Complication Read Free

increased; blocky tenements layered in graffiti towered in the middle distance, foregrounded by newly built corporate offices springing up alongside the road. We entered a tunnel and emerged in a Prague more as I would have imagined it had I ever bothered imagining it at all. Blackened structures from bygone centuries piled dark into the low horizon, and noisy trams rattled along the far riverbank
while people ambled by on the narrow sidewalks. On the hill above us, St. Vitus Cathedral rose spotlit and jagged against the night while a steep slope cluttered with tiled roofs tumbled to the riverbank beneath. Across the water, countless spires jutted upwards into the murky eastern skyline like tent poles supporting a sagging canvas.
    The cab crossed a stone bridge, and I watched white lights strung from the deck of a tour boat dance slowly in the distance, a ghostly constellation floating downstream, the people onboard rendered faceless by low banks of fog that clung to the water’s dark surface. Here then was the Vltava, the river that claimed my brother. The current looked sluggish, stillborn. Too weak to drown a rat.
    My cab driver pointed out the window at an imposing stone building as we came to a halt, said it was the National Theater. Atop its roof a winged goddess piloted a chariot pulled by three horses frozen in mid-gallop and about to heave themselves over the edge of the building and into the latticework of tramlines above the street. A block down was Ostrovní Street. No cars allowed. Too small, the cabbie said, too many people. He told me to head for Divadelní Street, then turn right.
    The moment I stepped outside the cab and set foot in the city itself, I finally started to ask all those questions I should’ve asked before I left. Was I in Prague to fulfill a journey my father had been denied? Here to answer questions about Paul I hadn’t thought about in years, if I’d thought about them at all? I couldn’t say. A friend of mine, upon hearing his mother had died, got into his car and drove straight across the country, from Maine to California, never eating, stopping only for gas. Why California, he couldn’t be sure. He would’ve kept going, he said, but for the ocean. Maybe this was my version of that. But as I stood there it
struck me that flying halfway around the world based on a letter from a stranger was more like something Paul would’ve done.
    I headed down Ostrovní Street. The cabbie wasn’t kidding—no broader than twelve feet at its widest point, the tilting and cobblestoned lane was hemmed in by low buildings crowded one into the next. Above a door on a building halfway down the block hung a wooden sign depicting an emaciated rabbit raised on its hindquarters. The rabbit’s ears were drooping, mouth agape, milk white eyes sagging like melted dinner plates. A diseased, demented Bugs Bunny.
    The Black Rabbit said the sign in English.
    The door opened onto a hallway leading to a curved stairwell cut from red stone and descending into a catacomb cellar enclosed by vaulted ceilings. Small white candles flickered atop sleek black tables, and well-dressed patrons chatted quietly over wine or beer. Too well dressed to be tourists, I figured. Czech professionals, Euro yuppies. No one paid me any attention whatsoever except a woman sitting alone in the far corner.
    Thin and shapeless inside a loose black sweater, she was in her mid-thirties, her straight black hair swept forward with just a little window carved out for a face with jutting cheekbones and hard blue eyes almost gray. She was less pretty than striking. More striking was that she made no effort to hide the fact that she was openly staring at me as I approached.
    â€œYou must be Vera,” I said.
    Her mouth parted, but no words came.
    â€œMy name is Lee,” I said. “Lee Holloway.”
    Closer, she looked less thin than simply frail, her skin ashen, mouth inelastic and sad. When