American Romantic by Ward Just

the refrigerator and the range, ovens side by side, the dishwasher, a toaster, an electric coffeepot. She had never seen a kitchen like it except in advertisements in
Der Spiegel
and
Paris Match.
She peeked inside an oven and was not surprised to find it pristine. She ran her hand over the counter, smooth as glass, similarly spotless. She had heard that Americans made a fetish of cleanliness. The open shelves were filled with canned goods, beans and tomatoes and condensed milk and chicken soup and
lychees au sirop
and English tea and artichoke hearts, enough to feed a family for a week or more. During World War II such a hoard would last a month. More than a month. Sieglinde shook her head and began to laugh.
    What’s funny?
    Your kitchen. There’s so much of it.
    It’s an ordinary American kitchen, Harry said.
    Yes, I suppose it is.
    You don’t like it?
    It’s a splendid kitchen. Do you actually cook in it?
    A wartime kitchen, Harry said with a smile.
    A fine wartime kitchen, she said.
    Harry said, I know I’ve brought up memories for you. Memories you’d rather not be reminded of. I’m sorry about that. I wish I hadn’t done it. I wasn’t thinking. Our past lives are so different.
    And present ones, she said.
    Yes, he agreed.
    I’m not complaining, she said. You’re a darling.
    You too, he said.
    So, she said. Two darlings.
    It’s forgotten then?
    A momentary thing, Sieglinde said.
    Can we make plans for the evening?
    Dinner out, she said. I know the place.
    I don’t want to lose you, Harry said.
    I’m not lost, Sieglinde said.
    She said she had to put in an appearance at the ship, to let them know she had not wandered off or been kidnapped, mugged or murdered, dismembered by communist thugs in a back alley somewhere. The ship’s captain had a vivid imagination, believing that the capital crawled with agents provocateurs, including pirates. And you, she said, don’t you have to go to work? Make your report for the file? They walked up the stairs to his bedroom where their clothes were. She showered for a long time and then he watched her dress, bikini bottoms the size of a handkerchief, a Gernreich bra. A prim plum-colored skirt and a white shirt, espadrilles on her feet, a blue ascot at her throat, aviator glasses with yellow lenses. She was combing her hair and whistling some tune when Harry went to shower and shave, already thinking of his leave, due next month, a two-week leave. He had plenty of money saved. They could take a trip somewhere close by, put in at one of the ancient ports with a grand old hotel that had a swimming pool and tennis courts, a view of the sea, a dining room with twelve-foot-high ceilings, the perfume of flowers, elderly waiters in tuxedos. He wondered if she played tennis. She looked as if she could, rangy of build, graceful of manner. She moved in a shuffle-walk. In one of the ancient-port hotels they could talk about anything in the world except the war—Expressionist painters, trends in architecture, cats versus dogs, the Baltic at sunset, Connecticut in winter, New York on New Year’s Eve, the sort of life she envisioned for herself, city or country, crowded or quiet. What that life was he had no idea, but the finding out would be thrilling. She came with baggage but everyone did. He would fill her in on the routine of the American foreign service, more agreeable than she might think. Much more agreeable abroad in an embassy—unless the embassy was in a West African jungle or one of the Stalinist utopias, and even then there were exotic sights to discover, a new language, a fresh culture well away from the Washington bureaucracy, tedious at all times unless you had rank. Washington itself had charm, surely more charm than glum Hamburg. Georgetown was quaint. Harry realized then that his life had turned on a dime. He lived in the present and had done for two years. Now the present was elastic and stretched as far