Sometime during the night, he came back like somebody arriving on a delayed train. It must have been around three in the morning because the station was quiet now. A reduced line of taxis waiting at the side entrance for the final latecomers. She was asleep. The door made no sound as it closed behind him, not even a click. He waited for a moment with his back to the door, then he stepped into the room and stood by the window for a while. The curtains had been left open.
How did she not wake up?
His presence should have entered her sleep and made her want to sit up and tell him to lie beside her, place her head on his shoulder and wait till morning to speak. He turned to look at her lying on the bed, breathing quietly, her eyes closed, facing the door. Who was she now, with no smile and nothing to say? Her mouth trapped in the silence of a photograph. One word from him would have brought them back together, but he continued watching her like a stranger in the room.
Without the consent of her eyes.
He picked me up from the bed beside her. Her most precious possession. He held the open pages up to the yellow light coming in from the train station. It was as though he had taken her hand to read her fortune lines. He took his time examining the map at the back in the same keyhole manner with which he had watched her face without her knowledge. Like a thief going through her things, searching for information he did not have the courage to ask her for directly.
What was he thinking? Did the thought cross his mind, as he studied the map, to go and find whatever was buried out there without telling her? Is that the kind of man he was, ready to steal from her? Like all men, robbing little pieces of treasure to file away in their heads. He had already hacked into her phone. He had read all her messages. He was clever enough not to reveal it, but it was clear, even to her, that he knew too much.
Why had he not asked more questions?
Walking out of the restaurant had been an admission of his knowledge. Instead of speaking about his suspicions, he had held on to them as if they were his companions, his armoury, the evidence he would present in some eventual courtroom where he would put her on trial.
Once, on a call from Iowa, he had almost given himself away, reminding her that she had left her keys behind at the studio. She asked him how he knew that and he said he was guessing. He loved her so much that he could read her mind.
He was collecting facts he didn’t want to know. The pain of finding things out made him feel stronger, as though each piece of proof gave him more and more power. He was like a man with a hunch for negatives, a man who wanted to hear the bad news in every agonizing detail. The more he found out, the more he sank into that fortress of self-pity. One time he’d stopped along the road outside Iowa City and sat crying for an hour with a Subway sandwich that he had just bought untouched on the passenger seat beside him. He could not eat. He could not drive. He spilled his heart out to one of his friends on the phone, listing off the things he had discovered about her. His technical abilities as a forensic analyst allowed him to be present at each encounter she had with Armin. He was a witness to his own worst fears.
He decided to place me back down on the bed beside her, perhaps knowing I was worthless without her.
He picked up his laptop and placed it into his case. He took his passport from the bedside table and must have felt her breath like a feather crossing his hand. Without switching on the light in the bathroom, he tapped with the fingers of a blind man for his toothbrush. He paused to look around the room, making sure he was not leaving anything behind, taking everything from her that belonged to him. She turned in her sleep to face the window. She spoke a word from inside a dream that was not clear enough to take hold. He retreated backwards to the door and let himself out.
In the morning she woke up to find his things were gone and sent him a message – why didn’t you wake me?
There was no reply.
She waited for him at breakfast, on the off-chance that he might appear, wondering where he had gone to. What streets had he walked through and had he got lost – is that what had kept him out all night? Every time the door opened, she looked up with a smile that faded again almost instantly. He didn’t come. She went to the reception and discovered he had already checked out. The room had been paid for.
It was cold. She went back to get her coat from the restaurant. She picked the wrong street. In the light of day, everything seemed to have turned around. She had to check the street sign to find out that she was right after all, that she only had to go on with more conviction to where the failed dinner had taken place. A cyclist came flying past her with a shout right in her face. She jumped back. She had stepped out like a blind tourist into the cycle lane.
They were getting the restaurant ready for lunch by the time she got there. A delivery of vegetables had just arrived and there was a man with a trolley of carrots and cauliflower entering backwards. The same waiter from the night before came to speak to her at the door. She wanted to pay, but the waiter said her husband had already done that. Last night, the waiter said, he came back just before we were closing. He paid by card. He left a generous tip. Your husband, the waiter said, had only just gone again when we realized that you had left your coat behind. The waiter told her he’d run back to get the coat, then dashed up the street, around the corner – your husband was gone out of sight.
There was a sadness in the waiter’s eyes. It appeared as though he had done his best to fix their disagreement, running as far as the main street to put things right. She smiled and said thanks. That gave him some hope.
Prego, he said as he helped her on with the coat.
She went to a café and sat staring at the pedestrians passing by. The sound of the staff making coffee, knocking the espresso cylinder, switching on the steam, was a comfort at first, then it became a shock that brought her back to reality. She checked her phone again. She left a final message –
Mike, where are you? Are you at the airport now? I went to the restaurant to get my coat. They said you had been there. You’re making me cry, Mike. I’m here in a café on Friedrichstrasse and I can hardly see the coffee in front of me.
Twenty minutes later she received a single message back. The message contained her flight details to Bucharest. He would be waiting for her there – we can do this, Lena. We can be happy. It’s your call.