White Apples (5 page)

this glass of water. You're the sea."

This memory crossed his mind as he waited on the street for a taxi. To his surprise tears came to his eyes. But tears often came to his eyes when he thought of Isabelle. She was an Italian opera
and
the sea. He could never believe the depth of his emotion for her and often it frightened him.

A taxi pulled up. Ettrich got in and gave instructions to the driver as they moved away from the curb. He began to think about what he wanted to say to Bruno, what he wanted to ask. But once again the whole thing became so crushing and impossible that for the moment he pushed it aside as best he could and just stared out into the night.

He thought about the angry tone of Kitty's voice when they spoke earlier. For the thousandth time since they separated, he felt terrible regret for what he had done to that good and loving woman. The irony being that for the first time in his adult life he had done it solely out of love and no other reason.

For years, for most of his married life, Vincent Ettrich had been a complete dog when it came to pursuing women.

Not that he treated them badly. On the contrary, he was the king of the female heart and that was the trouble. He adored women. He adored every•thing about them and they immediately sensed it the moment they met him. So many said they fell hard for him because in many important ways he possessed both a woman's heart and her way of perceiving things. That is a deadly combination in a man who cannot get enough of them. His best friend, a long-ago lover named Leah Maddox, called Ettrich her best girlfriend and was entirely serious. He was the rare kind of man who could sit and listen happily for hours to a woman talk about whatever mattered to her. It was not a trick, not a ploy to con her into thinking she interested him. His curiosity was genuine, his concern palpable. The fact he usually wanted to fuck every one he listened to was something else. Most men he knew saw women as a challenge, he saw them as marvels.

"Excuse me?"

Ettrich blinked his musing away and looked in the rearview mirror. The cabdriver, a thin balding man with large eyes and a small nose, was looking at him.

"Listen, I'm real sorry to ask this, but I got the worst heartburn. I was wondering if you'd mind if I stopped at a drugstore and got something for it? I'll just be a few minutes and I'll give you the rest of the ride for free."

"Sure, go ahead. Take your time."

"Hey, that's great. Thanks very much. I know a place in the next block. I'll be as fast as I can."

"No problem." Ettrich knew he'd arrive at the bar long before Bruno and there really was no hurry. They were no more than five minutes away from the place. Besides, he knew what bad heartburn was all about because it was one of the lousy side effects of work in advertising. Everyone in his office carried a bottle of Tagamet in their briefcase.

Heartburn. Now that he no longer had a beating heart did that mean he would no longer have heartburn?

"Here we are," the taxi driver said and pulled slowly to the curb in front of a brightly lit all-night drugstore. He turned off the engine and looked again at Ettrich in the mirror. "Anything I can get you in there? Dental floss, film,

ice-cream cone?" Ettrich smiled and shook his head. The driver nodded and turned to open his door. He stopped with his left hand in the air. It looked like he was about to say Wait a minute! His hand fell and, with a harsh gasp, he pitched forward onto the steering wheel.

Ettrich slid forward. "Hey!" He reached up and touched the driver's shoulder. The muscles were loose; there was no tension at all in his body. And then it happened: Up through Ettrich came the feeling of slowly sliding his hand into warm water. Something liquid and warm was moving languidly up his arm toward his shoulder.

And with no thought, Vincent Ettrich knew that it was the other man's life entering him. This "liquid" flowing up his arm and out of the other was
numen,
the divine substance, the sacred spirit that lives in a certain place in the body and sustains us all. A moment before, he did not know the word or what it meant. As soon as he felt it enter his arm he knew everything. The man was dying and his numen was entering another who had already died. Instinctively Ettrich also knew that it would give him back his heartbeat and other things, living things he had lost when he died.

Indispensable things.

But he could not accept it, could not take the flame that lit another's life.

Lifting his hand off the cabdriver's shoulder, he felt a strong jolt go through his body, as if a powerful electrical connection had suddenly been broken. In the next instant he put both of his hands on top of the man's head and willed the numen out of his body and back into the other.

At first it felt like trying to push through water—slow and useless. But the more he concentrated on the substance itself, the more it took a concrete shape and hesitantly allowed itself to be moved in the other direction. Halfway up his elbow to his shoulder, Ettrich willed it back down with all of his might. The longer it was in him the more he hated pushing it away because feeling this stuff inside his body was an ecstasy beyond imagining.

And then it was out. The last slip of it left his fingertips quickly and completely. He was exhausted and fell back against the seat. The cabdriver moaned. It was a completely sexual sound, as if the man were having an orgasm. It filled the inside of the car. His head twitched and he moaned again, this time in pain.

Ettrich fumbled for the door handle and pulled it up. The door swung open and he got out. Bright light from the drugstore made him squint. Inside the store he saw people moving around, oblivious to what was happening on the street. He took a few shaky steps and it was difficult but he kept moving. He turned once and looked back at the car. The drugstore lights burned across the taxi's wind•shield and he could not see inside. The driver would be all right though. Ettrich was sure of that.

When he got to Hof's he felt nervous and almost afraid. Not because of what had just happened. He was glad of that because he knew he had done the right thing despite the fact he had sacrificed something of great value. No, Ettrich was afraid of what Bruno Mann would say. He worried that in comparing notes the men would find no common

ground. Their experiences would be wholly different. And then what? How would he proceed from there?

The bar was full of couples. Normally Ettrich would have liked that. He liked to sit alone watching men and women go through the moves, do the dance that either brought them together or to the point where they realized there was no point in going on. He could read people brilliantly which was one of the reasons for his success in both business and romance. His mother had said if you can read a face then you can read a soul and he believed that. Waving to Margaret Hof working behind the bar, he sat down at a small table that faced the front door. Margaret brought him a glass of the single malt whiskey he liked. Hands on hips, she asked how he was doing. He smiled at her and said fine, I'm okay.

"I've heard from Isabelle, you know. A couple of days ago she sent me a letter." Margaret was from Austria and had known Isabelle for years. They had met in Vienna when Margaret was working at the Silberwirt restaurant there. She spoke English with the quirky fluency of someone who had been in the country a long time but didn't give a damn if she got the language right. She knew all about their on again/off again relationship and had sometimes acted as referee in their battles. She liked Vincent very much but was mer•cilessly honest with him. She always called it as she saw it and more often than not her judgments went against him. When Ettrich left Kitty for Isabelle, he lived for weeks in a studio apartment that belonged to Margaret.

He frowned and looked at his glass of whiskey. "Do I want to hear what she said?" Isabelle had not contacted him in two months. Twenty times a day he wondered how she was.

"You can ask her yourself. She is coming here the day after tomorrow." "What? Why? Why is she coming now?"

"You must ask her yourself, Vincent. She wants you to pick her up at the airport. I was going to call and tell you.

Friday night, eight o'clock. Flight 622 Austrian Airlines." She patted his shoulder and started away. "Margaret?"

"Yes, Vincent?"

"Is there something you're not telling me?"

She hesitated, nodded. Reaching into the pocket of her beautiful silk slacks, she pulled out a piece of folded paper and handed it to him. "She sent this to me last week. Said I should give it to you when I thought the time was right."

He took it from her, eager to see what was there. "Why didn't you give it to me before?" "Because no matter what happens next, your life is about to change."

He wanted to know what she meant, but more than anything he had to read Isabelle's note. They looked at each other a moment more and then Margaret left. Unfolding the paper he saw it was a poem. He hadn't heard from her in so long.

You, on one foot

Something I cannot forget nor do I want to

is you, standing on one foot. Almost naked, your underpants a white blur in your hand.

Looking at me, you slide them off your lifted leg.

All skin you are then, except

for that vivid touch of crumpled white in your fist. I loved you even more

if you tottered a little, off balance before you stood again and came to bed, smiling. I saw you on one foot like that in many places.

But I remember best at Miriam's because that is where it happened the first time.

In that cluttered bedroom of hers— laundry hanging around, stuffed animals and the bed that was never friendly.

How happy we were there!

You lifted your leg, slid that white down and off and I thought—

If a moment like this exists then there must be a God.

I am pregnant, Vincent. Pregnant with your child. Our child. I haven't decided what I am going to do about it yet. I will be in touch.

His mind raced around like a fly caught between two hands. She was coming. She was pregnant. How could it be? Why hadn't she told him? And when that first blast of questions had come and gone, the real one came. How is this possible if I was dead? He reached for the glass of whiskey and drank it all without tasting it. While his head was raised he happened to glance toward the bar and saw Margaret watching him. He could not read the expression on her

face. There was no time for that now.

Taking out his pocket notebook, he carefully wrote down Isabelle's flight number and when it was due. Without thinking he picked up the glass again and drank what was not there. He wanted another but wouldn't ask for it because that meant Margaret would bring it and he would have to say something to her. Not now. Not yet. The atomic bomb had just been dropped on his mind and the mushroom cloud was still rising and expanding outward. He stared at what he had written on the page and wiggled the pen up and down in his fingers.

"Vincent? Fuck, man, sorry I'm late."

Bruno pulled out a chair and sat down across the table from Ettrich. The man looked like he had run out of a burning house. His hair, always so carefully combed back flat and gelled to a seallike gleam, stood up all over his head. A meticulous dresser, who prided himself on the number of Kiton suits he owned, Bruno wore a rumpled sweatshirt with a rhinoceros on the chest and a pair of tattered carpenter's pants. Reaching down, he began to tie the laces on a pair of dirty tennis shoes. He pulled too hard and one of the laces broke off in his hand.

"Fucking bastard. Fuck!" Holding up the frizzy piece, he stared at it with absolute hatred. "Take it easy, Bruno. What do you want to drink?"

"Nothing. I've been drinking all day and it only gave me a fucking headache. Maybe when you're dead you can't get drunk. What do you think, Vincent? You think all the rules are different for us now?" His voice was both laconic and worried. He wanted to sound like a tough guy but it didn't work.

"Have you taken your pulse? Do you have a heartbeat?"

"No." Bruno looked suspiciously around, as if spies might be watching their every move. He shook his head. "What else? Is there anything else different about you since you discovered the truth?"

The guy was so distraught that Ettrich didn't think it was the right moment to describe what had happened earlier with the cab-driver. Later. He would drop that one on Bruno when he was a little more stable. Ettrich said no, feeling the slightest bit guilty for lying.

"Me neither. But what do we do, Vincent? What does this
mean
?"

"First tell me something—do you remember dying? Do you remember being dead? Anything at all?"

"No. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. That's what's so goddamned creepy about this—how can you die and be dead but not remember it? I don't remember one thing."

Ettrich sighed and rubbed his mouth. "The same with me. I was hoping you'd remember something and we could start from there but obviously that's out now. Look, I'll just tell you how it happened to me and we can compare notes."

"Yeah good, that's good. Tell me."

Slowly and with as much detail as he could remember, Ettrich told Mann about meeting Coco, their affair, and the events of that evening. Bruno said nothing, only nodding sometimes and making hand gestures for more detail, or "wait a minute" while he digested the facts. When he heard about his name tattooed on Coco's neck, he closed his eyes and sucked in his lips. Then he laughed but said nothing. Instead, he picked up the empty whiskey glass and spun it around and around in his hand.

When Ettrich had finished his story, the only things he left out were what had happened in the taxi and the news about Isabelle.

"But why did Coco go on all those weeks letting you think things were normal? What was the point?"

"She said I had to figure it out for myself. She was just waiting for a sign from me. When I saw you after you died, that was it. But I don't know what to believe, Bruno, because then she disap•peared. How did it happen to you?" He sat in the chair with his legs spread wide, shoulders slumped, elbows on knees. He looked both tired and defeated, as if he had just gotten bad news or spent an especially difficult day at work.