed to be and do not have your welfare at heart. I think they killed a woman who worked for us. And that they will kill you if they can. Call me, and I will come to you. Trust no one. Pierre came to warn you, didn’t he? And he paid the ultimate price. I don’t want that to happen to you. Marina.

  Quickly, she bundled up as much as she could to hide her face. Then she all but ran out, with no thought but getting back to the sanctuary of the apartment. Yes, I’ll go with Heather, she decided on the Metro as she made her way back to Vinohrady. She’d be crazy not to. Free transport to Italy—and with another woman, looking like friends traveling together. Anna felt safer in transit, and she didn’t feel safe now. She didn’t know what freaked her out more: Marina’s saying someone was planning to kill her, or being called “Anna” and reminded that some people knew who she really was.

  She would make her way to Rome. Even if she couldn’t get to the bottom of the YOUNGER conspiracy by then, she’d be in a place with a US embassy, a city she’d visited several times and knew well, a chaotic madhouse in which hiding would be easier than within the sedate environs of Prague. Yes, she could throw herself upon the mercy of the embassy in Prague, but she had things she had to do first. There was no way she’d contact Marina, nor did she feel ready yet to speak to David. She knew that reluctance stemmed from fear: he was all she had now. What if he turned her down?

  She had just a few days to get through before leaving, and she left the apartment alone only when necessary, telling the others she’d been out in their absence. She checked the news online on Adam’s computer, which was set up on the living room desk and which, Adam being Adam, wasn’t password protected. Still, she didn’t dare log on to her email from there.

  One day, summoning her courage, she took the Metro to a big mall in the Smíchov neighborhood, said by her guidebook to be well off the tourist path and boasting a Marks and Spencer. She wore the dark, hard-looking makeup, her blond hair tucked up under her black hat. She was going stir-crazy but also she would need more conservative clothes than what she’d bought in Berlin if she was going to pass herself off as an older, well-off tourist in Italy, and that was what she’d have to be, because, as the mirror in the brightly lit M&S changing booth told her, “Anna” was rapidly overtaking “Lisa” in the looks department.

  She ended up settling on a beige twinset, a lot like the one she’d worn to lunch with Richard at The Ivy, except this was some kind of manmade “cashmerevelous” or whatever, costing a fraction of what the other had set her back and chosen mainly for its innocuousness.

  Recalling that day, she sank onto the booth’s bench, shaking her head. What a fool she’d been, gliding up to the valet in a car she couldn’t afford, with her designer mocs and $400 hair color and cashmere sweaters, worrying only about how she looked. Who had that frivolous person been? Never again. She would never go back to that. What she was going back to—being a woman pushing sixty—scared her. Not as much as being stalked did, but it still scared her. As she was hurrying back through the mall, she heard someone calling her—actually, calling, “Lisa! Lisa!” She turned, expecting to see Heather, and came face-to-face with someone she couldn’t immediately place.

  “Hey, it’s me, Fleur? Forget me already? I mean, I’m not Fleur, of course. I’m Chloe. Don’t worry. It took me a minute to place you, too. I didn’t expect to see you here, of all places! Maybe now you can tell me why I didn’t get the part?”

  “The part?” She realized with a start who this girl was, but she still didn’t understand.

  “The part in the film! I did everything the producer told me. I even refused to
drop out of character when you pretended to pump me for information, remember? I thought I was pretty good, y’know?”

  “Oh . . . Yeah, you were, Fleur. I mean, Chloe. Excellent. But I . . . I don’t know what happened. The whole project got cancelled.”

  “No! Bummer! And here I thought the producer was your rich boyfriend. Not that you aren’t a good actress or anything. But what are you doing in Prague?”

  “Just passing through on my way back to the States. And you?”

  “I got a place with this English-language acting troupe. We’re dark right now, but in two weeks we open with a new comedy. Will you still be here?”

  “Nope. My flight leaves tomorrow,” she lied.

  “What about your chauffeur?”

  “Chauffeur?”

  “That guy who picked me up to take me to meet the producer in London. I thought I passed him yesterday on the Charles Bridge. He didn’t see me, though.”

  “Oh—not my chauffeur. The producer’s.” She forced a careless shrug. “Look, good luck to you, but I’ve got to run!”

  And run she did, making a mad dash for the doors. Could Aleksei be in Prague looking for her? Was he hunting her down for Kelm? And what about Fleur or whomever? No, that had been what it seemed, a chance encounter. If the girl had been following Anna, she never would have mentioned Aleksei. Outside, Anna hurried to the taxi stand, too scared to take the Metro.

  Alone in her room that night, she gave up on one of the used books she had bought. She wasn’t in the mood for rereading The Picture of Dorian Gray. Oscar Wilde’s tale of eternal youth wasn’t amusing her the way she’d expected. Instead, she found Gray’s lust for youth pathetic, and she tossed the book aside when he was carrying on about being willing to give anything if his portrait, rather than he himself, would age.

  Oh, no, you wouldn’t, Dorian, she thought. Trust me. Sure, it had felt fantastic to be Tanya, to look in the mirror and see the person she considered herself to be on the inside, just like in her YOUNGER marketing notes. But it wasn’t real, it never had been, and it was a hard truth with which to be slapped in the face. In the end, she thought, we are who we are. And stuck with it. And the more she thought about it, the less she thought that might be such a bad thing.