Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [69]
"I wasn't—"
"—that you fat and happy Americans — up in your big comfortable bombers and... and strolling through your Yosemite Park — don't know anything about anything." Again she looked away, in time to hide her tears from him. After a moment she said, "I just want it all stopped."
He watched her for a while. "Is your husband dead?"
"All our husbands are dead."
"How did it happen?"
Her voice lost its anger, but her tones were full and bitter, "He was a German and he believed Germany should have a future. That's how it happened."
"Was he my size?"
For a moment the American's question did not register on her. Then her head came around like a hydraulic tank turret. "You are asking if you can have his clothes?"
"Sure."
She stared at him, trying to dampen her anger. Then he grinned again at her.
So preposterous was his request, and so preposterous was he, that she finally laughed. "No, you can't have his clothes. You can't have anything. I don't like relentless people. That's what you are, and that's all you are. I'll be glad when you leave my house."
"I like this wine. How about you?"
Baffled, she stared at him. Then she said emptily, "Utterly relentless. No wonder the Hand is using you."
The fire filled the room with beautiful heat. She was warm all the way through, not just on one side, not just a part of her. She watched the fire. The amber and red and gold colors, flickering across the furniture and walls, almost made this room bearable, and almost brought Adam back. Her husband was almost sitting here with her, instead of this American stranger.
"I've lost my loved one, too," Cray said, his voice just above a whisper.
"Please don't share anything with me," she said. "I already have enough of whatever you are going to tell me."
He might not have heard her. "Wenatchee is a little town in the state of Washington in the United States. And although I've not been to all the small towns in America, Wenatchee is probably the loveliest, right there on the Columbia River. We grow apples there, and in May the valley is covered with apple blossoms. I was raised there, and so was my wife. My memory doesn't run back to a time when I didn't know her."
She didn't want to know any of this, but the American was now staring into the fire and speaking in a low voice, and she found she could not stop him. She took a sip of wine. She thought it safe to look at him. The wine, even these few swallows, had begun to play with her mind. The American seemed softer, his eyebrows less prominent, his mouth not so wintry, and his eyes less cruel.
"My wife—her name was Merri Ann—once told me that she knew from first grade that we would be married someday. I suppose I knew it, too."
Even his German was getting better, she thought. And he seemed forgetful of himself.
"I've heard old people say that they wish they had known how happy they were when they were younger, because they would have made a point of enjoying it more." He chuckled, a hollow sound. "Well, I knew how happy I was."
"What happened to your wife?"
"Apple cider is made from apples, and you can get as drunk from apple cider as from anything." His mouth silently worked a moment. Finally he said, "Merri Ann was killed by a drunk driver." He might have been talking to the fire. "So I know something of what you are going through. Some mornings I wake up and wonder whether its worth getting out of bed."
"What happened to the drunk?" Katrin asked.
"I don't know." His face reformed into hardness. "Not yet I don't."
After a moment, she asked, "Do you know why the Hand has chosen you?"
"The Vassy Chateau and a few other reasons, I imagine. And that I speak German."
"More than that."
He finally looked away from the fire and at her.
"The Hand knows about your wife," she explained. "It knows of your sorrow. You don't have much to live for, or so the Hand believes. And so you will go places and do things that a person who wants to survive will not."
He shrugged.
"The Hand