He turned away from her again, convinced they would spend hours pretending to sleep, but after a while he drifted off, no longer aware of her. It was the army’s one gift: you learned to sleep anywhere. When the rain started he was back at the cabin, listening to the steady drip on the roof, safe in his room. It got louder and he thought about the gutters, his father cleaning out the clumps of leaves so the water would run down the drainpipe at the corner, making a puddle near the porch.
A rattling noise woke him, and, disoriented, he was startled by the figure at the open window until he realized it was her. She was looking out, smoking, her head in profile against the dim light.
“What’s the matter?”
She jumped, as if he had tapped her on the shoulder. “Nothing,” she said quietly. “I couldn’t sleep, that’s all.”
“Would it be better if we had separate rooms?”
“It’s not that. Go back to sleep,” she said, her voice gentle again.
“You all right?”
“Just nerves. Middle-of-the-night stuff. That ever happen to you?”
He nodded in the dark. “What is it?”
“There’s no ‘it’.” It’s just that feeling you get when you know you’re going to make a mess of things. I do that a lot-make a mess of things.“ The rain blew in and she stepped back, brushing the front of her nightgown. ”And now I’m wet. My mother always said I didn’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain.“
“Do you want to go back?”
“Not now.” She stopped, talking into the dark as if she could see him. “That’s the thing about making a mess-you can’t help it, even when you see it coming.”
“What are you worried about?”
“You, I guess. I mean, I got you into this. And now you’re so-I don’t know, up for it.” She paused. “You never know how things will turn out.”
He sighed. “Then let me worry about it. I want to go, Molly. You just-came along for the ride, okay? Come on, get into bed. It’s late.”
She stood still for a minute, then started lifting the nightgown over her head. “I have to take this off. It’s wet.” He heard the rustle of cloth, then saw the pale white of her skin, indistinct in the dark. She slipped naked into bed, curling up on her side in a protective ball. “Nick?” she said. “Don’t expect too much, okay?”
“I know.”
“I mean, things never go the way you expect.”
“I know,” he said, but lightly this time, edging further away. “Look at us.”
The next day was bright and clear and she began to enjoy herself, as if the rain had washed away the nighttime jitters with the clouds. They drove past steep meadows dotted with cows and wide farmhouses with window boxes, a calendar landscape without a smudge. The road swung through the mountains in perfectly engineered switchbacks and tunnels, encouraging speed, and they seemed to fly through the high, thin air, not even pausing at the rest stops, where tourists photographed each other against patches of glacier and the miles of valley just over the rail. It all looked, in fact, the way Nick had imagined it, Heidi meadows and bright wildflowers, but more painted than lived in, and by midmorning, feeling guilty because it was beautiful, he began to be bored. He knew he was meant to admire it-think of America, raging in its streets-but after a while all he wanted to do was turn the radio on, to disturb the peace. “What kind of people stay neutral?” Molly said, somehow reading his mind. She was in jeans, down in the seat with her feet up, content to let him drive. “When you’re traveling, you never meet anyone who says he’s Swiss. Germans, yes, everywhere you go, but never Swiss. Imagine liking a place so much you never go anywhere.” She pulled out a cigarette, lighting it away from the draft at the window. “It must be nice, not taking sides.”
“Everybody takes sides.”
She looked at him for a second, then waved her hand toward the landscape. “They didn’t. They just let everybody go to hell. And they’re doing okay.”
“Up here in cloud-cuckoo-land. You wouldn’t last a day.”
“No? Maybe not. Anyway, it’s probably just the air. Not enough oxygen to decide anything one way or the other.”
“How much more of this?” he said, nodding toward the road.
“Miles. Austria’s pretty much the same. This part, anyway. You can hardly tell the difference.” She took a long pull on the cigarette, blowing the smoke out in a steady stream, suddenly moody. “Of course, they weren’t neutral there. They were Nazis.”
“So much for your theory,” he said. “About the air.”
“Maybe they got talked into it,” she said quietly, still looking ahead.
“That’s not the way I heard it.”
She glanced at him, surprised, as if he’d interrupted another thought, then shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe the air’s heavier over there.”
