“Somewhere else. Wherever he is now. Back on the boat with his chums. Floating about.”
They poured another glass of wine.
“I’m so pleased you don’t live in Switzerland,” said Georgie. “I shouldn’t have wanted to live in Switzerland.”
“Switzerland, Switzerland! Georgie, what is all this?”
“That time before when I phoned to say I was staying with you. You kept going on about skiers.”
“Skiers? In Skios?”
Georgie thought about this. “Oh, I see,” she said.
“Georgie,” said Nikki, “you’re such a dumbo!”
“Dumbissimo,” said Georgie.
Nikki gazed into her glass of moonlit wine, Georgie at the moonlit goddess gazing down upon them.
“So peaceful here, though,” said Georgie. “So kind of like eternal. All these statues and things.”
Nikki turned to see what Georgie was looking at.
“Never seen that one before,” she said.
* * *
“Phoksoliva?” said Spiros, as he and Oliver together struggled to lift the heavy suitcase into the boot of the taxi. “Thirty-two euros. In advance.”
Oliver took out a handful of banknotes he had found in Dr. Wilfred’s suitcase. “Airport,” he said. He was going to start his studies in neurology as soon as he was back in London. Or perhaps in some other branch of science. It would be interesting to know what a Wexler whatever-it-was was.
In the headlights, as Spiros let out the clutch and the taxi moved forward, appeared a familiar and improbable figure — a woman in low-cut evening dress, with strong bare shoulders and a construction of brass-colored hair on her head like the dome of a Russian church. She stood in front of the taxi waving her arms.
“No!” she said. “No! No! Please! Taxi! Yes! Thank you!”
“Oh, hello,” said Oliver. “You want a lift?”
“No, no, no!” said Mrs. Skorbatova, getting in beside him.
“I thought you’d gone! So what, you didn’t leave with your husband?”
“Yes!” said Mrs. Skorbatova.
“No, you didn’t. You got left behind, because here you are.”
“No, no, no!”
“OK?” said Spiros. “Airport?”
“Airport!” said Mrs. Skorbatova. “Yes, yes!”
“Wait!” said Oliver. He smiled his soft, melancholy smile at her, as if he had foreseen the whole thing, and all the beauty of it, and all the sadness that would inevitably follow. Spiros waited, watching the performance in the rearview mirror. “Or Phoksoliva?” he said.
“Exactly,” said Oliver. “Phoksoliva.” If he started his studies a few days later than he had planned he could always catch up later. And he had surely earned a bit of a break.
“Phoksoliva?” said Mrs. Skorbatova. She laughed, seized the end of his nose again, and waggled it from side to side.
“No, no, no!” she said. “No phoks! No, no, no, no! No, no, no, no, no!”
“No problem,” said Spiros.
* * *
Millimeter by millimeter in the moonlight Athena began to lean a little closer to the settlement she was responsible for, as the ground subsided beneath her weight. Gradually she leaned a little less slowly, until she passed the point of no return, and measured her length on the ground. She managed it with reasonable dignity, like a duchess overcome by drink, though she broke her arm in three places and her head fell off.
“She’s gone,” said Georgie.
“Everyone goes,” said Nikki, closing one eye to sight the last centimeter of wine left in her glass. “Dr. Wilfred. You. Me. The cleaning woman.”
“No, that white statue thing.”
“Things come, things go,” said Nikki. “Statues, temples. European civilization. Three thousand years. Constant flux.”
“Your boss is back, though,” said Georgie. “I thought she was dead.”
Nikki turned to look. From somewhere in the shadows Mrs. Fred Toppler had appeared. She seemed to be dazed, and was walking as if under water, or in a deep sleep. Slowly she found her way to the microphone. She was holding up a crumpled sheet of paper to read, though there was only moonlight to read it by, and the microphone was as dead as the old gods and goddesses. But Nikki knew what the words were.
“I just want to say a big thank-you to our distinguished guest,” Mrs. Fred Toppler was saying, “for making this evening such a unique and special occasion, and one that I’m sure none of us here will ever forget…”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MICHAEL FRAYN is the author of ten novels, including the best-selling Headlong, which was a New York Times Editor’s Choice selection and a Booker Prize finalist, and Spies, which received the Whitbread Fiction Award. He has also written a memoir, My Father’s Fortune, and fifteen plays, among them Noises Off and Copenhagen, which won three Tony Awards. He lives just south of London.