The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [105]
But Wolf’s laugh was full of affection. “I can think of worse fates,” he said.
The hotel was on the top floor of what clearly had once been a single family mansion. A black cage elevator descended through a cylinder of cords to greet them. As they rose inside it, Phoebe watched the grand stairway loop around them in wide ribbony arcs. At the top they were met by an elderly woman with bulging eyes and a tight painted face, breathing asthmatically inside her red suit. Yes, there were rooms, she said. Panting, she led them down a hallway.
Phoebe’s room delighted her: an old-fashioned sink, a floor made of smooth green stone, a bed with brass posts. Wolf pushed open a set of French windows, admitting the warm night and papery leaves colored orange by the streetlights. “How much does it cost?” Phoebe asked.
He waved this away, wrestling with the second window. “Relax,” he said over her protests. “It’s one night.”
He took her passport and went to arrange things. Phoebe stood on her tiny balcony looking down at the street. Soon she heard Wolf’s boots on the floor of the adjacent room. The bed squeaked under his weight.
Phoebe was aware of feeling inordinately happy, a rare, startling happiness that had nothing to do with dangerous or important things hovering at close range. They were far away, the dangerous things; her attention had lapsed and they’d sailed out of sight. She was glad to be rid of them.
Phoebe showered down the hall and washed her hair. Returning to her room, she studied her face in the cloudy mirror above the sink. Normally mirrors invited a harsh focus upon her flaws, the unevenness of her eyes, the overall blandness of her features. Phoebe wondered sometimes if Faith’s face had been marginally smaller than her own, giving the same components greater resonance. But this mirror allowed only an impression of herself, as if from a distance.
She dressed carefully and sat on her bed, waiting for Wolf to knock. She was nervous, and planned on drinking a lot.
“Look at you,” he said, touching the small of her back as they left the room. Getting on the elevator, Phoebe thought Wolf paused to catch her smell, and again she felt that shock of longing, like a heavy object plunging into deep water. It was not quite painful, but had something in common with pain. She and Wolf rode down in silence, patterned light sliding over their faces.
Outside, they agreed to walk. The warm darkness felt good on Phoebe’s shoulders, as did the weight of her long hair, still damp, the soft dress brushing her skin. This awareness of her body no longer troubled her; she actually enjoyed it. Perhaps she’d come late to a pleasure most girls her age already knew. Wolf wore a shirt made of soft rust-colored fabric, silk it must have been, big swashbuckling sleeves. A dress shirt, Phoebe thought, that he’d brought to wear with her.
“Good news,” Wolf said. “I found a map at the desk with Corniglia on it. So we’re all set.”
Phoebe murmured her delight. It unnerved her how little Corniglia seemed to matter suddenly.
Wolf shared her sudden thirst for wine, and a bottle was nearly gone by the time their pastas arrived. Phoebe’s cheeks burned; she was tipsy, reckless, filled with loud clanging laughter she didn’t recognize. Though her mood was clearly perplexing to Wolf, he didn’t seem offended; bemused, rather, as if unsure what exactly Phoebe was up to. Above all, she sensed his resolve not to hurt her in the smallest way. It felt like an advantage.
Phoebe asked about his family. He was closest to his sister, Wolf said, a reporter for the Baltimore Sun now stationed in Prague. This impressed Phoebe deeply, a women reporter living alone in a Communist country. “I’m supposed to visit her this fall,” Wolf said. “I’ve scheduled the time.” His parents came to Germany each year; Wolf went to the States perhaps a third that often. He took a keen interest in what had become of the people he’d grown up with. “It’s incredible,” he said. “You look back and feel like you saw it all coming, but you didn’t, that’s the