Steve spoke scarcely a word during the ten minutes it took us to break away from Mitzi Flamm and her boyfriends. And even when we were alone, walking to the car through brightly lit streets, he stayed moodily silent.
The Mercedes was parked in the center of a small square. Steve held the door for me, then went around and got in himself. But he made no move to drive off.
“Did you mean what you said about having an early night, or would you like to go somewhere else? Someplace we can talk without half the riffraff of Vienna barging in.”
“Well, it was your fault,” I flared at him. “It was you who got us all put together at the same table.”
“I just fixed it the way you seemed to want it. You were all over that cow of a woman and her two hopefuls. God knows why! You didn’t need to be so damn friendly.”
Not really having a leg to stand on, I attacked him. “If you’d left it to me, I’d have gotten rid of them. But with you rushing in like that, what could I do about it?”
Absentmindedly, Steve reached forward to switch on the ignition. He looked surprised when the engine fired, and immediately switched it off again.
“Those bloody men! They were giving you the eye like mad, too. I thought you’d have had more pride….”
This was a new Steve from the dependable rock I’d known. Before, he’d been calm and reassuringly competent; now he was over-touchy, ready to fly off the handle. Why, I wondered miserably, did people have to change?
Steve’s thoughts were apparently running on the same lines. He said unhappily, “You seem so different, Jessica—so hard! You always used to be a gentle sort of person. There was a quality of ... of innocence about you, whatever you were doing. But that’s gone now.”
We were silent for a while, sitting there together in his car with bright flashing neon signs mocking our saddened mood. Traffic buzzed endlessly by, and laughing pedestrians thronged the pavements. Was it possible that in the spring days of this same year I had been so happy here in Vienna!
“Things have changed,” I said bitterly. “You can hardly expect me to be the same.”
Steve shifted in his seat uncomfortably. “You’ve got to start picking yourself up again. You’ve got to look ahead, not just backward. It’s tough for you, I know, but it’s life.”
“I’m trying, aren’t I?” I shot out angrily. And then I knew it wasn’t true, I wasn’t really facing up to the future at all. I was here to square an account that could never be squared for me.
I said, with a falter in my voice, “You can’t expect me to just forget. It’s hardly a couple of months since ...”
“Who’s asking you to forget?”
“I loved Max. I loved him more than . . . more than I’d ever dreamed possible.”
“Yes,” said Steve soberly. “I know you did.”
He started the car again, and this time drove off. I had so much on my mind that I didn’t even consider where we were heading. In fact, it wasn’t until Steve pulled up some minutes later in a cobbled side street that I noticed our surroundings at all.
“Where are we?”
“Out near the Westbahnhof.” He pointed across the road. “There’s a little pub there. It’ll be quiet.”
We went down three steps to the beisl. As the door swung to behind us, a smiling elderly waiter beckoned us over to a bench seat in the corner. I hardly took in the details, just the atmosphere. It certainly was a quiet place. Stolid, solid citizens sat around in twos and threes or singly, drinking their beer, having their little snacks, studying the evening paper, or weightily debating the news.
Without consulting me, Steve ordered lager beer for us both. The cold, clean sharpness on my tongue seemed to drive away the sour taste of our quarrel. Perhaps it worked the same way for Steve, for when he spoke, it was peaceably.
“Have you any special plans while you’re here in Vienna?”
“No, not really. I just want to look around and meet old friends.”
“Friends, did you say?”
“Now, Steve! Please”
“I’m sorry.” He smiled rather thinly. “That’s the second time this evening I’ve had to apologize to you.”
We sat in silence for a while, sipping our beer and staring out across the tavern, soft-lit and hazy with tobacco smoke. Then he said slowly, carefully, “But you’ve got to admit that some of those ‘friends’ aren’t exactly the best company for you.”
“There’s no real harm in them.”
“Maybe not—when you were married. It’s different now.”
I laughed, a short, sharp sound that had no ring of conviction in it. “I can take care of myself.”
“Can you, Jessica? Are you sure about that?”
I wasn’t sure at all. This job I was doing seemed like treading a dangerous marsh. I was uncomfortably aware that at any instant I could step off safe ground and be sunk in up to my neck—or even go right under. But Steve couldn’t know about any of that. He was merely showing his dislike of some of the crowd Max and I had mixed with. And in that respect, I reckoned I was in no danger—I was quite able to take care of myself.
I’d been a long time without answering, and I could feel Steve’s eyes watching me. I gave a little scoffing laugh.
“You know, Steve, you make my friends sound an awfully rackety lot.”
“They were Max’s friends, really.”
“And so they were mine, too,” I came back sharply.
In the prickly silence that followed, I felt an urge growing to question Steve about Mitzi Flamm, and I fought against it. But in the end the need to know was too strong.
“Did Max know Mitzi Flamm well? I mean, before ... ?”
“Why? Has she been hinting that he did?”
I tried to make light of it. “Oh, something she said gave me the idea they were older friends than I’d thought.”
Steve picked up his glass tankard and drank from it. I got impatient and prodded him. “Well... ?”
“Mitzi was unimportant.”
It answered my question. But I couldn’t leave it at that. I stared into the clear-glowing amber beer and asked slowly: “How long did it last?”
He frowned. Not the usual deep furrows, but rather a little niggle of distaste. “There are some things it’s best not to delve into. I don’t mean just you. Any wife....”
“Look, Steve,” I said urgently, “I wasn’t such a little innocent as to imagine Max had never slept with a girl before he met me. That would have been stupid.”
There was a tiny pause, hardly noticeable, before Steve flipped out: “Then why ask about it now?”
“I suppose it’s because I hate to think of him and, well... a type like Mitzi Flamm.”
“She’s a prize bitch, all right. But you’ve got to admit she’s very sexy. With men these things are only physical, Jessica. They mean so little, really.”
“My mind tells me that,” I said unsteadily. “But it’s hard to accept, all the same.”
And it was hard to accept, however fiercely I clung to the avowals of that final letter from Max. “Remember always that I loved you very deeply. You are the only woman who ever mattered to me.” Those tender words should have given me the reassurance I needed now, but without Max’s living presence to endorse them, my confidence was at a low ebb.
I sighed. “Perhaps no woman ever fully understands that casual sex can mean so little to a man.”
Sitting side by side on the leather-covered bench, it had been easy to avoid meeting each other’s eyes. Steve was staring straight ahead, but after a while he turned and looked at me squarely.
“Take a chap like me, then. I’m twenty-eight, Jessica. I’ve been sent all over the place by the firm— Stockholm, Brussels, six months in Detroit; and now Vienna. I’m a normal male—or so I like to think! Even the Mitzi Flamms of this world . . . well, I’m not indifferent to them—and there are plenty of Mitzis around. But as for feeling any other emotion about them . . .”
“It’s none of my business, Steve,” I said hastily.
He seemed not to have heard me. “It takes a lot more than just sex attraction to make a man fall in love, Jessica. A lot more.”
“Please, Steve! Drop it, won’t you?”
He didn’t point out that it was I who’d started this line of talk. He looked away and began fiddling with his beer mug, twirling it around and around on the polished table. When at length he spoke, he merely asked, “When do I see you again?”
“I don’t quite know, Steve. Shall I give you a ring sometime?”
“But will you?”
“Of course I will.”
“Please make it soon, Jessica.”
I hesitated. “I can’t promise exactly when, but in a day or so. Leave it to me, Steve. And if you don’t mind, I’d like to go back now. I really am rather tired.”
“Sure!” He finished his beer, but I left half of mine. It was good, but after the vodka and a glass of wine with my dinner, I felt I’d had enough. Steve noticed, and commented as we got up to go, “You’re taking it easy on the liquor, I see.”
“Anyone would think I used to be a hard case. I never did like a lot to drink.”
“No, I know you didn’t.”
Outside there was a thin drizzle coming down, and as we stood hovering in the arched porchway, the night seemed suddenly bleak. But it wasn’t just the rain. In a few minutes I would be back at my hotel, alone in that impersonal bedroom. I would have liked to stay longer with Steve, even in his present difficult mood, but I had to put a firm stop to the way he was assuming rights over me, telling me what to do and what not to do. My life was dedicated to one single end now, and Steve Elliott was a complication.
“Come on, we’d better make a dash for it.” He grabbed my hand, and together we ran across to the car, the cobblestones wet and slippery under our feet.
There were far fewer people around now, though it was not very late. The bright night life of Vienna belonged to a world that I wasn’t part of anymore, and it seemed that ordinary folk thought more in terms of a good night’s sleep. Here beyond the inner city I was a bit lost. We drove through quiet streets, at intervals crossing the more brightly lit tram routes. I got my bearings again when we reached Josefstrader Strasse, and I glimpsed the famous old theater where Max and I had once gone with a party to see a new play that was considered rather daring.
Steve said suddenly, “Suppose I give you a ring in the morning and see how things are going?”
He was clearly bothered about leaving me to fend for myself in Vienna, perhaps remembering that I’d never shown much independence when my husband was alive. Max had always said that he liked a woman to be feminine and not too self-sufficient—and how was Steve to know that there was a stronger side to my nature?
“There’s no need,” I pointed out. “I’ve promised to ring you, and I will. Let’s leave it like that, Steve.”
“I suppose I’ve got to.”
And then we were drawing up outside the Mahlerhof. Instinctively I looked for the gray Volkswagen. It wasn’t there, and none of the cars parked along the curb appeared to be occupied. But I couldn’t be sure.
Steve got out and came with me as far as the vestibule. By now I was feeling rather ashamed of myself, and badly wanted to part from him on a good note, to gloss over the prickliness that had sprung up between us.
“Thanks, Steve, for taking me out this evening. I’m sorry about Mitzi—it was my fault, really.”
“No, it wasn’t. God knows why I didn’t brush them off. I could’ve, easily.” He hesitated, then said sadly, “Funny the way you always go and hurt the one person you . . . the one person you hate like hell hurting.”
“Let’s forget it, Steve.”
He nodded, and held open the inner glass door for me. As I was going past him, he reached out with his free hand and took my arm. For a few moments we stood together in the doorway, both of us aware of the surging tension. I felt a swift sympathy for Steve, a tender compassion. I regretted now that I’d ever, even partially, accepted Max’s view of him as stick-in-the-mud. Tilting my head, I gently put my lips to his cheek, and in answer his fingers tightened upon my arm.
“I’m sorry, Steve,” I murmured as I slipped away from him into the hotel foyer. The door swung shut behind me with a quiet hiss.
Why had I apologized, I wondered. And why had I kissed him? What did I mean to convey—what new problems might I be creating for myself? I was a fool and worse, I thought angrily, because Steve could so easily get it all wrong.
The night porter was at the desk, his round face beaming, his eyes friendly behind steel-framed spectacles. As I went over, he discreetly tucked out of sight the frankfurter he’d been nibbling.
“Guten abend, meine Dame.”
I gave him the number of my room. He took the key from the board behind him, escorted me politely to the ancient lift, and put me safely into the cage.
The dimly lit corridor on the second floor was empty, and so silent that I felt impelled to tread softly.
Reaching my room, I turned the heavy door key gently and squirmed as it grated in the old-fashioned lock. When I switched on the light, the three-branched central fitting threw a harsh shadowless glare, so I crossed quickly to add the softer glow of the bedside lamp.
And in those first brief moments I sensed that something was wrong.
I studied the room more closely, trying to discover what it was. The bedclothes were turned down now —that was the only change I could actually detect. The fawn rep curtains were drawn, but I had done that myself to shut out the man in the building across the way.
The feeling of disquiet clung to me as I undressed and put away my clothes. The arrangement of my things in the drawers was somehow not quite my way; dresses and skirts hung in neat order—too neat. I had always been a reasonably tidy person, but such precision was not like me.
By the time I was ready for bed, I knew without doubt that my room had been thoroughly and minutely searched. I found myself trembling, my hands clammy. The feeling of being spied on was something I’d never experienced before, and it terrified me. For several minutes I sat on the edge of the bed, in the grip of a numbing fear. But then I made an effort to pull myself together—in the job I was doing, such things were likely to happen. It was the speed of it that had so upset me. Being followed and watched, having my room turned over. And all in the space of my first few hours in Vienna!
It occurred to me that I might get some clue from the porter downstairs. I pushed the bell and slipped into my robe. I had to wait quite a time before there was a tap on the door.
“Hereinkommen!” I called.
His mild face, very faintly aggrieved, peered around the door inquiringly. I asked him who had been in my room while I was out.
“Nobody, meine Dame. Who should have come?”
“The chambermaid, for one.”
“Ach, ja!” He inclined his head and reduced his German to a snail’s pace, as if I were half-witted. “But naturally, the girl must come in.”
“But nobody else?”
He spread his hands. “Who else?”
“Did anybody ask for my key?”
He shook his head, shocked.
I gave up. “Danke, that is all,”
“Bitte, meine Dame. . . .” He was bewildered, I knew, wondering if he had properly understood this peculiar Englishwoman.
I gave him time to get out of hearing, then firmly locked the door on the inside. There was something else that I wanted to check. Switching off both lights, I went over to the window and drew aside a curtain. The street was pretty dark, but as my eyes accustomed themselves, I picked out one of the parked cars that looked like a Volkswagen. It could have been gray.