C Box - Three Weeks to Say Goodbye

ON THE NIGHT I was finally to meet with Harris, Melissa didn’t answer the phone.

It was 10 A.M. in Denver, and no one was home. I felt something hot and sour rise up in my throat, and fought to keep it down. I didn’t have enough information to panic.

I didn’t leave a message, but went through the whole procedure again to call her cell. Again, straight to voice mail. What was going on?

Cody, I thought. So I went through the long procedure again, talking to long-distance operators, giving my phone card number… to find out his phone was off, too.

I was running out of time. Despite that, I called home again and got voice mail.

“Honey,” I said, “what the hell is going on? I’ve been trying to reach you and Cody. Call me at my hotel and leave a message. I’m going to a business dinner but I’ll call as soon as I get back. I want to make sure everything is okay. Love to you and Angelina. You need to keep your phone on. ”

I SMOKED A CUBAN cigar for pure defense purposes- everybody else in the dark, cramped bar was smoking-in the Habana Haus off the hotel lobby and waited for Harris to arrive. He was a half hour late. Smoking the cigar and drinking a Berliner Kindle lager gave me something to do while I fretted, running scenarios through my mind explaining why Melissa didn’t answer. I ran the gamut: Melissa and Cody were having a wonderful time together and decided to go shopping and take Angelina to the zoo and both had simply forgotten to turn their cell phones on; Melissa had taken Angelina to the pediatrician for a long-scheduled checkup she’d no doubt informed me of but I’d forgotten and she and Cody had obeyed the NO CELL PHONES sign in the waiting room (although it didn’t make sense that Cody, for once, would obey a regulation); the power went out, rendering both the landline telephone and the cell towers useless.

Then the not-so-innocent explanations. Cody and Melissa had been arrested by the Denver PD in association with the beating and death of one Luis Cadena, and Melissa was being questioned in a spare room by detectives; Judge John Moreland and son Garrett had decided a month was too long and had shown up with a phalanx of cops to forcibly remove Baby Angelina and a fight had ensued, leading to the arrest of both Cody and Melissa; the two of them declared their long-smoldering love for one another and had bundled Angelina into the Honda and headed for Vegas.

SEVERAL HEADS TURNED when Malcolm Harris pushed through the heavily curtained entrance. He was recognized. At the travel show, he was a prize. Returning home with his business card impressed bosses. That he strode over toward me surprised a couple of the old female tourism war horses from Florida, and one, a hatchet-faced woman who had likely once sold cars, was out of her chair with a quick movement that belied her bulk and started tugging at his sleeve. I noticed a little weave in his walk, probably because he’d been drinking already. Harris’s face went cold when she hugged him, but he smiled gamely and hugged her in return with the enthusiasm of a twelve-year-old boy embracing a hated aunt, and she hung on his every word, which consisted of, “So, when did you get in?”

And she began to tell him, not only about her flight but about her luggage that hadn’t yet arrived and her new condo and that she’d divorced and had been sick but was feeling much better now and she’d even lost sixteen pounds.

I rescued him by standing and clamping onto the back of his shoulder and pointing toward my watch with urgency.

“Are we late?” he asked, mock-surprised. “People have been buying me drinks all afternoon, and I’ve lost track of the time.”

“I’m afraid so,” I said. To the woman, I said, “I’m sorry, but they started serving at seven thirty.” I lied, of course, having no idea who they were.

As Harris extricated himself, she followed him, poking her business card at him until he took it, pocketed it, and handed her one of his own, which instantly soothed her. She retreated to her table with the prize card as if she’d counted coup with her war club, waggling her eyebrows at her companions.

“God, thank you,” he said when we were on the street. It was cold and damp, which felt good after the smoky closeness of the Habana Haus.

“You’re welcome,” I said, still brandishing the cigar.

“Florida people,” he said, shaking his head. “They can be so obnoxious. It’s as if they don’t realize there is anything else in the world, you know, but Florida. Unfortunately for them, Florida is so over. But some of these marketing women will do anything for UK business, you know. That’s where we got the phrase, ‘ Been there, done that, fucked the rep. ’”

I laughed politely. The lights of the Ku’Damm were ahead.

“Are we going the right direction?” I asked. “I don’t know where we’re going to dinner.”

“Your treat,” he said, reminding me. “This is the right way. First another drink, then dinner.”

“Great,” I said, not meaning it and tossing the cigar aside. Thinking, Let’s get this over with so I can get the hell home.

THE RESTAURANT WAS A twenty-minute walk. Harris prided himself on having discovered it a few years before, and said it had the best schnitzel in Berlin.

“They make it the old way,” he said, rubbing his hands together, “You can hear them pounding the veal with mallets in the back to tenderize it. They pound it hard with mallets.”

The place was called Der Tiefe Brunnen, and it was located on Rankestraße. It was dark and old, lit by candles, looking very much like “The Deep Well” of its name. Black-and-white photos of unknown (to me) celebrities covered the walls. A cloud of cigarette smoke hung low in the room, but through it men and women eyed us from booths as we took our table up front near the bar. The owner, a severe man in muttonchop sideburns, greeted Harris in German. Harris shook the man’s hand and pointed me out, obviously telling the owner I was new to the place and would be paying the bill. A tray of schnapps shots was sent over immediately, brought by a woman dressed to showcase her massive breasts. She wore a see-through spandex support bra under a filmy shirt. Her hair was dyed German Red, a crimson/purple color not found in nature except for buckbrush in October when the leaves turned color. When she bent over the table to dispense the glasses, I was afraid her breasts would swing out of the confines of her shirt and hit me in the face like a pleasant one-two punch. The place reminded me of something prewar, or at least pre-falling of the Wall, a throwback to the fatalistic island mentality of Berlin before that structure came down.

“I’ve already ordered for the both of us,” Harris said, sitting down. “Schnitzel Cordon Bleu. And more beer, of course. This isn’t like most places-it takes ten minutes to pour a proper beer, which is as it should be. But everything is worth the wait in here, believe me.

“Just listen to that,” he said, smiling. There was indeed pounding going on in the kitchen behind the bar. The blows were so powerful that silver and glassware on the table jumped. “ That’s how you tenderize veal-the old-fashioned way.”

Something about the way he said it hit me wrong.

He excused himself to find the toilet, he said, and on the way he had an animated conversation with the proprietor that I didn’t track. The two of them laughed, and Harris followed the man through the back of the bar into his office. They closed the door. The proprietor returned to his place at the bar, but Harris remained in the office a long time. Maybe he was using a private bathroom? I checked out the photos on the walls and fought back exhaustion and sipped beer. I was sure I could lean back in my booth right there and sleep. Instead, I checked my wristwatch.