White Apples by Jonathan Carroll Page B

other time this misunderstanding would have delighted Isabelle and made her laugh. Instead she began to cry as she turned away and walked toward the ornate front door.
    What Vincent said last night still burned on her heart like slow acid. He had left his life for her. Not for himself, and not because he finally realized being together meant more than anything did. His great "gift" to her. She smiled bitterly thinking that the word Gift in German meant "poison."
    Hailing a maroon cab, she told the driver to take her to Heathrow. She had no idea when the next flight back to Vienna was. She would find out when she got to the airport. The important thing now was to get moving, get away from him and this hotel and city, which a night ago, eight hours ago, had held all the promise in the world. God damn him! Damn him and his "I did it for you."
    She knew running away wasn't the answer. Knew it was an immature and cowardly thing to do, but Isabelle Neukor was a coward. Much as she would have liked to change, she did not have sufficient inner strength.
    She was thirty-one. She had lived a privileged life that had given her character but no backbone or real inner strength when she needed it. She knew this but often pretended otherwise, fooling many people over the years. But those who knew her well knew that Isabelle was a paper lion. They were amused when she roared because it was only tricky sound effects she had devised, much like the Wizard of Oz hidden behind his curtain, furiously working those myriad levers and buttons.
    Having money in the family was like cigarettes—the trouble with both was that they were always there for you. It didn't matter if you were happy or sad: They were always at your fingertips, ready and eager to make your life better even if only for a few minutes. Too often in Isabelle's life when the going got tough, she went to the bank. She was thirty-one and had run from too many things. She had severe panic attacks and often took pills to quell them. Once when he was overwrought. Ettrich took half of one of those pills. It was the strongest thing he'd ever ingested and he came close to keeling over. He could not believe Isabelle took a whole one almost every day.
    But none of this mattered to Vincent Ettrich. He loved her without reservation. In college he'd had an Italian girlfriend who would say "I love-a you like-a crazy." The sentence always pleased him but he didn't believe the woman for a moment. Until he met and fell for Isabelle Neukor, that is. Then he knew one hundred percent what it meant to love someone like-a crazy.
    Within four days of their first meeting, Isabelle had told him almost all of her secrets. She was astonished at herself and thrilled. She told him about the sedatives she took and the neuroses they were meant to diffuse. She told him her fears and her hidden hopes for the future. She wanted to have a child some day. She had never admitted that she wanted to have a child, much to her mother's despair. Although she had certainly had her share of lovers, Isabelle had never met a man she wanted to have children with. Next she told Vincent her deeply ambivalent feelings about her
    interesting, difficult family. She continued telling this stranger things she had never told anyone, not even the
    good-hearted boyfriend she had lived with in New York for three years. And when she discovered how good it felt to talk to him, she told Vincent Ettrich more.
    Half an hour into their first formal date she already wanted to touch his hands to see if he had cold or warm ones.
    Instead she asked what he thought was the most important thing in life. She hoped he would say something wonderful or at least stunningly dif•ferent—not "love" or "freedom" or "individuality." Please, not those lame lumps. She wanted Vincent Ettrich to be creative and imagi•native; she wanted to be in awe. If to "love like-a crazy" was Et•trich's goal, then Isabelle's was for just once in her life to be in awe of a