Then we just sit there for at least five minutes, not looking at each other.
Felix speaks first.
“I think you’re scared,” he says, his fingers gripping the edge of the table.
“What about you? Are you scared?”
“No way.”
“Then take off your clothes.”
He turns slowly to me. He couldn’t get any brighter red. You could light a match on his forehead.
“You first,” he says.
“As if. It was your idea.”
He looks at me. His face is tense. Then he strips off his T-shirt and throws it on the floor.
“Your turn,” he says, wrapping his arms around himself like he’s cold. There’s a long white line running down the center of his chest. It stretches to below his breastbone. His arms can’t cover it.
“What’s that?” I ask, pointing. “Is it a scar?”
“It’s nothing. It’s your turn. I’ve already taken off half my clothes.”
“It doesn’t count the same,” I say, buying time.
“Why not? I don’t know why people get so worked up about nakedness. Every woman has all the same parts as other women. Every man has all the same parts as other men.”
I take a deep breath and add my sweater to his T-shirt on the floor.
“That, too,” he says, pointing with a nod of his chin.
“Oh, that which we dare not name,” I say.
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s Goethe,” I lie and throw my bra in his face. He grins as he catches it.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” I say coldly, restraining myself from wrapping my arms around myself like him.
“I guess not all women look the same after all,” he says.
I stretch out my arms, still sitting on the chair. He kneels in front of me so I can put my hands on his shoulders. His fingers carefully touch my ribs. His face is too close. I shut my eyes and manage to kiss him on the mouth. Probably because he leans in toward me.
Then I make two surprising discoveries. First, the hair the sunlight is on—that is, on the back of his head—is soft and very warm. Second, he has firm, dry lips that feel nice.
I lean back and look into his wide open eyes.
“Stop staring at me,” I say, pulling him closer between my knees.
Later, we’re lying next to each other between two comforters and at least five pillows. The bed is really just a wide mattress sitting on the floor, I think. I listen as a buzzing mosquito keeps desperately slamming itself against the windowpane.
Felix gulps. “So?” he asks, after he stops coughing.
“So what?”
“So what was it like for you?”
“Sticky,” I say. “And you?”
“Intense,” he says, relaxed. He adds with pride: “I didn’t grunt at all.”
“I noticed.”
“But I almost exploded as a result.”
“Fortunately only almost.”
“No, actually I did.”
I have to laugh.
“Did it hurt?” Felix asks.
“Is it supposed to? No, it didn’t.”
“Me either,” he says.
The mosquito stops buzzing. I savor the silence. The only problem is that Felix is taken over by a sudden spell of talkativeness. He turns onto his side and snuggles up to me.
“If it wasn’t that great for you,” he says in my ear, “it’s just because you’re inexperienced and need to practice more.”
“What?” I shout. “You’re the one who needs to practice.”
“Okay,” he says quickly, “let’s practice some more.”
“Not with me.”
“Then with who?”
“Try Paz.”
He pulls himself a few inches away from me. “You’re really mean,” he says, hurt.
“I know. And you’re really chatty. I thought men fell asleep right afterwards?”
Felix curls up. “Not me,” he says. “I don’t feel like sleeping. Not at all.”
“Then give me my clothes. They’re over there on the floor. With yours.”
“Why me? Why don’t you get them yourself?”
“Because you are the man here.”
This seems to make him brighten. “You can’t look,” he says sternly. I pull the covers over my face.
“Where is your mother anyway?” I ask from under the covers.
“Here,” Felix says. “Hey, you’re not supposed to look!”
“Yeah, but when you say ‘here’ what do you expect?” I say.
“I meant there.”
I look where he’s pointing. The TV that’s been going the whole time. A man and a woman are anchoring a news broadcast.
“What do you mean, there?” I ask.
“The woman on TV—that’s my mother.”
“No way,” I say. To say I’m surprised is an understatement.
“Why not? That’s her.”
Just then their names appear in subtitles beneath their faces. Johann Keller and Martina Trebur.
“Amazing,” I say. “What’s she doing on the tube?”
“That’s her job. You can see that. In Berlin.”
“Are your parents split up?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Why did you stay with your father?”
“Why wouldn’t I? I didn’t want to move to Berlin. And I don’t like her new boyfriend. I like it here. I have everything I need right here.” He throws me my sweater, pants, and socks one after the other. He turns off the TV.
“Should we go out somewhere together?” says Volker that evening.
“Where,” says Felix suspiciously.
“I was thinking we could go someplace for dinner. Maybe that Italian place you liked recently, Felix. No reason always to stay home. Or we could go to the movies. What do you think, Sascha?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Whatever.”
“You say that about everything. What a couple of drips you both are. I was different at your age.”
“What were you like?” asks Felix and closes his eyes, relaxed.
“I definitely didn’t waste my weekends sitting around at home.”
“Home,” says Felix, “is the best place.”
“I should take away your computer.”
“Over my dead body.”
“If you want to go out, I’ll go with you,” I say. “To the Italian place, to the movies, or both.”
“Well, if you two are going, I’ll go,” says Felix. “I’m home alone all the time.”
“My point exactly,” Volker says.
We get into the silver Audi and drive to a neighboring town where there’s a little cinema. Felix and I sit in the back seat because we can’t agree on who should sit up front next to Volker. My gaze jumps back and forth between the back of Volker’s gray head of hair and the view out the window. Felix looks at me. I don’t look in his direction because whenever I do he looks away sheepishly. So sheepishly that it’s as if this afternoon never happened. As if we just met.
I find it funny.
Before we go to the movies, we sit at a dark wooden table at the little pizzeria. Volker orders wine. “I’ll have the same,” says Felix, and so do I. We trade toppings from our pizzas. I give Felix the cheese from mine; I take his mushrooms and hot peppers. We laugh a lot.
“Give me that,” says Felix, reaching out with his fork.
“Hands off my plate,” says Volker. “This is for me and me alone.” He observes us with a sympathetic and somewhat wistful gaze. I feel suddenly sad. Felix tells a joke and I forget to laugh.
“What’s showing?” I ask.
“At the cinema? ‘Brokeback Mountain.’ About gay cowboys. They finally got a copy of it here,” says Volker. “Everybody else seems to have seen it twice already.”
“There’s no point to going to the movies,” Felix says. “Not anymore. Cinemas are dying out. The movie will be out on DVD soon anyway.”
“But I want to see it on the big screen,” Volker says. “You’re just not interested in the film because there aren’t any girls in it.”
“None at all?” asks Felix, appalled.
I sit between the two of them at the movie.
It’s an old-fashioned cinema, everything covered in plush, dark-red velvet. Volker has put a huge bucket of popcorn on my lap. The place is full. My elbow rubs up against Volker and he doesn’t pull his arm away. I break out in a sweat.
Felix keeps reaching into the bucket of popcorn.
“Just take it,” I whisper.
“I don’t want it,” he whispers back. Then he forgets to take his hand out of the bucket and leaves it on top of mine. It’s warm, moist, and covered with popcorn crumbs.
I carefully pull my hand away.
Felix pulls his out of the bucket.
Volker has in the meantime moved his arm. His eyes are fixed on the screen. I look at him in profile for a long time. Either he doesn’t want to notice or he really doesn’t notice.
I shake Felix’s hand off my knee in annoyance and shake the bucket of popcorn off my lap in the process.
After half an hour I forget about everything else because the movie gets interesting.
Shortly before the end of the film, a woman in the row behind us starts to cry—so loudly that I’m distracted and turn around to look at her. Right then Volker and I exchange a glance. His lips open. He mouths a word. “Sad,” I think he says, and I shrug my shoulders questioningly. He points at the seat next to me with his eyes.
I turn around and look at Felix. His face is all wet.
Volker’s lips move again. “Console him,” I hear.
“I don’t want to,” I whisper.
Felix looks over at us suspiciously and wipes his face with his hand.
Afterwards Volker waits patiently as we watch all the credits. We walk silently to the car. Felix’s eyes are red. I know he’s embarrassed about crying.
“What did you think?” Volker asks. There’s no answer for a while.
“Good,” I say finally, because I don’t want to be rude. But I don’t feel like talking about it. “It was pretty decent.”
“What enjoyable company,” Volker mumbles. “What lively conversation. Next time I’ll take somebody from the nursing home. They couldn’t be less lively than you two.”
We drive home in silence.
I’m happy when I flop down on the white bed in the guestroom. It no longer smells so unfamiliar. It occurs to me that I haven’t called home yet. They haven’t called me either. I consider sending a message to Maria. One of those voice messages, where you type in a text message and a computer reads it aloud at the other end. Preferably something in Russian—it sounds particularly strange when the speech synthesis program tries to pronounce things written in a foreign language.
I try to think of something funny to write. But then my door opens slowly and quietly and suddenly Felix is standing next to my bed in a T-shirt and boxers.
“You?” I say in an unfriendly tone. “There’s no way I’m going for it twice a day.”
“I didn’t come for that,” Felix says quickly. “You said your feet get cold. Volker always turns the heat down overnight. He’s always too warm.”
“When did I say that?” I say, realizing in the same instant that my feet are indeed cold.
Felix sits down nervously on the edge of the bed. He has a questioning look on his face.
“Suit yourself,” I say, moving sideways to make room for him to lie down next to me.
The bed is much narrower than his. The tips of our noses touch. I can feel his fresh breath. It smells like toothpaste but also, oddly enough, like chocolate. It’s as if he has just eaten a chocolate-covered mint. In the dark his pupils are so dilated that it looks like he has black eyes.
I throw the covers over him and roll over so I’m not facing him.
He shifts around a little and then snuggles up to me. I’m warm immediately.
He wraps his arms around me and clasps his hands in my lap. I unclasp them and hold them so they don’t start to wander around.
“They’re good right there,” I say.
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“And what about here?”
“Not there.”
Felix sighs in my ear.
“Do you want to sleep?” he asks.
“Yes.”
He sighs again.
I lie there awake for a long time. Felix’s breath stirs the back of my hair at regular intervals. I can feel the hair move back and forth.
I think about the cowboys in the movie and can’t fall asleep.
“Felix,” I say quietly, “do you want to hear a story?”
He jolts awake. I can hear him blinking.
“Don’t know,” he says. “Depends.”
“It doesn’t have a happy ending,” I say.
Felix is silent, breathing.
“There was once a woman,” I say. “A pretty woman, who was smart in her own way. But in other ways she was stupid. She couldn’t protect herself. At some point she fell under a spell and was struck by a sort of mental blindness. She got married to a man and had two kids with him. She already had an older daughter from a previous relationship.”
Felix holds my feet between his. It feels good.