“What else?” said Emil. “What else is there to do? I can’t spend my existence going round and round in circles. I’m going to throw myself out the window.”
“Oh dear.”
“Taking the amnesiac was only a cowardly compromise. A half measure. I’m not what I wanted to become. I never will be that person. I can’t live being anything less.”
“Well,” Maya said, “of course I’m not one to talk against suicide. Suicide is very proper, it’s always a perfectly honorable option. But …”
Emil put his hands over his ears.
Maya sat next to him on the bed, and sighed. “Emil, it’s silly to die. You have such beautiful hands.”
He said nothing.
“What a shame that such beautiful strong hands should be turning into clay. Deep under the cold, hard earth. When you could be slipping those hands under my shirt.”
Emil sat up. His eyes gleamed. “Why do women do this to me?” he demanded at last. “Can’t you see that I’m a shattered emotional wreck? I have nothing to give to you. In the morning, I won’t even remember your name!”
“I know that you won’t,” Maya said. “Of course I realize that about you. I never met anyone quite like you before. It’s a very attractive quality. I don’t know quite why, but truly, it’s very tempting, it’s terribly hard to resist.” She kissed him. “I know that’s an awful thing to say to you. So let’s stop talking now.”
She woke in the middle of the night, in a strange bed in a strange city, to the soft rise and fall of another human breath. The structure of the universe had shifted again. She felt soft and sweetly wearied, deeply warmed by his sleeping presence. Having a lover was like having a second soul. She had enough spare souls for every man in the world.
In the morning she made them breakfast. Emil, just as he had promised, did not remember her name. He was cheerfully embarrassed about this fact. A quick bed-wrestling match knocked their affair into order. Emil ate his breakfast, grinned triumphantly, and started working. Maya, unable to bear the disorder, started cleaning the studio.
To judge by the state of his catalog, Emil had been living alone for two, maybe three months. The documentation of his work was out of order and out of date. She would have to see to putting the record straight. This was clearly the open-ended legacy of being with Emil. To judge from the varying competence of the photographs, she was the fourth in a series.
Giving the place a good cleaning job was even more revelatory. Women had blown through Emil’s studio like a series of storm fronts. Hairpins here. A single crumpled stocking there. Shoe liners. An empty lipstick. Pink feathers off some long-lost costume. Cheap sunglasses. Mismatched cooking utensils. Lubricants. Blood testers. And, of course, the photographs. The women doing the photographs had been the ones investing real effort.
“I feel good today,” Emil declared, as well he should. “I’m going to create a new piece just for you, Maya. A piece to capture your unique qualities. Your generosity. Your goodness.”
“I’m not your clay vessel, you know.”
“Of course you are, my dear! We are all clay vessels. Why contradict Scripture?” Emil chuckled merrily and started pounding clay.
Maya found her way downtown and rescued her luggage from the storage locker. Klaudia’s backpack and garment bag were gone. Klaudia had left her a note. In Deutsch. Maya couldn’t read Deutsch, of course, but to judge by the angular scrawl and the forest of exclamation points, Klaudia had been furious.
Maya found a public netsite. She plugged in her camera and wired her photos to Therese at the shop. Then she had lunch.
When she had finished dutifully nourishing herself, she called the shop in Munchen.
“Where are you?” said Therese.
“I’m still in Praha. How is Klaudia?”
“She’s back. Mad. Worried. Hung over. Humiliated. You’re not being helpful, Maya.”
“I picked up a guy.”
“That’s exactly what I thought.… When will you be back?”
Maya shook her head. “Therese, if I don’t look after this one, he’s going to throw himself out the window.”
Therese laughed. “Have you lost your mind? That’s the oldest art-boy scam in the book. Show some sense and get back right away. I’ve brought in a lot of new stock.”
“Therese …” She sighed. “You were right. The Tête is a scene. I’m very taken with these artifice people. They’re going to teach me to be vivid. I’m not coming back to Munchen.”
Therese was silent.
“Therese, did you see my photos?”
“The photos are not bad,” Therese said. “I think maybe I can use the photos.”
“They’re awful. But I’m going to take lessons. In photography, in spex work. I’m going to get better. I’m going to get better equipment and I’m going to really work in artifice. I’m going to make myself into one of these people.”
“You’re not happy here at the shop, darling?”
“I don’t want to be happy, Therese. There’s not enough of me to be happy. I’m not my own woman yet, I have to learn to be more like myself. These artifice people, I think they can help me. They have my kind of hunger.”
“You sound very certain very suddenly. What changed your mind for you? One night in bed with some man? Why don’t you get on the train and come back here? Trains are very easy.”
“I can send you lots of photos, if you want them. But I can’t go back to the shop.”
“If you don’t come back to Munchen, I’ll have to get someone else. There won’t be a welcome for you anymore.”
“Get someone else, Therese.”
“My poor little Maya! Always so ambitious. And artifice people are so chic.” Therese sighed. “Cleverness doesn’t make them nice people, you know. You’re very innocent, and they could hurt you.”
“If I wanted safe and nice, I’d have stayed in California. My life is risk. I’m an illegal. I’m on the drift, the wanderjahr. You were very good to me, but Munchen’s not my home. I had to leave sometime. You knew that.”
“I knew that,” Therese acknowledged. She lowered her voice. “But stilclass="underline" you owe me. Don’t you owe me?”
“That’s true. I owe you.”
“I fed you, and I clothed you, and I sheltered you, and I never turned you in. That was a lot, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. It was a lot.”
“I’m going to ask you for a big favor in return, darling. Someday.”
“Anything.”
“You’ll have to be very discreet for me.”
“I can be discreet,” she promised. “I can specialize in discreet.”
“When the time comes, you’ll know. Just remember that you owe me. And try to be careful. Wiedersehen, darling.” Therese hung up.
Though he couldn’t be bothered to feed himself properly, Emil very much liked to eat. With a woman in reach, he complained bitterly if not methodically fed, as if this were some fracture in the bedrock of the universe.
Emil had a little money. He was too confused to properly manage the funds he had acquired; there were half-drained little cashcards stuffed in nooks and crannies all over his studio. So Maya went shopping for them, and began eating with more regularity and determination than she ever had before. Czech medical chow, such as noki. Chutovky. Knedliky. Kasha, and goulash. It was solid and enticing food and it made her cheerful and energetic.
Once Emil was properly fed, he generally became lively. It was sweet to be Emil’s lover, because he was never blasé. Whenever he ran his agile and dexterous hands across her flesh, there was always an element of shocked discovery to his caress. Sex made him all surprised and pleased and reverent and grateful.
Emil became very productive under this hearty regimen. He kept firing up his kiln. The kiln wasn’t a microwave exactly, it was a specialized potter’s resonator. Like most modern gadgetry, Emil’s kiln was foolproof, very clean, extremely quick, and altogether eerie. He’d pull out a freshly zapped pot with a monster pair of padded tongs. The irradiated clay would give a ghastly crystalline shriek as it hit the air and began to cool. The pot would gush heat like a fireplace brick. The whole studio would steam up and get very cozy. Maya would saunter around in slippers and an untied bathrobe, naked under her diamond necklace. Hair almost long enough to fuss with now. It was rather stiff and scruffy hair, but the speed of its growth was impressive.