by Lisa Unger
“What are you doing here, Trev? It’s not safe.”
He walks over slowly. “Izzy, I told you. You needed a gun.”
“I know. I know. You’re a smart kid. Listen, Trevor? Tell your mom how much I love her, okay? Tell her I’m sorry.”
“Tell her yourself.” He says it with a smile.
But no, I’m alone in the courtyard still. I see that it’s filled with junk. A stack of old tires, a splintering wooden table, a box of sodden books. There’s a chair on three legs, some broken planters. A black cat leaps from nowhere onto a metal drum that sags with rust and age. The cat sits, watching me. There are voices now, I think. And the wail of sirens. I think I hear my name. But maybe it’s just the wind.
Isabel… Isabel.
How did I get here? I wonder. Memory comes back in pieces.
WHEN I CAME to again, I was lying on a cold concrete floor. Ales and Petra were gone. But my ankles were bound, as were my wrists. I went from unconscious to hyperconscious, started immediately working at the bindings. There was very little light, just a milky gray coming in from a small sliver of a window up high on the wall. A basement. I could tell by the chill, by the mold, by the dark. I was in a kind of cage. All around me, nearly empty cages. One held a bicycle and a bookshelf. Another held a stack of suitcases and a box of books, an old treadmill. It was a storage basement, I realized. Little used from the look of things.
I had seen how gigantic doors glide open by remote in Prague buildings, and cars disappear into spaces you wouldn’t have believed were there. I have seen this at embassies and luxury condos.
Trying to figure out how I got there, I imagined that my captors had driven my rented Mercedes into such a door, that I have disappeared inside the walls of this old city. Jack would not be able to find me. Panic and anger started their dance in my chest. I worked against my bindings vigorously for a few more minutes before I realized that I was not alone.
He sat in the corner of the room outside the cage, shrouded in the dark. I didn’t have to see his face to know his form.
I really didn’t want it to come to this, you know. I warned you to let me go. He issued a cough. The damp has always bothered him.
How could you think I would? Don’t you know me at all?
I hoped, Isabel. I hoped you would.
Why did you do this to me? A mutinous sob I couldn’t stop. I loved you. Did you ever love me?
Of course I loved you. I’d have stayed if I could.
Was anything you told me about yourself the truth?
No. Nothing.
Tell me now.
Why?
You owe me that much, don’t you? I don’t even know what to call you now.
Just call me Marcus. In the world we shared, that was my name. That’s all that matters.
Tell me.
There’s nothing to tell. His usual cool and disinterested tone. My father died, my mother couldn’t keep my brother and me; she couldn’t afford us or didn’t want us. What does it matter? We were taken to the orphanage you visited. We were old enough to know we’d been left. It was a painful, stark, and lonely way to grow up.
He shifted in his seat, the only sign that his memories made him uncomfortable, that they might cause him pain.
But we managed. We survived, and communism did not. Ivan and I left for the U.S. I applied to colleges, received a scholarship, came on a student visa. Ivan came on a work visa, but the company that sponsored him was not legitimate. Ivan is a small-time criminal, always has been. Even as children, he bullied and stole-
I’m not interested in Ivan.
What do you want to know?
Start with Marcus Raine.
He paused, took a deep breath as if summoning his patience.
I wanted what he had. His money, his girlfriend. I took it.
How?
I seduced Camilla. She loved Marcus Raine-or maybe just his money, I don’t know. But his plan was to return to Czech. He wanted to take the money he earned in the U.S. and start a business in Prague. He went to America, like me, to work, to get rich. But he wanted to go home and enrich the country. He didn’t believe all the intelligent, young Czech people should leave for good. Go, find opportunities, make money abroad, and then return to help the Czech Republic. The last place Camilla wanted to go was back to Czech.
I knew what she wanted. I promised it to her. She got me a key to Marcus Raine’s apartment, helped me get past his doorman. And I killed him-well, Ivan did. His associates helped us to dispose of him, a mortuary in Queens cremated the body. It was seamless. I took his life… his identification, his money. It was really that easy.
I told Camilla that we had to be apart for a while, that it would be suspicious if we moved too fast. Then I met you.
You sought me out.
Yes.
Why?
Because you understood Prague.
So you thought I’d understand you?
Maybe.
Camilla got tired of waiting?
Yes, seven years is a long time to ask someone to wait. For a while, I could convince her that the payoff would be worth it. I gave her money every month. Continued seeing her. Then she realized.
What?
That I had what I wanted. That I loved you. That I wouldn’t leave you unless I had to.
So she got angry, started making scenes, sending me e-mail. Why didn’t you kill her then?
I couldn’t. I didn’t know who she’d told. I suspected she’d gone to the authorities. I couldn’t risk killing her yet.
Not until you had already disappeared, destroyed evidence, transferred the money from our accounts. Then you went back to tie up that loose end. You slit her throat.
Still risky but necessary, I thought.
My mind was racing through all the million questions I had. But I was starting to feel fuzzy, confused, fear and multiple blows to the head addling my thoughts.
That morning when you left, did you know you’d never see me again?
No. I would have been gone soon, maybe even in the next day or two. But not that morning.
What happened?
Ivan came to see me. I betrayed him after the murder of Marcus Raine, called the police and reported guns in the apartment. He went to prison. Camilla went to see him in her anger, told him what I’d done. He came to see me. Not just for money. For revenge.
You killed all those men. But you left Ivan alive. You could have killed him, too. Why didn’t you?
Isabel, so many questions.
Tell me why.
The same reason I didn’t kill him years earlier. Because he’s my brother. I wanted him to think about what he’d done. I didn’t necessarily want him to die. Why does this matter now? It’s over.
It matters, how the pieces fit together. I need to know.
And that’s why you risked your life to follow me.
I can’t be other than who I am.
That’s why I loved you, Isabel. You have always been so sure of who you are.
If you loved me, then tell me everything.
Another long sigh. Another cough. All the while, I was working the bindings. Before he started talking again, I felt my wrist come free. It was dark. He didn’t see.
What else do you want to know?
Who is S?
I didn’t expect him to answer, but he did. Sara. A woman I loved a lifetime ago. My first love, I suppose. I left her in the Czech Republic. I went to college; she joined the military. Eventually, she was discharged, served some time for injuring a man who tried to rape her-as justice in Czech would have it. She sought me out in the U.S., had started her own business.
Services Unlimited. A prostitution ring?
Among other things.
You had an affair with her. She was the one who sent that message.
He gave an assenting lift of his palms.
It’s complicated, our relationship. I loved her once. But she belongs to no one now.
She trashed our office. Our home. She hated me; I saw
it in her eyes in your office.
Someone like Sara doesn’t hate. She’s jealous, possessive, angry that I loved you too much to let her end your life for my convenience.
Did she take your mother’s ring? Did you give it to her?
You’re so naive. Such a little girl.
The ring never belonged to your mother.
Of course not.
Was anything you told me true? Anything?
He looked at me with unmasked pity. Why is that so important to you? What we had was real. Now it’s gone.
Just make me understand why.
What did you just say to me? I can’t be other than I am.
THE CONVERSATION IS an echo in my head, as though I am listening to it on headphones. I see the whole thing playing out on the wall across from me. There are other sounds, too, voices and sirens. Another sharp, insistent rattle. Gunfire? But it is so distant. The wind is still calling my name.
E NOUGH QUESTIONS. HE rose from his seat. He was just a shadow among other shadows in that milky light. While he spoke, I’d managed to get my hands and feet free. The bindings were careless. He’d underestimated me again.
He moved toward the door and opened the storage cage. I wondered if he’d want to cut my throat as he had Camilla’s, if he liked the power and the intimacy of that. When he was near, I lunged for him and knocked him back. I heard him release a grunt as my shoulder dug into his abdomen.
I’d surprised him; whatever weapon he’d held in his hand clattered to the floor. I tried to run past him, but he caught the neck of my sweater, ripping a long gash. Nausea and dizziness were twin forces within me, threatening to take me down. He grabbed me and threw me hard against the metal of the cage. I felt my lip split as my face connected with the metal.
But I also felt the door open, and I kept moving. Out of the cage, running blind for a rectangle of light that I knew was an open door. I heard him roaring as I found a staircase and took the stairs two at a time, adrenaline giving me more strength than I had a right to, injured as I was. At the top of the stairs, another door let me out into the cold. By the light and the hush, I figured it was right before dawn. I had no idea where I was or where I was going. But I just ran. I heard him exit, a door banging, echoing off the stone all around, not far behind me.
Isabel. His voice sounded like the moaning of the saints I always imagined on the bridge. Isabel.
I still had so many questions. But I’d finally developed, too late, enough sense to run from the darkness and hope the light still let me return.
I moved through the narrow cobblestone streets, surrounded by the muscular, ornate buildings that rose beautiful and quiet beside me, passed closed cafés and fountains turned off for winter. Then I broke free from the maze of streets into Old Town Square and thought for a moment that I’d lost him. But then I heard running footfalls behind me. A light snow started to fall. Against a bench, I lost my battle to hold on to the light. The darkness took me, if only for a moment. I heard the question I wished I’d never asked.
Kde je Kristof Ragan?
IN SPITE OF the cold, in spite of all the red around me, I am starting to feel warm now, happy, lighter. Some distant voice within me is telling me that it’s not a good thing to feel so comfortable. I hear more gunfire, voices, footfalls, closer now, then farther away. It all seems to be happening somewhere else. I think of my father, how he drifted away from us. And I think I understand the pull to nothingness. It’s such a chaos all the time-within.
I am thinking how nice it would be for things just to go quiet, when I hear a very loud, bossy voice in my head. Izzy, if you fall asleep, you’ll die. Do you understand? Get up. I know it hurts, but get up. Get moving, get help. Don’t give up. We need you. My sister’s voice. For once, I do as I am told.
The world comes into sharp focus and with it the fire in my gut. I am sick with the pain but I know I really don’t want to die here in this place. Suddenly the thought terrifies me. Fear gives me another shot of adrenaline and I pull myself to my feet. I manage not to scream, though the pain is white lightning through me-physical and beyond somehow.
The world is tilting but I use the wall and make my way to the doors through which he left. In the snow, there’s a trail of blood. I remember hearing the gunfire. Is he hurt? Has someone shot him out here in the street? But he kept moving like I plan to do now. The snow on the ground is a chaos of footsteps, slowly filling in with the falling snow. I follow the trail of his blood, leaving a trail of my own.
A quiet has fallen, or maybe I have just stopped hearing as I wind down a steep slope, past a closed café near the Little Quarter Bridge Tower. A young man passes me, gives me a strange look but keeps walking, more quickly. He doesn’t look back or offer help. Smart guy.
I grip a black metal rail and follow down a steep set of narrow steps. Before me a sloping cobblestone lane-a marionette shop, its windows shuttered, a small hotel, a new condo building rise up to my left. Ahead I see the canal they call Certovka-the Devil’s Stream.
There is more blood now-his and mine. I keep following until I come to the landing above the bank. It’s so quiet. A family of swans drift peacefully, gray water below them, snow falling, disappearing into their white feathers. Down further I see a large wooden mill wheel, slowly turning water, impervious to drama.
Then I see him. He stands on a small boat, docked below me. He is untying the lines. I can see that he is hurt, afraid. I am about to call for him, when the world explodes with sound. There are rough hands on me, pulling me away from the edge, but I hold on to the railing. I am surrounded by police officers, all of them yelling, guns drawn. I am yelling, too, calling his name, over and over. I don’t want him to die, not yet. There is too much I don’t understand.
He stands for a moment, dropping the lines, and I think he might surrender. The boat starts to drift and there is still so much yelling, still hands tugging. He and I lock eyes. But there’s nothing there. He is blank. Then he’s raising his gun.
I find myself screaming his name again, but his body is jerking, dancing with the impact of bullets. He falls to his knees and the boat rocks but doesn’t tip. I hear his gun hit the water with a heavy splash. He sinks down on his side, and I watch life leave him. That terrible stillness settles as the boat slowly drifts away in the current. I let myself be pulled back, lose my battle to stand in spite of the hands on me. And then I am on the cold, hard ground, clinging to consciousness. But the world is turning fuzzy, all the color draining. A woman is talking to me, yelling at me. But I don’t understand her, wouldn’t have the energy to answer her if I did.
I see him then. Jack. He is gold in my black-and-white-and-red world. But there’s so much cold distance between us, I am afraid I’ll never reach him now. He’s running, then being held back from me. I see uniformed men push past him with a stretcher. I want to tell Jack that he was right. No second, third, and final draft. Just the words as you first wrote them, the plot as you first conceived it. You can’t go back and make it better, change the ending so that it is happier, more satisfying. You have to live with it or die trying.
28
There’s a universe in a moment, in a single frame. Not in every frame. Just the perfect one, where light and shadow mingle, when an expression tells a story-beginning, middle, and end-when a reflection offers meaning. The “now” frozen, everything that came before and after rendered meaningless.
Linda Book stood in the far corner of the gallery and watched them looking at her photographs-pointing, smiling, frowning, nodding “ahh.” Her show, called Assignations, was drawing a lot of attention, more attention than her last few. She liked to think that her art had reached a new level, but probably not. Mimicking candid shots that might have been taken by a private eye, she’d captured lovers around the city-exchanging glances, embraces, passionate kisses. Some were candid. Some staged. She wouldn’t say which was which. Some critics called it shameless, in view of her family’s recent scandals. Others called it magnificent, se
nsational. Art Forum wrote, “Linda Book’s most captivating show in years-maybe ever.”
It was a week after the opening and the gallery was still packed-on a Tuesday, no less. No one recognized the photographer. Her publicity photo was far too old, airbrushed even then. She looked like a windblown goddess in her photo, untouched by grief or childbirth or disappointment, or infidelity of any kind. Only her husband, who drifted, eavesdropping on conversations, offered her a secret, knowing smile. He was the only one who knew her, here or anywhere.
To see them, the way they made love in the mornings after the kids went to school, the way they held hands again in the cab on the way here, the way he smiled at her now, one might believe that she was still that young girl untouched by life’s trials, after all.
Through the large picture window, she saw Isabel and Jack walking up the sidewalk slowly. Her sister looked so small, still leaning on Jack a bit as she walked. Her injuries-internal and external-would take much more time to heal. But heal they would. She’d see to it.
She moved away from the wall and met her husband in the center of the room. They left together to walk with Jack and Isabel back to the loft-it was still theirs for now-for dinner, and to watch something on television that none of them was quite sure they wanted to watch.
The kids were staying with Margie and Fred, so that Linda and Eric could have some couple time, something they had been sorely lacking. Now that there was a wireless hub, sixty-four-inch flat screen and a Wii in the Riverdale home, Emily and Trevor no longer considered a visit with their grandparents a hardship. There was a minimum of grousing. Therefore, Linda had only a minimum of guilt. Even when Emily called to complain that Margie was making fish and wouldn’t let them order pizza instead, Linda only smiled and told her daughter that fish was good for her and she’d have to bare up.
“You don’t want to see the show again?” Linda teased her sister, embracing her gingerly, afraid to cause her pain. Izzy gave a weak laugh; she’d been to the show several times, had seen it even before it opened. She waited for a smart comment in return, but her sister didn’t say anything. In Linda’s arms, Isabel felt fragile. Linda was still waiting for the haunted look to disappear from her face. She felt as if she hadn’t seen her sister even really smile in months. Not that she could be blamed.
