Anne Korkeakivi - An Unexpected Guest

But, still. Even if he hadn’t been involved in the assassination, he couldn’t be considered entirely guiltless, could he? He did once make that choice, regardless of his age at the time. And if he had been involved in the assassination, even remotely? The thought left her dizzy. And she’d been standing on the street corner with him, chatting about yogurt and the eating habits of French women! He might have had the blood on his hands of civilian children and women, the invisible wing tips of their souls brushing his broad shoulders.

There would be huge political pressure to solve this case, and quickly, to keep fear from growing amongst the populace. People were ready to believe anything about anyone once the word “terrorism” was mentioned. Terrorism was too frightening, too inhuman. The utter breakdown of civilization.

Clare started up, causing water to cascade down her neck and into her collar.

“Ça va, Madame?”

“Oui, oui, excusez-moi.”

She lowered her head back down, leaving her neck lifted slightly so the assistant could wipe off the back of it.

Other than Niall, whose wake had been attended by family and friends, whose body had been checked by a coroner — so why did she continue to believe she saw him? — no one should have known about her trip to Dublin, or any of the rest of it. You never saw me, the man in the hotel had warned her — and she’d understood that idea to be mutual. Just as promised by Niall, the desk clerk hadn’t requested her passport. She’d paid in cash. No one who knew her had ever seen her alone with Niall, including her family. No one knew they’d become more than polite if somewhat distant housemates for two months of one summer. Even when she’d driven him up and down the Eastern corridor, she’d always stayed in the car, stayed on the beach, stayed in the motel room, stayed away from being seen with him. She could count the number of people who would have seen them alone together — a luncheonette waitress, a motel cleaning lady, a tollbooth collector. People who wouldn’t remember her or Niall more than two decades later. She and Niall had been two amongst the thousands of holiday-making lovers they’d poured coffee to, straightened the sheets of, accepted dimes from. Even if they said they could remember her, they couldn’t be considered credible witnesses. Twenty-plus years later? But she knew.

The pressure on her skull stopped. The assistant had removed her fingers from Clare’s head. Clare opened her eyes and looked up.

“Madame?”

“Oui?”

“J’ai dit: la temperature de l’eau? Ça va?”

“Excusez-moi. Oui, c’est parfait.”

The water returned, bubbling along the perimeter of her hairline, the frontier of her high forehead. Instinctively, she re-shut her eyes. The hands returned. They slid down to the base of her neck and made their way back up again, kneading, pressing, stroking. Droplets dribbled over her temples, wet lapped her cheekbones. All this mess, all relating back to that moment more than two decades ago when she’d stepped out of the shower, water trickling down her back and over her breasts, and found him standing there. And if she’d cried out or grabbed a towel or turned away? If she had blushed, even? She’d said, “You—” And then she’d said nothing. She’d stood there, naked in front of him, water pooling down around her toes. She, the girl who disappeared into the private dressing room to change at the pool, who pulled her sweats and T-shirts on in a toilet stall by the gym lockers. A false breeze, maybe just the movement of his arms, had stirred the wet on her body, lifting away the oppressive heat of that summer, of her own body. He’d raised the towel in his hands and begun to dry her hair, while droplets streamed down her back.

Again and again, in her mind, over the decades, she’d revisited that moment. That delicious lifting of the heat. The delicious lifting of suspense, uncertainty, attente. The joy it had given her then. The horrible thrill it still gave her to remember despite herself.

“You’re different from other girls in America.” The evening air was viscous around them on her aunt’s back porch in the Boston suburb; Clare felt it hugging her bare arms and legs like a wet bandage. Two weeks had passed since their weekend alone together, and, for the first time since, she and Niall were the only ones in the house. It wasn’t planned. Niall hadn’t shown any deference towards her since that weekend — not a word, not a glance. He hadn’t whispered a suggestion they meet someplace away from the house, nor hesitated when their paths had crossed under the eyes of her aunt and uncle. She understood he was pretending nothing had happened between them to save her from unnecessary trouble, because becoming a couple would cause a lot of talk amongst the family. From what she’d figured out, he was a cousin through her uncle, and it was Aunt Elaine who was her father’s sister. They weren’t blood related, therefore — but whether or not they were would hardly have mattered. She was a Radcliffe girl. Niall was a high-school dropout from a worn-down street in Derry. Worse, he was a “cause,” she’d learned, for her aunt and uncle. He’s been getting himself into a mess over there, Uncle Pat had said a few nights after Niall had arrived. He’ll be ending up under lock and key, just like his father before him, before turning to flip a steak on the barbecue. God knows how he even got the fare to come over. But you know how El can never turn them down. He’d been talking to a friend, who’d nodded without asking for further explanation. She’d overheard, and understood the essential. Niall was never going to be a suitable match for her.

But even as she’d admired his discretion, another part of Clare had begun to worry he’d forgotten about lying in the heat after wrapping her in a towel, after putting his arms around her. He was young and handsome. He was confident. God only knew how many women he’d slept with. Was sleeping with currently, while visiting Boston.

Or was he showing no recognition of their intimacy because it was something he regretted? Could he be angry because of what she’d said about the English in Northern Ireland? Or had she been disappointing without her clothes on?

In front of the others, he acted as though he’d love to have her if only he could. He made an open joke of it. “Why doesn’t Clare have herself a man?” he’d remarked over a family breakfast several mornings after he’d rubbed her naked body down with a towel and spread her wet hair across her pillow beneath him. She was on her way to work, her blond braid spun up in a bun, a clean cotton dress buttoned up her long spine. He’d been missing the last few days — or maybe just a couple days, but every day without any acknowledgment from him since the weekend that they’d spent together seemed like a month — and she hadn’t expected to find him amongst the others in her aunt’s kitchen.

But there he’d been, leaning against one of the counters as though he’d been leaning against it all along, knocking back a mug of thick black coffee. Wearing his same worn-out old corduroys, which she now knew he wore without anything under them, and a sleeveless undershirt. She’d had to look away. He’d kept looking at her.

“Some Harvard bastard wearing a sports coat and driving a Mercedes,” he’d said. “Don’t they know how to ask a girl out there?”

“That’s no way to talk,” Uncle Pat had scolded him, coughing into his fist, a glint of smile appearing over his closed knuckles, checking over his shoulder that Aunt Elaine wasn’t within listening distance.

Clare had poured her own cup of coffee and slipped onto a chair by the kitchen table, across from her cousin Kevin. “Pass me the milk and sugar?”