“At your exhibit?”
“Yes, and with your son.”
Murat kneads his chin between his thumb and index finger, figuring why this was the most surprising development to Peter. “So you knew then.”
“Knew what?”
“What she was going to do.”
Peter suppresses an anxious laugh. “You mean leave you?”
“No,” says Murat, returning a laugh of his own. “She’s aiming to ruin me. There is a difference. When you own a family business and that family comes apart, it obviously affects your business.”
A coil of ash threatens to topple from Murat’s cigarette. Peter ducks into the kitchen and returns with a saucer, which he rests on the sofa’s arm. “I’m sure your business would recover,” he says.
“What could you possibly know about that?” says Murat. He jabs a finger toward Peter, one of the two with the cigarette pinned between them. Ash tumbles onto the sofa. Murat curses and then apologizes weakly, brushing at the upholstery but leaving tiny gray streaks behind. “Who is to say that my interests would recover if I faced such a scandal? You know the Beşiktaş football stadium? The debt on that property is mine. You were at Gezi Park. The plunge in the real estate market that followed ruined some of my competitors. It nearly ruined me.” Murat stubs out his cigarette in the saucer, freeing his hands to gesticulate more aggressively at Peter.
“How do you know that I was at Gezi Park?” Peter asks cautiously.
Murat lifts an eyebrow, not answering right away. He keeps Peter suspended in a quiet that is charged with the prospect of all Murat knows and the lesser prospect of what he does not know. Then Murat nods across the living room, toward the table scattered with Peter’s portraits, his abandoned project. “In case you forgot, you inscribed a book of your work to my wife. I’ve since kept track of your photos and have seen in the press the ones you took at Gezi.”
Peter leans back into the sofa. He takes a deep breath. Until this afternoon he and Murat had never met, although they had both assumed outsize roles in one another’s lives. Peter feels a degree of hesitation when dealing with Murat. Bound up as they are, it seems counterintuitive to Peter that Murat should know so little about him. But at the same time, it seems utterly plausible that Murat’s only connection to Peter would be through his photographs. After Peter had gifted Catherine his book, he had hidden his involvement with her, so what else could Murat really know? But as this calming idea asserts itself in Peter’s mind, Murat lights another cigarette and lets slip, “… or was it Kristin who first told me you’d been at Gezi Park? This was the time you were arrested, no?”
Murat’s elbow brushes against the precariously balanced saucer. It plunges to the floor, shattering. Murat comes out of his seat and apologizes as he sweeps the jagged fragments into his cupped hand. “Look at this mess I have made,” he says absently, seeming to speak only to himself.
Peter remains on his side of the sofa, sitting very still. “And how do you know Kristin?”
“Where is your trash?” Murat stands in front of Peter with the largest shards gathered into his palm.
Peter doesn’t move.
“In the kitchen?” asks Murat, and then he disappears to the back of the apartment, where Peter hears him opening and closing cabinets until he finds the waste bin. Murat returns to the living room. “How do I know Kristin?” he asks ponderously, picking up their conversation as he wipes his hands together and clears off the last sticky flecks of porcelain. “You could say that I know her in much the same manner that you do. She paid you to do work for her, did she not? She’s paid me to do the same.”
“She gave me an artistic grant,” says Peter, as if the word grant ennobles his work. “Also, there was an exhibit last night.”
“So I heard,” replied Murat. “At Deniz’s apartment.”
“Yes,” Peter says. “At his apartment.” He hesitates, uncertain of Murat’s connection to Deniz and uncomfortable with their perceived familiarity.
“And was your grant for this?” Murat asks while approaching the photographs scattered across the table. His open palm hovers over their surfaces as if he is casting a spell on them, and then he picks up and shuffles through a few of the black-and-white prints. “What was the concept?”
“I wanted to show how people keep one another in check,” says Peter, “or how sometimes a person’s conflicting character traits might do the same. The idea was to pair photos that would reveal this.”
Murat lifts a portrait in each hand, sighting down his arm for the effect Peter was trying to evoke. He ranges over the black-and-white prints, lifting one and then another, searching for a pairing like a cardplayer in search of a winning hand. “It’s an interesting concept,” says Murat, eventually setting down the photos.
“The project hasn’t worked,” Peter confesses.
“Maybe you can’t see how it all comes together yet.” Murat ambles back to the sofa. “The idea makes sense.”
“You mean pairing the photos?”
“I can’t say about the photos,” answers Murat, “but the concept that people hold one another in place. Let me ask you something: Did it ever occur to you that Kristin had an ulterior motive when providing you with your grant? Did you ever think that she wanted you to meet my wife?”
“She introduced me to Catherine, of course she wanted us to meet. Kristin thought Catherine could be helpful with my work.”
“No,” says Murat. “Did you ever think that your work had nothing to do with it? Did it ever occur to you that Kristin understood what you just described? That she knew how one person could hold another in place.”
Peter points toward Murat’s coat pocket, to where he keeps his cigarettes. “May I have one of those?” he asks. Murat sets the packet between them and Peter fishes one loose. He borrows Murat’s lighter and inhales deeply. “You think Kristin engineered my relationship with your wife?”
“Catherine has been threatening to leave me for years.”
“And … ?”
“I’m very important to Kristin.” Murat’s phone rings. He digs it out of his pocket and glances down at the screen, a wry smile expanding across his face. “Ask her yourself.” He tosses the ringing phone to Peter, who answers it.
“I know where she is.” It is Kristin.
Peter remains silent on the line.
“Hello? Hello? Murat?”
“No … it’s me,” says Peter, who glances up as Murat crosses the room and returns to the table of photographs, which he continues to sift through, seeing if he can find a matching pair.