White Apples (20 page)

Despite the tension in the air, Isabelle smiled too. "I love those smells. Vincent always kids me because I sniff pencils."

"And use too much pepper on your food." "How do you know that?"

"He told me."

"Did he tell you a lot about me?"

"No. Only good things. I can't remember his ever saying any•thing bad about you." Coco pushed her glass from left to right and looked at Isabelle. "It really pissed me off."

"Tell me about death."

Coco started to reach into a pocket of her coat. "Have you ever seen any of the world's great mosaics?" Her face twisted this way and that, as if what she was searching for in her pocket couldn't be found.

"Yes, twice—I was in Hagia Sofia and the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna."

"Excellent." Coco pulled out a large handful of wooden Scrabble letters and small multicolored, multishaped ceramic tiles. She flicked her wrist and they danced out across the table in all directions. Some of them jigged to the very edges of the table but none fell off.

"Do you always carry Scrabble letters in your pocket?"

"Only on special occasions. Arrange them any way you want. Letters and colors together. Or just the letters alone,

the colors alone—however you want it." Coco pointed toward the scattered tiles.

Isabelle hesitated a moment, looking at them spilled across the tabletop. Then she started sliding the ones she wanted toward her. She took her time choosing. Despite not knowing what this was about, she would still do it her way.

"Any way I like?" She kept looking at the tiles.

"Yes. This is not a game or a trick. Do it however you want. Sort of like the way you rearrange your sandwiches."

Isabelle found the letter "p" twice, an "e," and an "r." She spelled "pepr" and then placed red, yellow, blue, and black tiles in a square around the word like a frame. She continued choosing and arranging, discarding and adding as she went. Only once did she look up to see how Coco was reacting. The other woman was looking at her fingernails.

Margaret Hof came over to see what her friend from Vienna was doing with those strange little pieces on the table. When Isabelle ignored her, Margaret
hmpƒ
'd and walked away. Coco kept quiet, drinking tea and smoking cigarettes.

When she was finished Isabelle had used many of the pieces. She began to count them but very firmly Coco stopped her. "Don't do that, don't count them. How many there are is not important."

"I just—"

"I'm telling you, don't do it." Coco's voice was cold and sure. Counting the tiles was definitely not a good idea. Isabelle did not like being told what to do. Still, she stopped and put her hands down. "Okay. Now what?" Coco did not move. "Take your hands away. Put them in your lap."

Whatever Isabelle expected to happen next did not. Nothing happened. Nothing but the goings-on in the bar around them. Some•one sang a few lines of a Monkees song. Someone else laughed. Isabelle kept looking at Coco to see if she was doing anything. Nothing. After more time passed, she began to grow restive and looked at the tiles to see if they might catch her interest. Two wooden letters, "f" and "h," were too far away from the rest, so she slid them in closer to her design. A green star-shaped ceramic tile suddenly looked wrong where she'd placed it so she moved that too. Then another needed adjusting and another. She became ab•sorbed in getting her arrangement just right, although the whole idea of pushing tiles around a table was silly. She wasn't paying attention when Coco began to speak.

"No one can ever leave their design alone once they've started tinkering with it, and everyone does. If you move this tile, now that one needs realigning. Then another. Your whole life you're moving your pieces around and around, always trying to get the big picture just right. Sometimes it looks okay for a while, it looks perfect. But then you get older, or the things in your life change, and suddenly the pieces need to be shuffled again. Again and again, like what you're doing now."

Isabelle had been staring at her design. Looking up, she saw Coco put one of the unused tiles in her mouth and start chewing it. She picked up another and ate that too. After she'd swallowed, Coco continued talking.

"There are two mosaics. The first is the life that
you
create and live. When it's finished, that life is placed into a greater mosaic. The one where everything goes at the end."

"Aliens too?" Isabelle couldn't believe she had actually asked that question, but in her secret heart she really wanted to know the answer.

"Aliens, ants, amoebae, and Ashkenazim. All the a's, all the b's—everything that has ever lived goes there in one form or another after their life is over. Everything becomes part of the mosaic."

"What does it do? I mean, what's its purpose?" "It is its own purpose."

"That doesn't help me, Coco. That doesn't clarify a whole hell of a lot."

Coco ate another tile. She shrugged as if to say I don't care what helps you because that's just the way it is.

They sat silently staring at each other for some time. Finally Coco asked, "Do you know that Vincent almost always carries a small red plastic spoon in his pocket?"

"Yes, it's his talisman. I was with him when he got it. We bought ice cream in Vienna one summer evening. Then we walked down to the Danube canal and sat there eating it."

Coco slid around in her seat so that she was facing Isabelle square-on. "How well do you remember that night?" "Very well. Why?"

"Do you remember the flavor of ice cream you chose?"

"Rum raisin. Häagen-Dazs. They'd just opened a stand in the middle of town." "Why does Vincent carry the spoon?"

Isabelle couldn't keep a note of pride out of her voice. "Because he said it was one of the happiest nights of his life."

Reaching down, Coco took the "h" tile from the middle of Isabelle's design. She held it out to her. "Eat this." "What?"

"Eat it. Just do what I tell you."

Isabelle took the small wooden square and without pause put it in her mouth. The first thing that happened was her mouth filled with a strong, distinctive taste. Cold and very sweet—ice cream. Rum raisin ice cream. It was so unexpected yet delectable that she closed her eyes to take the whole moment back into herself and make it larger, more hers.

Opening them again it was to the warmth, lush smells, and soft golden light of a summer evening outdoors. She was standing on the
Graben
in Vienna with an ice-cream cone in her hand. Vincent was two feet away eating his rum raisin from a small cup with that red spoon. He pointed it at her. "What do you want to do now?"

She knew what she was going to say because she had already said it a year ago. She listened to herself with

detached interest.

"Let's walk through town and down to the canal. We'll sit by the water." She was aware that two very different versions of her self lived in one body at that moment: Isabelle then and now.

For the next half hour, these two Isabelles and Vincent Ettrich strolled through downtown Vienna past the elegant stores, the street musicians, packs of kids in a hurry, and the packs of Japanese tourists in no hurry. All of them together sharing that warm Vienna night.

When the couple reached the canal they sat on a green bench and chatted with the great joyful intimacy only lovers know. They were delighted to be together. They had found each other and both knew this was the big one, no doubt about it. Life would never be any better than this. Vincent was right when he said it was one of the happiest days he'd ever known.

And for Isabelle, living it now
and
for the second time, the experience was incomparably richer. The prickle of the new and the aroma of the old. Nor did the two parts conflict. It was as if her Now self were driving a car down a new and unexplored road. The other Isabelle, who had been here before and enjoyed it tremen•dously, sat in the passenger's seat. She listened to the driver's en•thusiasm about what they were seeing while noticing all the details she had missed her first time here.

Holding hands, the lovers watched the Danube go dark as evening fell around them. She was just about to say something to him when it ended. In an instant she was suddenly back in the dark bar with Coco sitting at the table covered with tiles.

First she was disoriented, and then filled with a terrible, almost visceral longing for Vincent and that moment together. Like waking from a wonderful night dream and wanting more than anything to go back there for a few more minutes. Just long enough to kiss that dream lover, or eat the sumptuous meal that had been cooked for you. Longing, confusion, disappointment. All those dark feelings moved through Isabelle's heart. "What
was
that?"

"The first lesson in purgatory: Reliving your life from the two perspectives simultaneously." "A whole life? You relive your whole life? How long does that take?"

Coco grinned. "Not long. We have a sort of fast-forward mech•anism."

"But what about the bad stuff? Doesn't that hurt you to relive it from both sides?"

"Yes, but it's very necessary too. Before adding your life to the mosaic, you must know it fully. What you just experienced was the first part of learning to understand what your life
was
and what you made with it."

"Coco, is there free will? Am I ... am I doing what I want, or is someone pulling the strings? You know—" Isabelle pointed to the ceiling. "Him?"

"How much do you want to know? Do you want a taste or do you want the whole meal?" Isabelle did not hesitate a second. "The whole meal."

"Good. Watch the table."

What happened next took place quickly. Isabelle might have missed it if she hadn't been told where to look.

All of the tiles not in the mosaic began to move. They slid in toward the center of the table where Isabelle had created her design minutes before. But there was nothing ominous or disturbing about this—just some tiles sliding across a table. Both women watched. Isabelle looked up once to see if anyone else in the bar was paying attention but they weren't.

Coco said, "Think of it this way: The design you created here was your life until now. You chose the tiles you wanted and arranged them. Your mosaic. The ones you didn't use are the future elements of your life."

"Is this true? Is that really my life there?"

"No, but pretend it is. This is the simplest way to illustrate it. See how they're all joining now into a larger mosaic?" "Yes. Except the ones you ate."

Coco plucked another tile off the table and put it in her mouth. "Hey!"

"It's okay. I just ate the last five years of your life, but you'll never miss them."

As a piece, this new larger mosaic rose slowly and hung mo•tionless in the air a moment before upending itself so that it faced Isabelle.

"There is
your
creation—Neukor envisioned and arranged. On the last day of your life, this is what it would look like. People don't know that because most think their lives are a bunch of scat•tered, random events that don't add up. They couldn't be more wrong."

The mosaic hung in the air as if held there by invisible wires. Both women stared at it while they spoke. No one else in the bar did.

"But what about the bad things, Coco? The terrible things that strike like lightning? The kid who's kidnapped and tortured. Or a good, brave woman in Florida who gets cancer... what about them? They didn't
choose
to put those things in their mosaic. Don't tell me they did. No one does."

"Let me finish explaining this, Isabelle, and then I'll get to that." Isabelle nodded.

"So there is your finished work." Coco waited a bit to allow Isabelle a good long look. Then she took a folding knife out of her pocket and opened it with a loud click. Reaching forward, she stabbed it into the middle of the mosaic.

Twisting it back and forth, she pried out one black tile.

Isabelle said nothing, expecting an explanation for the disturbing gesture. While waiting she kept looking at the spot where the tile had been on the mosaic. It was hard not to because strong white light now shone through it from the other side, as if it were a peephole.

When something important is damaged, we cannot take our eyes (or thoughts) away from the break, the crack, or the wound. The first bad scratch on a new car, the first recognized lie told by a new lover, the hole where the black tile belonged. We knew this would happen, sure, but secretly hoped it never would. Sometimes these things can be repaired but even then they will never really be whole or perfect again. Never.

The black tile lay in the middle of Coco's open palm. "Imagine this is your whole mosaic shrunk down to this size." She pointed to the large one hanging in the air. "Your tile completes that. Alone it looks small and unimportant. Until you see what the finished one looks like
without
it. Are you with me?"

Isabelle nodded.

"That big mosaic is not death—it's
God.
The tiles that create Him are all of the completed lives that have ever existed. Every single one of them has its place in Him. And without them all, He is incomplete." Coco handed her the black one. "Put it back in."

Isabelle reached out and stuck the tile into place with her thumb. "So God is a mosaic and we're the tiles. How we choose to live gives our tile its specific shape?"

"Right."

Isabelle naturally waited for Coco to say more but she didn't. "And that's it, the answer to life: God is a mosaic and we're the tiles? The end?"

"Oh no. Now it gets interesting. Watch."

Isabelle looked up just in time to see the mosaic explode. It burst without a sound. All of its many tiles flew out across the room in a wide pattern like a shotgun blast. They moved silently and
slowly.
Not one person in the room paid any attention as black, red, green, yellow Scrabble... tiles flew by and over and under and in some cases
through
them on their separate trajectories. Isabelle saw one tile actually pierce a man's forehead and exit out the back. Slowly. The guy continued eating a pretzel and reading the news•paper.

Some went low, others high; some tiles moved only a few inches from where they started. Others flew out to the highest, farthest corners of the barroom. On reaching their various destina•tions every tile slowed, stopped, and hung in the air as if frozen.