Anna interrupted. “It’s okay.” It is okay, she thought. Mary will help me. Anna spoke the next words painfully. “I need.” She added no object. She was in need of many things. Help was only one of them.
“What do you need, Anna? Can I bring you anything? You’re at home? Are you feeling better?” Anna tried to answer all the questions at once and the result was gibberish. Mary cut her short. “I’m having a hard time hearing you. I’m on the train. On the way to Dietlikon, actually. Tim’s meeting me. We’re going to that car lot by the Coca-Cola plant—you know where that is?” Anna did. It was just down the street from the train station. Until that point the Gilberts had been using a car-share service. But Mary, just the week before, managed to get her driver’s license (Can you believe it??? I know!!! she said and said again to Anna) and with Tim so often gone and the Gilberts having now settled into a routine, they’d decided it was time to buy a car. “Can we drop over afterward? Are you at home?” she asked again. Anna tried to explain that she wasn’t but the connection was weak and she didn’t think Mary caught it. “Anna, I can barely hear you and we’re about to go through a tunnel. We’ll talk later. I am so glad you’re feeling—”
The call was dropped before Mary could finish the sentence. Anna was left with Mary’s good-intended but poorly timed wish: I’m so glad you’re feeling! If only she knew. There was nothing in these feelings to be glad about. Mary had a driver’s license. Mary was getting a car. Mary was volunteering at Max and Alexis’s school. What else was Mary doing, having, being? When did this happen? Anna was jarred by Mary’s progress. Why her? Anna searched for a pat response of logic or a Jungian truism that would situate (if not soothe) the sting of this defeat. A defeat? Anna self-reprimanded. You really should be happy for your friend. The poetic response to Anna’s dilemma had to do with tribulation molding character the way that fire forges steel and how Anna—Atta girl! Chin up!—would pass through the flames, be purged of her flaws, and then she’d have earned her own grand and good reward. She, too, would learn to drive. She’d buy a car. She’d have a bank account! She’d be happy again. She’d be happy for once. But the regrettable truth came down to all and only this: Anna had already received her reward. Her reward was pain. And her character had already been forged. I’m as good as I’m probably ever going to get.
Anna wandered without aim for the next thirty minutes. The interaction with Doktor Messerli had snapped Anna back from panic. But the outcome of her conversation with Mary served to kick her into the familiar fugue she’d walked away from on Bahnhofstrasse. I’m running in circles. I’m back where I started. That wasn’t quite true. It wasn’t a circle she ran in. It was a spiral. The near parallel arcs give an illusion of sameness. At each turn, though, she came closer to a center. Anna had moved through every quadrant of the emotional spectrum that day. There was no reason to believe that whatever had her in its hands was ready to let her loose. She harnessed her present calm and tried to clear what she could of her mind. She wanted to make lucid decisions while she could. And what she decided next was to go to Archie.
It was a decision that didn’t require much forethought—she was already in the Niederdorf—but one that demanded a humility she might not have mustered but for the nearness of the shop and the ever-encroaching worry that come nightfall she’d have nowhere to go. Present need prioritized this possibility. Despite what had passed between them—perhaps even because of what had happened—she knew that he would absolutely take her in, at least for the night. They’d not spoken since the day at the zoo, and the last time she saw him was Charles’s funeral. She’d go to Archie, he’d give her an icepack and a glass of Scotch and a place to sleep for the night. She did not dare to think beyond that. She looked up to the window of his apartment but it was closed. She’d deleted his number from her phone over a month ago so she couldn’t call. Who memorized phone numbers anymore? Anna paced in front of the whiskey shop for ten minutes before finding the courage to go in. Even then, it wasn’t courage that she rallied, but resignation.
A bell tinkled when she opened the door. A man who she presumed was Glenn stood at the counter. They’d never met. He was shorter than Archie and younger. But Anna could see the resemblance in Glenn’s eyes and in his mussed, russet curls. He was going over an invoice, checking the list on his clipboard against a stack of boxes. Glenn looked up when Anna came in.
“Can I help you?” Yes. Glenn will help me, Anna thought. He’ll tell me where Archie is.
Anna hadn’t planned her words. She couldn’t make a sentence. “Archie. Where?” Glenn narrowed his eyes and studied Anna’s face. His stare was apprehensive.
“Ma’am, he’s not here.” His voice was even and polite.