Lisa Unger - Die For You

“Isabel,” he said. “You were drunk. I wasn’t, not really.”

“Yes you were.”

“No. I was loose, maybe. Uninhibited. But I knew what I was doing. What I was saying.”

I’ve always loved you, Isabel . The words hung between us. I looked away from him, sat on the floor. He sat up, planted his feet on the ground.

“I think I took advantage of you that night.”

“No.” I shook my head.

He hung his head, released a slow breath. “Anyway, you can trust me now. I know what you need here. I’ll be that. You take the bed. This couch is pretty comfortable.”

“Jack.”

He reached out and pulled the cap off my head, then ran his hand along my cheek. I took his hand and held it, closed my eyes.

“This is the last thing we need to talk about right now,” he said. “Let’s fix what’s broken, leave everything else be.”

I didn’t argue, and handed him the e-mail, which he read.

“I guess we know where we’re headed tomorrow. The guide will be here at six. Let’s get some rest.”

SHE WAS PRETTY. Not like Isabel, whose beauty came as much from some radiance within as the quality of her features. Not like Camilla with her desperate fire. But she was pretty, if too thin, anemic looking even, with a straining collarbone and wrists that looked as though they could snap like twigs. Her name was Martina; he’d met her at the Four Seasons cocktail lounge. She thought it was a chance meeting. It wasn’t.

There was also something else to her, a quality they all shared. Longing. Camilla longed to be lifted out of the life she was in, thought she needed money and the right man to do that for her. Isabel longed to experience “real” love, even though she claimed when they met that she’d given up on that. He wasn’t sure what Martina longed for, but he could tell by the way she was looking at him that she thought she’d found it.

He understood longing. It lived in him, always had. Even when he’d satisfied every desire, when everything he had wanted was in hand during his years with Isabel, it lived in him. He understood only recently that it was a chronic condition that might be treated but never cured.

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that you have a special kind of beauty, very delicate, pure. Like an orchid.”

The color rose on her cheeks and she bowed her head. “Charmer,” she whispered with a smile. She let him take her hand.

Walking past the outdoor cafés where people sat even in winter, coated, beneath heat lamps, they moved through Old Town Square decorated with festive Christmas trees. The craft market, set up for the holiday, was teeming with people. A gypsy played an accordion, and some young people danced with his vested monkey.

They strolled along a narrow street, picking their way through the crowd, and moved toward the Charles Bridge. Kristof remembered how he’d charmed Isabel on this very walk, pointing out all the attractions, speaking to locals in Czech. It hadn’t even been Christmas then. Now it was like a fairy tale, with a light snow falling. It couldn’t have been more romantic. Martina was enchanted.

On the bridge, vendors lined up with their wares-wood carvings, watercolor paintings, marionettes. Prague had turned into a bit of a circus in recent years, mobbed with tourists. Every year since the fall of communism, the city changed, more people came. First the gray cast that had hidden the beauty of the buildings was washed away, revealing pinks and yellows, oranges, elaborately decorated facades. Heavy iron doors were finally unlocked, revealing squares and gardens no one knew were there.

During communism, no one was allowed to have any flourish or show. Now people planted flower boxes in their windows, restored what had been neglected or destroyed. It was a revival that drew the world. Tourists flocked to this jewel of Europe. But Prague wasn’t the Czech Republic, and what visitors saw while following their guidebooks wasn’t really Prague.

“Do the tourists bother you?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Not really.”

“You’re frowning.”

“Ah,” he said, forcing a smile. “Maybe they bother me a little.”

He leaned in and gave her a light kiss on the lips. Their first. He pulled away to look at her face-she seemed surprised, pleased. He kissed her again, deeper, snaking an arm around the small of her back. Her body melted into his. He felt nothing really. No warmth, no affection for her. He only felt a physical arousal and the thrill of success, of conquest. He might have felt something different for Isabel, even for Camilla. But those moments were distant, like all the other lives he had lived.

It was then, with the blush of success on his cheek, that he saw that dark river of curls, that confident gait. For a moment, he thought he was hallucinating, that she was so much on his mind he was seeing her where she wasn’t.

But no. Isabel moved past him, unseeing. Her face was pale; she looked so unhappy, so angry. He turned away quickly, pretended to guide Martina over to the stone wall. He pointed across the black and brooding water to an outdoor café.

“The best view in Prague is had at those tables,” he said. He wondered if his voice betrayed the adrenaline racing through his system.

“So let’s go,” she said.

Nothing could keep her from coming after you . Sara’s warnings echoed in his ears. You’re weak when it comes to women .

He kept his arm around her and watched Isabel as she disappeared into the throng on the bridge. Just before she did, he realized she wasn’t alone. Beside her was someone, a man he recognized, but it took him a moment to place the face. When he did, a cold rage filled him.

“Are you all right?” Martina asked, maybe sensing the change in his mood. “Marek, are you unwell?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “Walk with me.”

He took her hand and he followed after them.

“SHE’S HERE.”

He knew Martina thought it was strange that he’d cut their date short, but he had no choice. He’d made an excuse, seizing on her question about his not feeling well, and brought her back to her hotel, promising to see her tomorrow. He could tell she was hurt. He’d make it up to her.

On the way back to his apartment, he called Sara. She sighed.

“I told you.”

“I need some help.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

He felt a rush of urgency. “ I need to take care of it, Sara.”

More silence on the line. Then: “As you like it. Where is she staying?”

The Greek philosopher Heracleitus believed that the universe was in a constant state of flux, that the only permanent condition was change. He said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” And I believe this to be true. But I also believe that some things don’t pass over us like a rushing river, they pass through us. They leave us altered from the inside out and the river becomes a stagnant pool where we languish, our development halted by an inability to climb from the muck of it.

Even from the road there was a palpable aura of despair, though there was nothing especially grim about the building, gray and squat against the green countryside. I’d read enough about postcommunistera orphanages to be a little worried about what we’d find. But as we drew near, the building and surrounding lawns looked tidy and well kept, if barren in the winter months. Some tall trees must have, in summer, provided leafy green shade over a winding walkway, and kids who just looked like your average U.S. high-school students milled about. One girl read a book under a tree in spite of the cold temperature, another listened to headphones with her eyes closed, sitting on the steps that led up to the double-door entrance. A group of boys gathered off to the side, smoking cigarettes. They looked a little on the gaunt side, a little on the rough side, with very young eyes.