The Marching Season

hair wrapped in a white towel like a sheikh. She lit one of his cigarettes and said, "Does it work?"
    "The transmitter is sending out a signal, but I won't be certain until there's someone in the house."
    "I'm hungry," she said.
    "Order some food from room service."
    "I want to go out."
    "It's better if we stay inside."
    "I've been trapped on boats for ten days. I want to go out."

"Get dressed, and I'll take you out."
    "Close your eyes," she said, but Delaroche stood and turned to face her. He reached out and tugged at the towel around her head. Her hair was no longer an abrasive shade of blond; it was nearly black and shimmering with dampness. Suddenly, it was in sync with the rest of her features—her gray eyes, her luminous white skin, her oval face. He realized that she was a remarkably beautiful woman. Then he became angry; he wished he could hide in a bathroom with a bottle of elixir and emerge an hour later with his old face.
    She seemed to read his thoughts.
    "You have scars," she said, tracing a finger along the bottom of his jawline. "What happened?"
    "If you stay in this business too long a face can become a liability."
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    Her finger had moved from his jawline to his cheekbone, and she was toying with the collagen implants just beneath the skin. "What did you look like before?" she asked.
    Delaroche raised his eyebrows and pondered her question for an instant. He thought, How would anyone describe his own appearance? If he said he had been beautiful once, before Maurice Leroux destroyed his face, she might think he was a liar. He sat down at the desk and removed a piece of hotel stationery and a pencil.
    "Go away for a few minutes," he said.
    She went into the bathroom again, closed the door, and switched on the hair drier. He worked quickly, the pencil scratching over the paper. When he finished, he appraised his own features rather dispassionately, as if they belonged to a creature of his imagination.
    He slipped the self-portrait beneath the bathroom door. The hair drier stopped whining. Rebecca came out, holding De-laroche's old face in her hands. She looked at him, then at the image on the paper. She kissed the portrait and dropped it onto the floor. Then she kissed Delaroche.
    "Who was she, Jean-Paul?"
    "Who?"
    "The woman you were thinking about while you were making love to me."
    "I was thinking about you."
    "Not all the time. I'm not angry, Jean-Paul. It's not as if—"
    She stopped herself before she could finish her thought. Delaroche wondered what she might have said. She lay on her back, her head resting on his abdomen, her dark hair spread across his chest. Street light streamed through the open curtains and fell
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    upon her long body. Her face was flushed and scratched from lovemaking, but the rest of her body was bone white in the lamplight. It was the skin of someone who had rarely seen the sun; Delaroche doubted she had ever set foot outside the British Isles before she had been driven into hiding.
    "Was she beautiful? And don't lie to me anymore."
    "Yes," he said.
    "What was her name?"
    "Her name was Astrid."
    "Astrid what?"
    "Astrid Vogel."
    "I recall a woman named Astrid Vogel who belonged to the Red Army Faction," Rebecca said. "She left Germany and went into hiding after she murdered a German police official."
    "That was my Astrid," Delaroche said, tracing his finger along the edge of Rebecca's breast. "But Astrid didn't kill the German policeman. I killed him. Astrid just paid the price."
    "So you're German?"
    Delaroche shook his head.
    "What are you, then? What's your real name?"
    But he ignored her question. His fingers moved from her breast to the edge of her rib cage. Rebecca's abdomen reacted involuntarily to his touch, drawing in sharply. Delaroche stroked the white skin of her stomach and the tops of her thighs. Finally, she took his hand and placed it between her legs. Her eyes closed. A gust of wind moved the curtains, and her skin prickled with goose bumps. She tried to draw the bedspread over her body but Delaroche pushed it away.
    "There were things in the houseboat in Amsterdam that belonged to a woman," she said softly, eyes closed. "Astrid lived on that boat, didn't she."
    "Yes, she did."
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    "Did you live there with her?"
    "For a while."
    "Did you make love in the bed beneath the skylight?"
    "Rebecca—"
    "It's all right," she said. "You won't hurt my feelings."
    "Yes, we did."
    "What happened to