Fleeting of course. Those sensations of clarity and arrival. Despite her physical generosity, Nicky was in her own way as unattainable as Emily: He felt, in her spattered apartment, like a much cherished witness to her life, even a key supporting character, while again suspecting that his own real life was locked up at the top of Buda hill, in Emily’s bungalow. Infuriating: all this time wasted in unquenchable unrequital. He stared at his reflection in the bar’s long mirror. This was too much, the worst sort of foolishness, and not even confined to romance: His evenings with Nicky imagining Emily, meetings with Imre longing for Scott’s unsolicited forgiveness, nights with Nadja wishing her younger, and here now yet one more drink pretending Scott might someday develop into some other brother entirely. This must end.