Sleeping in Flame

After Helene gave them the finger and Goldstar walked away, Nicholas asked Luc if there was anything else he wanted. The other looked confused and disoriented, but couldn't let it go. He had come so far for . . . this?

"How could she be a whore? Maris?"

"She's not, Luc. She's living with him, and that's the way he likes her to dress. I think he'd kill anyone who tried to touch her, especially you. I guess she's told him everything. What was that about your wearing her underpants?"

"How could you bring her to him? A pimp? How could you do that?"

"What did you do for her, Luc? Beat her up? Scare her to death? Why do you think she's even with him? She doesn't want you near her life. You're her trouble, man, not him."

"Fuck you, Sylvian."

Nicholas turned around and shouted to Goldstar, "Luc wants you to fuck yourself, Goldie."

Goldstar honked the horn twice, scrambling out of the car again. Helene tried to restrain him, but couldn't. He rose, and rose, and rose from the spotless Jaguar, looking like a demonic Mr. Clean. Pointing a long finger at Luc he bellowed, "Go home, little shit frog. Go home before I eat your fucking face."

When it seriously looks like Mr. Clean is going to eat your face you get out fast. That's what Luc did, but not before saying to Nicholas, "I'm going to get you."

"What did he mean by that?" Maris worried.

Once again, I'd turned the receiver so both of us could be in on the conversation at the same time.

Nicholas chuckled. "Maybe he'll report me to the Directors' Guild."

"He's a crazy man."

"Maris, he looked so goddamned confused by what he was seeing, that it's going to take him a couple of months to recover, believe me. He was scared, honey, what else could he have said? He thinks I've got big pimp friends who can't wait to kick his ass!

"Leave it alone, forget it. You won! Walker, tell her to stop worrying. Go out and celebrate. I've got ten things to do now so I'll be ready to go tomorrow. You know what I don't like about Israel? Breakfast. You can't put milk in your coffee, then they give you raw onions and tomatoes. God, what a country! I'll send you a postcard of a tank. Let's go to Frascati when I get back. Tell me I'm your hero, Maris."

"You know I love you anyway, Nicholas."

There was an embarrassed silence, then, "Yeah, me too. Take care of each other. I'll see you in a few weeks."

"Do you want me to take you to the airport? It's no trouble."

"No, Eva will take me. She likes to drive out and play her radio. Bye-bye."

The next morning the Sylvians arrived at the airport an hour before Nicholas's flight. It wasn't like him to be such an early bird, but he knew El Al was very slow and careful about inspecting luggage and passports before they let you on the plane. He couldn't afford to miss the flight, so he played the good boy.

As he was checking in, an old Mercedes pulled up to one of the doors on the upper level of the airport. Several Arabs with submachine guns and hand grenades got out and ran into the building. Eyewitnesses said it was such a shock to see them there, that no one really started doing anything until after the men opened fire and threw the first grenades at the El Al counter. The same thing was happening in Rome at Fiumicino Airport.

The bullet that tore off part of Eva Sylvian's ear was probably the same one that kept moving – straight through her husband's head. One in the head, one in the stomach. If you have ever seen that grisly picture they ran in Time of the many dead at Vie

We heard about the attack in an electronics store while out shopping for a new VCR. The first report was that the road to the airport was closed to all traffic because of an "incident." We paid no attention because the Austrians love to interrupt their radio programs with traffic reports at all times of day. But a few minutes later the first detailed news of what had happened started coming in. Maris said she noticed the whole place stopped and, as one, everybody turned toward whatever radios were on in the store. These things didn't happen in Vie

In that shock-time when the enormity of what had happened began to come clear, I was first outraged at the sheer wrongness of the act. Shoot randomly into groups of people at an airport? For what, a political cause? What about the politics of humanity? Or man's purported ability to distinguish between the enemy and a child with a doll in its arms? Or had part of the world really turned the corner en masse, really grown so mad as to think enemy and child were the same? I kept saying "Those bastards!" to myself as the news updates turned into horror stories.

Someone grabbed my arm. Before I registered it, Maris said in a scared, shrill voice, "Nicholas is out there! He was going to Israel on El Al!"

For an instant I hated her for saying that. We hate anyone who hands us the death sentence, the news that everything is terminal.

We looked at each other and ran out of the store. My car was parked nearby and we jumped in without saying anything. Both of us were silent all the way to the airport, the loud radio news the only words we shared.

A mile outside the town of Schwechat on the autobahn, police barricades blocked the road. I told the first man we came to I was afraid my brother might be one of the dead. He was sympathetic and checked with his boss, but couldn't let us through because things were still going on out there.

After they finished shooting, the terrorists ran out of the airport building, got back in their car, and drove away down the same road we were on. They didn't get far. There was a crazy, moving-car shoot-out between them and the police that resulted in more blood and death. There is a photograph of their stopped Mercedes, its rear window blasted out, one of the terrorists dead on the road, his pants conspicuously soiled. A young policeman is looking at the body with a small smile on his face.

I made a U-turn and drove to the next phone booth, where I called my friend Barbara Wilkinson, who worked in the news department at O.R.F. Luckily I got right through, and she knew what I wanted the moment she came on the line. Nicholas had introduced us years before.

"Walker, Nicholas is dead. I just heard that. His wife was wounded, but that's all I know. Call me back in a couple of hours. Everything is completely crazy here. Call me later. I'm sorry. I'm crying. Call me later."

I realize now that I began this narrative by speaking of Nicholas's and my relationship in the present tense. But that's only because whenever he comes to mind, always several times a day, I think of him as still alive: his late-night calls, the black Valentino suits and pastel shirts, the strange but unique balance of precision and hyperbole of a good man unsure of himself but totally sure of his art. I loved the landscape inside him. Next to Maris, he was the best friend I had as an adult, and perhaps the greatest compliment I can pay him is thinking he is still here. When he died it was the first time I ever had the feeling that life sometimes unfairly takes sides. Possibly the only reason for that relationship was to be happy together then, for that period of our lives. Expecting or wanting more was unwise or greedy.

No, I don't like that. There are too many ways to rationalize the death of someone you love. Many sound good, but none are strong or convincing enough to genuinely console you. Especially when you see someone smoking "his" cigarettes, or a new film you would love to talk to him about . . . if only he were alive.