The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [70]
part three
thirteen
Trees were in feverish white flower outside the lavish, dilapidated building where Kyle’s cousin, Steven Lake, and his wife, Ingrid, lived. Phoebe lingered on the street, hesitant to ring the bell so early. She’d taken the overnight train to Munich from Paris, giving the Lakes, who had never heard of her, no warning of her arrival. She’d been afraid they might say there wasn’t room for her.
Phoebe sat on the front steps to wait. Days had passed since the acid trip. The pounding of her head had been unbearable at first, gray-blue bruises on her forehead and temples and scalp. For two days she’d lain quite still on the sagging bed, listening to scattershot sounds from the street. She’d been afraid to move; the membrane between herself and the acid trip seemed very thin, like the soft patch on an infant’s skull. Sudden, drastic movement might puncture it, causing her to fall back through. Carefully Phoebe would creep down the many flights of stairs to pay for her room and buy food. On the third day she’d begun reading her book of Charles Dickens stories: blacksmiths, scullery maids, Christmas roasts, somehow they were what she needed.
She’d thought at first that she might go home. But with time this seemed less and less possible, like turning around on that narrow street lined with hissing women, finding the way back just as long.
When the ache in her head subsided, Phoebe had turned to the task of repairing her room. She moved carefully, as if each bone in her body had been broken and reset. She wrapped the pieces of shattered mirror in a T-shirt and smuggled them out to the street, where she emptied them into a wastebin. Her bloody hand had stained the bedspread, but after several bouts of scrubbing and hanging it in the sun to dry, the stain (the whole spread, in fact) had faded.
Faith’s postcards were gone. She’d thrown them into the Seine. Phoebe remembered doing it, the driving, frantic sense that this move held the key to her survival, but she no longer knew why. Now there was nothing to guide her—if you chose a place at random, how could it matter whether you went there? The address of Kyle’s cousin, Steven Lake, was still wrapped around the pink joint at the bottom of her wallet. All this time she’d carried it.
Phoebe leaned against her backpack and drifted into shallow sleep. At exactly nine o’clock she woke, climbed the steps and pressed buzzer three. An intercom clicked on, a man’s voice spoke in German.
“I’m looking for Steven Lake,” Phoebe said, pronouncing the name slowly.
“Steve’s in Brussels this summer,” said the same voice, but American now.
“Brussels,” she said.
“Yeah, I’m renting while they’re gone. You want their address? Hello?”
Phoebe felt as if she were sliding down a hill.
“Hello?”
“I was supposed to—give him—” She was stammering.
The intercom clicked off. Phoebe turned back to the empty street. The flowering trees had a sweet, powdery smell. She was in Munich, Germany. When a buzzer sounded, Phoebe whirled back around, throwing her weight against the door.
“Third floor,” he called. The hall was shadowy. Phoebe began toiling up the stairs under her backpack. She heard descending footsteps, and through the hair that had fallen across her face, glimpsed a tall man wearing wire-rimmed glasses. She questioned the point of hauling the backpack upstairs when Steven Lake didn’t even live here.
“Here, let me take that,” the man said, lifting it from her shoulders. Phoebe noticed a slight double-take at her appearance. The bruises were still visible, ashy smudges above her eyes and on her temples. She lowered her head. The man sprang ahead toward the first landing. Phoebe sensed the hurry in his step, an eagerness to get on