The Cairo Affair Read Online Free PDF

defined her husband’s look. The table rocked as he fell off the chair, leaving a mess on the wall. She didn’t hear him hit because her ears were ringing from the gunshots, and she felt as if she were going to vomit. There was more screaming and the distant sound of weeping, but she soon learned that all of it was coming from herself.

 
    3
    She had never imagined that it would be like this. Not that she’d ever imagined this, but whenever she’d imagined something terrible happening before her eyes, her imagination would take in the event itself, that first taste of horror, and then … cut : to the next day, or the next week. Her brain worked like a film editor, even dicing up actual memories, jump-cutting over hours, balking at the grimy minutes and hours that stretched between the initial shock and the final passing out, when a night’s sleep would come along to wash away a little of the metallic taste of disaster.
    Yet it became abundantly clear that this in-between time was the event. The adrenaline and the endless replay of her husband’s pink bits splattering across the wallpaper, the contradictory calm voice of some restaurant customer, an American who thought she could relate to Sophie, the barely intelligible grunts of Hungarian policemen who seemed, more than anything else, baffled by what their role was supposed to be, and then the trained, cool, faux-comforting voice of a skinny, pink-cheeked young man from the embassy who arrived with a doctor and introduced himself as Gerry Davis. Gerry Davis told her that the doctor was going to take a look at her—nothing to worry about—and maybe give her a little something to take the edge off. They brought her to an empty table in another room so she wouldn’t have to see her husband anymore. Someone gave her a real silk handkerchief that smelled faintly of vinegar. She focused for a long time on a cigarette burn in the tablecloth. This was all the event.
    Gerry Davis said, “Do you have a phone?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “A cell phone. If you do, you might want to turn it off.”
    She took out her iPhone and stared at it, unsure of what to do. Gerry Davis took it from her, powered it down, and handed it back. “It’s better that way. For the moment, at least.”
    When Gerry Davis explained that he was going to take her back to her apartment, where there would be someone else from the embassy to stay the night with her, she realized that he was smart, this Gerry Davis. Though he knew her future had just evaporated, he was giving her precise, manageable plans to carry her forward. Until the next day, at least.
    Later, she would ask herself how she could make such judgments—that Gerry Davis was smart, that the policemen didn’t know what to do with themselves, and that she’d misjudged the parameters of a tragic event. After what she’d been through, she shouldn’t have been able to see past her own fingertips, but she could see clearly to the end of the room where Daniel himself, in a smeared apron, was giving a statement to a uniformed cop. Why were her eyes so clear and her senses still acute?
    One of the policemen, an older Hungarian in civilian clothes, introduced himself as Andras Something and squatted in front of her chair. In a heavy accent, he asked a few questions: Did she recognize the killer? Had he said anything that might explain why he had come tonight? She tried to give him useful answers, but in the midst of her words she began to spill too much information; she couldn’t help herself. “Beforehand, we were talking, Emmett and me. About the affair I had. He was hurt, really hurt. I don’t know—maybe this had something to do with it … do you think? I mean, it lasted so long, right under his nose. Do you think that maybe—”
    She felt a hand on her shoulder. Gerry Davis said, “I think that’s enough for now.”
    Andras Something climbed to his feet, knees cracking like a log fire, and thanked her for her help. Then Gerry Davis