Sleeping in Flame

"I'll be on the next plane. I'm only going to Germany, Maris. They're paying me a couple of thousand dollars to hold up a champagne bottle. It's sort of hard to say no."

"I've seen those champagne ads. Lots of beautiful girls in low-cut dresses."

"Are you being serious or just grumpy?"

"Grumpy. I know you have to go. This hospital isn't cheap."

"Don't worry about that. You know we've got plenty of money from the film."

"Plenty of money lasts an hour when you've got someone in the hospital. I don't want you to go because I'll miss you. No other reason. Even if you're not right here, knowing you're in town makes me feel better. Is that babyish?"

"I love it. I love you too for feeling that way. Listen, I wanted to ask you a question about something else. Did you and your family ever spend a summer on Lake Maggiore in Italy when you were little?"

She nodded. "Yes, near a town called Laveno."

"Do you remember much of it?"

"Pretty much. Why?"

"Do you remember 'Sinbad'?"

"Sinbad? No. What are you asking?"

"I had a dream about you last night. I dreamt I was you in that house in Italy."

"You were me?"

"I was you, and I was in that big yellow living room where you all went when thunderstorms came at night. Your father played the piano to tame the rain."

She sat up fast. "That's right! Oh, Walker, I'd forgotten all about that. It's so mystical. Tell me the whole thing immediately. Every detail."

When I had finished her cheeks were flushed and she wore the biggest smile I'd seen in days.

"That is so . . . It gives me little shivers all over. Sinbad! How could you know about Sinbad? You know why I called it that? Because sometimes I'd pretend it was my sailing ship and I was off on an adventure. Sailing past the Island of the Sirens. I would hold my ears and think I needed lots of wax to hold off their screams. My favorite movie when I was growing up was The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Did you ever see it? With the cyclops and the princess who was shrunken down by the evil magician? I even remember the name of the actor who played him. Torin Thatcher."

"You sound like Venasque. He knew the cast of every film made."

"Sinbad. I saw that movie six times. Whenever they asked the genie in the lamp to do something, he'd bow and say 'I shall try, my master, I shall try.'

"You were me as a little girl in Laveno. Walker, that must mean something good. Maybe it's a turning point. All your other dreams were so strange and disturbing. This one is only childhood and magic."

"Your childhood. That's the kicker."

"No, that's the beauty! Wouldn't it be something if that happened to us forever? Dream each other's dreams? We'd know each other so well we could be –"

"Identical twins."

"Ha ha. Not fu

"How do you feel today?"

"Good. Especially after hearing that. I'm sad you're going away, but I'm okay. Listen, there's one thing, though. You don't have to call me from there as much as you do here. It'd be sweet, but eleven calls a day from Germany wouldn't help our bank account."

"There's a lot to talk about when I'm away."

"That's true. How long will you be gone?"

"Three days. I'll take the night train back Tuesday."

"Okay, then five times a day is enough."

The night train to Cologne is strictly business. Night trains to Italy are full of excited tourists and lovers off for a weekend in Venice at the Danieli. Trains north, especially to the heart of German business, are quiet and full of tired men in rumpled suits with their neckties pulled down, looking wanly through their briefcases.

I was in a first-class compartment by myself until a few minutes before the train was due to leave. I had the German edition of the fairy tales on my lap but only because I wanted to read some of the other stories. I had no further need of reading "Rumpelstiltskin."

The compartment door slid open and a woman walked in. When I saw her I thought of a line my college roommate had once said when we were gassing about women.

"Sometimes you see one on the street who's so beautiful you want to walk up to her, put your hand over her mouth, and just whisper 'Don't talk. Come with me.' You take her immediately to bed, never letting her say a word. Because no matter what she says, it's going to spoil that first beauty you saw in her. You know what I mean? Silent, she's perfect."

The woman across from me was that kind of perfect. Dressed in a shimmery black leather coat and skirt, she had a small Oriental face that held a stu

"Is this seat taken?" She spoke English in a high voice.

"No. Can I help you with your bag?"

"That would be very nice."

She was already sitting when I stood to put her Louis Vuitton suitcase onto the rack above. She seemed very used to men helping her through life.

"Thank you very much. You speak English?"

"Yes."

"That's so good. I'm so tired of speaking other people's languages. Are you going to Frankfurt? It's a long trip, isn't it?"

An hour after the train started, Kiko had told me all about her modeling jobs in Europe, an Italian boyfriend who didn't appreciate her enough, and how lonely her life was. She asked if she could sit on my side of the car, and after she did, every few words were accompanied by a touch on my hand, my knee . . .

If it had happened before Maris, I would have been a happy man. As it was, I smiled and was a sympathetic listener, but made no attempt to reciprocate her warmth. Plainly, she wasn't used to that, and her face grew more and more puzzled. After another ten minutes of long looks and long fingernails on my knee, I touched her hand and said I was married.

"So? Is your wife on the train?"

"No, but she's in my mind and that's enough."

Angry as a swatted bee, she stood right up and went for her suitcase. I offered to help, but she gave me the evil eye and said no thanks.

She was a small woman and had to reach all the way up to get hold of the suitcase handle. Giving one hard pull, the bag came flying off the shelf, knocking her back against the opposite wall head first. The bag hit the floor. She cried out and slumped crookedly into the facing seat. She'd cracked the back of her head against one of the metal coat hangers screwed into the wall. Blood was everywhere – dripping down the leather, spotting her white hands, the gray silk blouse.

Her eyes were closed and she mumbled in either shock or pain. I leaned over, put my hand on the top of her head and said it. One moment I felt warm blood and wet sticky hair under my fingers. The next moment I felt only warm, dry hair. I pushed her head up and told her to open her eyes, everything was okay.

I sat there awhile calming her, telling her she'd fallen asleep and cried out something about her suitcase falling. But I told her to look – there it was up on the rack. She'd only had a bad dream.

When it was clear she was all right, I got my bag and left the compartment. Before going, I put her to sleep. Nothing was simpler.

In Cologne the next morning, I had a two-hour layover before my next train left. After a bad cup of coffee in the station restaurant, I found a phone and called Maris. I told her I was in the hotel and they'd given me a nice room overlooking the great cathedral.

"How does it look? Is it like St. Stephen's?"

I had never been to Cologne and knew nothing about it. The only things I saw were trains and tracks and commuters. Closing my eyes, I said it again and vivid pictures of the Gothic cathedral, the fourteenth-century stained glass windows, and the Magi's shrine inside the church came sliding into my head. I went on to quickly describe parts of the city, including the Roman-Germanic Museum and its million-piece "Dionysus Mosaic," even the cable car over the Rhine. She told me I sounded like a travel guide and she was jealous.