So began the affair between Anna Benz and Stephen Nicodemus.
“First off,” Anna said, taking the map from his hands and turning it around, “you’ve got it upside down. The Lindenhof’s on the other side of the river.” A mild, embarrassed expression spread across Stephen’s face. Anna examined him closely. He was and wasn’t attractive at the same time. But it wasn’t his looks Anna fell immediately in love with (if one could have called it love and two years after the fact, Anna was no longer sure it ever was). It was his voice. It was a steady, low, solid voice with a gentle immediacy to it. He spoke with an intimate and confidential baritone. There was a fleshy texture to his words. Anna gave directions to the Lindenhof as slowly as she could. She wanted to draw the encounter out as long as possible before the thread of it snapped. So she leaned into the space of him, and breathed the air of him, tapped her hand and arched her back under the gaze of him, gestures she would find herself repeating sooner than either of them knew, and while dressed in fewer clothes. Anna fished a pen and a receipt from her purse, and wrote down the tram stops he wanted, the transfers he’d need to make. Anna handed him the paper and for a few awkward seconds the two of them stood cold and shivering and, though fully dressed, strangely naked before each other, not knowing what next—if anything—to say. They spoke in tandem:
“I guess I should get home.”
“Would you like to grab a coffee?”
They shared an uncomfortable laugh and the inept silence returned once more. But not all will is free. Anna broke the self-conscious lull.
Oh yes, she said. Let’s.
DAVID LED THEM THROUGH the house and then to the back patio where the other guests had gathered. Ursula put Daniela’s gift on the dining room table, and Anna draped her purse and Polly’s diaper bag over the back of a chair and followed David and Bruno outside. Ursula paused in the kitchen, not immediately joining the group.
Daniela and her friends sat upon benches flanking a large mahogany picnic table, itself shaded by an equally enormous umbrella. Everyone drank European beer—Feldschl?sschen, Hürlimann, Eichhof—and almost everyone smoked European cigarettes—Parisienne, Davidoff, Gitanes. A radio was tuned to a Basel rock station. Daniela sat near the center of the table. She was telling a story. Anna couldn’t make out the details, but Daniela’s modulation suggested a ribald tale. Daniela waved her arms as she spoke, a half-empty beer glass in her left hand and in her right, the tail of a red feather boa one of her friends brought for her to wear. She interrupted the story with her own laughter. She was sincere in her present amusement, merry and gay. For a jealous moment Anna begrudged her this happiness. Anna hiked Polly farther up her hip and pulled her own sweater closed as if to protect herself from the sting of a joy she did not know. Bruno broke into his sister’s story to give her a birthday kiss. She set aside her beer, rose, and greeted the family. She seemed genuinely glad they had come.
“Anna,” she began in English equally as grammatical but more heavily accented than her brother’s, “I am very happy to see you. You look so pretty. Polly is so big!” She liberated Polly Jean from Anna’s arms. Daniela loved her niece and would hold her the rest of the afternoon if Anna allowed it. Daniela worked in Basel for a fair trade organization. She was kind, thoughtful, funny, earnest, easy to like and all around, a very admirable person. Had Anna known her in any other context, perhaps they’d have been girlfriends. But she didn’t, and they weren’t. They were sisters-in-law. They were friendly. But they were not precisely friends.
Daniela turned back toward her other guests, who nodded and waved politely at Anna. Anna looked around. Bruno had abandoned her for beer and Victor and Charles had run off to the barn, preferring the company of Rudi, David’s decade-old Saint Bernard, over the company of adults.
With Polly in Daniela’s arms, Anna didn’t know what to do with her hands. She felt ill at ease, like a dateless girl at a school dance. She moved to join Bruno but he was already locked into conversation with another party guest, a man whom Anna had met before, but whose name she couldn’t recall. He was blond and muscular and only an inch or two taller than Anna. When he noticed Anna he widened the circle and invited her with an open hand to join. He interrupted Bruno mid-sentence, pointed to his beer, and raised his brow. “Willst du?” That’s what it sounded like he said. He was speaking Swiss. Did Anna want?
Nice, so very nice to be asked.
Anna stepped a little closer while shaking her head no. She wasn’t a beer drinker. The blond man nodded and smiled, then motioned Bruno to continue.