Love? he had wondered.
“Fuck,” she had whispered in his ear.
* * *
Catherine sets her phone on the menu so that Peter can see the price of a ticket back to the States. “How am I going to organize all of this?”
He glances back at William, who is hunched over the arcade game in a trance, working furiously at the joystick and buttons as he defends against a cascade of space invaders. His body contorts in a choreography of moves and countermoves. The little girl from before, with the red scooter and dark braid, has wandered over to him from the table where she had been sitting alongside her parents. She leans next to the controls, watching William as intently as he watches the screen. He ignores her, completely immersed in his game.
Catherine sits quietly next to Peter. Her eyes remain on her phone.
“You can pay me back,” says Peter, and he hands her his credit card.
“It’s not that. The passports are at the house.”
“At the house?”
“Murat keeps them.”
The starship on the arcade screen explodes in a pixelated cloud of smoke, dust and debris. The sound of a deflating chime comes from where William has lost at his game. His shoulders go slack over the controls. The little girl who had been watching him wanders away, back to her parents. William’s eyes jealously follow her. On the screen, a timer counts down from ten. Above it is a question: CONTINUE?
PART III
2012 and 2013
March 8, 2012
Kristin had received a text that morning from Catherine, asking if she was available for one of their lunches, “just to check in.” Kristin already had plans, a meeting with a midlevel functionary at the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism who needed help with a visa application and whose sister-in-law happened to be a member of parliament who sat on the Public Enterprise Committee. Nevertheless, Kristin canceled and arranged to meet Catherine instead at Kafe 6, a trendy restaurant in Cihangir which didn’t accept reservations and had only a dozen or so tables. Kristin arrived a few minutes ahead of time, not only to ensure they got a table but also because she was anxious to hear about Catherine’s dinner with Peter at the Istanbul Modern the night before. Kristin left her name with the hostess. She was told the wait would be about forty minutes, so she loitered out on the sidewalk among a gaggle of hopefuls who also aspired to lunch there.
Catherine soon appeared, ambling down the street in a black felt hat with a floppy brim. Her dark, bug-eyed sunglasses covered her face as though she’d selected them to conceal her features for a masquerade ball. She removed her hat and glasses at the door, kissed Kristin on both cheeks and then suggested they grab a table inside.
“I already left our name,” offered Kristin. “They said forty minutes.”
“Let me double-check,” said Catherine. She wove gracefully through the crowd, which seemed to part owing to her demeanor alone. On approaching the hostess, she spoke in English, dropping the owner’s name, and reiterated the request for a table. The hostess disappeared into the back of the restaurant and then emerged with a pair of menus cradled beneath her arm. “Right this way, Mrs. Yaşar,” she said apologetically. “We’ll open up the garden for you.”
Catherine glanced over her shoulder at Kristin, as if asking whether the garden would be a suitable option. Kristin nodded, and the two women followed the hostess through the restaurant, where any number of Istanbul’s cultural elites—media personalities, actors, politicians—sat elbow to elbow, preferring to be seen in each other’s company among the closely packed tables, which felt like a galley, as opposed to eating in any of the more lavish but less trendy establishments in other parts of the city.
A sprinkling of freezing rain had passed through that morning and the hostess called over a server, who wiped down their seats and set up around their table a circle of space heaters as if they were the lights and audio equipment of a television studio where Kristin and Catherine were about to sit for an on-air interview. The hostess left them with their menus. A fountain bubbled in a far corner. Aside from this the garden was very quiet.
“It’s nice back here,” Kristin said. “So how are you? How’s Murat?”
“We’ve been okay,” said Catherine. “William’s fallen behind a bit this semester at the lycée, so that’s been stressful. His Turkish still isn’t where it should be. What do you think of IICS?” she asked, referring to the Istanbul International Community School, where most members of the consulate sent their children and where Kristin’s daughter had enrolled in pre-K that fall.
“How concerned are his teachers?” interjected Kristin, who’d always taken an interest in William.
“It isn’t his teachers who are worried, it’s Murat.”
“Well, IICS is great, but the curriculum’s only in English. They teach Turkish as a foreign language, so I doubt William would come out fluent. Do you think Murat would go for that?” asked Kristin, who knew full well the challenges Catherine had faced with her husband when first enrolling William in the lycée, which was less traditional than Murat preferred even though the majority of its curriculum was taught in Turkish. Then Kristin added, “What about a tutor? I could help you find one.”
“Maybe,” answered Catherine, noncommittally. “I’ll figure it out.” There was an awkward pause as she changed the subject. “I met your friend Peter,” she added. “We had dinner.”
“Oh,” said Kristin, averting her eyes down at her menu. “And what do you think?”
“I wanted to tell you that I plan to help him.”
“That’s good news,” said Kristin. “Thank you.”
“And I was wondering what else you could tell me about him.”
They both placed their menus on the table. Before Kristin could answer, their server appeared. Kristin ordered a salad and Catherine ordered the same but removed and then added enough ingredients that she might as well have ordered off menu. The server tucked his notepad into his apron and Kristin waited for him to leave before answering Catherine’s question. Kristin then reviewed in greater detail what she knew about Peter: his East Coast education, the publications in which his journalistic work had appeared and his ambitions, as she understood them.
Catherine listened impatiently. She seemed to already know most of this.
Kristin, feeling obliged to offer up something more, began to list a few of the photographers and artists Peter had placed on his grant application as influences. “He likes the hyperrealist painter Taner Ceylan quite a bit,” she said. “His work is being featured in a gallery opening next week. Fair warning, his paintings are—um—avant-garde. But you could bump into Peter there.”