The busker lay on the wooden floor, staring at the ceiling and talking to the girl. They hadn't skipped a day to call one another since she had gotten a telephone, and he could tell that she always made sure to be alone before calling him. Occasionally, Ivanka would be with her, but most of the time he would hear nothing but the sound of bedsprings creaking.
After two weeks, the girl had grown very serious, asked if she could tell him a secret, and just as she was about to say something he sensed would change the courses of both of their lives, she wavered and instead settled on "I'm hungry." He had pretended to find it incredibly funny, and it became something of a joke between them after that.
One Sunday—rainy in London and snowy in Dublin—in late January, he was curled around the radiator, certain that the girl was as well, and trying to find a way to go out busking without getting wet. They had been talking and laughing together for nearly an hour when suddenly she went so silent he could hear Ivanka whining to be released from her nap early.
"I can tell you secret?" she whispered, the 's' making an unpleasant scratching noise.
"Of course ye can."
She pulled in a slow breath, and for a moment he feared she would change her mind again. But then she spat out "I-…I t'ink about London every day," as if it were a curse word, and with the strain of someone close to tears. He didn't know what to say to her that could fix whatever she was feeling. And which of two evils were he to choose? Coerce her into coming to London, convince her to leave her husband for him, or be a good friend and make her feel better? When he didn't answer her, she added "What do I do?"
He hesitated for only a moment before finally choosing neither. "Yer…yer husband. He is treating ye okay, isn't he?"
As she opened her mouth to reply, she instead seemed to freeze. "One minute," she said quickly, and put the phone on the nearest surface. He heard someone else come in, a voice he didn't recognize.
"You were on telephone," said the man who could only be her husband Miklos. It was not a question.
"Ano." Apparently that meant "yes".
"It was your Irishman." Her Irishman? Exactly how well-known was he in that house?
"A-…ano."
The husband seemed to contemplate this for a while. Then: "You will not speak to him again."
Suddenly the girl was shouting, screaming in Czech, stomping her feet and slamming a fist down onto the radiator and howling when it burnt her hand. Her husband shouted right back. The busker didn't know he had started shouting into the phone for them to stop until his voice broke, and on the other end there was a sudden loud 'bang' and then silence.
"Milueś ho?" asked the husband in a low voice. He could hear the girl weeping, but at the question she went eerily silent. Of course she remembered that day by the seaside, when he had asked her the exact same question, only this time she was being asked if it was him she loved, and not her husband.
"What?!"
"You hear me. Milueś ho?"
He could still see her in his mind's eye from that day. How he has asked her that question and she had turned to him, eyes alight, lips curved into a smile, and had said—
"A-ano! Ano! YES!"
Then he knew what "Miluĵu tebe" meant.