They take breakfast together, as usual. He breaks his egg, absently dabs at a spot of jam on the tablecloth, while she looks at him over the pages of the newspaper. "It's coming soon, you know," she remarks, and he gives a strange half-smile.
"And we sit here like we're waiting for it. You and me."
She lays the paper down. "We both need to stop waiting," she says, with an urgency that surprises even her. "We can get out, cross the Channel. My father's family is in England. I've already been writing to them."
He seems not to have heard her. "Do you ever think that perhaps we'd met before?"
Mélodie L'Étang, otherwise Mélodie Williams, met János Kovács after he took up residence in the apartments just down the hall from her. The hotel was nearly empty, and, intrigued at the arrival of a new guest, she decided to introduce herself. "Hello, chéri," she said, as she stepped into the lift beside him; he awkwardly returned the greeting. Within a week, they were talking like old friends. She knows something about archeology and he knows something about astronomy, and the juxtaposition of stars and dust is, in a way, fitting.
A slight breeze stirs in the curtains of her sitting room as the early spring twilight deepens outside. Neither of them has spoken for the last quarter of an hour, but she hums to herself: J'attendrai, le jour et le nuit, j'attendrai toujours. When she looks across the room at him, she sees that all the false brightness has gone out of his face; he's older than she knew he could be, old and alone, no longer trying to conceal it. "János," she murmurs, "Jani, what is it?"
He doesn't turn to her. "You were right," he says. "Everything's coming."