Sleeping in Flame Read online

  "Why didn't you just leave? Or tell him to get the hell out!"

  "I did, but he had a key."

  "Change the lock."

  "I did! But he got a locksmith and had a copy made when I wasn't there. I changed it three times. The last time, I had one of those expensive unpickable locks put in. When I came home that night, he'd squeezed Krazy Glue into the hole and even I couldn't get into my place."

  The brakes failed on her car. When she took it to be repaired, the mechanic said there was a good possibility they'd been tampered with.

  These stories went on and on until I got completely exasperated. "For Christ's sake, Maris, why didn't you go to the police? You were being fucking terrorized!"

  "In Germany, all you can do is go to the police and make out an Anzeige, which is the same as lodging a formal complaint. But if no one's around to witness the event, you're out of luck until there've been lots of those Anzeigen made against the same person. Then the cops start looking into things. I did one when he hit me the first time, but you know what the cops said? Even after I'd shown them the bruises he'd left on me? How could they be sure I hadn't hit myself just to get him in trouble! Thank you very much, Munich police. You can't imagine how helpless women are under the law in most countries when it comes to things like this, Walker. That's why they're so hesitant to go to the police after they've been raped or attacked."

  "But I thought that whole policy was changing."

  "It is, but it isn't changed yet."

  In the boxes were a wonderful silver ballpoint pen from the 1940s, a Claude Montana leather jacket the color of a chestnut, a pack of tarot cards wrapped in a piece of black parachute silk.

  "Do you read the tarot?"

  "Yes, but please don't ask me to do it for you yet. I'm a little afraid of what it would say about you and me."

  "Are you good at it?"

  "Sometimes. It's always there to hold your hand, but then you grow too dependent on it and don't look for the answers on your own. It helps best when you don't need it so badly."

  "What happened when you asked it about Luc and you?"

  "The card that always came up was the Tower. Das Turm. Do you know what it means?"

  "Bad things?"

  "Life crashes down. Ruin, usually. It's a card that scares me whenever I see it."

  "You won't read for me?"

  "Not yet. Also, please don't take the cards out or touch them, Walker. No offense, but there's a funny kind of magic associated with that. The only one who's supposed to handle them is the one who reads them. It's an old law of the tarot."

  People I'd known had had their cards or palms read, their astrological charts made up. To me, it was a convenient, vaguely questionable and frightening way of finding out about the day after tomorrow or how to handle it. Part of me believed, part didn't. What held me back most was the thought that fate was a much more illusive and teasing creature than we liked to admit. Why should it reveal its next move so readily and easily, in a line across the hand or the figure of a man with a few swords going through his body? Maris later assured me the only thing the tarot did was give suggestions about how to handle our lives and our next moves: the final decisions were certainly up to us. But by then she had read my cards and the Tower showed up in every hand she dealt. By then I believed completely in fortune telling, but it gave no suggestions, only told me again and again who I was. And that there was no way out.

  An hour later we were standing in the middle of her apartment surveying a Matterhorn of boxes and things stacked everywhere. The doorbell rang. While she went to answer it, I pulled a large book out of a box on the architect Charles Jencks. I heard a child's voice and assumed it was one of the Schuschitz children. I wasn't thrilled. They'd discovered Maris and her kindness as soon as she took the apartment, and had been coming to visit at all hours of the day, sometimes to our embarrassment.

  I didn't like children very much but didn't feel guilty about it. Maris said she couldn't believe that, and attributed the feeling to my own strange beginnings. But that was too simple. Children are a world in themselves, and as an adult you either want to live in that world or not. My stepsister Kitty had two children and I enjoyed their company whenever I visited Atlanta. But Uncle Walker could bring presents and wrestle around with them like crazy because he knew they were part of a visit, not a lifetime. Yet I knew that if Maris and I were to remain together, kids were an essential part of her future. We talked about it until the cows came home, which I took as a tremendously positive sign about us, because she got more and more emotional about it the more we discussed it.

  "Did you bring your cities, Maris?"

  "I did. I brought the cities and all my thousands of LEGO, too. We're going to make a whole universe!"

  She came back into the room with the boy and girl, both lovely looking, both bratty as hell. They knew they had Maris wrapped around their little fingers, but with the same perceptive antenna children have about adults, they were sure I was big competition. We three checked each other out coolly. The boy even squinted his eyes at me in dislike.

  "We have to go to school now, but I said we should come down to welcome you home."

  She knew the kids were naughty, but smiled at them with pure delight. Her love was helpless and all-encompassing. "If I had some sweeties I'd give them to you, but I haven't been shopping yet. Walker and I just got in. Come back after school and we'll have a little party."

  They accepted this and, after checking out some of the more interesting things she'd already unpacked, went out again.

  "You really don't like them, do you?"

  "Whenever they come in here they want something from you. No kids should be like that, Maris. They're too used to being given everything and expecting it as their due. No, I don't like that."

  "Oh, Walker, haven't you ever read Freud or any of those people? Kids expect things as their due because no one's told them different yet. The worst thing that happens to kids is the shitty day they discover the world doesn't give a damn. It happened to all of us, so why not indulge them a little till then? That's only fair; it's what our parents did with us."

  I touched her hand. "I don't love them, but I love your love for them. I know what you're saying. You're right."

  She went to the bed and started taking boxes off it. I knew what she was doing. It made me as excited as the first day we'd been to bed. I walked over to help. She grabbed me around the neck in a headlock and pulled me down with her. The sheets were freezing cold when we slid beneath them, naked, minutes later.

  In a few days she had everything in place and the apartment was completely her. On the walls were large prints of Tamara de Lempicka women, Michael Graves buildings, a blow-up of a Vogue photograph of Maris dressed as a giant green cactus. The shelves were filled with interesting or funny things that said their owner had a taste for the silly as well as the beautiful.

  The first time we ate a full-fledged meal there, she brought out a photograph and put it in front of me.

  "It isn't nice, Walker, but I want you to see a picture of him just in case he ever comes around."

  Luc had curly brown hair and a slightly cleft chin. Sad eyes, sweet eyes. He looked a lot older than I'd imagined, but wore the clothes of a fifteen-year-old – scruffy white sneakers, bleached jeans, a "Best Company" yellow sweatshirt. Maris had worn the same shirt often. Seeing it on him sent a small prick through me.

  "I know that shirt."

  She took the picture and looked at it. "He wore all of my clothes. We're about the same size. It drove me crazy. Did I tell you about the underwear? When things really started going bad between us, he would take my underpants and wear them. He thought it was a very hot thing to do."

  "Come on, he wore your panties? What the hell for?"

  "Because he knew I hated it. He wanted to get me angry."

  "And you let him do it?"

  She looked at me sternly, her hands on her hips. "What was I going to do, Walker, hide them all from him?
Or say 'Hey, take off my underpants this instant, or else!'"

  I cracked up. The tone of her voice, those hands on her hips, and what she was talking about, just cracked me up. Both of us broke into that kid-silly laughter that happens when you're too tired or giddy to be in control of either yourself or your emotions. Forty-year-old Luc walking around her apartment in a pair of lilac panties with little white flowers over the crotch was too much.

  While we laughed, I unconsciously took the snapshot and put it straight up by one of its corners on the tip of my finger, as if to balance it there. But when I took my other hand away, the picture stayed perched, vertically, on the finger. It didn't move, not even a bit. Fascinated, I wiggled my whole hand, but the card stayed straight up. I looked at Maris, but she was staring goggle eyed.

  "Walker, how do you do that?"

  "I don't know. It's just happening."

  "Come on, tell me. It's wonderful! Can you do other tricks?"

  Uncomfortable now, I took the picture off my finger then put it back. It stood just as straight as a moment before. I took it off and put it on – again and again, until I got the jitters. Maris was enchanted.

  That night I dreamed I was an infant lying in a crib of gold and fur. A woman with very long amber hair spilling around her face was looking down at me. Although I was very young, no more than a few months old, I understood her when she spoke.

  "I've done everything, but I never knew there were so many names: Klodwig, Mamertus, Markwart, Nepomuk. People coming from everywhere, everywhere, with new names: Odo, Onno, Ratbod, Ratward, Pankratius . . ."

  She put her face in her hands and began to cry.

  That is all I remember of the dream. When I woke, Maris was lying asleep across my left arm, so I could barely feel my fingers out there on the edge of my body. It was strange, a night thing, knowing part of you was near but gone at the same time.

  4.

  I was making a commercial for mineral water the day Luc arrived in Vienna. But somehow I knew he was there. From the moment he stepped off the train at the Westbahnhof and started looking for a phone booth, I knew. And that didn't really surprise me; I'd had the feeling all along I would instinctively know when he approached Maris's and my planet. He was simply too dangerous a force: a meteor careening out of control, that gave off all kinds of waves as it sped across space toward us.

  He arrived at seven in the morning and by seven-ten was on the phone with Nicholas, demanding to know where Maris was. Nicholas was a heavy sleeper and usually didn't go to bed until very late. It isn't hard to imagine how he felt when he realized who was calling. Eva Sylvian said she had no idea who it was because Nicholas spoke to the Frenchman in a quiet and reasonable voice. The only strange thing was he said "nein" every few words. Eva was only half-awake when the call came through, but she said she distinctly remembered Nicholas saying no at least ten times in the short conversation.

  Where was she? Nicholas had better tell him right now. Nein.

  Just give him a phone number where she could be reached. That way she could decide for herself if she wanted to see him. Nein.

  Did Sylvian realize what Luc could do to him if he kept up this shit? Nein.

  Und so weiter.

  Nicholas was flying to Tel Aviv the next day to meet with an Israeli producer. Because he'd be gone a while, we three had had a farewell coffee together a week before. Naturally, Luc came up in the conversation. But after screaming with laughter at the Luc-in-Maris's-underwear story, Nicholas brushed him off as if he were a fly on his hand. Even if "that idiot" did show up, he would be taken care of. Maris asked how, but only got a smile and a vague shrug for an answer. My director friend loved intrigue and strange situations. Our adventure in Munich had made him happy for weeks afterward. In retrospect, I know he was delighted to have Luc in Vienna that day, because Nicholas had been planning a scene with him ever since we'd returned.

  So, instead of packing his bag for Israel that morning, he surprised Luc by making a date to meet in front of the Burg Theatre at noon. Eva was wide awake by then and watched her husband across the bed smile like a bandit who has just cracked a safe. He made two other calls before getting up and whistling all the way to the shower. Life was about to become art.

  The whore's name was Helene Kцstlich (Delicious) who, from afar, looked a good deal like Maris. Nicholas had also given her a photograph so that when the time came, she could make herself up to look as much as possible like the woman in the picture. He'd used Helene to play a bit part in one of his films, so she was glad to do him a favor.

  Goldstar owned an old but perfectly kept Jaguar sedan that had been given to him the year he won the European boxing championship. Behind the wheel he looked like an Easter Island statue with arms. Originally, he'd offered to beat Luc up, but Nicholas wanted something more interesting than that: He wanted theatre.

  He called Helene Delicious, told her to put on the "Maris look," and dress in the sluttiest outfit she had. Today was the day! Goldstar picked both of them up and drove to the Burg Theatre. Although it was the middle of December, he was attired in an all-white polyester suit and a hideous matching red tie and shirt Nicholas had supplied for the occasion. The three of them must have looked like they were going to a photo session with Diane Arbus.

  When they arrived at the theatre, Luc was nowhere to be seen. Ten minutes later he came ambling out of the Cafй Landtmann next door, cool as could be. Nicholas got out and happily walked over to meet him. Luc looked his way, then at the car. From that distance he could only dimly see the woman inside. Was it Maris? In a gold lame dress with a neckline that fell below his line of vision? Topped by a foxy Tina Turner wig? And who was the gorilla sitting next to her? "Maris" waved at Luc at the same time the gorilla started climbing out of the car. Nicholas had directed Goldstar to take his time so his entrance would be that much more impressive.

  Luc asked what was going on. Nicholas innocently said Maris had agreed to see him, but first he would have to ask permission of "her friend," who was fast approaching.

  The conversation that followed between the two men went something like this, after Goldstar took out a knife and held it open to his own nose.

  "You want her back? You can't have her. That ends that discussion. You want to fuck her? First you have to fuck with me.

  "She told me about you, asshole. You like to slap girls around and then walk around in their underpants? Why don't you come to work for me, too? I'll let you wear all those things – bra, silk panties . . . We'll even buy you some Tampax too: to put up your ass! I bet you got a nice ass, huh? Tight, very fuckable."

  To Luc's credit, he stayed calm and asked nicely if he could speak to Maris a moment. Goldstar turned and yelled the request back to the car. Helene Delicious rolled down the window and gave them the finger.

  "I guess that means no, Luc." Goldstar folded the knife and put it back in his pocket. "Maybe she doesn't like guys who kick her ass, then wear her underpants. You got to be one or the other, you know? You got to be one or the other, right, Nicholas?"

  On the phone to us later, Nicholas said Goldstar overdid it a little, but it worked. Maris said it sounded like he overdid it about 500 percent. But I could tell she was both tickled and relieved. No matter how brave a front she'd put on since the bad days in Munich, knowing Luc was simmering in his crazy juices somewhere on the same continent worried her terribly. At night she spoke in her sleep. Although I didn't tell her, what she said was too often loud and frantic and disturbing. Walking into a restaurant, she'd seen someone who looked so much like him that she'd started to bolt. Only at the last moment did she realize the man's hair color was completely different. Maris isn't the kind of person who runs away from things. I sensed this from the first, and it's still so now.

  After Helene gave them the finger and Goldstar walked away, Nicholas asked Luc if there was anything else he wanted. The other looked confused and disoriented, but couldn't let it go. He had come so far for . . . this?

 
"How could she be a whore? Maris?"

  "She's not, Luc. She's living with him, and that's the way he likes her to dress. I think he'd kill anyone who tried to touch her, especially you. I guess she's told him everything. What was that about your wearing her underpants?"

  "How could you bring her to him? A pimp? How could you do that?"

  "What did you do for her, Luc? Beat her up? Scare her to death? Why do you think she's even with him? She doesn't want you near her life. You're her trouble, man, not him."

  "Fuck you, Sylvian."

  Nicholas turned around and shouted to Goldstar, "Luc wants you to fuck yourself, Goldie."

  Goldstar honked the horn twice, scrambling out of the car again. Helene tried to restrain him, but couldn't. He rose, and rose, and rose from the spotless Jaguar, looking like a demonic Mr. Clean. Pointing a long finger at Luc he bellowed, "Go home, little shit frog. Go home before I eat your fucking face."

  When it seriously looks like Mr. Clean is going to eat your face you get out fast. That's what Luc did, but not before saying to Nicholas, "I'm going to get you."

  "What did he mean by that?" Maris worried.

  Once again, I'd turned the receiver so both of us could be in on the conversation at the same time.

  Nicholas chuckled. "Maybe he'll report me to the Directors' Guild."

  "He's a crazy man."

  "Maris, he looked so goddamned confused by what he was seeing, that it's going to take him a couple of months to recover, believe me. He was scared, honey, what else could he have said? He thinks I've got big pimp friends who can't wait to kick his ass!

  "Leave it alone, forget it. You won! Walker, tell her to stop worrying. Go out and celebrate. I've got ten things to do now so I'll be ready to go tomorrow. You know what I don't like about Israel? Breakfast. You can't put milk in your coffee, then they give you raw onions and tomatoes. God, what a country! I'll send you a postcard of a tank. Let's go to Frascati when I get back. Tell me I'm your hero, Maris."