A Dirge for the Temporal Read Free Page B

,” she said, smiling. She wasn’t plump, she didn’t wear an apron, she smelled nothing like the farm.
      “ Gross Gott, ” he said. “ Sprechen Sie Englisch ?”
      “A little, yes.”
  “I would like a room for the night.”
      “How many in your party, sir?”
      “One, if you count me.”
      She didn’t seem to get it—and there was nothing to get anyway. She produced a registration card, and as he accepted it, their hands brushed. The brief sensation reminded him how far along the road of loneliness he was. Yes, he had shared an office with females during this past year of his separation from his wife, but co-workers didn’t count. Did Austrians? he wondered. Did Europeans? Did the whole blessed gender?
      “I’m curious,” he said as he tapped the card with the pen, brows furled with the effort of remembering his new address in Brussels. “How did Sept come by its name?”
      When she didn’t answer immediately, he glanced up. She was looking at his name on the card.
      Their eyes met. Hers were a rich brown touched by a certain joyless ness, like his own. Her cascading hair was brown as well, more than com plementing her eyes—lending to their momentary intensity.
      “You are Austrian?” she asked.
      “I’m of German ancestry…maybe Austrian, I don’t know. Is it an Austrian name?”
      “I…” She hesitated, frowning. “I do not really know, sir. If so, it is uncommon.”
      He nodded.
      “Where are you coming from, Mr. Sept?”
      “I’ve lived in Vienna for the past three years, working for the Atomic Energy Agency.” He gestured behind him with his thumb. “Today I’m coming from Salzburg.”
      “What brought you…here?”
      He shrugged. “I’m being transferred to Brussels. I'm not due there for a few weeks, so I thought I would wander some of the less traveled roads. I'm at the whim of my path, if you like.”
      “No map?”
      He mirrored her look, which was markedly strange. “No map.”
      Slowly, with an elegance that moved him, she extended her hand. “Verena,” she said.
      He shook it without his usual flare because he was disturbed.
  “Shall I get the key?” she said, glancing down. He realized he still held her hand.
      “Yes of course. I’m sorry.”
      “Please,” she said, smiling.
      He assumed she was coming right back, that the key would be hanging on a rack behind the door, or somewhere equally convenient. When she didn’t, he wandered over to the brochures. One showed a skier, radiant against a clear blue sky as her streamlined superimposed image jumped Olympic distances. Another depicted the very house in which he stood. Yet another was for the village itself, the word Sept appearing above a silvery picture of the mountain stream. A fourth leaflet was apparently a map of the region. He picked up one of these.
      There was nothing inside.
      He picked up another of the maps. Nothing. Shrugging, he picked up one of the skiing brochures. This time the absence of printed matter startled him. He picked up the Gasthaus brochure. Nothing. The last one…again nothing.
      “Mr. Sept?”
      “Yes,” he said, turning. “Yeah…these brochures, they’re…”
      “You aren’t supposed to look at them,” she smiled, wrinkling her nose. “They are…the word—it is ornaments ?”
      “Like a Christmas tree?” he said with irony. And realized as he said it that it wasn’t fair. She was the one making the effort to use his language.
      As he stepped up to the counter, she gestured at his hand. “You wear a wedding band. May I ask…where is she?”
      He thought about this for several seconds. At last he gave her the answer he felt spoke to the greater truth:
      “Not here.”
      She nodded, led him up the stairs, skeleton key dangling on a ring.
      At the door to Room 11 she stopped, inserted the key, stood back to let him enter. Again he brushed her. Again he was reminded.
      She waited as he glanced