“Very nice.” He paused and then commented, “You know, these aren’t cheap, Adelphia.”
“It is not like I drink the café a hundred times all of the days.”
“But you have money?”
Adelphia eyed his new clothes. “So? And you, you have the money.”
“I have a job. And my friends, they help me.”
“It is no one that helps me. I work for money, all of it.”
Stone was surprised that he’d never asked her this before. “What do you do?”
“I am seamstress for laundry place. I work when I want. They pay me good. And they give me good deal on room,” she said. “And then I can buy the café when I want.”
“It must be very rewarding to have such a skill,” Stone said absently.
They stopped talking, and their gazes idly took in other people in the small park.
Adelphia finally broke the silence. “So your match of chess, you were victor?”
“No. My defeat was based on equal parts lack of concentration and my opponent’s considerable skill.”
“My father, he was very excellent at the chess. He was a, how you say . . .” She hesitated, obviously searching for the right words in English. “My father, he was a, how you say, Wielki Mistrz.”
“A grand champion? No, you mean a grand master. That’s very impressive.”
She glanced at him sharply. “You speak Polish?”
“Just a little.”
“You have been to Poland?”
“A very long time ago,” he said, sipping his coffee and watching the breeze gently move the leaves on the trees overhead. “I take it that’s where you’re from?” he asked curiously. Adelphia had never spoken about her origins before.
“It was in Krakow that I was born, but then my family, they move to Bialystok. I was just a child, so I go too.”
Stone had been to both those cities but had no intention of telling her that. “I really only know Warsaw, and, as I said, that was a long time ago. Probably before you were born.”
“Ha, that is nice thing you say that. Even if it is a lie!” She put her coffee down on the bench and gazed at him. “It is very much younger you look, Oliver.”
“Thanks to you and your wizardry with scissors and a razor.”
“And your friends, do they not think so too?”
“My friends?” he said, glancing at her.
“I have seen them.”
He looked at her again. “Well, they’ve all come to visit me at Lafayette Park.”
“No, I mean at your meetings I have seen them.”
He tried not to look concerned at her stunning words. “So you followed me to my meetings? I hope they weren’t too boring.” What has she seen or heard?
She looked coy and, as though she’d read his thoughts, said, “It might have been things I hear, or it might not.”
“When was that?” he asked.
“So finally it is I have your attention.” She edged closer to him and actually patted his hand. “Do not worry, Oliver, I am not spy. I see things but I do not hear. And the things I see, well, they stay with me always. Always they do.”
“It’s not like we have anything worth overhearing or seeing.”
Stone picked up the switchblade and then palmed the weapon in a very unusual way. He reached over and ripped open his assailant’s collar, exposing the man’s thick neck and throbbing arteries. For an instant it seemed that Stone was going to slice that neck open from ear to ear as the knifepoint edged very near a pulsing vein. There was a look in Oliver Stone’s eyes that virtually no one who had known him over the last thirty-odd years had ever seen. Yet Stone abruptly stopped and gazed up at Adelphia, who stood there staring at him, her chest heaving. At that moment it was not clear which man she feared more.
“Oliver?” she said quietly. “Oliver?”
Stone dropped the knife on the ground, rose and wiped off his pants.
“My God, you are bleeding,” Adelphia cried out. “Bleeding!”
“I’m fine,” he said shakily as he dabbed at his bloody mouth with his sleeve. That was a lie. The blow had hurt him very much. His head was bursting, and he felt sick to his stomach. He picked at something in his mouth and yanked out a tooth the man’s punch had loosened.