“Look,” he says. “The city. It’s so—I don’t know.”
“What?”
“Zurich. If money were a country, this would be its capital.”
“The capital of capital.” I grin.
He groans and smiles back.
“Whatever,” I say, squeezing the world’s softest duvet between my fingers, plunging my head back into the world’s softest pillow. “I can pay someone to come up with something better.”
He lowers his nose to his armpit and grimaces. “Can I take a shower?”
“No,” I say. “Not until you come here.”
“I’ll shower, we can have dinner.”
I throw a pillow at him. “No, first come here.”
He approaches the bed slowly, a half grin lifting one side of his face.
“Wait,” I say. “Stop.”
Then I point languidly to the minibar. “First, get me one of those million-dollar mineral waters.”
* * *
Dr. Andre Mason does not have a reservation at the restaurant on the ground level of the Obelisk Grande, but the maître d’ shows us to a table anyway. It’s an excellent spot, near the windows overlooking the city; some country’s prime minister is at the next table over. I try taking apart the transaction that happens between Terrance and the maître d’, but I can find no magic in it. It’s not a function of clever code words or secret handshakes. Rather, it’s just about the way he asks, the tone, so that do you have a table? becomes you do have a table. That Dr. Mason is the only man not in a suit, and his date is the only woman not in a dress, is of no consequence, either. He only makes the other patrons look foolishly overdressed.
A groveling waiter presents us with menus. When he leaves, I squint at mine in the dim light.
“There are no prices,” I whisper.
Terrance does not—emphatically, does not—roll his eyes when I say this. But still, that’s what I see anyway.
“That’s the women’s menu,” he says.
I look at him, give a so what? shrug.
“Prices are on the men’s menu.”
Then he laughs at whatever expression pops onto my face—wide-eyed shock, maybe, that such a thing exists in the twenty-first century. “That’s sexist,” I hiss, quietly as I can.
He stares back blankly, as if contemplating how, after everything, this is what shocks me.
“The tasting menu. Six courses,” he says. “How’s that sound?”
I’m about to ask how much it is, then don’t. Prices are, evidently, not a woman’s concern. “And champagne,” I say.
Terrance holds out his hands, palms up. “Naturally.”
* * *
Roasted lobster and artichoke soup with black truffle is followed by seared foie gras, which is followed by quail with winter succotash and asparagus, which is followed by rose sorbet, fucking rose sorbet.
When it’s done, paid for by me in cash, we ride the elevator back to the room, fourth floor, fifth.
I press my face to his shoulder. “If the cable were to snap…”
Terrance looks at me. “Yes?”
“I’d be okay with that.”
He laughs. “You’re buzzed.”
“Even so.”
Back in the room, making love again seems obligatory, so we do, not halfheartedly, just half-bodily, exhaustedly, sleepily. He dozes off somehow a minute later while I’m still peeing in the bathroom, but I don’t mind. I don’t feel like talking. I don’t feel like planning or making sense of things. All I want is what’s here. Not just Terrance, but the duvet of white silk he’s spread across, the softest pillow in the world scrunched under his head, the Louis-Whatever dresser and the blood-colored curtains. I curl up beside him like a cat and wait for sleep.
* * *
Terrance wakes me in the morning with kisses to my arm. I pretend to stay asleep for a long time after he starts, just so that he keeps it up. After a while, though, I can’t hide the smile anymore. “Wake up, buttercup,” he says into my ear. “Time to go to work.”
So just like a pair of normal people, that’s what we do. I shower first, he goes second. While I dry my hair, I watch him shave. When he dresses in the same sweater and dark jeans, I tell him he really does need to get something nicer.
“And buy a tie,” I add.
“A tie?”
“So in the morning I can straighten it for you.”
We leave together, but I take a taxi to Naz’s office, and he heads into the Altstadt with his camera.
“So—a company in the Canary Islands,” says Naz when I’ve settled into the couch in her office. “How does that sound?”
I shrug. “Sure. Fine. Can you—tell me what the company does?”
She bites the end of her pen. “Maybe—financial management. Why not?”
“Why not.”
“And something else in St. Kitts, I think,” she says. “The Caribbean, always a good choice. They have an economic citizenship program. Easy passport if Lila Kereti ever needs it.”
“Aren’t the Canary Islands in the Caribbean?” I ask.
“Cayman Islands,” Naz says. “Canary Islands are off the coast of Africa.”
“Oh, that’s right,” I say. “I just—never mind.”
So two entities for me, a company that never has to actually do anything besides exist, and another to own the first. A double-curtain of privacy. It’s done in a few hours, and the paperwork, a few hours after that. Phone calls will be made to expedite the process, and the accounts will be funded within a day.
And that’s it. That’s all it takes to steal almost 19 million Swiss francs.
Twenty-Three
After leaving Naz’s office, I go promptly to the address she’d given me, a stately old building off the Paradeplatz just a few doors down from Hindemith & Cie. The plaque on the front of the building says Feldman Capital Services.
Inside, it looks every bit like a bank—and is, in fact, a bank. But a division for, as Naz put it, specialized services, is segregated from the rest, and this is why I’m here. The specific specialized service for which Lila Kereti has come is the leasing of a specialized kind of safe-deposit box.
Virtually every question on the application form has next to it the word optional in parentheses, even those asking for passport number and name. The only two that do not are the boxes where one checks consent to a retinal scan and the method of payment, which will be taken in advance, five years minimum. This, Naz told me, is the niche FCS has carved out for itself, the class of wealthy clients for whom passport numbers and names might, on occasion, become inconvenient.
A pretty blond woman with clever green eyes shows me into a mahogany-paneled booth the size of a small bathroom and hefts a narrow steel box about eighteen inches long onto the counter.
“Let me know when you’re finished,” she says, and closes the door behind her.
I press my fingerprint against a panel on the front of the box and an LED goes from red to green. The inside is lined with a black rubber mat.
One by one, the things I’m leaving behind go into the box. Three hundred thousand in cash. Lila Kereti’s passport and identity documents. A small plastic bag with a dozen SD cards containing copies of my father’s video testimony. The original hard copies of the doomsday device scrawled on children’s notebooks.
* * *
The sun is setting, and the air is filled with a magnificent yellow-orange that surrounds everything, casts it in gold, touches everyone’s skin and makes it glow. Terrance is waiting in the Paradeplatz, right on time.
“All finished?” he says.
“All finished,” I say.
A tram rumbles into the square and sets a flock of pigeons into the air, turning them into dark darts on a hundred bending trajectories. I duck and laugh, then see Terrance has bird shit on his shoulder and laugh again.
“It’s good luck,” I say, fumbling for a tissue and not finding one. “Really. It’s a thing in, like, a dozen cultures.”
&nb
sp; But he’s aghast, scowling at his sweater.
I fish a newspaper from a recycling bin and do the best I can. “You needed a new one anyway,” I say, adding spit to the mix in the hope that it will help. “Let’s go; I’ll get you one, my treat. Look, there’s a shop.”
Still-laughing me and shit-shouldered he cross the street and enter Lorber’s Haberdashery. Nothing new here for the elegantly suited clerks; the pigeons in Paradeplatz have simply claimed another victim. Terrance is given a stack of shirts to sort through, and I entertain myself with a wooden box filled with swatches of elegant wool. This must be the place where those princes hanging out in the lobby of the Obelisk Grande get their fix: the very deepest blues and the very deepest browns, blacks, checks, pinstripes—everything you can imagine.
A man materializes beside me. “We create for women, as well,” he whispers.
He’s well beyond sixty, with a thick body wrapped in an electric-blue suit and a fabric tape measure over his shoulders like a priest’s vestment. He introduces himself as Marcel, then presses his fingertips together as he takes my measurements in his mind. I catch the glint off the cuff links in his white shirt, which are silver like the wings of hair pressed back to the sides of his head.
“I—don’t really need anything.”
Marcel looks at me and very nearly winks as he plucks a square of fabric from the box. “A certain prime minister prefers this one. For evenings, of course, when she’s feeling daring. The mystery of it.”
The fabric is black and deep, like oil or ink, then he turns it in the light and for a moment it’s unmistakably blue.
“Midnight,” he says, answering the question before I can ask. “It exists on the line between one color and another, and it can appear to be both.”
I take the swatch and repeat the trick, black to blue, blue to black. The effect is subtle but distinct. By the time I look up, Marcel has a sketchbook of drawings open, his maybe, or Lorber’s, but all rendered by hand with notes beside them in elegant script. He runs his finger over a pencil-line woman, her shoulders broad, lines straight, bearing strong and purposeful.
“Madame prime minister—she’s a little thicker here and here, of course, and she doesn’t have your shoulders, but…” His voice trails off as he gives a very salacious smile. “For you, yes. You’ll wear it as well as she can. Better.”
I twist the swatch in my hand, steal a look at Terrance, busy with a dozen shirts unfolded and spread about him as the clerks around him fuss.
I ask Marcel how much. The number he gives me is painful, and practical reasons for saying no queue up in my mind. But then I’m shaking Marcel’s hand and saying yes.
He leads me to an empty spot of floor and begins measuring, calling out the number to an assistant summoned from the back room. Terrance watches me, corners of his mouth curled up. I nod to him, and he nods back.
“Can you be back in Zurich in six weeks?” Marcel asks from his knees as he measures me from crotch to ankle.
“Is that how long it takes?”
“Oh, yes. We can send it by courier, but for final alterations…”
“I’ll be here.”
“Very good. We take half now, half when you’re satisfied.”
I look down at him, the bald top of his head, the breadth of his shoulders as he measures the circumference of my ankle.
“Better if I pay the whole thing now.”
* * *
A white shirt. After all that, Terrance went with a white shirt. It does look wonderful on him, though, as does the jacket I bought for him, something soft and black that’s a pleasure to touch as I hold his arm walking through the Altstadt. There’s a dinner, of course, in some moneyed place the bankers all seem to gather. Steaks and cocktails, the whole thing very American. The meat and wine sit heavy in my stomach, and afterward I can barely move.
“I had too much,” I say.
Terrance groans into his napkin. “Me too.”
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Me too.”
“God, how we wealthy love to bitch,” I say.
There’s nothing left to eat or drink in the city of Zurich that we can fit inside ourselves, so it’s a cab ride home to the Obelisk Grande. Home, as if we’ll stay in the hotel forever, growing old, the two of us. Christmas trees set up by bellmen and Passover seders delivered by room service.
We slink into the room guiltily, as if sneaking away from the sin of having gluttoned down in one sitting the entire caloric intake of a small, poor nation. I collapse to the bed and think about my suit.
Terrance is hanging his shirt on a hanger in the closet, buttoning the top button so it doesn’t fall down.
“You should’ve gotten more,” I say.
“I only need one.”
“Why, though? I mean, we’ll get you a suitcase.”
He says nothing. Goes to the bathroom and washes up behind a closed door. When he comes back, I’m nearly asleep but snap back as he sits heavily on the edge of the bed.
“Get in,” I say.
“In a minute,” he says.
I see his back expanding, the ribs and muscles stretching, relaxing, stretching again.
“Hey,” I say, reaching for his shoulder. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he says.
But the inflection’s off, like the word isn’t what he meant to say. He turns slowly, looking at me with his serious face, then slides onto the duvet next to me. “I was thinking—I was thinking about—since I can’t go back. To the States, I mean.”
I run my hand down his arm.
“Budapest. That printmaker I told you about, Miksa Jò. I could go there, apprentice maybe. If he’ll have me.”
I shrug. “Sure. I hear Budapest is great. We couldn’t stay forever, though. I mean, I don’t know. And I have to contact my dad.”
He nods, settles his head into the pillow. “Right,” he says. “Your dad.”
“Something wrong?”
He closes his eyes, wiggles his head no. “Just tired.”
* * *
My friends—champagne, the balcony, cold night air—gather with me again just as they had the first night. A low-key celebration this time. A contemplative celebration. If this is a celebration. I’d been wrong about how tired I was. The dinner wore off after a half hour of watching Terrance pretend to sleep. I slipped out of bed only when the real thing came and he started that gentle snoring of his that I love.
Jesus, how could I have been so shortsighted? My plan had only ever led to yesterday. Never further. As to what happens now—it had seemed so unlikely there would even be a now—no thought had been given at all. At least by me. But Terrance always had a plan for after, or at least a dream. He’d told me about it. Budapest. Miksa Jò. Is there room for me there? Had he planned on my being part of that?
Those darting pigeons in the square. Together on the ground for a time, but then comes the tram and it’s off they go—trajectories this way and that, bending together or not. I am only one force of many, a single influence on Terrance’s trajectory. And what have I given him to fall in love with besides greedy, gluttonous Gwen? My worst self—and also the only self I’ve known for years.
Good thing the money’s here to fix things.
I refill the glass again, brain thumping now, held aloft on a cloud of fizz. I turn around and look at his sleeping form on the bed, all long lines and plans for the future. We still have tomorrow, and one last night at the Obelisk Grande to figure it out. Things’ll be better in the morning. They always are.
* * *
Hangovers for the both of us the next day, and a message from Naz that the transfers to the accounts of my shiny new corporations began this morning. All should be resolved by this afternoon, she says, so early congratulations.
Just some toast and coffee for us. Terrance works out some issue between himself and his camera and says he’d like to try to get some shots in. I smile and tell him it’s a great idea, that I can’t w
ait to see them because I’m sure they’ll be great. Laying it on a little thick, I think, but just in the performance, not in the sincerity of the thought. When he leaves, he kisses me for a long moment. Then he runs a thumb over my cheek.
I take a bath, lolling around in fat suds until I prune up and force myself to endure the small torture of climbing out. But the robe makes up for it with a mighty hug, and I lie on the couch flipping through the tourist magazines and discovering new things I want to buy.
After an hour of this, I’m disgusted with ads for jewelry and watches—Schmuck is the word for that here, bangles, adornments, but all I see is Schmuck. All the things one doesn’t need but buys anyway. Like a custom suit in a color called midnight. How foolish that had been. I take up my phone and check my mail for a message from my dad, but there’s still nothing.
I try not to let it bother me. Try to tell myself it’s no different from yesterday’s lack of contact, or that of the day before. But at a certain point, the empty inbox has to mean more than he just didn’t get around to checking in. I fidget there on the couch for a while, trying to ignore the building anxiety. Then I dress and head out, substituting fresh air and motion for some kind of productive action. A buzzy, anxious tension creeps into me as I walk down the driveway of the hotel toward the tram, every noise too crackly and sharp, the sunshine shifting from blinding to meek every other second as clouds scuttle over the city.
The tram is nearly empty when I get on, and it shushes peacefully along the tracks toward more interesting neighborhoods. Trees and cars slide by, mothers pushing strollers, old men arguing about something.
We slow down to a stop and a single passenger boards. A businesswoman, prosperous in a Burberry trench and good suit and good pumps. Her black hair is worn very short, and her skin is dark brown with fine cheekbones and a slender nose. She glances through the car and approaches me, the trench she wears swishing through the air and sending up a faint smell of perfume. Maybe fifty seats are open, but she chooses the one directly across from me. I look away but feel her eyes on me.
Another stop, then another, a few passengers get on and off, but the woman remains just where she sat.
“Excuse me,” she says in English. The accent is very slight and from nowhere in particular. “You look familiar.”
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