Thirty-five

That night—because that was how she would always think of Edward’s death—Annie and Will returned home in the darkest hour before dawn, sleepwalking, in shock. Grieving. In the vestibule, they passed the familiar stink of garbage bins and the super’s apartment door with the number 1 on it, shut and silent. She saw a pale light from a television flickering under the door.

The elevator on the top floor opened to a view of their bald neighbor’s beer cans lined up on the mat, two grocery bags stuffed with a week’s worth of trash: chicken bones, fruit rinds, old bread, juice bottles—rotting smells rising everywhere.

“Jesus,” Will said, fitting the key in their door.

They walked into the quiet, clean oasis of their apartment and Leo’s room. They had Klara to thank for that.

A gentle nightlight glowed in the hallway. Annie could hear the television down the hall in the living room where Klara and Sandor had fallen asleep on the couch. Will had called them from the police station. Never had Leo’s room felt as safe as in this moment when she stood over his crib and simply stared at his face, the sleeping baby surrounded by his stuffed animals and the sweetness of life, because life held that possibility and it was embodied right here in front of her, in their child.

It was her favorite room because of the views, especially at night when the castle on the hill, illuminated by spotlights, shone like a full moon. Will took her in his arms. She leaned into him, the feeling of safety flowing through her like water satiating a terrible thirst. Her small family was intact.

She looked out the window to Castle Hill and wrapped her arms around Will’s waist to combat the sensation of her body losing gravity, the horrible images of death pummeling inside her head. In this tranquil moment with Will, she remembered the sounds of thudding footfalls approaching, loud voices and electronic noises and a handful of policemen bursting into Stephen’s living room. Was it exactly after the last shot fired? During? Just before Annie was shielding her own head with bent wrists and elbows to fend against another horror she did not want to see? She’d witnessed enough already when Stephen fired two shots and Edward fell to the floor.

At Stephen’s apartment, a policeman directed her next to the table with the crystal glasses. Agnes appeared. And then Bernardo and Eileen, Marta and Olga—everyone huddled together trying to make sense of the insensible. Will was by her side.

The police would not let her approach Edward, but Annie wanted to touch him, kneel by his side, place his head on her lap, give him back his body’s dignity. “Van killed him,” she said. “We saw him do it.” But the police would not let her approach the crime scene.

A young officer pointed to the balcony, speaking quickly to Agnes in the soft tones of the Hungarian language.

Will said, “Van Howard is his name. He also goes by Stephen Házy. We saw him shoot Edward twice.”

“Igen. Agnes touched Annie. “The policeman wants to know if you know him.”

Annie started to move toward Edward again, but a young officer blocked her.

“Itt!” the policeman said sharply to Agnes in Hungarian.

“Please obey them,” Agnes said to Annie.

Two medics carried stretchers to the balcony.

Annie saw that Edward’s mouth was open in a distorted O, a dark spot around his crotch, a pool of blood oozing from his stomach area, his eyes staring at something only he could see. Stephen was twisted on his side. Thank God she couldn’t see his face.

But something else happened in those moments of gunshots. As she inhaled the bitter odor of the gun, and in the confusion of lights and police and medics, and Hungarian words she couldn’t understand, she thought she smelled, too, the sunbaked odor of tar on the driveway where her brother, Greg, lifted his knee and aimed the ball at the chalked white circle on the blacktop. She felt her legs remembering the skip-step she took toward the circle. She’d wanted to catch the ball, to be part of the game. So she started for the chalked circle, hearing Greg shout, Annie! Get out of the way! She saw the ball flying toward Tracy on her bike. Annie heard a thump of metal and saw the edge of the white line, and she remembered how she couldn’t move, paralyzed on the blacktop as her brother shook Tracy, lying on the ground, trying to rouse her; she did not hear his frantic words, she did not hear anything.

She burst into tears in Leo’s room.

“Annie, Annie,” Will said, placing his hands gently on her shoulders. She shook her head.

Dear Mr. Weiss.

She couldn’t erase the image of Stephen’s angry smile provoking Edward. Good thing we didn’t get that autopsy.

How long would she hear those hideous words and gunshots? How long would she see Stephen pointing the gun at her and at Will?

Annie felt her body’s fluids pulsing through her legs and arms. Why did Stephen point the gun at them? Edward was right. Stephen was an angry, homicidal man.

In the car ride to the police station close to midnight, the roads were still crowded, the sidewalks busy with couples dressed for late dinners and club hopping. This city didn’t sleep. This was no slouch of a town. It’s what seduced Annie when she and Will first came, and Will decided that yes, he could do it, he could quit his job. Only now she knew: what they had seen on the surface of these streets and hills with their quaint, backward time-warped ways was not at all what breathed beneath. The police car merged onto the fast avenue along the river.

She hadn’t penetrated the city’s veneer, but she saw that trying to get inside this country had been her attempt to get inside herself.

The police car drove past an intersection crowded with twenty-somethings, a Budapestian girl in black boots with thick heels stepping off a curb, crossing in front of the car. The car swerved out of the way and kept moving alongside the river, where small and midsize boats inched down the dark waterway, the Duna, the liquid beast that swallowed secrets of time and death.

Edward and Stephen both dead. There were no winners here.

AFTER SANDOR WOKE Klara on the couch and took her home, Annie and Will, exhausted but unable to sleep, made love in a way they hadn’t in months, with a sense of gratitude and purpose, and sadness, clinging to each other like flood victims grabbing hold of deep-rooted trees, as if Edward’s death confirmed that life was worth living, more than they ever imagined. She tried to erase the image of Edward’s lifeless body on the balcony, to see him alive once again in Josef’s apartment, vibrant with complaints. Fighting. Difficult and irascible, appalled by love’s injustices. But the lifeless image hung in her mind like a limp flag. She hoped time would bleach it out, make it fade and disappear.

“It wasn’t in vain, coming here, was it?” she said to Will as they lay in bed, her eyes sore from crying. “He’d still be alive if I hadn’t told him the address. They both would be.”

“You gave him what he was looking for. He got answers. He would have persisted with or without you, Annie. Have no doubt about that. It’s why he came here. To find out the truth. He told you that.”

“You think he got his answer?”

“Absolutely,” Will said. “I do.”

She pulled Will closer, skin to skin, and shutting her eyes, she saw the blinding spark of sunlight from the car’s metal fender. Tracy didn’t have a choice. She was a victim of fate wedged between their father’s car backing up and Greg’s errant ball, yet Greg blamed himself and carried the burden of her family’s despair.

Maybe they were all victims of fate.