Sleeping in Flame

"Hey, Kleine, how come you never bought a nice car? You make enough money. This thing looks like something out of Mad Max."

While shifting gears, she gave him a poke in the ribs. "That's not very nice. What am I supposed to do, be like you and buy a Porsche? An M.L.C.?"

He looked at me again. "What's an M.L.C.?"

"A Mid-Life Crisis car. Every man I know who drives one is either a twenty-year-old brat who got it from his daddy, or a forty-year-old who wants to have a last fling before admitting he's bald and looks silly with a gold Rolex and a teenage girlfriend."

"I'm not bald. I don't have a teenage girlfriend."

She looked at him, and although she was smiling, raised her eyebrows questioningly. "Maybe not, but you bought that car as soon as you turned forty. Don't forget, Nicholas, I was right there when you got it."

There was a kind of sexy, teasing tone to their banter that made me seriously doubt what Nicholas had said earlier about their not being lovers. Before the ride was over, she had said a number of things to him he wouldn't have allowed others to say without becoming very angry or defensive.

She drove the way she spoke: nervously, a little too fast, but clearly in control. I kept forgetting what she had already gone through that day. It was as if we three were out for a night on the town and not, in fact, helping her to flee a lunatic who had gone for her with a pair of scissors.

"I'm going to call Uschi from the airport and see if you can stay with her."

I quickly tried out three or four sentences in my head. "She can stay with me, Nicholas. It's no problem." "Hey, stay at my apartment, Maris. I'll bunk out on the couch if you don't mind sleeping with a cat." I tried several and then wisely decided to keep my trap shut.

At the Munich airport she put the car in a long-term parking slot and we scampered through the fast-moving traffic to the main terminal. It was nine at night and there were few people in the building. While Maris bought her ticket, Nicholas went off to find a telephone. I stood far back from the ticket booth, not sure if she wanted me nearby. When she was done she came right over.

"I haven't flown in so long. I've always hated to. It scares me right down to the bone. I usually take five Valium and sink into a dead stupor an hour before flight time. That's my way of handling it. No Valium this time."

"You don't look like the kind who'd be afraid of flying."

"Just watch my knees when we take off."

"I know! We'll sit on either side of you in the plane so you can have stereo arms to squeeze if you need to."

"You know what's so nice about this whole experience, Walker? That something so reassuring and . . . human could come out of so much bad. I thought when I went to meet Nicholas it would be for an hour and he'd make me feel a little better. Nothing more than that. But afterward I'd have to go back to being frightened and unsure of what to do next. But you've so wonderfully taken all of those decisions out of my hands. You just said 'We'll take care of you' and you have. I can't tell you how grateful I am. And you don't even know me!"

I almost couldn't look at her. "I hope I will."

It was raining when Nicholas pulled up in front of the Arrivals section in his white truck. Maris laughed loudly and clapped her hands.

"It's the Good Humor man! Where's the Porsche, in the back?"

I had forgotten there were only two bucket seats in the little truck, so Maris had to ride back to town on my lap. She kept asking if she was crushing me. It would have been fine with me if the trip had lasted a few days.

Uschi Hellinger had worked with Nicholas for many years, doing all of the costuming for his films. She was probably his best female friend, and he often referred to her as his sister. I liked her for many reasons, especially because she was always dead-honest with me, but also generous and quirky. When I returned to town after my divorce, she was one of the kind ones who had kept a loving eye on me.

She lived in an atelier in the Third District, and answered the door that night in a fla

In the middle of Sachertorte, Maris began to cry. She was exhausted and the day had finally closed down on her. I have rarely seen a person in so much obvious pain. Hunched forward, hands spread over her face, there were so many tears that they actually dripped through her fingers onto the floor. Uschi got right up and put her arms around her, their heads together in what looked like prayer, or mourning.

Nicholas looked at me and gestured with his head for us to go. We got up at the same time and went for the door. I turned there and looked back into the room. Uschi looked up, smiled briefly, and then turned her attention back to her friend.

3.

The next morning I woke to an almost total loss of memory of what had happened the day before. It was only when I was pulling on my pants that everything came back in such a Technicolor rush that I could only stand there and look blankly at the wall across the room.

I don't know why this lapse occurred, but I had a hunch. Seven hours before my mind, like the rest of my body, had also dropped all of its "clothes" on the floor before crawling wearily into bed. Overtired by all the things the day had demanded it take in, or consider, reject, memorize . . . my brain had simply had enough and wanted some empty hours to itself. And like a heavy drinker the morning after, it rose to the call of the day only because it had to.

Orlando broke through my remembrances of things past. Standing in his magenta cat box in the bathroom, he loudly a

I walked barefoot into the kitchen and opened him a can of something tasty. One good thing about Orlando; he wasn't a picky eater. Avocadoes or raw liver were his favorites, but he made a happy meal of almost anything I put in his bowl. He always ate very slowly, pausing sometimes between bites to think about what he was eating. If you said something to him while he was chewing, his mouth would stop moving and, blind though he was, he would look in your direction and wait for you to finish before he went on.

While preparing my own coffee and toast, I ran yesterday through my mind: backward, forward, and lots of stop-action. It reminded me of an athlete reviewing previous game movies in order to spot both his opponents' and his own weaknesses and slip-ups.

When the phone rang, I was thinking about something Maris had said to me on the plane trip home. "Today has been the kind of day that tires you out the rest of your life."

The phone had rung four times before I picked it up.

"Walker, have you called her yet?"

"No. Should I?"

"Of course! Don't you know how lonely and frightened she is?"

"Nicholas, it's nine in the morning! I don't think she's lonely and frightened yet. Listen, we talked about this, but I'm going to ask again: Is it really all right with you if I ask her out?"

"Absolutely. I know what you're thinking, but we really never went very far. Don't be paranoid before you begin."

Before I called I brushed my teeth.

"Hello, Maris? This is Walker Easterling."

"Hi! I just got back five minutes ago. I went out and bought everything I need to camp out here indefinitely: a toothbrush, soap, and mascara. I even went to a toy store and bought a couple of LEGO sets."