Chapter 1
“Don’t fret, sweetheart! You can always get Leopold back just for the asking.” Egon soothes me.
Tears roll down my cheeks in a choking torrent of grief. Lies, above all the charitable ones, are hard to swallow.
Beda shoots me an irritated glance. Anyone in his right senses would know that having got definitely rid of Leo, a liberating act shockingly long delayed, should be a cause for jubilation, not for despair!
Keeping one hand on the driving wheel Alan puts a pink tablet into my mouth. The one I haven’t needed until now, the pill for a broken heart. I gulp it down with a glass of Fiji water longing for a drink of gin.
Egon tries his best to buoy me up. He feels responsible for his interference in my marriage.
Blinded with misery, numb with the grief of having lost Leo, I totter blindly from the car to my bedroom.
“I’ll be at the “Four Seasons” if need be.” Alan raises his hand to Egon in a brotherly salute.
Tucked in bed, drugged into oblivion, I cascade into darkness. Spinning round and round in a whirlpool of nightmares everything becomes real for me. Deafened by the chiming bells, I follow the newly weds to the altar. The light, tinged with the rainbow glimmer of the cathedral’s stained-glass windows, gives Verena an eerie beauty. How long will this exotic plant survive in this corrosive soil? Prague against New York! Cobblestone against asphalt! Glamour, lost to the banal routine of an everyday life!
Hidden amongst the jubilatory crowd I watch the young couple leaving the Cathedral hailed by the victorious clamour of Beda’s organ. He has every reason to celebrate! One of his competitors is out of game, the other is knocking at the death door and the third one is a man of no importance.
“Here I am, my dear! Will you take me back?” With an enchanting smile Leo slips into my bed. Verena’s newly-wed husband, my lover! And what a lover Leo is! Tearing Verena’s wedding band from his finger I hurl it against the wall claiming him back.
