"I'll buy a whole house in Zurich!" Jack said.
"You want everything to happen too fast," she reminded him.
He didn't know when or if she slept. When Jack woke up, Heather was staring at him--her large brown eyes close to Jack's, her small nose almost touching his face. "You have four gray hairs," she told him.
"Let me see if you have any," he said, but Heather's hair was golden to its roots. "No, not yet, you don't."
"It's because I'm pretty happy, all things considered," she said. "Look at me. I just slept with a movie star, and it was no big deal--'no biggie,' as Billy Rainbow would say."
"It was a big deal to me," Jack told her.
Heather gave him a hug. "Well, actually, it was a big deal to me, too--a very big deal."
While Jack was in the shower, Heather took his plane tickets down to the concierge's desk in the lobby; she booked his flight to Zurich, with a connection out of Amsterdam, and his return trip to L.A. from Zurich.
She also arranged for his first meeting, later that afternoon, with a team of doctors at the Sanatorium Kilchberg; there were five doctors and one professor, in all. Heather gave Jack a brochure of the buildings and grounds of the clinic, which overlooked Lake Zurich. Kilchberg was on the western shore of the lake--in Zurich, they called it the left shore--about fifteen minutes by car from the center of the city.
So Jack was leaving for Switzerland as soon as they finished their breakfast; Heather had reserved a room for him at the Hotel zum Storchen in Zurich.
"You might like the Baur au Lac better," she told him, "but the Storchen is nice, and it's on the river."
"I'm sure it will be fine," he said.
"The doctors are excellent--I think you'll like them," Heather said. She had stopped looking at him. They were in the breakfast cafe at the Balmoral--a few tired tourists, families with small children. Jack could tell that Heather was nervous again, as they both had been when they'd first met. Jack tried to hold her hand, but she wouldn't let him.
"People will think we're sleeping together--I mean really sleeping together," she told him. "Being with you in public takes a little getting used to, you know."
"You'll get used to it," he said.
"Just don't let anything happen to you--don't do anything stupid," Heather blurted out.
"Can you read lips?" Jack asked her.
"Jack, please don't do anything stupid," Heather said. She looked cross, in no mood to play games.
Jack moved his lips without making a sound, forming the words as slowly and clearly as he could. "I have a sister, and I love her," he told her, without actually saying it out loud.
"You want everything to happen too fast," Heather said again, but Jack could tell that she'd understood him. "We should go to the airport now," she announced, looking at her watch.
In the taxi, she seemed distracted--lost in thought. She was once again not looking at him when she said: "When you've seen him, I mean after you've spent a little time together, please call me."
"Of course," Jack said.
"All you have to say is, 'I love him.' You don't have to say anything more, but don't you dare say anything less," his sister said. Her fingers were playing Boellmann's Toccata, or something equally strident, on her tensed thighs.
"You can relax about me, Heather," he told her.
"Can you read lips?" she asked, still not looking at him.
"All actors can read lips," Jack said. But Heather just stared out the window, not saying anything--her lips as tightly closed as when she'd given him his first kiss as a brother.
It was still early in the morning when they got to the airport. Jack hadn't expected Heather to come to the airport with him, much less accompany him inside; now she led him to the check-in counter. Obviously, it was a trip she was familiar with.
"I hope you like Switzerland," Heather said, scuffing her feet.
She was wearing blue jeans and a darker-colored T-shirt than she'd worn the day before; with the backpack and her cropped hair, she looked more like a university student than a junior lecturer. If you didn't notice her constantly moving fingers, you could discern nothing musical about her. She was simply a small, pretty girl--made more serious-looking by her glasses and the determined way in which she walked.
Near the metal-detection equipment, where a security guard had a look at Jack's passport and examined his carry-on bag, there was a Plexiglas barrier that kept Heather from accompanying her brother to his gate. Jack wanted to kiss her, but she kept her face turned away from him.