Red Square - Martin Cruz Smith [125]
Stas said, “Maybe I should have stayed.”
In the morning a heavy fog brought out headlights. Bicycles appeared and disappeared as wraiths.
Irina lived a block from the park, on a street that mixed town houses, artists’ studios and boutiques. All the buildings were dressed in fey Jugendstil except hers, which was plain and modern. Though her windows were set back, Arkady located her balcony, a chrome rail before a wall of vines, lush and bright in the wet. He stood at a bus stop at the end of the street, the most logical and least conspicuous place to wait.
Did the balcony lead directly to the kitchen? He could imagine the warmth of lights, the smell of coffee. He could also imagine Max having an extra cup, but he had to eliminate Max from the picture in his mind or slide into crippling jealousy. Irina might drive to the station. Worse, she might leave with Max. He focused on the hope that she was alone, was drying a cup and saucer, was putting on her raincoat, would take the bus.
A delivery truck parked in the middle of the block. The driver climbed down from the cab, opened the rear doors, brought racks down to street level with a hydraulic lift and rolled them into a dress shop. The truck’s windshield wipers kept time, though rain wasn’t falling so much as hanging in the air in fine droplets. Traffic had a sheen. Arkady stepped off the curb for a better view of Irina’s house when a bus arrived and chased him back. Passengers boarded and canceled their own tickets in an automatic punch box. Every single one of them—that was the amazing thing.
The bus pulled away and the delivery truck drove off. It took Arkady a minute to notice that the vine-covered wall on Irina’s balcony was a darker green, which meant that the lights of her apartment were off. He watched her door for another minute before he realized that she had left while the truck had been blocking his view. He had expected her to use the bus in this weather; instead she’d gone in the other direction toward the park and he’d missed her.
Arkady ran the length of the street to the park. In the foreshortened view that accompanies emotion, umbrellas bobbed on either side. A Turk wearing a conical hat of newspaper biked between the bumpers of limousines. Across the street the Englischer Garten began as a wall of giant beeches. Farther down the street, a woman in a white raincoat entered a park gate.
He darted between cars. The radio station lay diagonally across the park. Where he entered the gate, paths twisted left and right. The Englischer Garten was called the “green lung” of Munich. It had a river, streams, forests, lakes—all veiled now by mist, giving the park a cold, close breath that made Arkady gather his jacket at his neck.
He could hear her, though; at least, he heard someone walking. Did he remember how she walked? Long strides, always sure of herself. She hated umbrellas, she hated crowds. He hurried after the echo, aware that any hesitation put her farther ahead. If she was ahead. The path kept trying to turn away. Overhead, beeches were monkey bars in a cloud. Oaks were shorter, as bent as beggars. Where the path crossed a streambed, steam rose from the water, a ghostly flood tide. A creature resembling a large caterpillar sniffed around wet leaves. Closer, it became a wire-haired dachshund. Its owner crept behind, a yellow slicker with a scoop and bag.
Beyond, Irina had disappeared—if it was Irina. Over the years, at a distance, how many women had he dressed in her features? This was the illusion of his life, the nightmare.
Arkady had the park to himself. He heard the slow condensation of mist on leaves, the thud of nuts from the beeches onto sodden earth, the dash of unseen birds. Where shadows faded, he found he had reached the edge of a wide meadow, completely lost in a circle of green. For a moment on the far side he saw a flash of white.
Running over the grass,