Whatever word she wanted to use for it, or not use, there obviously was a significant emotional attachment there.
It was naive of him to think that it might be otherwise.
He seems to be the last person she wants to talk to about it though.
She has lunch with her friend the artist.
“Are you okay?” he asks her when he picks her up afterward at the River Café.
“Yes,” she says.
“Sure?”
“Yes,” she says again, wiping her eyes.
“If you want to talk to me,” he says.
“I don’t,” she says.
“Okay,” he says.
They drive back to Cheyne Walk in silence.
The next day she flies to Germany again, and there’s something so stiff and distant about the way they part at the airport that driving back into London he wonders if this is it, if the whole of the last year has just been a waste of time.
That evening, though, she phones him. “I’m sorry,” she says.
“For what?”
“For being such a cunt.”
After a few seconds he says, “Don’t worry about it.”
“This is really difficult for me,” she says. “This whole situation.”
“I know,” he says. “Obviously.”
“I feel very guilty,” she says.
“About what?”
“About everything.”
“You shouldn’t,” he says.
“Why not?”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.”
They talk for another twenty minutes.
Even so, he’s still far from sure where things stand, to the extent that he wonders whether some of the things she said on the phone might have been her way of ending it, or of starting to end it.
And then the next day she sends him some naked pictures of herself taken in the hotel room in Munich. He studies them. It’s been a few months since he’s seen her naked, which makes them more interesting. They’re tasteful soft porn. An open bathrobe, things like that.
He Facebook messages her. Thanks for the pictures
She messages back almost immediately. That’s ok
I like them
:)
What have you been up to?
Went to see Karl
How is he?
Ok
How’s the hotel?
Ok
It looks nice
Why don’t you join me here?
There’s a delay this time, before he messages back.
During the delay something else arrives from her—I’d like that
He has already typed Yeah? in response to the last thing, he just hasn’t sent it yet.
He hesitates, and then sends it anyway, even though it means something slightly different now.
Lufthansa Business Class from London City to Munich just involves having an empty seat next to you and being served a meal you don’t really want. Still, it makes him feel sort of important to be in that part of the plane. And the feeling of importance is prolonged by the sight, at Arrivals, of a man in a suit holding up a sheet of paper with his name printed on it.
“You’re here for the conference?” the man asks, when they’re on the highway.
“Sorry?”
“The security conference.”
“Yeah,” István says, not sure what the man is talking about.
The man tells him that the drive might take longer than usual because of road closures to do with the conference.
“Okay,” István says.
They don’t speak again until they arrive at the hotel.
When they do, István isn’t sure if he needs to pay the man or not. It seems not. The man simply wishes him a pleasant stay in Munich and István thanks him and follows a porter, who already has his suitcase, into the lobby.
Another porter accompanies him up to the room.
When the porter has left, István snoops around a bit. That’s how it feels, like he’s snooping. Like this isn’t his own room that he’s in. It’s partly the silence, which seems unnaturally pure, and the way that everything is so perfectly arranged and undisturbed. He looks into the bathroom, and opens the minibar. He holds aside the net curtain and checks the view from the window—a neat courtyard overlooked by many other windows like his own. In one cupboard there’s a Nespresso machine. In another some wooden hangers, one of which has a bathrobe on it.
He turns to the room again.
Imposing lamps flank the bed, and one whole wall, strikingly, looks like a detail from an eighteenth-century painting or tapestry, massively blown up—an enigmatically smiling woman in a tall white wig.
He takes off his shoes and tries the mattress, and while he’s lying there he phones her.
“You’re here?” she says.
“I’m here. I tried you from the airport.”
“I was asleep,” she says. “Sorry. Everything okay?”
“Very nice. Thank you.”
“What are you doing?”
“Not much. I just arrived.”
She asks him if he wants to come to her room.
“Okay,” he says.
She tells him the room number and he puts the phone down.
He lies there for another minute or two against the pillows, looking at the ceiling, which is discreetly studded with smoke detectors and other things, and wondering what will happen now. He’s not sure what to expect, after the last few months.
It also feels strange to meet her in a place like this. It feels very much like her world, a world from which he has always been excluded until now.
He takes the elevator up. She’s on the top floor.
After opening the door of her room, she just looks at him for a few seconds.
“What?” he says.
“Nothing. I’m just looking at you.”
When she asks him how he is, he shrugs. “Okay. You?”
“As you see.”
He’s not sure what she means. Maybe that she looks tired, is wearing tracksuit trousers and a T-shirt and socks that are falling off and no makeup.
“I know I look shit,” she says.
“You don’t look shit,” he says.
She seems to have some sort of enormous suite. There’s an eight-seater dining table. A marble fireplace. Various arrangements of sofas and other furniture.
“Is that your terrace?” he asks.
“M-hm.”
He slides open the glass door and steps out.
It’s a mild, gray day.
She follows him onto the terrace. There’s some furniture out there, a plastic-wicker sofa and some matching chairs around a low table.
“Nice,” he says.
“It’s okay.”
“So,” he says. “What now?”
“I don’t know. What do you want to do?” she asks.
“Do?” He’s lighting a cigarette.
“Yes.”
“What am I here to do?” he asks.
She shrugs. “I don’t know. Support me?”
“Support you?”
“Yes.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Okay.”
The terrace is quite high up. There’s a faint sound of traffic from somewhere out of sight.
“Do you want to go out somewhere?” she asks.
“I don’t know. What is there?”
“In Munich?”
He nods.
“You mean to do?” she says.
“Yes.”
“Like sightseeing?”
“For instance.”
“Not much,” she says. “It’s not that kind of place.”
He looks around, seeing if any windows have obvious sightlines onto the terrace. None seem to. It’s mostly lower roofs around them.
“You could sunbathe naked here,” he says.
She laughs. “In this weather?”
“In summer.”
“Is your room okay?” she asks.
“It’s very nice.”
“I had to beg them to give it to me,” she says.
“Yeah?”
“There’s this conference on.”
“The security conference?”
“Yes,” she says, perhaps surprised that he knows about it. “The hotel’s full of NATO people or whatever.”
He tells her that the man who drove him from the airport asked him if he was there for it.