“It’s his,” I replied. “I lost my name a long, long time ago.”
Klemens Ebner.
He is, if you look through the weariness, the slouched shoulders and the abandoned dreams, a very easy man to love. It is perhaps the simplicity of his affection, the patience of his understanding and loyalty that makes him too easy to love, for his love is taken for granted by many, who give back nothing in return.
I came to him first in the body of his wife. I did my research, for if nothing else I was a good estate agent, and knew how to pick up a life that was not my own, move it about like so much money on a Monopoly board. The first night that I wore Romy Ebner I said, let’s go out for dinner. Let’s have something Thai.
Klemens Ebner loved Thai food, so we had a platter of spicy treats: duck stewed with cashew nuts, coconut rice, prawn crackers, rice noodles, tofu steamed on a bed of garlic and mushrooms. When we were done I said, come on, there’s a concert round the corner, and it was Brahms and I held his hand as the violins played.
At home, in the dark, we lay together in a creaking bed, and made love like teenagers just discovering their own flesh, and in the morning he held his arms around me and said, “You are not my wife.”
Of course I’m your wife, I exclaimed as my heart started in my chest; don’t be foolish.
No, he replied. My wife hates the things I love, because she hates that I can love anything besides herself, and when we make love, it is to appease me, because sex is dirty and flesh is vile and it is only because men are weak that such things must be so. You–this woman in my arms–you are not my wife. Who are you?
And to my surprise, I told him.
I am not Romy Ebner. I am not Nathan Coyle, I am not Trinh Di’u Ma, sobbing in her father’s arms even as I slip away from her body, relieved to be gone. I am not Josephine Cebula, dead in a Turkish morgue, al-Mu’allim lost by the Nile, or the empty-eyed girl sitting in a village in southern Slovakia, scars on her arms and drugs in her veins, do you want to try something kinky tonight?
Once every few years I return to Klemens Ebner and his wife, who he will never leave, and for a few nights, preferably over a weekend with no social obligations, he commits delightful adultery with the woman he married, and we sail the river and ride the Ferris wheel and live as tourists do, hand in hand, until I leave, and he loves the body I leave behind.
My file calls me Kepler.
It will have to do.
Chapter 36
Klemens asked me if I wanted to stay.
He didn’t want me to, but asked anyway, out of good manners.
Thank you, but no.
In all the times I’ve worn his wife I’ve managed to avoid ever having to meet her for more than the briefest instant of physical contact, and frankly I’m not sure I want to start now.
He says:
If you’re in trouble… you could be me. For a little while. If you need to.
His offer of a bed was false, his offer of a body is real.
I have to remember not to kiss him when I say no, thank you.
He says:
The man you are now? This… Nathan? Are you going to kill him?
The words come tangled, courageous and scared.
Maybe, I reply. Maybe.
He nods, digesting my words, then says:
Don’t. Life is a beautiful thing. Don’t kill him.
Goodbye, Klemens Ebner.
Goodbye, Nathan.
We shake hands formally, and then, as I move away, his fingers touch my arm, the inside, where the skin is soft. He’s frightened, but his fingers stay, barely resting on my skin, and if there was a moment, it would have been then.
I do not look back as I walk away.
Travellers’ hotels.
Seen one, seen ’em all.
This one had a couple of cranky computers in the hall, accessible for half-hour stretches for residents’ internet access. Of the many email accounts I ran, only one had content more interesting than an invitation to buy three new coffee cups at 72 per cent of their original price or anti-cellulite cream for the modern woman.
The email was from Johannes “Spunkmaster13” Schwarb, and came with a business disclaimer at the bottom pointing out that any information contained within was confidential, and that the value of your investments might go down as well as up. He’d forgotten to remove it before pressing ‘send’.
The email was short and to the point.
It had the registration number of a car driven to a hospice in rural Slovakia.
The name of the woman who’d hired it from Eurocar in Bratislava.
The credit card she’d used to secure the transaction.
The last eleven places that credit card had been used.
Five of the eleven were in Istanbul, on the days leading up to the death of Josephine Cebula.
All the rest were in Berlin.
A name and address were at the bottom.
Alice Mair.
Nice to meet you at last.
Chapter 37
An estate agent has two primary roles.
The first is the acquisition of long-term investment property. Male or female, young or old, there’s no point moving long term into a skin unless you know its social situation, criminal record and medical history. I have known seven of my kind hospitalised for asthma, angina, diabetes–all of which could easily have been avoided if they’d done their homework–and two have died of the same, their physical conditions striking so hard and so fast that they couldn’t even get a good grip on the paramedic to jump away. Had one known enough about her target to check the inside jacket pocket, she would have found the epinephrine right there, ready to go. She would have lived but for ignorance of her own wardrobe.
The second role of a good estate agent is exhaustive research for short-term loans.
To take an example.
“I wanna be Marilyn Monroe.”
1959 Hollywood may have had the glitz, the glamour and the flashing lights, but the Scarlet and Star Diner on North Arlen Boulevard served the worst scrambled eggs this side of the Greenwich Meridian. I prodded them gingerly with my fork while on the other side of the booth the body of Anne Munfield, forty-two years old, said, “I wanna be her, just for a few days. There’s a party on Friday, the whole town’s talking, and I thought, maybe Tony Curtis, maybe Grace Kelly, maybe I’ll go as a politician or even just a waiter, whatever–but then I thought. Marilyn. Just for a few days, a couple of nights, even. I wanna be Marilyn Monroe.”
My eggs, when prodded, oozed a thin liquid that might have been water, might have been undercooked grease–whatever it was, it could have formed the perfect medium for the evolution of some primeval monster.
“So…?” asked my companion, leaning across the rubber tabletop. “Whatcha think?”
I laid my fork to one side. The inhabitant of Anne Munfield went by the name Aurangzeb, for reasons which largely evaded me as, by her own confession, she’d been ghosting for less than thirty years and had been raised in her previous life on a farmstead in Illinois. Even had she not admitted to her youth, her behaviour would have been self-explanatory.
“All right,” I murmured. “Let’s go with this for a moment. Why Marilyn?”
“Jesus, why not Marilyn?” she exclaimed. “She’s got this sleek little body, and it’s perfect, but it’s also real, you know, I mean, she’s got a real arse and real tits and a real belly and you might call it chubby, but it’s not that–it’s just real.”
“The word is she’s also prone to alcohol and pills.”
Aurangzeb threw her hands up in frustration. “Who isn’t in this town? You seen some of the faces round here–it’s like they’ve been eaten by crabs. I heard you were the guy for this. I heard you were good. This body I’ve got, it’s got more money than sense–I can wire you whatever you need, whatever currency, I’ve got the signature down perfect. Just gimme this? OK?”