“I hope she doesn’t get seasick,” Raef said.
“She’s a good sailor,” I said. “Her family sails.”
It struck me as a drunken comment, but I couldn’t help it. A few people—it was early evening, or late afternoon, an in-between time at the bar, so the crowd was just arriving—whooped when Constance took it up to the next level. She looked mythical on the bull. I would have bet a great deal of money that she had a myth in mind, maybe Europa and Zeus, because her eyes blazed, and she looked as happy as I had ever seen her. Saint Constance riding the bull of Crete or some crazy thing. I took a couple of pictures and sent them to Amy. This was something Amy needed to see. You did not get to see Constance on a mechanical bull in Prague, Czech Republic, every day. I didn’t even glance at Jack, who always had a funny outlook about pictures.
Then the bull began to buck. Instead of simply moving around in a slow circle, it sometimes bucked its rear end up as if trying to throw her. Constance slapped her hand against the leather skin to balance herself for a moment, then she nodded as if she had once more figured out the rhythm.
“She’s a natural,” Jack said. “A freaking natural.”
“She’s the most beautiful woman who has ever lived,” Raef said, his eyes not leaving her for an instant. “She’s nearly too much.”
“She’s even more beautiful inside than out,” I said.
Raef slipped his arm through mine. His eyes were a little damp.
Arms linked, we stood and watched Constance ride the bull. She didn’t crank it all the way to the top, but she rode it hard and didn’t show any signs of slipping off. When the bull operator slowed it down, people cheered for Constance. She waved at everyone, but she looked a little rocky. Raef walked over and lifted her free of the bull. Constance kissed him, and he kissed her back. I knew, watching them, that they would be married. It was as simple as that. Whatever it was that drew two people together had latched onto them both.
“He loves her,” I said to Jack. “He loves her with everything he has.”
“Yes, he does. Does she love him?”
“Totally.”
“They’re good with each other.”
And there was a brief, passing instant, when one of us should have, might have, could have said something about love, about commitment, to the other. The knowledge descended on us inevitably. It wasn’t that I didn’t think we were falling in love, or already existed in love, whatever any of that meant. But we couldn’t say it exactly, and I wondered why that was. I felt myself giving in to the ridiculous old notion that a man should say it first. According to common lore, a woman should never drop the L-bomb first. That was basic girl knowledge. We had hinted around about it, had come close in Berlin and then in Poland, to confessing everything. But the word eluded us. We watched Raef and Constance lean against each other as they cleared the matted area beneath the mechanical bull, and then we broke apart and said we needed more drinks, and I gave Constance a hug, and Raef volunteered to buy a round in honor of Constance the bull rider, and we were jolly once more, Jack and I no less than before, but a tiny pilot of formality took light in my heart, and I wondered how we could be so close and still be so careful with one another.
*
In the early hours of the morning, Jack talked us onto a milk barge. Raef and Constance had gone back to the hostel. Jack had picked up a card from a man he had talked to at the bar—the brother of the barge captain, if I understood it correctly—and we had an address to give to a cab, although the cab driver had to ask two other cabbies how to get to the pier. Then we drove around for what seemed a long time, the driver leaning forward to peer more closely through the windshield. I didn’t have much sense of where we were going except that it seemed industrial. Now and then, a flash of water appeared in bright, surprising glimpses, the reflection of our headlights like small photographic flashes. We drove near the Vltava River, if I remembered my geography correctly. But it was hard to see anything with all the buildings and construction equipment barring the way.
When we arrived, Jack had to talk us onto the barge by giving the captain the card he had procured at the bar. He may have slipped the crew some money, too, because they went from reluctance to friendliness in a matter of seconds. The crew consisted of three men, all of them wearing dark clothing and black watch caps. They may have been wearing a company uniform, for all I knew, but they stayed busy and left us alone. The barge—a flat, messy boat with a small crane on the port side—pulled away from the dock sometime after midnight. The engine stunk of diesel, but eventually it pulled sufficient headway to make the exhaust stream behind us.
We sat leaning against the cuddy, as much out of the wind as we could manage. It was a dark, dark night, and I wondered how the crew could see where it was going. The canal, or waterway, was only a black rope through a black countryside. Now and then, the moon gave us a little light and the stars glittered and shook, and we heard an owl at one point, its call unmistakable, and then later, when the boat was steady and moving at a good pace, we heard a heron croak near us, and then we spotted him perched on a piling of a dilapidated dock.
We leaned close together. For a while, we didn’t really talk; maybe Jack was a little nervous about taking me on a strange boat, with a crew he didn’t know, but if he was, he hid it fairly well. When he sensed I was cold, he opened his barn jacket and tucked me inside it, sharing his heat, and we went along through the darkness listening to the engine sounds bounce back off the trees that lined the water. This was how Jack wanted to experience Europe, I knew. Anyone with the price of a ticket, he would say, can visit a museum. You had to be a traveler to scout out something unique in a place where so many feet had already trod. He wasn’t content to visit museums and cathedrals and interesting cityscapes, then go home and feel he had bagged another destination. He refused to be a mere tourist. He desired a deeper connection with the land and people, and I had to admit that riding on the barge was something I knew I would remember all my life. The night after Constance rode the bull in Prague. The Vltava River. The scent of water and city mixed and the smell of diesel, making the air tinged with industry.
“I hope they’re not taking us to Russia or something,” Jack whispered. “Let’s hope they’ll bring us back to Prague when it’s all over.”
“Do you think we’re being kidnapped?”
“Probably. I’m fairly certain at some point we’ll have to dive overboard and swim for our lives.”
I tucked closer to him. I looked at him a long time. He was still the handsomest man I had ever known. Sometimes I had to remind myself that I was beside him, that in some way or shape, he was becoming my own.
“I’m assuming your grandfather would have liked this kind of thing.”