Out Where the Sun Always Shines Read online

  A soft chuckle escaped him. The sound was a mixture of relief and amazement.

  “Whenever you’d like, Cat. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  The Frenchman’s back pressed into the backrest; the train was leaning upwards, ascending a mountain. The desert had given way to pines and cool shade.

  He wished he had been braver. He wasn’t sure if what he was doing now was brave, or just foolish, but if he had been brave back then, maybe things could have been different.

  * * *

  They walked hand in hand to the subway. She asked him little things: how many newspapers did he read, anyway? Did he have any pets, where did he live…When work came up, more than a few of her questions were about the doctor. He quickly declared work a verbotensubject on this outing and found with relief that she didn’t press the issue. Opera was not out of her reach, he discovered. When she described Madama Butterflyas the most beautiful-sounding train wreck she had ever seen, the Frenchman threw back his head and laughed.

  Sitting next to her on the subway train, he resisted the urge to put his arm around her. That, he thought, would be pushing it.

  The fair was small. Fewer than a hundred people were walking through the grassy aisles. “More a farmer’s market,” she said, looking it over, “than a real fair.”

  They walked through the stands anyway. She only stopped at one stall, where clusters of oversized grapes hung. She held one up and showed him how they glowed like gems in the sunlight, another thing he had never noticed before. But soon, there was nothing left to see. They boarded the subway back into the city.

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  He opened his mouth, ready to say something easy, but changed his mind. “I am disappointed in the fair because it disappointed you.”

  She blinked. And then she blinked again. “Really?”

  He nodded.

  “But it wasn’t your fault!” She squeezed his hand.

  “I know.”

  “And we have the whole day to find something else to do, right?”

  “We do.”

  “Also, gut.” She nodded to herself to make it final. The subway began to move. He watched her reflection as the world slid away from them outside the window.

  “Are you hungry, Cat?”

  * * *

  Ah, yes. She had suggested the Döner Kebabstand—whether out of frugality or Scott’s bad influence, he couldn’t tell. (The Frenchman had once overheard the boy boasting that he ate one every day; the Frenchman suspected the idiot was addicted.) He recalled how her face lit up when he took her to a proper restaurant instead—and then the way she’d cupped her hand over her mouth (but disguised it as a rubbing gesture) when she realized there were no prices on the menu. He replayed that memory often.

  She told him it was the best Italian food she had ever had.

  * * *

  The rest of the day was everything the fair should have been. He suggested things, and what sounded good to her, they did. They spent the crisp, bright day together, window-shopping the bookstore on Mariahilferstrasse, visiting the Anker Clock, more little things that seemed to add to the possibility of success. He left her side only once, at the gelato shop. He excused himself around the corner for a smoke.

  It was there he first heard her song.

  He was returning to their bench, but stopped and ducked back behind the wall, when he realized he could hear Cat humming. Not like a bored person, but like a musician would, adding dumpah dumpahsand other strange spoken rhythms into the song, her own accompaniment. Only once did she sing, and then, only one line: Out where the sun always shines…

  It was a jaunty tune, it was all Cat. He kept hidden around the corner and listened a few more seconds, but she did not start again.

  He returned to her side. She held out her cup of gelato.

  “Try some. It is so good.”

  He did. It was.

  The sun had gone down long before their walk back to her flat. Her fox coat, though fur-lined, didn’t seem to stop her from shivering, so he put his arm around her until they reached her building. That wasn’t taking it too far, was it.

  She unlocked the door. He reached over her head and held it open for her. Inside, their steps echoed around the foyer. There were other doors facing the central area, no doubt belonging to other tenants, but it felt to the Frenchman as though they were the only ones in an empty building. Stairs led up to the first floor, and to her flat.

  “Thanks for today,” she said. “I had a lot of fun.”

  Her nose was pink in the warm light of the foyer. Perhaps he stared too long; her eyes darted away. She rubbed her nose with a hand.

  “My pleasure, chérie,” he said. She peeked back up at him. Fear grabbed his chest. Did he dare.

  She shuffled in place (was she waiting?), pushed her hair off her cheek (was she inviting him?). He took both her hands in his.

  A kiss on the cheek, he thought. Then he found himself looking into her eyes. He dropped his gaze, but it was too late. Her smooth face had become like the sands of the Sahara: endless, vast, impossible. He instead lifted her one hand to his lips.

  He rushed on, not wanting to see how she had taken that.

  “Cat, I am leaving tomorrow afternoon, it may be for a lo—for a few months, but if—when I come back, can I see you again?”

  Her brow furrowed, and she stopped looking at him. He squeezed her hands. There was a slight pull; she was trying to take a hand away. He swallowed, then released it. She was looking over her shoulder, as if seeking answers from her neighbor’s door. His arm hung there, dead weight.

  “I—I’m not sure.” She glanced at him again. “A lot can happen in a few months, right?”

  The doctor’s face appeared in his head. Maybe he hadn’t had a chance after all. Not a chance in Don Juan’s hell.

  “But if I’m still available then, then yes, I’d like to do this again. With you.”

  * * *

  On the train, the Frenchman snapped out of his doze. The sunlight darting in and out of the trees made the scene before him flicker and strobe. Had she said that?He leaned back in his chair.

  He’d remembered the scene differently: that she’d turned him down, then stood on tiptoe to give him a chaste kiss (he’d come to think of it as thepity kiss) on his cheek before retiring to her flat.

  The Frenchman stared at his pack. I was so sure her answer was going to hurt—

  He shook his head. She’d said it. She’d said it. He just hadn’t heard.

  * * *

  The Frenchman returned to his apartment and smoked.

  Later, he lay awake in bed. His heart ached. It wasn’t even the honest heartbreak of rejection; it was this horrendous pain of not-knowing, of uncertainty.

  A lot can happen in a few months, right?

  Had she planned on making something happen during his absence? Or did she think a promise couldn’t last that long? Perhaps she was only speaking of fate…

  His thoughts chased themselves in a great circle all night long. Three in the morning, still no answers. He drank a glass of wine and finally slept. He dreamed of glowing gems of grapes, and the Donau.

  * * *

  The sunlight had stopped strobing through the trees. The train was in the shadow of the mountain now. From his pocket, the Frenchman pulled out a black-papered clove cigarette. He let it hang from his mouth, unlit. During his time with the Australian, he’d gone outside to smoke on a few occasions. Once, he’d come back inside through the front door, where Cat worked. She was at her desk, typing. She hadn’t said a word, hadn’t looked at anything but her work, didn’t even miss a key…but she had wrinkled her nose in distaste.

  The next day he’d switched to the black-papered kreteks, which had a sweeter smell. After the break, when he had closed the door behind him, Cat paused her work and lifted her head. Eyes focused in space over the typewriter page, she sniffed the air. She moved her tongue and lips as though tasting the scent, seemed to think it over
a moment, then resumed typing.

  He’d switched back to his old brand after her death, but traveling here, in her country, it had felt right to pack the cloves.

  He stared at the trees.

  She had said yes to seeing him again. It was a fact.

  It put his final day with her in a different light.

  * * *

  The day of his departure, the Frenchman entered the office through the front door. Scott sat on the edge of Cat’s desk, kicking his feet against the side like a child.

  “You’re gonna love this band we’re seein’ next week! They’re just the best, the greatest. Hey and did you know their bass player used to play for the Sox?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know anything about them, you know that!” She reached over to tweak Scott’s hat, but he ducked out of the way.

  “I’ll bring ya a baseball card tomorrow so you can spot him,” he said.

  Early in his career, the Frenchman had received a blow to the back of the head. Remembering that the boy had made a date with her, remembering that a lot could happen in a few months, remembering that she had been seeking the doctor in the first place, it all hit him just like that blackjack.

  I should never have come through this door, he thought, right when Cat called to him.

  “Good morning!&rdquo.

  “Good morning, Cat,” he said quietly.

  “Hey, what about me?”

  He nodded at the boy. “Scott.”

  “Is that all you’re taking?” Cat asked. “I thought you said you’d be gone a few months.”

  He glanced down at his leather traveling bag, faded to a tarnished gold from years of use. He was glad he’d packed it before yesterday. If anyone asked him now, he would not be able to recall what was in it.

  “I travel light,” he said to the bag.

  “When do you guys leave?” she said.

  He straightened up again.

  “Two-thirty or so. Perhaps earlier.” He looked sideways, out the window.

  “Don’t leave without saying goodbye, okay?”

  Did she really mean that?

  “What, you gonna throw ‘em a party, Cat? They’re big tough guys, they don’t need—”

  “Hush,” she said. To the Frenchman’s amazement, the boy did. It must mean—

  “Okay?” she asked the Frenchman again.

  “Of course, Cat,” he said. He went up the spiral stairs.

  The doctor was in Operating with the door shut, so the Frenchman was alone with the Australian in the upper office. The hunter’s effects (including a hard-sided rectangular case for his rifle) were stacked next to the Frenchman’s desk, which the Australian was sitting on. The Australian took one look at him.

  “Who pissed in your coffee, mate?”

  The Frenchman shook his head. “Later.” If he could make it to the train, all this would be behind him.

  The Australian idly thumped the side of the desk with his fist. Tunk…tunk…tunk…

  “You had the time, fella. Shoulda taken the shot.”

  “I did.” The Frenchman muttered this but did not expect the Australian to hear, let alone shout loud enough to be heard on the ground floor.

  They scrambled to close the door. When no one came, the Frenchman recounted the previous day for him, ending with her saying a lot could happenand the pity kiss.

  “Well…” The Australian sat back, scratching his chin. “At least she didn’t tell you ‘no’ outright.”

  “She’d be too polite to,” snapped the Frenchman, and grabbed the mission documents. He hid in them for the rest of the morning.

  * * *

  The landscape outside the train had changed. There was greenery, a lake, even pelicans. She, who had been delighted by the sparrows that winter, would have loved them. Maybe, if things had been different, she would have loved him, too.

  The train stopped. New passengers boarded. He held the pack close. This place was beautiful, but it wasn’t her home.

  * * *

  That sneaky, sun-baked, Vegemite-swilling bastard had moved their luggage into the lobby, sent Scott on an errand across town, then gone for a last beer with the doctor, leaving the Frenchman alone to guard the luggage—alone with her.

  A craven voice inside him told him to retreat up to the office, but he couldn’t. First, the Australian’s rifle was never to be left alone. That he’d left it behind guaranteed that the Frenchman would be stuck guarding it. If Cat hadn’t been on lunch break, the Frenchman could have carried the rifle back up to the office and holed up there for the rest of the day. But on break, she could follow him anywhere, if she so desired. So he sat there with the luggage while she asked her questions.

  “Are you excited?”

  “I suppose. It isn’t my favorite city.”

  “Really? What don’t you like about it?”

  She listened to him, chewing her Semmel. When he was done, there was silence between them. She folded the remains of her lunch carefully and tipped them into the wastebasket.

  “Sounds cold! I don’t know how…Praguers? I don’t know how they stand it. I guess that’s what they have those fur coats for.&rdquo.

  “I prefer Venice, for these trips.”

  “Venice.” She sighed. “I’d like to go there someday.&rdquo.

  He managed a meager smile. She checked her watch.

  “Well, back to the mines.” She rolled another paper into the typewriter.

  He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. The typewriter clacked on. He was going to forget all of this. As much as he had hated the mission’s appearance in his life, he found himself thankful for it now. Time away to forget her, that’s what he needed. Time and distance.

  The typewriter clacking stopped, and he heard her open the drawer where she kept her pens. There was an ink sound on paper. She began to hum again, at first tunes he hadn’t heard. Then, after a pause that seemed to indicate she was done, she started up on the jaunty one from the gelato shop the other day.

  He opened his eyes to watch her nod her head in time. Her foot pressed…kicked up, pressed…then kicked again, like she was at the piano.

  She sang a line under her breath he couldn’t decipher, and then he heard it, the same line from yesterday—Out where the sun always shines. The Frenchman leaned forward, thinking he might be able to hear the rest, but his motion had caught her eye. She froze, song abandoned.

  After a long pause—during which the Frenchman sat very still—Cat threw herself back over her typing, ears red.

  Hours later, she sent him and the Australian off with a handshake. But his last vivid memory of her alive was in that office, with a rifle case, a typewriter, and that song.

  * * *

  That song had brought him here, for better or worse. The train was winding through the ugly desert again. He checked his watch, stuck the unlit kretek away. One hour and he would be in her city.

  “Almost there, chérie,“ he said softly.

  * * *

  He thought the mission would erase her from his mind. The business of coordinating his movements in the city with the Australian filled his head the first few days. On schedule, he was in the estate, and the Australian was casing the grounds.

  But—and he had known this all along—his role in the mission was to seduce away the wife (who was allowed where bodyguards were forbidden) so that her husband could be killed without any witnesses.

  Each time he slipped into his Don Juan persona, he wanted to be sick. He wanted to shout at the wife: This isn’t real love. You old cow, how could you not know it?

  The wife was a tittering, frivolous thing. Nothing he hadn’t seen before, but for the first time ever, a woman’s overtures disgusted him.

  He tolerated the wife’s touch, and even her kisses, but begged off sleeping with her. He managed to get away with it until the Australian shot her husband dead from half a kilometer away.

  Before the funeral, guilt caught up to the wife and she kicked the Frenchman out. He
was on the train back home. The Australian had been good to his word; they were back a half-month early.

  * * *

  But not soon enough, the Frenchman thought, stepping off the desert train. It was starting to get dark. He found a hotel and checked in. In the room he turned on the radio, took out a book, and forced his mind to it. There were some memories he did not want to remember past dark.

  He slept until morning, straight through. At first he thought his sleep had been dreamless. But when he picked up his pack and felt its weight in his arms, he remembered.

  I dreamt I was Mercury in that painting she loved.

  He checked out of the hotel and began scouting the city to see if a right place could be found.

  * * *

  League procedures required the Frenchman to stay home a week after a completed mission, to better mask any possible connections between events and facilitators. At first, he tried falling back into his old routines.

  But the second night of staring up at the ceiling and wondering what is she doing? Who is she with? made up his mind for him.

  The next evening, an hour or so after work let out, he went to Cat’s building. He waited outside in the chill until an old woman from her building entered the main door. He slipped in behind her and waited in the shadows while she shuffled ahead. When the neighbor’s door had clicked shut, he went up to Cat’s door and knocked. He wondered if he should have brought something for her.

  He heard the clatter of the door unlocking. His heart seemed to spin.

  The door opened and a strange man’s face appeared. The Frenchman’s heart froze, then restarted.

  “Who are you? Where is Cat?&rdquo.

  “‘Cat’? I don’t know any…” The man tried to shut the door, but the Frenchman barreled forward and the man stumbled back.

  “Cat lives here!”

  “I just moved here! I tell you, I don’t know any Cat.”

  The Frenchman stopped scanning the flat and stood in the doorway. He assessed this comment. The apartment walls were no longer bare. Only a serious raise from the League would have permitted her to move out. Unless she had been fired. If that were so, how would he find her again?

  He stepped back, adjusted his collar. “I—I’m…my apologies, sir. I have been on holiday a while. She—I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”