“Wait!” Vince was just buckling Louiza into the passenger seat when the girl ran up, sunglasses back in place. “You forgot your apples.” She handed Louiza the bag. Vince smiled and closed the door. Louiza couldn’t tell what the girl was thinking on the other side of the glasses. But Louiza was as certain it had something to do with Malory as she was certain that she hadn’t bought any apples.
Poor Malory, Louiza thought, as Vince turned the car and headed back up River Road. It was a combination of words that often came to her even after all these years, remembering how touched she had been, waking to the Vespers bells with her head on his chest, remembering how he’d carried her in his arms from that cold church down the streets of Rome, yes Rome! The more that Louiza lived with Una and Dodo and Terri and Quatro and all the Unimaginables, the more she began to imagine another universe in which, strangely enough, Malory continued to appear. Not as her husband, per se, although she had only the vaguest idea — no fault of Vince’s — of what a husband might be. But as a presence, a presence not always separate from her. She held conversations with the Malory in her mind, not just about Schrödinger and not just about cats, but about bare feet and snow and catching fireflies in an empty jam jar. There were long periods of the day, long days, maybe long weeks, when she heard organ music — not just faint, imagined music, the way just the buzz of electricity in the walls can make one imagine a little bit of Bach — but full-throated St. George’s, Whistler Abbey, organ music with stops out and pedals blazing and Louiza giggling, giggling — something she hadn’t done in years — with the Pip in her hand.
Louiza could barely remember Malory’s face. She could remember Malory’s number, –78, identical to hers. She could remember the sound of Malory’s voice, curled on her chest, resonating inside her like a sideways eight with its infinite regret — the regret of not saying goodbye after that day in the organ loft of St. George’s, not turning back to explain why she was leaving, why she was accepting the invitation of the Americans, why she was taking that red hand with the red hairs and stepping into that car, stepping into that Morris Minor, and then onto a plane, first to Rome — she was certain of it — and then across the Atlantic to this only imaginable world where everyone, from the beige-suited men to Vince, Mr. Kolodney, herself, and all the cats, were half-dead and half-alive.
Vince walked Louiza from the car across the porch and into the kitchen before returning outside. She heard voices. Vince was scolding somebody, many somebodies. Louiza took off her cardigan and hung it on the hook. She reached into the bag the woman gave her and bit into an apple. Uninvited, her hand began to stroke her belly. It was true what she remembered, she thought as she chewed. Her belly had once been bigger. There had been a time — she wiped the apple juice from her chin. There must have been. Rome. The woman with the gray eyes on the other bed. The giant with the beard and the strange accent. And life. There had been life — she took another bite — there had been a child growing in her, a child born, unimaginable if not. There had been Malory, –78, carrying her across the river, over the bridge, up the stairway of the hospital. And a child, their child, her child, Malory’s child, no other possibility, but a girl? A boy? What was it Malory had said about cats? Don’t look, they told her in Rome. A girl? A boy? Don’t look!
Louiza couldn’t resist. She looked into the paper bag. There was something on top, not an apple. A slip of paper, a phone number, a name. She looked. TiborTina.
“TIBOR!” OTTAVIA HAD NEVER BEEN INSIDE THE SEVEN VEILS, NOR IN any place resembling the Seven Veils. But it was quickly apparent to her that there was a man at the far end of the bar who was very angry with Tibor, and another man with him who was equally determined to keep the first man from attacking Tibor. Much closer, Tibor was sitting on a bar stool staring at a glass of water, while a girl — possibly the same age as Ottavia but wearing considerably less — was whispering something in a consoling tone of voice in his ear and trying to encourage him to stand. “Tibor,” Ottavia said again, and everyone stopped for a moment.
Tibor swiveled his head to the left.
“Tibor, it’s all right.” Ottavia touched his wrist.
Tibor picked up his clams and walked out the door and into the light. It took a moment for his glasses to darken. He saw the Yukon. He followed Ottavia across the street. He climbed into the passenger seat and placed the plastic bag next to him, buckled his seat belt. Ottavia opened the driver’s-side door, threw a paper bag from the Farmers’ Market and a plastic bag onto the seat between them, and then jumped up behind the wheel. She sniffed the air.
“Clams,” she said, somewhat mollified. “Water?” she said, sniffing Tibor’s face, “with a piece of lime? Well, now I expect Cristina will only half kill me.”
Ottavia pulled out and past the Mobil station, the culvert. Tibor looked forward through the windscreen as a late-model BMW did a U-turn and headed south on 9D. A roar of noise — music maybe — came out of the back seat or the exhaust pipe of the car. Behind the BMW, another College Girl followed on a red Vespa, a guitar strapped across her back. And then another, in a vinyl minidress on a lime-green Vespa, and then a third, a fourth — the entire band from the Seven Veils. The music was coming from the band, not the BMW. But when Tibor swiveled to follow their progress, they had disappeared, and the music was gone.
He swiveled back and looked down at the little girl, Ottavia, behind the wheel. Ottavia felt his look and turned to him. She smiled, she couldn’t help it, and looked back at the road. Tibor looked down at the seat — the paper bag of corn and apples, the plastic bag of clams. And another plastic bag. Ottavia must have taken the man from Jeddah’s plastic bag. Tibor raised his chin to look down beneath his glasses inside the bag. Squeezing the top of the bag closed, he placed it slowly into his jacket pocket. And for the first time in more than a week, in perhaps a month, he smiled.
WHEN MALORY SHOWED INTEREST IN CRISTINA’S INVITATION, SETTIMIO — ancient though he was — took on a tone that reminded Malory of their first meeting, twenty-three years earlier, in the corridors of the Ospedale Fatebenefratelli.
“There has been chatter, mio Principe.”
“Chatter?”
“Conversation, both vocal and electronic, across the Internet.” Over the phone lines, in cafés and airports and docks and markets and ice cream parlors around the world. It was chatter that grew louder over the summer, chatter reported by Settimio’s channels of contacts who owed allegiance to Septimania in ways that Malory happily kept beyond his learning. “They say that the United States is a prime target for attack. No one knows precisely where, no one knows who or how or why. But might I advise,” Settimio said to Malory on the afternoon of Ottavia’s visit, “that the Principe avoid public celebrations and pass the autumn here in Rome?”
Malory had to acknowledge Settimio’s clarity. And his own reluctance.
“You might recall what His Holiness told you, early in your reign. Anonymity is a blessing.” Both men were right. No one recognized Malory, no one knew who he was. No one came at him with a baby to kiss, a car to bless, or a gun to discharge. Leaving Rome, leaving the Villa Septimania was putting that anonymity at risk.
Settimio insisted — and Malory didn’t object too strenuously — that the Driver accompany Malory to the United States. The three of them rode together in a simple Lancia, driven by the Driver’s twenty-three-year-old son, to Ciampino, where Settimio had arranged for a private jet. Although a Saharan wind was blowing into Rome from the south, Settimio was wearing a winter overcoat of midnight blue. It had been twenty-three years since he had first accosted Malory in the corridors of Fatebenefratelli. Malory then thought he had been old, but now age was showing its conquest.