small thrill from standing so close to the ride featured in one of my favorite movies, The Third Man.
With my location set, my next step was to visit a dry cleaner on Tuchlauben, where I would tell the clerk I’d been sent to retrieve a suit for a Mr. Werner Voigt and ask if I could pay in Swiss francs. I’d then be given the bagged suit with a ticket noting the address where the first batch of miniature Zhivagos would be located. Dissemination would begin the following day.
But first, I was hungry. I decided to stop and buy two plate-sized potato pancakes before leaving the park—one for dinner and one for breakfast. The food stand was strategically placed next to the Riesenrad, a trap for everyone waiting in line. It was there, standing in line for food behind an American tourist wearing unflatteringly tight lederhosen, that I saw her.
She was there, in line to ride the Ferris wheel, her back to me.
Sally was wearing a long green coat and white gloves, her red hair cut a bit shorter than I’d last seen it. Even from behind, she was beautiful. It reminded me of the first time I saw her in Ralph’s. How the first thing I saw when I turned around was her hair.
It was strange seeing her like that, in a place where I was no longer myself, where she was no longer herself. Reality had shifted. And so much time had passed. Over the last year, I’d let myself come to believe I’d gotten over her. Maybe, I’d told myself time and again, there was never even anything to get over.
But there she was. She’d finally come for me.
Sally tilted her head, as if she could feel me notice her. She didn’t turn around to see if I’d seen her, but she didn’t have to. She knew I would. Of course I would. Should I join her in line? Run up from behind and put my arms around her? Or wait for her to come to me?
I got out of the food line and shifted a few steps over to the line for the Ferris wheel, cutting in front of a group of French-speaking students who paid me no mind.
I inched forward, several spots behind Sally. When she reached the ticket booth, she removed her wallet from her purse. But just as she was handing her money to the woman in the booth, a tall man with salt-and-pepper hair came up and plucked it out of her hand. He paid and she kissed his cheek.
She didn’t even have to turn completely around for me to know.
I watched as the man with salt-and-pepper hair opened the door to the enclosed red gondola for the person who wasn’t Sally. I bought a ticket anyway and boarded by myself. I looked up to see if I could see the Sally look-alike again, hovering somewhere above me. I couldn’t. The ride rocked as we left the ground. I leaned out the open window and watched as the world below became quiet and small.
* * *
I saw her again and again. Long after I’d handed out my last copy of Zhivago in Vienna and gone on to the next mission, and the one after that. Our time together had been brief, but that didn’t matter. I’d see her for years to come: hailing a rickshaw in Cairo, her red manicure a flash of color in the dusty street; boarding the last train in Delhi, her matching luggage held by a man twice her age; in a New York bodega, petting a cat who was standing atop a stack of cereal boxes; in a hotel bar in Lisbon, ordering a Tom Collins with extra ice.
And as the years passed, her age always stayed the same, her beauty sealed in amber. Even after I met a nurse in Detroit who opened doors inside me I hadn’t known I’d locked. Even then, I’d still see Sally sipping coffee at a diner counter, or sticking her arm out of a dressing room for another size, or in the balcony at a movie theater watching a picture by herself. And each time, I’d feel that same inner gasp, that exquisite anticipation—that moment the lights go down and the film begins, that moment when, for just a few seconds, the whole world feels on the verge of awakening.