“I’ll explain.”
Sarah sniffed and kissed her kneecaps. “Rancher Roe?” she said. “You’ll explain how we conned that poor old fairy? Take a look at yourself. Not a moral fiber to be found.”
“I’m sweet, though.”
“Nixon was sweet. Oppenheimer was sweeter. Einstein—sweetest old geezer who ever lived.”
“Yes, but Einstein warned us.”
“That’s how sweet he was! Invents the end of the world, then sounds the alarm. Isn’t that how relativity works? Szilard was a sweetie, Fermi was a pussycat. Just like you and me, William. We’re all such charmers.”
“If you’re feeling guilty—”
“Guilt?” she said. “Forget it, man. Guilt went out with culottes. It’s a new world.”
Sarah crushed out her cigarette and winced and stroked a thick red blister at her lip. It was a blemish that had been recurring for years now, but here, in the flickering light, it seemed to have its own organic mandate. I wanted to reach out and brush it away.
“Face it,” she said, “we’re established. Donated our scruples to the highest bidder. Buckled, snapped, sold out. Sweet Bobbi will see the change.”
“Enough,” I said.
“Am I a nag?”
“A little.” I watched her massage the blister. It was the color of her nipples, almost exactly, and it did the same thing for me. I locked the door and took off my clothes and squeezed in beside her.
“You love her, William? Really?”
“Pretty much.”
“Maybe we should take separate compartments.”
“If you say so.”
“But maybe not,” she said. “In a case like this, proximity’s important.”
“Fine,” I said.
We made Bonn late the next morning. Sarah wanted to get right down to business—no last-minute waffling, she said—but I needed a day for reconnaissance and planning. No mistakes. Ten years and more I’d been dreaming about this, how one day I’d pack my bags and take off after her, chase her to the ends of the earth, do it right this time, show her what a brave and sane and exciting man I am, make her beg for me, buy her furs and jewels, the things of the world-as-it-is, real things, show her how life is meant to be lived, show her what she’d missed. I was done with half-assed fantasies. I was a pragmatist. Let the world stew in its own bloody juices, it didn’t mean a damn next to Bobbi.
“You want it too bad,” Sarah said. “You can’t win.”
I told her to wait and see.
We found a room near the government district, unpacked, then went out for lunch and a walk. It was the burning end of August. There were giant shade trees along the Rhine, and bridges and boulevards; there was a sidewalk café where we ate sausages on brown bread and drank beer. We were beginning to feel rich. We rode the riverboats, bought cameras, bought clothes, dined elegantly at a high rooftop restaurant. Sarah looked great. She looked tan and aristocratic, silver earrings and a Cyd Charisse dress that was made to dance in, so we danced slow to jazzy music, then we rented a hansom that took us clomping through the wee-hour streets.
“A question,” I said. “Put yourself in Bobbi’s shoes. A night like this—will it win her over?”
Sarah snuggled close. She had a shawl around her shoulders. Her shoes were off.
“Depends on the vibes,” she said.
“How are they?”
“Ho-hum, sort of. This is Europe, man, you have to wear your wealth more freely. Take it more for granted.”
“What about the basics?”
“Passion,” she said. She showed me a brown leg. “Otherwise it gets soupy and she starts thinking of you as something sweet. Like Fermi and Einstein. Take some chances. Get violent.”
“Like so?”
“Harder. We’re talking violence.”
The hansom circled through a park. I practiced violence for a time, then got sleepy, and Sarah ended up paying the driver and seeing me to the room.
In bed, she cried.
“This lip of mine,” she said. “I’m not hideous, am I? I mean, I’m still kissable?”
“Absolutely.”
We kissed cautiously. Afterward, with the lights out, Sarah slipped a pillowcase over her head and came in close for warmth.
“Idiot,” she said, “I love you.”
In the morning I began making calls. There wasn’t much to go on—a few vague possibilities. All I remembered, really, was that her husband had taken a position as a visiting lecturer in prosody at Bonn University; Bobbi had planned to teach English to the children of embassy officials.
But all that was nearly a decade in the past.
“A cold trail,” Sarah told me.
She lay in bed as I made the calls; after each strikeout she kissed me and said it wasn’t meant to be. I tried the university, the American Embassy, and the central APO mailroom in Bad Godesberg. No one knew anything. In part, it was a problem in detection, teasing out clues, but there were also the complications of language and uncertainty and Sarah.
“It’s an omen,” she said. She was at the foot of the bed, legs wrapped around a phone book. “Tell you what. Let’s get married.”
“Not that simple.”
“It is simple. Get hitched in Istanbul. Honeymoon in Venice and then settle down in some nifty castle on the river Rhone.”
“Nice thought,” I said, and frowned at her. “Maybe I should try American Express.”
Sarah put her head in my lap while I dialed.
“Man and wife,” she said lightly, not quite teasing. “We’ll do it right. Have portraits done. Those rich, dark oil jobbies that age so nicely. Hang them in your hunting den. You’ll call me Lady, I’ll call you Sir William. Dine each evening at eight sharp. Very proper, you know. I’ll run charity balls and you can chase foxes with your friends. Late at night we’ll talk pornography. We can do it.”
American Express had never heard of Bobbi Scholheimer.
“William, for God’s sake, don’t you love me?”
We had breakfast in bed, then I tried several hotels and pensions, then the German-American Club, then each of the banks. I was getting desperate. Somehow, for all the wasted years, I’d always thought that when the time came it would be easy. Ring her up and plead my case and start making children. I’d run through the image a million times.
“Hey, look here,” Sarah said. She went up into a handstand at the foot of the bed. “Command performance. How does Bobbi match up?”
“Stop it.”
“I’ll bet she can barely stand on her feet.”
“Sarah—”
“Balance, man.”
She curled her toes toward the ceiling, the muscles at her hips correcting for the wobble in the bedsprings.
“Is she cuter? Perkier? No shit, I can be perky, too.” Sarah came down to the kneeling position. “Coy and shy and mysterious. Demure as all get-out. Sublime. You want sublime?” She crossed her arms on her chest, bowed her head, and smiled. “Gee golly, sir, I don’t commit Congress on the first date. Am I blushing?”
I looked away.
“Listen,” I said gently, “we can’t accomplish anything this way.”
“Accomplish me, William.”
“Let’s just—”
“I’m sublime! I am, I’m brilliant. You can wear my Phi Beta Kappa key around your neck, we’ll go steady. My doctor says I’ve got this gorgeous womb—ovaries like hand grenades—I’m built for motherhood—I can cook and rob banks and manage money. I can sew. I know how to make pickles. Just name it.”
“Get dressed.”
Sarah sighed. “I hope she’s dead.”