Part 38 (1/2)

I cant stand this. What if I wait for him to decide to come in and he never does? ”The walls arent even plain white,” I shout back. Theyre wallpapered: a pattern of pastel-colored squares against a cream background. ”Tim, I promise you, you wont be scared of this room the second you set foot inside it. Its not the room from your nightmare. Its enormous, for one thing.”

Hes moving. I feel the vibration in the floor. When he comes in, I expect him to stop in the doorway, but he strides over so that hes standing right next to me, our arms touching. He looks around. I listen to his jagged breathing.

”Are you . . . ?” He stops to clear his throat. ”Youre sure this is where me and Francine stayed? The right room?”

”You told me your room was called Marjolaine. This is Marjolaine.” In case he needs any more grounding, I say, ”You recognized it just now when you saw the name on the door.”

”Yes. Sorry.” He wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. ”Youre right. Its not . . . This isnt the room in my dream.”

”No. Its not. Nor is any other room.”

”What?”

”The room in your dream isnt a room, Tim.”

”What do you mean?”

”Follow me.” I pick up the key and move to leave.

He pulls me back. ”Wait.”

”No. Ive waited. Im sick of waiting.”

His eyes fill with tears. ”Gaby, I understand that, but I need to stay here for a few seconds. Not much longer than that, not even five minutes, just . . . I need to stand here and know that its not this room Im scared of. It never was.”

”Right. It never was.”

”But . . . now you want to take me somewhere else,” Tim says, his voice full of shadows: the shadow of a handbag against a white wall. Except it wasnt a wall. ”You want to take me to the place I should have been scared of all this time, the place I thought was this room. I dont know if I can do it, Gaby.”

”What place, Tim? Where is it? What is it?” No point asking; I can see from his face that he has no idea.

”Its here, in Leukerbad. It must be if youre about to show it to me, but . . .” He shakes his head. ”There isnt anywhere else. We didnt go anywhere else that wasnt a public place. She wouldnt have tried to kill me in a public place.”

”She didnt try to kill you,” I tell him. ”That never happened.”

”Then why do I dream that she did?”

I take a deep breath. I dont know if its going to be worse or better for him when he has the answer. ”Youre taking the dream too literally,” I say. ”Come. Let me prove it to you.”

This time he doesnt protest.

We walk along the corridor in silence. Into the lift, down to the ground floor, outside and down the red-carpeted stairs. We turn left, Tim following me as if he doesnt know where Im going. Can he really not know? Where else might I be going?

I wish the walk were shorter. I could end this now and just tell him, but I want to give him every chance to get there on his own. As we walk up the hill, past shops, restaurants and wooden chalets, I say, ”In the dream, does the size of the handbags shadow change? Does it get bigger or smaller?” The weathers bright and sunny where we are, but theres snow on the mountains above us. I take care not to look at them.

Tim stops for a second beside a fountain thats spilling warm water. Leukerbad is famous for its hot springs and likes to show them off, I discovered last time I came here.

I carry on walking.

”No. The handbag stays the same size,” Tim says, picking up his pace to catch me up.

”You said Francines walking toward you in the dream, diagonally across the room, getting closer and closer.”

”Right.” The wounded expression on his face as I force him to think about his nightmare is too much; I cant look at him.

”So the handbags shadow ought to grow or shrink, depending on the source of light,” I say. ”It ought to get smaller, or bigger and more blurred as she gets nearer.” I find this immovable law of nature comforting. I doubt Tim does. ”If shes walking diagonally across the room toward you, the bags either going to be getting farther from the wall or closer to it.”

”Its a dream, Gaby,” Tim says. ”Not a scientific trial.”

Hes almost right: theres nothing scientific about a symbolic representation of danger in a dream, which is why Im determined to cling to the one scientific detail: the shadow of an object traveling across a white surface will only stay the same size if the distance between it and the surface doesnt change as it moves.

We turn another corner and I freeze. Here we are, sooner than I expected. I throw out an arm to stop Tim going any farther. ”What?” he says. ”What, Gaby?”

”Look. Have you been here before? Did you come here with Francine?” The answer has to be yes. Ahead of us are tall snow-covered mountains. A cable runs from the peak of one of them down to a small wooden building at the bottom. Theres a square car sliding down the wire, a slow diagonal through the air.

Tims breathing as if it hurts him.

”Theres your small room,” I say.

”The cable car. But . . . I dont understand. Yes, Francine and I went up in it, but we werent alone. There were other people there, a family of four, a Russian family. She wouldnt have . . .” His words run out. Hes staring. Trying to piece it together.

”Wouldnt have tried to kill you in front of them? No, she wouldnt. I told you: she didnt try to kill you at all, in front of anyone or no one. Not in the way you mean. What happened in that cable car, Tim? Did you and Francine talk? Did anything important happen?”

”She proposed to me. I told you.” Hes distracted. Cant keep his eyes still.

”You told me she proposed, but not where.”

”She asked me at the top, when the car set off. She said . . .” He shakes his head.

”What? What, Tim?”

”I didnt answer straightaway.”

”What did you want to say?”

”I didnt want her to have asked.” I force myself not to turn away from the pain in his eyes. ”She said I had until we got to the bottom to give her an answer.”

A proposal immediately followed by an ultimatum. Nice.

”I said yes.”

”When? On the way down?”

”When we got to the bottom. Id run out of time. She was my girlfriend, Gaby. What was I doing with her if she wasnt the right person? I didnt know there was a right person.”

”All the way down the mountain in the cable car, you were getting closer-not to a handbag containing something that was going to kill you, but to the moment when you handed over the rest of your life to a woman you knew would crush all the joy and hope out of it. Thats what was going to kill you.”