“If they’re important, they call me on my landline.” She picked up one of the phones, giving it a cursory glance, and then she set it back on the desk as if confirming her suspicion that it was, in fact, no one of importance. “Are you still interested in the type of project you outlined in your proposal?”
In his application, Peter had described in some detail his current project of portraiture, which was an expansive survey of the city’s inhabitants. Peter recognized that it lacked focus. He had been wandering the streets like a paparazzo, but instead of hounding out celebrities he was hounding out the most obscure citizens. He couldn’t say whether or not this work was any good. He hadn’t figured out the thrust of his project and he suspected this was why Kristin had selected his application among a multitude. If the project remained undefined, she could help craft it to her own purposes. While determining exactly how to answer Kristin’s question, he reviewed the paragraph he had submitted a few weeks before, the one headed “Scope of Work.” He could already see the flaws or, as Kristin phrased it, “What you have outlined is ambitious, Peter.”
“You don’t think it’ll succeed,” he answered, not without some defensiveness.
“That’s not what I said,” she corrected him, “but I want you to pare it down.”
“Into what?”
“Maybe a book? An exhibit? Or both? We don’t have to figure that out today. What we do have to figure out is whether or not we’re going to move forward together.” She glanced insistently at the contract.
Peter leaned over her desk and signed.
“The right choice,” said Kristin.
Her comment did nothing to assure Peter. “What do we do now?” he asked.
Kristin reached into her desk drawer and handed him a business card with the same eagle she wore on the lanyard around her neck embossed in gold. She scrawled a number across the back. “Use that if you need to be in touch.” She then turned to her keyboard and began crafting an email. “I’m going to make a few introductions for you. It will help get you momentum as you start your project.”
“I’ve already started it,” Peter grumbled, reminding her of this.
“Of course,” she replied. “Also, you should meet Catherine Yaşar, an American who’s lived here for some time, nearly a decade. She used to dance in the ballet, though I’m not sure which company, perhaps one in New York. She married a Turk and is now a patron of the arts. Her husband is a well-known developer. I’ll set it up. She’ll take an interest in your work.”
“What makes you so certain?”
“Because your work is interesting.”
Kristin turned back to her computer and continued to craft the email to Catherine. While she typed, Peter punched the number on her business card into his cellphone. He pressed dial so that it would save to his contacts. The call connected. A cellphone in the batch that sat on Kristin’s desk began to ring. Without shifting her glance from the computer screen, Kristin reached over. She silenced the phone.
* * *
Peter’s head is still on the pillow. He continues to watch the bridge and with the least possible gesture the gray morning light reveals its spans. The traffic comes in an unsteady drip. He counts the cars, reaching one hundred. The headlights curve out of the snaking residential streets, up the on-ramp, and then hold steady, pressing straight ahead into the rush between the two continents. The road across is a lonely no-man’s-land.
Peter keeps counting the cars.
From the easternmost hills of Europe, he looks over the water and watches the westernmost hills of Asia take shape. These are the minutes before dawn. The lights on the First Bridge have served their purpose and, as if set to a timer, they extinguish. The buildings on the far bank, lightly sketched in fog, shine with the sun behind them. The strait is a mirror. His window has no curtains. This high above, who can see in? Traffic picks up. As the lanes begin to fill, Peter loses count of the cars and quits. He reaches for his phone on the bedside table to see the time. He needs to be up in an hour. His ringer has been off and he sees a half dozen missed calls. Before he can check who it is, there is a knock at his door—one long, two short.
One-thirty that morning
Three Persian rugs cover the wooden floor of the enormous room where the boy sleeps. His father rarely puts him to bed, and that night Murat stands at William’s dresser rifling through the drawers for a pair of pajamas. He eventually finds a matching set. William is old enough to dress himself, but it has been some time since Murat participated in the nighttime routine, so he strips off the boy’s shirt and bottoms, not allowing William to do it on his own.
He stands naked in front of his father.
Murat fumbles with the pajamas, putting the shirt on his son backward. William is fearful of further upsetting his father so he makes no correction. Murat finishes and crosses the room to the bed. He flings open the covers. William climbs beneath them. Murat does not kiss William or say good night, or say anything for that matter. Yet when Murat turns out the lights, he does remember to keep on the small lamp alongside William’s nightstand. There is a great deal in William’s life that Murat is oblivious to, but he never forgets that his son is afraid of the dark. He once had the same fear himself and, at times, in other situations, he still feels sweat breaking out on his forehead and the back of his neck, he still feels his mouth turn to cotton, and he still feels that tight panic in his center, as if a big, invisible hand were pressing open-palmed onto his rib cage.
The door shuts behind Murat and William listens as his father’s heavy footfalls sound down the hallway and then down the stairs to the foyer. William strains to hear either of his parents in the silence of their grand house, yet he hears nothing. His eyes wander. Piles of untouched toys—train sets, stuffed animals, a thousand colors of molded plastic—jam the corners of the room like a fugitive’s wealth hoarded away in a cave. He has arrived at that age where, slowly, he has lost interest in these possessions. Above the dresser his mother has arranged photos of the three of them—a reminder not of her, or of his father, but rather of the general idea of a family.
A door slams somewhere in the house. More footsteps. He hears his parents’ voices intermingling in sharp whispers. Another door slams. Then another. He no longer wants to hear anything. Or see anything. He wants to be hidden. He reaches over to his nightstand and turns off the lamp.
He lies in the dark convincing himself that the dark can no longer hurt him.
It is still dark when his mother wakes him. Her face is very close to his. The trace of her perfume lingers, it is the scent she had put on before Peter’s exhibit that evening. She gently shakes William by the shoulders. He rolls over and reaches for the bedside lamp, but she stops him. “We have to go,” she says. Before he can sit up, she has already flung away his blanket and is cramming his shoes onto his bare feet. He walks hand in hand with her, down the hallway, still in his pajamas, toward the stairs. He knows to step quietly—heel to toe, heel to toe. They make their way. The lights are out. They descend the stairs one at a time so that they don’t stumble in the dark, so that they don’t interrupt the early-morning silence. Then they stand in the foyer, next to the table with the porcelain vase filled with white orchids.