“It really is,” Giuliana whispered, and paused, and her hands began to flail about weakly for words. She left the rest unsaid.
She wouldn’t even look at him. Even with the light from the overhead in the cafe, he saw that her face still looked kind of chalky.
“It’s just… ” she tried again, and let that go too.
“Look,” he said. “Do you want a beer or something instead?”
She shook her head. She had left the biscuit on her plate. It looked like she’d be leaving most of the coffee behind too.
“I’m sorry,” he said and added it to his total. He had said sorry four times now that he could recall. “I never expected this.”
“It is just like, Jesus a movie,” she said, and a little gasp finished her words. “I’m waiting for, I don’t know, it to be over. Just pazzo crazy.”
She fixed him with a hard look now.
“I am so numb that I’m not even scared yet. How stupid is that?”
“It’d be just a precaution,” he said. “That’s all.”
“But Felix, listen: this is for someone else. Tell me that, can you? You’re starting out, you have a job, and it’s not this crazy, dangerous stuff. Right? You go into schools and talk to kids, you catch hooligans or something, get back stolen cars. Right?”
He nodded.
“Not all in one day.”
“Don’t try to be funny,” she said. He was momentarily glad to see she was moving out of the paralyzed state she seemed to have entered.
“Just don’t try to be a comedian, okay? Who is this guy you spent the day with, this big shot?”
“He’s a higher-up from HQ. A detective. He’s a ranking officer.
He seems to run his own show.”
“But I don’t get it. Are you changing jobs? Were you at work today? What?”
Felix sat back and stretched. He did not want to see the dark rings around her eyes again, the ones that had seemed to erupt when the colour left her cheeks a few minutes before.
“What do they say back at your post? The one you work with, Gebhart?”
“I think he’s telling me to stay back from this.”
“You think?”
“It’s hard to be sure what’s on Gebi’s mind sometimes. He doesn’t expose his feelings much.”
He heard her draw in a deep breath and she put her hands around the coffee cup.
“But your boss there, what’s his name? Sch…?”
“Schroek. He’s okayed the job. Gebi went to him, because he had to okay it.”
“But isn’t Schroek the guy you told me, he’s so low-key there that the place runs itself? Half-retired already? Does he have a clue what this is about?”
Felix didn’t have an answer. Still, he felt he had to offer something.
“It’s going to be fixed,” he said. “It’ll get settled, it’ll be okay.”
“How do you know this?”
“What can I tell you?”
“You can tell me we have a week together, and that we’re going to get in the car and drive to Italy and do what we said we were going to do. You could tell me that you stood up to them and said, ‘Look you idiots, I’m not trained in any of this, I haven’t a clue what’s going on, and you should leave me alone.’”
He looked down at her hands when they came to rest on the tabletop again.
“Well?”
He shook his head.
“What does that mean? ‘Let’s go to the beach’?”
“I’ve got to see the thing through,” he began and raised his hand to meet hers already coming up. “Just a bit longer but I’ll tell him I’m no use, I want out.”
“Christ,” she said, and sagged in her chair. For a moment he thought she’d cry.
“We’re stressed,” he said. “At least I am, I know.”
“You can say that again. Understatement of the year I just can’t take it in yet. I really can’t. You’re actually telling me it’s a good idea to stay out of my of our apartment because…?”
All he could manage was a nod. He reached for her hands.
“Come on,” he said.
“Come on where?”
“Anywhere.”
“What? Where are we going to go this evening?”
Her eyes had set into a hard look.
“My grandparents’ place.”
She took her fingers out of his grasp.
“No way. I wouldn’t feel right. And don’t even say we’ll go to your mom’s, or your sister’s. It just wouldn’t be right.”
He waited a few moments.
“We could find a gasthaus somewhere then, a hotel even?”
He heard her sigh. There was more than exasperation in it now.
“Look,” she said. “This isn’t going to work. Are you listening to me?”
“I am. You mean this apartment thing.”
She waited until she had his eyes locked on hers.
“I can’t do this, Felix. Do you understand that? Do you?”
“It’ll only”
“You’re not hearing me. It’s more than this.”
“I’m getting time off instead,” he said. “And we can just hang around here, can’t we? It saves money, even, you see? It’s crappy but … ”
He took her hands again. Her frown eased and he looked down at their hands.
A tiny tremor brought his gaze to her face. He saw she was near tears.
“It’ll blow over,” he said. “Really. Try not to worry. It’ll blow over.”
“It’s just that things,” she began but paused and drew in a fluttery breath before wiping her nose again. “We needed to talk anyway. I thought, when we were together, we’d be able to.”
The foreboding flooded into his mind. He felt himself searching her face for clues.
“Talk,” he said, quietly. “I never liked ‘talk.’That kind, anyway.”
She had a stricken look now.
“Don’t try to joke now, Felix. Please.”
“What else can I do? Weren’t we going away for a few days?”
“Look, we’ve been avoiding talking about it.”
“It? What’s ‘it’?”
“I don’t want us to talk like this. It’s been a long day. You probably slept lousy too.”
“Maybe I’m beginning to get it,” he said. “Is it about this cop life? The crappy stuff?”
She hesitated before answering.
“We talked about that already. You forgot.”
The coffee was an acid snake still worming its way through his gut.
Then she sighed. He expected her to cry again, but she didn’t.
“Felix. I don’t want you to be like the others. But that’s impossible, I see now. I’ve been thinking about it, trying not to think about it, running away from it, but it comes back. Now, with this horrible thing you’re involved in, I am thinking this is the start of it, and it’ll get worse.”
“Did I make the worst mistake ever bringing you up there with those other cops? Is that what did it?”
“No, no. Peter’s nice Andreas, the one from Klagenfurt?”
“Andreas the cabbage?”
“They are nice guys,” she said. “And no, nobody put the moves on me. It’s just that, well, you are in the circle or you are not.”
“What circle?”
“I’m not saying this right.”
“You mean cops? There’s a wall there?”
She returned his look but made no reply.
“For Christ’s sake, Giuliana. Stuff like this never happens. Ask Gebi. It’s traffic, it’s domestics, or burglaries, and beer fights.”
She said nothing. He felt like something had been decided already.
“I need time to think,” she said.
A closing line, Felix realized. Still, he wanted to rescue something from the day.
“Jesus!” was all he managed, and he had not even intended to say it aloud.
“Please, don’t get angry Felix. It’s me, my problem. Can we just leave here the banhof, I mean?”
He moved in a daze around the table and out the doors in front of the station. He didn’t remember how noisy it had been here when he’d arrived.
“I started,” he snapped at her when she put her hand on the straps of her carry-all. “I’ll finish carrying it. Okay?”
When she put her arm in his, it felt like never before. He counted each step they walked to where he had parked.