They sat through Katrine’s smoking another cigarette. David ordered a glass of whiskey, then a second. Katrine drank a vodka. They didn’t speak much at all. At last Katrine said, “I think you can’t be too sad to see me, David. Because why? Because you haven’t got up to go to your room, have you?”
“Neither sad nor happy, Katrine. Just taken aback.”
“Know what I am? I am tired and hungry. How about it, David, dinner with an old friend? I will telephone my Pavel and tell him I’m having dinner with you. He’ll appreciate that I told him.”
“I don’t think dinner’s a good idea.”
“I hate good ideas. You know this about me.”
David smiled at her familiar contrariness.
“I’m hungry, too, I suppose. Dinner, then you’ll get a cab to your hotel, right?”
She went to the telephone booth in the hallway and called Pavel. He was a doctor. She reached him at his office. After describing how she’d “looked David Kozol in the eye,” she said, “It’s nothing, really. It’s only dinner.” Pavel told her that he had a patient waiting; that he loved her; that he would pick her up at the airport, just let him know when.
They took a table near the window. “The truth is, David, you were so seldom in Prague,” she said. “And I never came to London. I never suggested I visit you in London. You never asked. This not asking went on for four years, almost.” The waiter came to the table. Katrine said, “Your best Italian Chianti, please.” The waiter nodded approval and went into the kitchen. When the wine was poured, Katrine clinked her glass against David’s, said, “To old times. Means, we tried each other out and lived to tell the tale, yes?” But they didn’t tell any tales, not really. They ate in pretty much a comfortable silence. They shared a second bottle. No dessert. “Coffee in your room, my friend, David,” Katrine said. “Then I’ll get my taxicab.”
“Katrine, how about coffee in the bar?”
“Be polite, David. I traveled a long ways to say goodbye in person. I’ll say it over coffee, then get my cab.”
In his room, Katrine sat on the sofa, David in the chair opposite her. A bottle of wine, compliments of the hotel, sat on the glass-topped table in between. Katrine opened it, poured them each a glass. Room service delivered a pot of coffee. They didn’t pour any yet. On they talked. What about, David, only a day later, couldn’t remember. Mostly, increasingly drunken non sequiturs. They dozed off, startled awake, the room a kind of emotional purgatory; neither was particularly animated; no buttons got unbuttoned; they eventually fell asleep. David in the chair, Katrine on the sofa. Yet here was the thing, of course: the fact of Katrine’s being in David’s hotel room — the fact from which every consequent form of collapse emanated — meant David had dropped Maggie’s trust, whether she ever found out about it or not. True, the evening constituted David and Katrine’s final parting of ways, but it had taken place after his marriage to Maggie. This chronology offered its own judgment.
The hotel room, with its metallic-tasting water, a pocket of rust somewhere along the pipes, nicely appointed as it was.
William knocked on David’s door at 7:55 in the morning. This was August 19, the day William had his noon appointment with Reginald Aston, royal swankeeper. Katrine heard the knock just as she stepped from the shower. She’d felt grubby and hung over — disgusting, really — but was in fairly good humor. She’d put on the plush terrycloth robe provided by the hotel and opened the door. William was dressed in a brown corduroy sports jacket with elbow patches, a white shirt, khaki trousers, sensible walking shoes. He was holding a small gift-wrapped package. Katrine held open the door and said, “Yes?”
William looked at Katrine’s face, admired it. He noticed especially her skin, a bit flushed from the steam; the bathrobe was more than evident. Then he looked past her and saw David groaning awake. Katrine said, “David, this man is definitely perhaps not a stranger to you, I think. Should he come in, then?”
David stood up in his rumpled clothes and looked at William. “David,” William said, not moving from the doorway but holding up the box. “I thought you might bring this to Margaret. It’s a small vase with real dragonflies somehow blown into it. I was told the fact it was made in 1890 warranted the price.”
“She’ll like it very much,” David said.
“I’ve suddenly changed my mind. Now I think it’s best I give this vase to my daughter in person. When I get back to Canada.” His voice held a kind of stark conviction, but his face betrayed little. He grasped the doorknob, didn’t offer Katrine the least further acknowledgment, backed out into the hallway and solidly shut the door behind him.
Tightening its belt and holding the robe closed at the neck, Katrine looked at a stunned David, then said, “Oh, I see in your face you certainly yes are married.”
Wrenched by William’s presence, still brain-muddled from all the wine, and with what Katrine felt to be an almost comic franticness, David flew into action. He looked for his shoes, found them in the bathroom, not recalling how they’d got there. He splashed cold water on his face, then took some deep breaths. He pressed his forehead to the mirror above the sink, as if to keep thoughts inside, and said to himself, “We saw a swan in a car together, in the Hebrides.” He pounded the mirror with his fist. It might have shattered, but didn’t.
As Katrine got dressed, what sprung to her mind — she being constantly susceptible to literary references — was the English title of a novel by Louisa May Alcott she’d translated into Czech, A Long Fatal Love Chase. She said the title aloud with world-weary resignation, as if it somehow forecasted what David had now begun as he hurried past her into the hallway. He raced down the stairs and out onto George Street, observed by John Franco and the concierge. He ran toward the intersection where he knew William could catch a bus, or, fueled by whatever William might be fueled by — rage, disappointment, disgust, sadness, the combinations were interminable — could easily begin a crosstown walk. David had chosen correctly: he caught immediate sight of William, of all things just sitting at a café table, like any man out for breakfast. A cup of tea and a muffin were on the table, along with the gift-wrapped box.
“William,” David said, approaching the table.
William looked up, took David in, stood, and without a moment’s hesitation lifted the cup and flung its contents. Tea splashed against David’s chest. He winced in pain but continued forward, grasped William’s shoulders and said, “Please, listen. William, there was nothing—” True and not true. William grabbed hold of David’s shirt and pushed him backward, letting go. David careened against a nearby table but didn’t fall.
“What are my choices?” William said. He stepped forward and took a wild swing, which David easily ducked. One of the two women standing behind the pastry counter shouted, “Stop it, you bloody idiots!” The other had already picked up the wall telephone and dialed the police. “Go on, both of you — get out of here!”
William and David seemed almost calmly to escort each other out of the café, but once on the street, William took another swing, which David deflected downward, grabbing and yanking William’s arm so that his father-in-law fell to the sidewalk. William quickly got to his feet. David held his hands palms-out and said, “William, just listen, will you, please?”
David moved forward. William moved back and stumbled off the curb, severely twisting his left ankle. He crumpled into the street. A cabbie (his name was Derek Moreland, age fifty-six), moments before, had picked up Katrine Novak in front of Durrants Hotel. He’d just glanced at her in the rearview mirror when she shouted, “Watch it!” She had recognized William ahead in the street but hadn’t noticed David. The cabbie turned to the front and said, “Fuck-all!” He leaned on the horn and braked hard but the cab thudded into William, who was trying to lift himself up.