Vienna (2 page)

Justine said fine and hung up; slipping into a Toni Frieze original that would pay six months' rent on Vienna's prêt-à-porter life.

The claustrophobic hall held the only art Vienna seemed to own. An elfish girl with jet-black hair and serrated beauty. Justine recognized it as a cover from one of Björk's early solo efforts. The bottom tenth of the poster, which must have held a track listing, had been trimmed off. The pencil had been used here as well. A nested frame of eight concentric rectangles had been drafted onto the plaster. Justine brushed her fingers over the lines, feeling shallow grooves etched into the surface. It seemed to her that if she found the perfect tension, the furrows would play back like old vinyl. A recording of whatever madness had set the pencil in motion.

A deep breath and on to the galley kitchen.

Vienna was dressed for a '60s Disney musical: white pinafore over a powder blue shirt. Faux mother of pearl buttons. Methodically clipping fresh chives over frying eggs. The girl looked up from her work, peering through the useless glasses. “Your hair is blond.”

Brunette, but now wasn't the time to explain. “Yes?”

“It was blue last night.”

Justine laughed. “Soluble dye for a last-minute promo. The ads are already printed and going up today.”

“Promo?”

“A photo shoot for high-end footwear.”

The girl's eyes pinched together. “You dye your hair blue to photograph shoes?”

“No, silly. People take pictures of me wearing the shoes.”

“Oh. I thought it was a little odd. Sort of scary. Pretty though.”

It finally hit Justine on a visceral level that Vienna had no clue who Justine Am was. It made her feel as if she'd drifted too far from shore. Reaching down with her toes and not touching bottom. “Thank you, I think.” The involuntary gulp of mossy lake water.

Vienna nodded. “The eggs are ready, if you want.”

Justine tried to remember the exact moment when any of this had seemed like a good idea.
Didn't you always say you wanted adventure?

They sat at the table, white plates flanked by unadorned flatware. Justine was surprised how hungry the childhood smell of salt and pepper on eggs made her. Vienna served them sunny-side up, salmonella be damned. Justine didn't have the heart to turn them down. Poison or not they were delicious, and the macerated strawberries were dead ripe. Better add an extra half hour at the gym.

Justine ate in silence; noted that Vienna placed her own berries as far as possible from the eggs. Shepherding runny yolks away. Justine had observed such behavior numerous times during her internship. Seeing it repeated in this airless apartment made her queasy.

“I'll do dishes,” Vienna said after she finished. She reached for the plates and Justine saw the girl's fingernails were chewed ragged. Justine had seen plenty of that back at Stanford as well.

Hurry up, James.

Vienna's black flats whispered over the floor; a sheet of white laminate running into the narrow hallway. The same floor in the bedroom and bathroom. Justine couldn't remember seeing a solitary seam breaking its nonreflective surface. How would such a large piece have been unrolled and installed? It must have cost a fortune. Maybe it was there before Vienna moved in?

It's none of my business.
Justine sat in awkward silence before deciding conversation was the least of evils. “You're a student?”

“No.”

“It's just the stack of books in your room.”

Vienna paused. “I'm learning World War Two this week.”

“Oh?”

“Hitler and Himmler. Goring, Goebbels, yeah?” She paused. “Bernie Madoff.”

Justine laughed before she realized how odd it was to hear Vienna trying to joke. Even more astounded to hear the girl exhale a single sigh of laughter. As if she had at last been given permission to act human, only to forget how.

The BlackBerry interrupted with an oldie Justine's parents had gotten her hooked on.
The world was moving, she was right there with it and she was.
Vienna inhaled at the sound.

“Yes?” Justine said into the phone.

“Eglise St.-Jean-du-Béguinage,” James said.

“What?”

“The church with red doors. We're in the courtyard.”

“Be right there.” She turned off the phone. “Vienna, I have to—”

“‘And She Was,'” Vienna said. “Three minutes, thirty-nine seconds. Track number one of
Little Creatures,
by the Talking Heads. June 16, 1985, Sire Records. ID Number TAH-2. All songs by David Byrne unless noted.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your ringtone. It's about a girl who took LSD near a factory that made chocolate milk.”

“I didn't know that.” Justine forced a smile. “I have to leave, honey. I have a shoot with Vincent Mathews this afternoon.”

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“Matty? Hardly. Don't you ever watch TV?”

Vienna's voice was almost too soft to hear. “It's bad for me.”

“Bad?”

“Because I'm broken.”

“I'm sorry
.” What am I supposed to say?
“I have to go.”

“I can walk you down.”

“You don't have to.”

“I need to go to work.”

Justine sighed. Whatever got her out of this broken-soul corner of the universe the quickest.

Out into Brussels's hazy October; sunlight spreading across the ash-colored city in a watery blush. A summer morning arriving three months late. The air already felt like dilute glue.

The limo was waiting, a glossy special effect projected in front of the medieval church. James would have the AC on full. Justine put on her sunglasses. “This is good-bye.”

“Okay.”

“Take care, Vienna.” It almost sounded like an apology.

“Okay.”

Justine was mortified when the girl followed her to the car, even more so when Grant stepped from the back. The surprise James had mentioned. Grant's Hermès jeans and black T-shirt looked painted on his surfer boy frame. His wavy brown hair cropped short. He smiled behind Oakley wraps.
Paint him white and snap off his arms and you would have a Greek statue.

“I told you not to come, silly,” Justine said. “I don't have much free time.”

“We'll make do.” He gave her an unhurried kiss. Nothing less than full on the lips for Grant. “Introduce your companion?”

“This is Vienna, an old friend I was visiting. Vienna? This is Grant Eriksson.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Vienna.”

“I'm not—”

Justine interrupted before Vienna could explain that a one-night stand didn't amount to being friends. “Grant's an old friend, too.” Well, he'd lasted more than a night, anyway.

Vienna nodded. “Where are you from, Mr. Grant?”

Justine rolled her eyes, glad they were hidden behind her sunglasses' oil-slick lenses.

Grant smiled, he was too aware of being in public not to. “America—a small town in Nebraska.”

In a frozen heartbeat, so quickly gone Justine wasn't sure she'd even seen it, Vienna's lips twisted into a leer of purest loathing.

“What town?” Her voice as empty as ice on a lake.

Grant looked at Justine, who could only summon a shrug. “Kearney.”

“The elm trees there are lovely.”

Grant smiled. “Especially in autumn.” He glanced at his Breitling, reflections from the bezel skipping across the plaza. “We're running late.” He nodded toward Vienna. “Good to meet you.”

Grant guided Justine to the car. James Hargrave sat shotgun, wearing his annoyance in a gunfighter scowl. Doors shut. Justine looked back at the girl, standing alone by the church. Motionless as a statue. Or as motionless as any statue except that idiotic manikin in Prague.

Just get me out of here.

The limo turned down a canyon etched in the gothic landscape, and Vienna was gone.

I have to call Bernoulli this afternoon. Paris in the off-season sounds perfect.

 

2

And she was alone in the courtyard of Eglise St.-Jean-du-Béguinage, her shadow fractured across worn cobbles.
Why had Heather's boyfriend lied about who he was?
But then, Heather had lied, too. Vienna knew this because she'd stood outside the bathroom door after she'd heard the shower go off. Her ear to the hollow wood, the paring knife she'd used for the strawberries forgotten in her hand. Surgery syrup inching down the blade. The angry person on the phone had called Heather “Justine.”

Would it have been so hard to tell the truth about her name? So hard to pretend it mattered? So hard to stay a little longer?

Vienna walked to one of the friezes that flanked the doors of the church, if only for the sake of appearing to be doing something. Other than crying.

Christ waited there, beseeching weathered apostles. The Agony in the Garden. There were words that went with the scene, written in italic red letters:
Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation; the spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak.
Vienna had read the passage as a child, growing up near Bath. Scampering down the tomblike ruins of a Roman hypocaust when the world got too big and twisted inside her head.

Ironic to see the words here, outside a chapel dedicated to the widows of crusaders. But then, their flesh had been weak, too. Ripped apart by swords and trampled under horses, leaving behind only grieving lovers. Vienna's own apartment housed such a widow, centuries ago.

The architectural elements of the Béguinage in Brussels are unique from the standpoint of
 … Vienna closed her eyes, consciously letting the words go.
It's because my mind doesn't work right.
There was nothing new in the thought.
Then why cry now?
She wiped the tears away.

Footsteps; a shadow next to hers.

“I meant no harm,” a man said. Vienna shied from the voice, turned, and saw a short, sandy-haired man. Jeans and a plaid shirt. Vienna's mind slipped into the patterned fabric. Endless tunnels of squares, hypercubes that shifted perspective every time the man moved. Ratios of sides and surface areas blossomed in Vienna's mind. It would take 172 of the large red squares to tile the uneven shape of the fabric, but some would be wasted. A better pattern would be …

She looked away, into fresh tears.

“They're replacing them all,” the man said. “I don't know why. There's a good amount of gold inside, but not enough to pay my commission.” He handed her a scrap of paper. She glanced at a nearly illegible scrawl:

Au 5 gm / Ag 3 gm

Au 3 gm / Cu 18 gm

Au 7 gm / Fe 21 gm

Au 11 gm / Pb 14 gm

“I don't understand,” Vienna said. She felt a shiver of alarm beyond the whirling geometry of his shirt.

“Show this to her.” His voice had a Scottish burr. “I was lucky to get measurements from the piece in Rome. They're paranoid of everyone.”

“What do you mean?” she whispered.
Am I in danger?

“I saw you with Justine Am last night. Your apartment was being watched—a Yank in dark glasses. I couldn't approach while the limo was here, they would have recognized me. You have to tell her.”

“Tell her what?” Vienna kept her eyes away from the nightmare squares.

“What happened in Prague was my fault. Rush job when the first one broke—lorry smash-up on the E50. She has to forget it.” His voice grew quiet and quick. “Andries is dangerous. They say he murdered an art dealer a year ago in Munich. I've seen it in his eyes. She has to let it go.”

“I don't—”

“You have to tell her!”

The rough cough of a lorry echoed from the walls. Vienna heard the man step away and then race across the plaza. She stood for over a minute, carefully focusing on the frieze. What just happened?

It's none of my business.
Vienna crumpled the paper and threw it in a rubbish bin at the side of the church.

She left the plaza by the same street Heather's black limousine had taken—past a sign showing a car with a red slash through it. Stupid Americans. A few turns and she entered the Galleries Saint Hubert. She loved the spider web of iron and glass that covered the long plaza, hung from the heavens with spectral grace. It was so familiar by now that it rarely made her dizzy. And if it did, there were always window displays to distract her. Chocolate and shoes and watches and photographs of beautiful people in beautiful places.

The stores had yet to open for the day, and the corridor smelled faintly of bleach. Brussels had thrown its customary Saturday night party, and the Sunday morning custodians had already engaged the citywide hangover of garbage in the gutters and piss in the alleys.

Vienna wondered why she'd tried to join the festivities. Cecile had asked to meet her at Holler, though Vienna never expected her to actually show up, and of course she hadn't. But Vienna had been too hot and too afraid of another night lost in the sad memories of widows. She'd stepped out a few times before with no harm coming from it. Only this time she was propositioned by a woman with blue hair, cut in straight bangs down to liquid emerald eyes. Vienna had thought her beautiful, but maybe her exotic appearance kept her from dating.

And she lied about her name.

As for the night, Vienna didn't like thinking about it. Cecile had suggested sleeping with a woman might be a good tonic for Vienna's shyness. Vienna wouldn't have considered it back in London. Her foster father would have been horrified. But here, sinking ever lower in the city's social strata, she didn't see any harm to it.

Still, it had been too overwhelming and too foreign to be anything other than shameful. Vienna hadn't known what was expected—had never been with anyone—though she knew in one respect her coworker had been right. With a woman, she at least knew the topography well enough to guess a route. The wrong one, apparently.