Matthew Salesses - The Hundred-Year Flood

“After we married,” Katka said, “the May after the Revolution, he said I had hurt him that day. He said he had been afraid I would be able to do anything to him, and he would want it to happen. That was what we were like.”

They had been Tee’s age when they met. “Thank you for telling me,” he managed.

“Sometimes you look at me like that.”

In one of the oldest home videos of Tee’s mother, she was washing dishes, and with each plate finished, she batted her eyes as if waiting for Tee’s father to step out from behind and help her. After a few minutes she put down the sponge and pulled him in front of the lens and kissed him. Tee thought of that now, against his will.

“Why did you climb up to me?” Katka asked again.

“When I was a child,” Tee said, “I was very sick once and almost died. In my sickness, I dreamed my dad took me to Manhattan and up to the roof of a skyscraper. He refused to wait in line for the Empire State Building. A woman rode the elevator all the way to the top with us, without talking, and when we got off, I held my dad’s hand in fear. The wind blew so hard you could feel shapes in the shifting air, and I felt the woman run past us before I could see her face. She ran to the edge of the roof, and then she leapt off, arms out like she was diving into a pool.” Tee tore off the top layer of his coaster. Katka wrinkled her eyes, confused, but she knew suicide.

“After I got better, I couldn’t get the dream out of my head, it was so real. I bothered my dad until he agreed to a trip to New York. I don’t know why he indulged me. In the end, after hours of walking, we found the same building, exactly as I had dreamed it, and we went up to the roof and the rooftop was the same, too, and I knew something had happened there. I’d known it all along. I’m not so easy to understand.”

“You had a girlfriend,” Katka asked after a pause, “in Boston?”

“There was a girl I thought loved me once. But she was just in my head.”

“What do you call that? Puppy love?”

Katka finished her glass and the waitress came by. Tee’s face was hot. He wondered what had made Katka mention her father so early on and then never again. As the waitress wrote down their orders, she stared at Tee; finally she asked if he was American.

“Truth?” she demanded when he nodded. He frowned and drank the rest of his beer. “You have phone call.”

Katka pinged her wineglass with her fingernail. Tee hadn’t told anyone where he was. She swept her hair over her ear and glared as he followed the waitress to the front desk.

Could he simply ignore the call? Maybe Ynez was in another chamber, hating him. Or Rockefeller had seen him leaving the apartment building and followed for some reason — but why phone? Maybe one of the regulars at Rockefeller’s parties had spotted them and suspected something. Tee had nothing to hide.

“ Prosím, ” he said, picking up the phone.

“You said you wouldn’t tell her about us,” whined a woman with a New York accent.

“I’m sorry?”

“Come on, Tee, I saw you in there. You promised you wouldn’t say anything.”

“Vanessa?”

“Listen,” Vanessa said.

“I’m not going to tell anyone about you and Rockefeller. Where are you?”

There was a pause, and then: “Then what are you two talking about, the day after she climbs a tree and her husband burns his art?”

“Good-bye, Vanessa,” he said, and hung up.

He looked around but couldn’t see her. There was no reception underground, which was probably why she hadn’t called his cell phone. Rockefeller had trusted him with their secret relationship back in March. Vanessa had said her father hated her dating and would sell Pavel’s art on eBay or something if he found out. The last of Pavel’s unsold paintings, still intact, were at her father’s apartment.

Back at the table, the drinks had arrived before Tee. He thought about what he could say to Katka, but she didn’t ask. She wiped her lips and drained her second glass of red.

He shouldn’t have hung up so abruptly. What would Pavel do if Vanessa told him she had seen Tee and Katka together, alone? Tee remembered the shattered mug, the night of the attack. That was nothing compared to what Pavel could be capable of now, an artist who would burn his own art.

Katka leaned toward him. The scent of cocoa butter. “Remember that day,” Tee said, “in Vyšehrad, with the dogs? Pavel and Rockefeller appeared, and then you took off and pulled me along, and they ran after us. I didn’t even know why we were running.” Several dogs had jumped their leashes and joined the chase. Strange Prague everydays. “I’ve always been ready to follow you.”

Her expression hardened. “Follow? Is that why you climbed the tree? That day in Vyšehrad, you rescued a girl no one else would, remember that? The dog had her in its jaws, and you let it snap at you so she could get free. Even her dad would not do that. On New Year’s you seemed brave, going under the fireworks nude.”

“Naked,” he said. He remembered doing those things, only he hadn’t seemed himself then.

“I had not thought you needed to follow,” she said. “I thought you were more mature than your age, you were different than anyone else. You left your home behind. You left Korea. You left America.”

People stared now, as her voice rose. And he was reminded, horrifyingly, of his mother. Like always: an Asian boy with an older white woman. Katka gripped his hands, and he wanted to let go, but he didn’t.

She seemed to be accusing him. She brought his hands to her cheeks, as if he would slap her. “You’re so young,” she said, but she didn’t look away. He knew by now that this was desire, an attempt to distance herself from what she wanted. She brushed his fingers over her lips. He knew what he’d agreed to by meeting her here, by climbing the maple. He leaned in and kissed her.

She shook him off and stood. “I have got to go,” she said suddenly.

He shoved back his chair. Then he stepped in front of her, not caring who saw them, and kissed her again.

They got out of the cab in front of his building in Karlín, the rain coming on, and she said, “No one will know who we are. The rain will hide us.” On the stairs, they shushed each other. They put their fingers to each other’s lips. He went first to check that Rockefeller’s door was closed. Then he waved her up. His heart thudded like a third pair of footsteps. He recalled what she’d told him about the truth, hard and soft cartilage. He rested his finger on her nose.

Wrong women. But he was defying, not repeating, the past. He touched Katka lightly on the arm, and she shivered. At the top of the stairs stood two ghostly feet. He stopped short. The feet didn’t move. They weren’t Rockefeller’s. And Katka couldn’t be in two places at once. Tee touched her arm again, solid and real. When he kept moving, the feet were no longer there.

In his bedroom, he whispered with a sharp ache, “This is right.”

“No,” she said, “promise me we will not pretend.”

He pulled her toward him. He twisted her blouse in his fingers, and lifting it off, brought his darker skin to her lighter skin. He ignored the ghost passing his doorframe now. Katka moved his palms to her ribs, her breasts. He imagined his desire gathering her up, piece by piece. In her closet those pieces had been separate, a conspiracy of art. Now she was in his arms, whole. His fingers brushed the curve of her waist. Goose bumps rose on her cold chest. She kissed him harder, then softer, than before. He could hear the change in her breath. He bit her nipples, and she tugged his hair. He tried to make her same deep sounds, to hold nothing back. When she moved her mouth over his skin, she left cold, wet spots where her breath had been. She kissed his neck, he called her name, and she pulled him on top of her, locking her legs around the small of his back.