“We should order first. Are you familiar with our foods? A salad might be nice on a beautiful warm day like this—and then perhaps the cold salmon plate, or—” She stopped abruptly. “Is something wrong?”
Thimiroi struggled to fight back nausea. “Not a salad, no, please. It is—not good for me. And in my country we do not eat fish of any sort, not ever.”
“Forgive me.”
“But how could you have known?”
“Even so—you looked so distressed—”
“Not really. It was only a moment’s uneasiness.” He scanned the menu desperately. Nothing on it made sense to him. At home, he would only have to touch the screen beside anything that seemed to be of interest, and he would get a quick flavor-analog appercept to guide his choice. But that was at home. Here he had been taking most of his meals in his room, meals prepared many centuries away by his own autochef and sent to him down the time conduit. On those few occasions when he ate in the hotel dining room with his fellow travelers, he relied on Kadro to choose his food for him. Now, plunging ahead blindly, he selected something called carpaccio for his starter, and vichyssoise to follow.
“Are you sure you don’t want anything warm?” Christine asked gently.
“Oh, I think not, not on such a mild day,” Thimiroi said casually. He had no idea what he had ordered; but he was determined not to seem utterly ignorant of her era.
The carpaccio, though, turned out to be not merely cold but raw: red raw meat, very thinly sliced, in a light sauce. He stared at it in amazement. His whole body recoiled at the thought of eating raw meat. His bones themselves protested. He saw Christine staring at him, and wondered how much of his horror his expression was revealing to her. But there was no helping it: he slipped his fork under one of the paper-thin slices and conveyed it to his mouth. To his amazement it was delicious. Forgetting all breeding, he ate the rest without pausing once, while she watched in what seemed like a mixture of surprise and amusement.
“You liked that, didn’t you?” she said.
“Carpaccio has always been one of my favorites,” he told her shamelessly.
Vichyssoise turned out to be a cold dish too, a thick white soup, presumably made from some vegetable. It seemed harmless and proved to be quite tasty. Christine had ordered the salmon, and he tried not to peer at her plate, or to imagine what it must be like to put chunks of sea-creatures in one’s mouth, while she ate.
“You promised to tell me something about yourself,” he reminded her.
She looked uneasy. “It’s not a very interesting story, I’m afraid.”
“But you must tell me a little of it. Are you a musician by profession? Surely you are. Do you perform in the concert hall?”
Her look of discomfort deepened. “I know you don’t mean to be cruel, but—”
“Cruel? Of course not. But when I was listening there outside the window I could feel the great gift that you have.”
“Please.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, you don’t, do you?” she said gently. “You weren’t trying to be funny, or to hurt me. But I’m not any sort of gifted pianist, Thimiroi. Believe me. I’m just a reasonably good amateur. Maybe when I was ten years old I dreamed of having a concert career some day, but I came to my senses a long time ago.”
“You are too modest.”
“No. No. I know what I am. And what the real thing is like. Even they don’t have an easy time of it. You can’t believe how many concert-quality pianists my age there are in this country. With so many genuine geniuses out there, there’s no hope at all for a decent third-rater like me.”
He shook his head in amazement, remembering the magical sounds that had come from her window. “Third-rater!”
“I don’t have any illusions about that,” she said. “I’m the sort of pianist who winds up giving piano lessons, not playing in Carnegie Hall. I have a couple of pupils. They come and go. It’s not possible to earn a living that way. And the job that I did have, with an export-import firm—well, they say that this is the most prosperous time this country has seen in the past forty years, but somehow I managed to get laid off last week anyway. That’s why I’m downtown today—another job interview. You see? Just an ordinary woman, an ordinary life, ordinary problems—”
“There is nothing ordinary about you,” said Thimiroi fervently. “Not to me! To me you are altogether extraordinary, Christine!” She seemed almost about to weep as he said that. Compassion and tenderness overwhelmed him, and he reached out to take her hand in his, to comfort her, to reassure her. Her eyes widened and she pulled back instantly, catching her breath sharply, as though he had tried to stab her with his fork.
Thimiroi looked at her sadly. The quickness and vehemence of her reaction mystified him.
“That was wrong?” he said. “To want to touch your hand?”
Awkwardly Christine said, “You surprised me, that’s all. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—it was rude of me, actually—oh, Thimiroi, I can’t explain—it was just automatic, a kind of dumb reflex—”
Puzzled, he turned his hand over several times, examining it, searching for something about it that might have frightened or repelled her. He saw nothing. It was simply a hand. After a moment she took it lightly with her own, and held it.
He said, “You have a husband? Is that why I should not have done that?”
“I’m not married, no.” She glanced away from him, but did not release his hand. “I’m not even—involved. Not currently.” Her fingers were lightly stroking his wrist. “I have to confess something,” she said, after a moment. “I saw you at Symphony Hall last week. The De Santis concert.”
“You did?”
“In the lobby. With your—friends. I watched you all, wondering who you were. There was a kind of glow about the whole group of you. The women were all so beautiful, every one of them. Immaculate. Perfect. Like movie stars, they were.”
“They are nothing compared with you.”
“Please. Don’t say any more things like that. I don’t like to be flattered, Thimiroi. Not only does it make me uncomfortable but it simply isn’t effective with me. Whatever else I am, I’m a realistic woman. Especially about myself.”
“And I am a truthful man. What I tell you is what I feel, Christine.” Her hand tightened on his wrist at that. He said, “So you knew who I was, when I approached you in the plaza up above just now.”
“Yes,” she murmured.
“But pretended you did not.”
“I was frightened.”
“I am not frightening, Christine.”
“Not frightened of you. Of me. When I saw you that first day, standing outside my house—I felt—I don’t know, I felt something strange, just looking at you. Felt that I had seen you before somewhere, that I had known you very well in some other life, perhaps, that—oh, Thimiroi, I’m not making any sense, am I? But I knew you had been important to me at some other time. Or would be important. It’s crazy, isn’t it? And I don’t have any room in my life for craziness. I’m just trying to hold my own, don’t you see? Trying to maintain, trying to hang on and not get swept under. In these wonderful prosperous times, I’m all alone, Thimiroi, I’m not sure where I’m heading, what’s going to come next for me. Everything seems so uncertain. And so I don’t want any extra uncertainties in my life.”
“I will not bring you uncertainty,” he said.
She stared and said nothing. Her hand still touched his.
“If you are finished with your food,” he said, “perhaps you would like to come back to the hotel with me.”
There was a long tense silence. After a time she drew her hand away from him and knotted her fingers together, and sat very still, her expression indecipherable.