Kristin glances curiously at Peter’s neck. “Your bow tie,” she says, reaching toward him. “It’s crooked.”
Peter feels beneath his chin. He torques on the knot, trying to fix it.
“That won’t do,” says Kristin. Without asking permission she yanks on the running end. She hands Peter her drink, so that both of his hands are occupied. She then begins to reassemble the knot as she continues, “I overheard that the photos for your next exhibit have arrived,” she says. “What’s the theme?”
“You’ll have to wait for the opening. I’m not telling anyone.”
“Why’s that?” Kristin asks.
“Maybe I just want to see who will come knowing nothing about the photographs except that they were shot by me. You’ll be there, won’t you?”
“Straighten up,” Kristin orders while finishing the last twist on his bow tie. Peter squares back his shoulders. “There,” she says, making a final adjustment. “You’re a mess without me.” She takes her rosé from Peter and has a sip, admiring the work she’s done.
“You’ll be at my exhibit, won’t you?” he asks again.
“No, unfortunately I won’t be, Peter.”
He says nothing, demanding an explanation through his silence.
“I’ve been meaning to speak with you about it,” says Kristin. “A cable arrived earlier in the week. It’s time for me to go.”
“To go? Go where?”
“Back to the States until I get my next posting sorted out.”
“The States?” Peter’s voice mixes with his suddenly elevated breath. A shot of panic stabs him in the stomach and then flows gradually outward, like blood from a wound, pooling into his legs, feet, arms, hands. His mouth is dry and he closes and opens it once like an idiot. He looks above him and feels as if the roof might tumble down, as if this building made of glass is no building at all, but rather an illusion for him to be crushed beneath.
“I had requested another extension on my tour, but it got denied.”
Peter shuts his mouth. He wills the roof above him to lift, and gradually it does as time and space reassume their familiar proportions, those infinitely small units of measure that are finite all the same. Peter begins to nod and slowly his face contorts into a slight expression of disgust at the irony. The only person among them who can escape the web of interests and counterinterests that have kept them in place is Kristin herself, the architect of it all. “It doesn’t seem fair,” says Peter.
“What doesn’t seem fair?” asks Kristin.
“You leaving after you convinced all of us to stay.” Peter draws silent for a moment. “You leaving after you convinced Catherine to stay.”
“Catherine made her own decision, so did each of you.”
“The woman in your car that day, William’s birth mother, where is she?” Peter asks.
Kristin stares across the room, to an unknown point.
“Answer my question,” says Peter. “That afternoon, when Deniz was walking back from the İstiklal, I was watching from the window. Deniz didn’t recognize that woman in your car. So who was she?”
“I don’t see how it’s relevant,” mutters Kristin.
“That wasn’t William’s mother.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“After that day I traveled to the Central Authority,” says Peter. “I waited in the lines. I even paid a bribe. Do you know what they showed me in their records? That William’s mother has been dead for eleven years. If you leave, I’ll tell Catherine.”
“And why would you do that?”
“Because you convinced her to stay on false premises.”
“You won’t do that,” adds Kristin.
Approaching them through the crowd is a man, conspicuous in that he doesn’t wear a tuxedo, but a pair of khakis, a white oxford shirt and rep tie with navy blazer. The rubber soles of his docksiders squeak meekly on the marble floor. He is muscular but gangly, like a rower, with a well-brushed drape of sandy brown hair. He carries his drink, a bottle of IPA, with his elbow bent at a perfect right angle. “There you are,” he says, the relief evident in his voice as he finds Kristin. “Sorry, the caterers had me go all the way to the kitchen to find a beer.” Then he stops, holding up an index finger. “Wait, don’t tell me,” he says. “You must be Peter.” Kristin introduces them properly and her husband has the personality of a Labrador retriever, saying how Kristin has always kept “her work at work and her home at home,” and how after hearing so much about “the elusive Peter” he wondered if he’d ever have the chance “to at least meet before we leave.” Their conversation then turns to that departure, to the scramble of packing up their house, to the question of where their daughter will go to school in the States, and to what they plan to do with their last week or so in the city. “We are treating ourselves to one thing,” he says, glancing sheepishly downward at his docksiders. “It’s a total splurge. We’re going to get a suite at the Çırağan Palace Hotel. Neither of us has ever been. I hear it’s got the best view in the city.”
He smiles at Kristin. But she is staring fixedly at Peter.
Then the squelch of a microphone interrupts them. Deniz mounts a black stage in the corner of the atrium. He pulls down the microphone stand, which has been adjusted for a much taller man’s height. He makes brief introductory remarks, which welcome everyone to the opening of the museum’s new extension, and then he offers a summary of some of the Istanbul Modern’s upcoming programs, to include Peter’s “highly anticipated sophomore exhibit.”
Peter listens, but he hardly hears the words. What he is thinking is that Kristin has, of course, been to the Çırağan Palace Hotel. According to Deniz that’s where the two of them first met. Why would she lie?
Murat then assumes the stage with Catherine and William dutifully standing alongside him. He begins to speak about his family, their support of his various enterprises, and how he has asked them to the stage because he could not claim any success without acknowledging their contributions. When Murat offers a toast to his wife and son, the crowd lifts their champagne. So do Peter and Kristin, but neither of them drinks. They have already emptied their glasses. When Kristin’s husband swallows the last of his beer, he notices their empties. “I’ll get us another round,” he says but fumbles nervously with the glasses as he takes them and disappears across the reception.
With Murat’s remarks out of the way, the gentle hum of conversation has resumed among the crowd. Once her husband is safely out of earshot, Kristin turns to Peter. “Did they tell you at the Central Authority how that girl died?” Peter gazes up at the stage, to where Deniz has taken the microphone from Murat and is now attending to the evening’s festivities. “You could have asked Deniz about William’s mother,” Kristin continues. “It would have saved you the trip … and the bribe.”