“HEY, DID YOU hear me? We’re leaving.”
Adam was startled awake.
“Did you fall asleep?”
“Guess so.” He pulled on his pants and took his watch out of the pocket. “It’s only four o’clock, right?”
“Almost six thirty.”
“Wait just a sec, Evi, please.”
She stood there without looking at him but then waved the others on ahead.
Adam folded the blanket and slipped into his sandals.
“That skirt looks good on you. But it needs the headband.”
They walked across the meadow, where there was almost no one but couples, Adam staying half a step behind her. Simone and Michael were waiting beside the road.
“Could we have maybe ten minutes to ourselves?”
“What for?”
“I’d like to know whether we still belong together. When I have to watch you rubbing suntan lotion onto some other man’s back—”
“Adam, for the hundredth time. It’s not my fault. And I didn’t ask you to follow me.”
“Fine, it’s my fault, we’ve established that. I’ve said I’m sorry, more than once, over and over.”
Evelyn shook her head with a laugh and turned to go.
“Evi, please, why are you carrying on like this?”
“Do you know what’s the worst part?” She turned back to him. “That you don’t have a clue what this is all about. That you even dare to still look me in the eye. You behind the cupboard! What if it had been me standing there, with some fat guy in the tub? What would you do, would you still trust me?”
“I only know that I love you, you and no one else.”
“You found some quick consolation.”
“I helped her, that’s all. I got her over the border in my trunk. That is the truth.”
“And I’m supposed to buy that?”
“It’s how it is, ask her. If I didn’t love you I wouldn’t be here.”
“I wanted to get away from that nowhere town, and that nowhere job in the rathskeller, get away from you, period. And just be on my own for once.”
“With Mona and Michael?”
“That’s a whole different thing.”
“Am I keeping you from collecting your thoughts?”
“If you’re determined not to understand me—” Evelyn shrugged. She quickened her pace now. Simone and Michael had crossed the road and were taking a shortcut to Római út.
Adam ran after her, the blanket under his arm.
“So you’ve put on your big show—now what else can I expect?”
“You can leave anytime, Adam, anytime you like!”
“How about you? When are you leaving?”
They were standing side by side on the shoulder, but the line of traffic wouldn’t let up.
“I don’t know.”
“Why not?”
“It doesn’t matter when I get back. I quit my job, or did you forget already?”
“Are you planning to live off Pepi’s parents?”
“You’ll all be chowing down again in just a bit.”
“Michael’s paying for all that. He paid for two weeks’ room and board, for him and Mona. I was invited to be their guest, and you invited yourself.”
“What?”
“You didn’t know?”
“I haven’t invited myself as anybody’s guest.”
“So I’ll be here two weeks anyway.”
“And then? How are you getting back?”
“Maybe I don’t want to go back?”
“Do you want to cut and run?”
“Louder! Why don’t you shout louder!”
“You can’t be serious?”
“Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.”
Evelyn stepped into the road and waited on the median strip.
“Come on, come on.”
“I’m not coming along,” Adam said once he was across the road.
“Not coming along where?”
“To supper.”
“Don’t be childish, there’s too much food as it is.”
“And who’s financing this? Not you!”
“Pepi spent two weeks with us, look at it as the generosity of a host.”
“You mean of the Angyals?”
“You sewed for her for free.”
Together they walked up the narrow path between houses and gardens, took a left on Római út, and then followed the curve up to the house with the green door.
Simone and Michael were standing in the driveway, beside the shed. At first it looked as if they were in the middle of a conversation. But Simone was the only one talking. As Adam and Evelyn drew closer, she fell silent. Michael smiled at Evelyn. Suddenly Simone marched off toward the road, without a word to Evelyn and Adam as she passed them, her handbag swinging.
“Mona?” Evelyn called. “What’s wrong? Mona?”
Simone halted as if she were about to turn around and say something. But she just fished out her sunglasses and walked on.
“Mona!”
“She doesn’t know herself what she wants,” Michael said and walked around to the back of the house.
“I’ve got something else for you,” Adam said softly, “something really nice.”
“I don’t want anything from you.”
“Sure you do, you just have to take a seat in the car.”
“I won’t do it.”
“Then you don’t get your present.”
“I told you I don’t want anything.”
Adam opened the trunk and took out the jewelry box.
“Last summer somebody broke in at the Findeisens’,” he said, sitting down on the backseat. “And I thought if our little place is standing empty and somebody happens by, this would be easy pickings. So I brought it along.”
“My jewelry?”
“Actually I shouldn’t give it to you just like that.”
“Are you crazy? It belongs to me!”
“Come here for a minute, just one minute.”
Adam opened the far door from the inside.
“So here you are—your treasure.”
Evelyn sat beside him, turned the little key, and opened the box.
“Take your time, make sure it’s all there.”
“You’re a gutsy guy, Adam, smuggling this across the border and then leaving it in the trunk of a car. More luck than sense.”
“And that’s all you have to say?”
“What were you thinking?”
“I thought it would be a way of luring you into my car.”
“It’s all there. No fear.”
She laid a short glittering gold chain around her neck and added a pair of ruby teardrop earrings.
“It’s truly lovely having you so close beside me again,” Adam said.
The table under the trellised arbor was already set. Michael and Herr Angyal, his glasses shoved up on his forehead, were sitting there, waiting.
“Adam just happened to find these in his trunk,” Evelyn said, pushing her hair away and tossing her head back and forth.
Into the silence that followed her announcement, Adam said, “Yep, that’s right.”