the bathing suit a sexy-astringent commie second skin, he started shooting again, the shutter rattling like a submachine gun, ignoring the wary looks of swimmers who got in the line of fire. Playing the camera all the way, Dunja pulled herself out of the pool and sat in one of the chairs—her chair, evidently, because she pulled around her the towel that had been draped over its back. Nathan pulled up another chair and sat close to her.
“So, you’re actually staying here, at this hotel?”
“Part of the Molnár Clinic package,” she said. “It included business-class tickets on Malév. Flying me right from my hometown deep in the wilds of Slovenia. Where are you staying?”
“Holiday Inn. My expense account is limited.”
“Is it nice?”
“Well,” said Nathan, “you can park a bus there. Great if you have a bus.”
Dunja peeled the bathing cap off her head. She let it flop into her lap like a jellyfish and combed her fingers through her black crop. “You really should stay here. Would you like at least to see my room? For your writing? And of course you could take pictures. It’s very … proto-Hungarian.”
“Aren’t you going to try the thermal baths? They’re supposed to be very healing.”
“Oh, I did that when I first got here. I really don’t think they’d be very good for me right now. Besides, Dr. Molnár forbids it. I think those little pellets will come popping out of my breasts like blackheads if I get all steamed up. He’s seeing me again tomorrow. I wouldn’t want to upset him. I won’t even tell him I went swimming.”
DUNJA’S SUITE WAS A DISAPPOINTMENT. It was large and blandly comfortable, with a nice partial view of the historically strategic Gellért Hill and the sinister, sprawling stone Citadel that topped it, but Nathan had been hoping for something more exotic than just bourgeois familiarity. He had, he realized, hoped for the swimming pool, the florid thermal baths, converted into a hotel suite.
But Dunja was not a disappointment. She was wearing a waffle-pattern bathrobe, looking at herself in the mirror over the writing table. The bathrobe was open, and she was holding her breasts, one in each hand, palpating them expertly, clinically, without sensuality. Nathan sat on the bed and took photos of her through the mirror.
“So? My breasts are now officially radioactive. I’m not allowed to hug pregnant women for at least three months. What do you think of that? Journalistically.”
“I don’t know. Can you hug non-pregnant men?” Still firing. The constant clucking of the camera had become part of their repartee, Nathan rolling his firing finger over the shutter release as exclamation, as rimshot, as query.
Dunja turned to him, her bathrobe still fully open, hands still holding breasts. “Nathan, I’m a very sick woman. Does that turn you on?”
Still firing. “Well, I told you, I’m a failed medical student. Now I’m a medical journalist. So, yes, I guess sickness does turn me on in a way.”
She approached him and gently took the camera out of his hands and placed it behind her on the writing table. “What about death? I could be dying. Is that exciting to you?” She took his hands in hers and placed them on her breasts. “They ache a bit, you know. After all, they’ve been penetrated by two hundred and forty tiny titanium pellets. Like asteroids and a cosmic dust shower. Look. Look at all those needle marks. I’m like some weird junkie, crazy for titanium.” She laughed. “Don’t be shy. They feel better with some pressure on them.” He squeezed her breasts tentatively and kissed her.
After a beat, she pulled her mouth away. “I’ve discovered that most men are repulsed by disease, especially when it starts to be visible.” She took up his hands again and placed them on her groin. “You feel those lymph nodes, how big they are? My shape is changing. It’s really starting to become a not-human shape. I had a boyfriend in Ljubljana, you know, for eight years. When he felt those, he told me it creeped him out, his exact words—well, the Slovenian equivalent. Then he noticed these.” She took his hands and placed them around her throat, then pushed them up under her jaw. “You feel those? They’re hard, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” said Nathan. “I noticed them when you were swimming.”
“They spoil my jawline, don’t they? It used to be very strong, very elegant. Now it’s lumpy and I look like an old toad. No, worse, because they’re not even symmetrical. A lopsided old toad. And so my boyfriend left me for a German tourist he was showing around the city. He worked as a guide in the summers. Now he lives with her in Düsseldorf. They go hiking. Marike’s a very healthy woman. He sent me a book of poetry by Heinrich Heine, who was born there. He says his German has gotten quite good, and he hopes I’m getting good medical treatment. That’s thoughtful of him, isn’t it?”
Nathan slid his hands down around her throat and kissed her deeply. Once again, she pulled away, this time laughing. “Maybe you’re not normal. Or is this part of your research? Do you always have sex with your subjects?”
“You’re not my subject. Dr. Molnár is my subject, and I’m not going to have sex with him.”
“Maybe you can ask him again why I have these swollen lymph nodes. He tells me it’s the cancer but that no one really knows what causes the swelling. I think he’s being evasive. I think I have cancer everywhere, not just my breasts. Look at these.” She twisted away from him, shrugged off the bathrobe, and held up her arms. “You see these? Near my armpits? They’re so big, they’re almost like two more breasts.” She dropped her arms and shrugged. “But maybe four tits is nice for you, who knows?”
Dunja turned and strolled over to the bed. “If you make love to me, who will be shooting the photos?” She lay down on the bed languorously, head propped up on one hand.
“There’s always a way, if you really want that. There’s a self-timer on the camera.” Beside the writing table stood a large armoire that held the TV aloft, flanked by miniature fluted wooden Greek columns, presenting the screen as though it were an oracle. Below that was a pair of doors, which Nathan now opened to reveal the scuffed, refrigerated minibar; sitting on it was a wooden tray that held snacks and sundries. Nathan slid out the tray and started rummaging through its chaotically scattered contents. He picked up a black cardboard box with red stripes and turned it over, looking for a label. “It would be tricky to get the best porn angles, though. We’d have to ask the concierge for help. Or maybe see what the doctor is doing right now. He seems to be a connoisseur of nude photography.”
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“I think they have something here called a Pleasure Pak. Has gels and condoms and things.”
Dunja sat up on the bed. “Nathan, forget that, please. I’ve had enough technology shoved into my body.” She spoke softly.
“Really? But aren’t you …”
“I’m not anything. In the last two years I’ve been irradiated from head to toe, inside and out. Nothing inside me has survived. Believe me. And besides, I don’t have much of a future to worry about, so if you have the clap, or even something worse, I don’t much care.”
HERVÉ SAT CROSS-LEGGED on the chaise longue with Naomi’s old MacBook Pro on his lap. He was wearing his white shirt and loosened tie and his Calvins. On the bed, Naomi used her BlackBerry to email a certain Dr. Phan Trinh, Célestine’s personal physician, whose address had just been given
