Page 94

"Yes," I say. "Are you?"

He considers this with the Jan seriousness. "Yes," he says. "Better, actually." A pause. "It helps. To have said it."

I take his hand.

"Good," I say.

We meet Lucia at ten.

She is waiting outside a café in the old town — small, sharp-eyed, the look of someone who has known Jan since before he was the Jan I know. She looks at him first, the way you look at someone who has been yours for a long time, and then she looks at me.

"Patrick," she says. In English. She extends her hand. "I've heard about you."

"Good things, I hope," I say.

"Mostly," she says. Then she looks at me for a moment, properly, the full assessment, and turns to Jan. "You didn't tell me he was even better looking in person than on the channel."

Jan looks at the sky.

"Lucia," Jan says.

She looks at him with the expression of someone who has known him for twenty years and finds this very funny. "Classic Jan."

"He's a pilot," Jan says. As if this resolves something.

"He is also very handsome," Lucia says. "Both things can be true."

I am, I find, enjoying this quite a lot.

The drinks are good. Lucia is easy, in the way of people who have decided not to waste time on performance. She talks to Jan about her work, her life, a mutual friend from school I don't know. She talks to me about Amsterdam. She asks about the channel, she has watched it, and means the questions.

"He's very calm on camera," she says to Jan. "Did you know that about him? That he's very calm."

"He's less calm off camera," Jan says.

"That's not…” I stop. "That's not inaccurate."

Lucia smiles. Not the polite kind.

After drinks we walk.

Brno in October morning — the old streets, the light on the buildings, a city going about its Saturday. A man approaching us looks at Jan twice.

"He went to school with me," Jan says after he passes. "We were never friends."

I walk beside him.

"Does it bother you?" I say.

He thinks about this with the Jan seriousness. "Less than it used to," he says. "Coming back used to feel…smaller. Like putting on something that didn't fit anymore." He glances at me. "Today it feels different."

"Because of yesterday?"

"Because of you," he says. Plainly. "Having you here makes it… the size of it changes. Somehow."

I take his hand.

We walk through the city that made Jan Novak and I hold his hand and the people who went to school here can look as long as they like.