“Except you.”
Bunny nodded. “I keep things running.”
SHE WAS in the pool when he got home. He followed the faint sounds of splashes through the quiet house and out onto the terrace, stopping for a second by the lemon tree near the door. Only the pool lights were on, a grotto effect, with blue light rising up, not spilling down, and he saw that she was naked, her body gliding through the water with a mermaid’s freedom, alone in her own watery world. He knew he should make a sound but instead stood watching her, the smooth legs, the private dark patch in between when they opened out. When she became aware of him, a shadow at the end of the pool, she swam toward him without embarrassment, faintly amused at his own.
“I thought I was alone,” she said smiling, glancing toward the crumpled bathing suit on the edge of the pool.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean—” Still looking, only her head above water, but the rest of her clear in the pool lights.
“That’s all right. I was getting out anyway.” She reached for a towel, more of her out of the water now, her nipples hardening a little as the air touched them. “Quiet as a mouse.”
She looked at him, still amused, then began to climb the shallow end steps so that he finally had to turn away, a show of modesty. Behind him he could hear the towel rubbing, another rustling as she put on a robe, watching her now by sound.
“Have a drink.” She moved to the open wine bottle on the table, tying her belt. “Iris left something in the fridge, if you’re hungry. I didn’t know—”
“I should have called.”
“No, don’t feel that. Come and go as you like.” She poured out two glasses from what he saw was an almost empty bottle. “Did you have a good day?” she said, handing him one.
He laughed, a reflex.
“What?”
“That’s what people say in movies.” What wives said.
“So how do I say it then?” She sat down on a chaise and lit a cigarette, turning to sit back but keeping one leg up, poking through the folds of the robe.
He shrugged. “Same way, I guess.”
“Ha, art and life. Like my father’s lectures. So, was it? A good day?”
He leaned back on the other chaise, taking a sip of the wine. “This is nice.”
“Mm. Maybe I’ll take to drink.”
But he hadn’t meant the wine: the warm night, the liquid light of the pool catching her bare leg, Danny’s wonderful life. Is that how it had been? Comparing their days, listening to night sounds, the soft air rubbed with hints of chlorine and eucalyptus.
“Did you go to your father’s?”
“No. He says it’s too soon.” She took another drink. “How long do people sit at home anyway? Do you know?”
“A week, I think.”
“Two more days. Then what? Ciro’s. Ha. Every night. Das süsse Leben.”
“How about dinner at Sol Lasner’s? Saturday.”
She turned to him, eyebrows raised.
“He said to bring someone,” Ben said. “Who else do I know?”
She sat back, smiling. “Such an invitation. But you’re in luck. I’m free. Every day, in fact. Well, not Sunday.”
“What’s Sunday?”
“My father’s birthday. Salka makes a big lunch. Dieter comes and makes a toast—he writes it out before, a real speech. My father thanks him. Then he says something. It goes on like that, every year. Then chocolate cake.”
“The one Danny liked.”
“Yes,” she said, a sudden punctuation mark. She stubbed out her cigarette, then got up and poured more wine in their glasses. “They sent the medical report you asked for. It’s on the desk.”
“What does it say?”
“He died,” she said, sitting back down.
“I’ll look at it later.”
“Why?”
He said nothing for a minute, listening to the pool water hit against the drain flaps.
“I don’t know. How he died. It’s something we should know—it’s part of it all.”
She looked over at him for a second, about to speak, then let it go.
“If you say so,” she said wearily. “So what do we wear to Lasner’s? They dress up?”
“I’ll ask Bunny.”
She turned, a question.
“His right hand, his— I don’t know what you’d call him. He used to be a child star.”
“That’s what happens to them? I never think of them grown up.”
“Neither do they. Then they are and they have to do something else. But they look the same. Just older. Remember Wolf Breslau? The little boy in the Harz Mountain films? He became a Nazi. They put him on trial. For killing Poles. In open pits. The same baby face.”