A few seconds later four of them hit the windshield of Isabelle’s Land Rover. Each one made a loud hard splat before exploding into strings and bits of yellow goo across the safety glass. What little was left slid leisurely down toward where the windshield wipers slept.
An even louder explosion went off above them when the twenty-inch body of the first pizza landed on the rear of the car’s metal roof. Isabelle was an excellent driver, steady and focused. But who can be expected to remain steady when attacked from above by plunging pizza and pineapple pieces?
Luckily the car was in the slow lane of the highway. When she veered hard to the right after the first hits no other vehicle was nearby. Even though her seat belt was fastened, Flora’s head snapped viciously to one side and then back against the headrest. She yelped from fear and outrage against everything that was happening. But her cry was cut off by the much larger punch of pizza body hitting the roof.
Skittering across the carpeted floor, Flora’s cell phone banged into one of her seat’s metal struts, bounced, and, small miracle, slid forward until it was directly in front of her right foot. She didn’t see it. But Broximon did. He had just gotten back up onto all fours after having been painfully thrown into the seat frame when the car veered to one side. Different parts of his body hurt now but he had to get to that phone. As he moved toward it, Isabelle slammed on the brakes and they stopped abruptly with a jerk and a screech. The phone jumped farther away.
Flora couldn’t get out of the car fast enough. The moment it came to a stop she unclipped her seat belt and flinging the door open, swiveled and moved. Her foot kicked the phone aside. Hyper-alert because of their near-accident, Isabelle heard the sound and looked down. There was the phone! Vincent was on that phone. She bent over and grabbed it up ahead of the now forgotten Broximon. There was only chaos around her but just having that phone in her hand, having him in her hand, made things better.
“Vincent? Vincent, are you still there?” Phone pressed to her ear, she opened the door and climbed out.
“Yes Iz, I’m here. What’s happening? What’s going on, are you okay?”
“I don’t know.” She saw and slowly recognized the pineapple on the windshield. She reached out to touch it to make sure those thick smears were what she thought, but changed her mind and dropped her hand. Looking next at the roof, she saw the pizza mess up there.
“My God.”
“What’s going on?” His voice was shrill.
“Something just hit my car. I think it was a pineapple.” She choked out a bewildered giggle.
“Isabelle, listen to me. Who’s in the car with you?”
“Flora.”
“Besides Flora—is there anyone else?”
She hesitated.
“Is Broximon with you?”
“Yes. I think he’s still here. But how did you know that, Vincent? Do you know him too?”
“It’s not Broximon. Do you hear me? Get away from him, Isabelle. Get away from the car.”
Ten feet away Flora paced back and forth, looking from Isabelle to the traffic speeding by. Their car stood at a strange urgent angle on the shoulder of the autobahn. It looked either like it had been carjacked or for some mysterious reason the driver had pulled over in a hurry, jumped out, and fled.
“What should I do, Vincent?”
“Where are you now? Where’s Broximon?”
“I’m standing out on the road. He’s still in the car I think. I was driving to the airport. That’s what he told me to do. Broximon said—”
Ettrich cut her off. “Forget that. Here’s what you do.”
When Isabelle disappeared Flora was not facing her. Who knows how that flighty woman would have reacted if she’d actually seen her friend walk a few steps with the phone still pressed to her ear, and then from one instant to the next vanish?
When Flora did turn around to face Isabelle it was to announce Okay, that’s enough, I want to go home now. We can talk about things tomorrow or over the phone or at another time. But right now—
But right now Isabelle was gone. After Flora saw and absorbed that fact, she called out to her friend first tentatively, then louder. For a while she was certain that Isabelle was still somewhere nearby only just not immediately visible. Like when you take the dog for a walk; look away a moment, it invariably disappears over a hill or around a corner and has to be yelled back. But here they were on a flat stretch of autobahn with no hills or corners to disappear behind. No matter how stubbornly she denied it, eventually Flora had to accept the fact Isabelle was gone.
By the time a taxi pulled off the highway and right up behind the Range Rover eight minutes later, Flora was gone too. In her high heels, silk stockings, and formal dress she had nevertheless managed to climb over a waist-high concrete safety barrier and down across a muddy ditch toward civilization.
Vincent Ettrich got out of the cab and walked straight to Isabelle’s car. His taxi pulled away and back into traffic. Opening the door to the Rover, he saw Broximon sitting on top of the dashboard, back to the windshield. He acknowledged Ettrich by giving a halfhearted salute with two fingers to his forehead. “Hey Vincent. Do you know who I am?”
Ettrich nodded. He had been told in great detail about Broximon.
“You’re late.”
“She’s gone?”
Brox shifted his ass to a more comfortable position. “She’s gone. Both women are gone. I didn’t think Flora had it in her but by God, she just climbed right over that wall and kept on moving. I assume she’s going home.”
Furious, Ettrich slapped his hand down on the roof of the car. “Damn it! If I’d just had a few more minutes… I would have gotten here and this wouldn’t have happened. I would have stopped her.”
“I don’t think so, Vincent. It was done too fast. They knew exactly what they were doing. As soon as Flora’s telephone rang I knew it was them. And I knew they’d try some kind of trick, but I never imagined they’d use your voice as bait. That was genius. Of course she went when she heard you. She got out of the car with the phone, took a few steps and zip—she was gone. They tricked her into choosing to go there. She couldn’t have done it on her own because Isabelle doesn’t have that power anymore. They told her she was in danger and the only safe place to hide was over there. She said I want to go and that was it—her choice. She probably thought you were helping her. And I was fooled because I thought once I got her out of town she’d be safe.”
Ettrich sighed, and stared into the distance. “Maybe. Maybe you’re right, but I would like to have tried, damn it. What could they have said to her to get her to go over there so fast?”
“I don’t know.”
“What happens to you now, Broximon?”
The little man carefully brushed nothing off his knee. “What happens to me? Nothing. I stay here now. I can’t go back. They told me that when I volunteered to do this. I’m stuck here for good. Your world is my new home whether I like it or not. Do you know of any nice apartments for rent?” Brox tried to keep the irony and sadness out of his voice but Vincent heard both. He knew what a great sacrifice it had been for Broximon to come over here to try and save Isabelle. It must be especially miserable for him now that he had failed and knowing there was no going home.
Ettrich sat down in the driver’s seat and pulled the door closed. After it slammed shut he took a deep breath and let it out long and loudly.
Broximon studied his expression and guessed correctly what he was thinking. “You can’t follow her there, Vincent, so don’t even think about doing that. Isabelle chose to go over. The living can visit death as often as they like if they know how. The dead can’t, and you know that.”
Ettrich slid a hand into his breast pocket, took out a pair of black eyeglasses, and put them on. Reaching for the keys still dangling from the ignition, he started the motor. “I can’t just sit here and wait for her to come back; hope that she’ll find a way to come back. I can’t do that, Brox. If I do I’ll go crazy.”
&
nbsp; “If you go there now, Vincent, you can’t return. Isabelle brought you back from the dead once. But if you go there now then you’ll have to stay. That won’t help anything—not you, not her, and not your child.”
“Well what am I supposed to do?”
Broximon was encouraged that Vincent had at least asked the question. “For now? Just wait. Wait and see what develops. There were three people at that funeral who understood what glass soup really meant: you, Isabelle, and the guy who calls himself either John Flannery or Kyle Pegg, depending on who he’s with. You know who Flannery is now, don’t you?”
Ettrich nodded. “Yes, I found out back there.” He gestured with a finger toward the direction he had just come from.
“Right—because you had to know.
“The three of you have experienced life after death. But you and Flannery know more about it than she does. It will take time for her to understand it more completely.”
“She knows about the mosaic, Broximon. We’ve talked about it a lot. And she has experienced death; at least my death.”
“But not her own and that’s the difference. It’s a whole other thing. Right now she’s in Simon Haden’s after-death world. Before, she was in yours. Both times for her it’s been like going into someone else’s house and not knowing where anything is—not the bathroom or the kitchen…” Broximon looked at Ettrich and saw that nothing he’d said so far had helped. “But there’s good news too, Vincent; something incredibly important. Isabelle saw me. Flora didn’t. No one else at that funeral would have either, even though they all saw Leni holding up that sign.
“But Isabelle saw me and talked to me, which means—”
Ettrich finished Broximon’s sentence “—she can see in both worlds now and they overlap for her.”
“Exactly, and that is a huge advantage for her. Chaos has to hate it particularly because it means things are more equal now. It will have to play on a much more even field with her. Isabelle may not realize it for a while, but she’s become a redoubtable opponent, Vincent. You can be sure that she makes them nervous.”
Ettrich pulled his ear. “Redoubtable. What does that mean?”
“It means kick ass, my friend. It means your woman has got game now.”
“You take off clothes. Lie down on table.”
Unpleasant music played while Isabelle undressed. It was the kind of kitschy, cloying Muzak one invariably hears playing in the background at Chinese restaurants. High-pitched, single-stringed twinging and twanging.
“Take off everything? Even my underwear?”
“No, no—keep underpant on. Underpant and bra.” The doctor spoke impatiently, not once looking up from the notes she was writing on her clipboard. Whenever this small thin woman spoke it sounded like a command. Isabelle was cowed but intrigued at the same time.
When she had undressed, she lay down bit by bit on the white examining table. Although it was covered with a cotton sheet, the table was chilly. Cold enough to make her shiver.
The doctor finished writing and put the clipboard down silently on the desk. That was another thing Isabelle had noticed about this woman: when she spoke it was to command, but everything else she did silently. The contrast between the two traits was disconcerting. “Now we look at Zi Cong Baby Palace, huh?”
Isabelle lifted her head off the table and looked at the doctor. “What did you say?”
To her surprise, the doctor reached down and put a small warm hand on her stomach and gently patted it. “This is your Zi Cong Baby Palace. That’s what we call it in Chinese medicine. You call it wum.”
“Wum?” Unconsciously Isabelle began to smile. She couldn’t help it. What was a wum?
The doctor saw nothing funny in this and patted her stomach again. “Wum. You-tore-us.”
“Uterus. Oh yes, the womb!”
“Yes—wum.”
This memory of her initial visit to the Chinese doctor in Vienna lifted Isabelle’s spirits and made her feel better for the first time since arriving here. Arrive was not really the accurate word though. Appeared was better, or materialized. As had happened every time in the past, she moved from her world and reality to this one with the ease of turning her head from left to right. One moment she was standing next to the autobahn near Schwechat, talking on a cell phone to Vincent. A blink later she was sitting at a large outdoor sidewalk café eating a bowl of lousy chocolate pudding with nuts and thinking about her baby palace. She stared across the street at a storefront that had a sign above the door announcing: TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE. Seeing that sign had handed her a lovely bouquet of memories of the first days of her pregnancy. She reveled in them.
She said the word wum now under her breath and then spooned up some more of the chocolate pudding. She did not like chocolate pudding and this bowl of it was bad. Too thin and watery, it had the consistency of a sluggish milk shake and with the added insult of nuts mixed in. On the other hand, pregnancy had given Isabelle a sweet tooth the likes of which she had never experienced before and any kind of sugar these days was okay with her.
Wedged between the salt and pepper shakers in the middle of the table was a menu. She reached over and picked it up. Perhaps there was something a bit more appetizing to eat at this place. Still, judging from the tasteless pudding, eating here was dubious. The menu was black with neat white script lettering. Opening it, she was more than surprised to see that it offered only two things—chocolate pudding and lima bean soup.
Lima bean soup?
Isabelle put the menu back in its place and looked again at the Chinese medicine building across the street. As far as she knew, there was nothing else to do here now, so she allowed her mind to slip back into daydreaming about her first visit to the Chinese doctor.
Petras Urbsys had recommended the acupuncture treatments. He gave her the name of his doctor after hearing that she felt listless and tired much of the time. She was not usually an alarmist but had begun to wonder if this lethargy was due to her pregnancy. Isabelle had never done anything like acupuncture before so she was hesitant to go at first but later grew to enjoy it. For three or four days after each treatment she felt revitalized and vibrant with residual energy. The doctor was a stern no-nonsense woman who clearly knew her business and made Isabelle feel like she was in safe hands.
Across the street the front door of the building she had been watching swung open and a woman walked out. Nondescript, middle-aged, dressed in beige, there was not one reason to notice her. Isabelle didn’t for several seconds while continuing to daydream about her acupuncture treatments. Finally some part of her brain shook her and said Look who’s there. She straightened and focused her attention on this anonymous woman who was already halfway down the block.
Realizing who it was, Isabelle stood and hurried after her because she had to talk to that woman. For the first time in Simon Haden’s dreamworld she had recognized someone she knew! It was astounding, and even more so considering whom that person was.
As she was about to step down off the curb into the street, a white bull terrier with one black ear pedaled by on a small red tricycle. Isabelle guessed who it was too because Simon had once told her at mind-numbing length about his beloved boyhood bull terrier Floyd. At any other time she would have called out the dog’s name and tried to stop it. Maybe in this strange place dogs talked and she could find out valuable things. But at the moment she couldn’t let that woman escape. After the dog had pedaled past, she rushed across the street.
Simon Haden was unquestionably a selfish, immoral man. Yet he had once done something wholly out of character that Isabelle always liked him for very much. One Saturday morning several years before, her phone had rung and out of the blue it turned out to be Simon. He was in town for two days with his mother. Isabelle thought he was joking but he wasn’t. He wanted her to meet his mom and asked if she would join them for coffee and cake at Café Demel on the Kohlmarkt.
Arriving there an hour later, she saw Simon talking animatedly to an unfrie
ndly looking sourpuss of a woman dressed in clothes so uniformly beige and nondescript that she almost faded into the background of that sumptuously ornate café.
When Simon saw Isabelle coming, he stood up and with great enthusiasm and fanfare, introduced her to his mother. Beth Haden took Isabelle’s hand and looked at her as uninterestedly as one would look at a choice of brooms in a market. The next hour with mother and son was both a bore and a surprising testament to filial love.
Beth Haden had been widowed five months before. She was living alone now in a retirement community in North Carolina. She liked nothing. She had no friends, no hobbies, and no ambitions. Everything in her life was either flawed, flat, suspect, or not worth the effort. She inherited some money when her husband died but had no plans for spending it. What for? She didn’t need anything and there was nothing she wanted.
At which point Simon interrupted her and said sweetly, “That isn’t true, Mom. There was something you wanted and now that you’re actually here, you have it: Europe.” All her life Mrs. Haden had dreamed of going to Europe after having read the Lanny Budd books of Upton Sinclair when she was a girl. Throughout their marriage she had periodically and pointedly told that wish to her husband who either ignored it or said don’t be ridiculous.
At his father’s funeral, Simon put his arm around her and said, “Ma, let’s go to Europe together for a few weeks—just you and me. There’s nothing stopping you now. We’ll go anywhere you want. I’ll be your traveling companion.” His mother looked at him like he was being ridiculous now, but in due course she agreed.
When Isabelle met them in the café that day, they had been in Europe for two weeks and Mrs. Haden hated it. Everything was too expensive. The food was too hot or too cold, unsalted, unsavory, or untrustworthy. In Greece she had seen things hanging in butcher shop windows that would give her nightmares for the rest of her life. European beds were lumpy, drivers were insane, the toilet paper felt like tree bark, and everyone smoked everywhere. There was no escaping it. She said all of this in a monotone of relentless woe that soon had Isabelle fighting back laughter. It was the first time in her life that she had ever encountered a true misanthrope. Most people liked something, but apparently not Simon’s mom. Feeling reckless and naughty, Isabelle asked Beth how she’d liked the Louvre (too crowded), the Spanish Steps (crawling with hippies on drugs), the Parthenon (not much there left to see), and the Viennese opera? It was a bore.
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