Freak City (16 page)

Clara tapped me on the shoulder. “And you? How come you know sign language?” she asked, forming her spoken sentence in sign language at the same time so that Leah also knew what we were talking about. Slyly, I looked forward. It looked so romantic, the way Franzi was leaning against Marcel. They had finally found a great love. It must have hurt, the tattoo with his name. Scratching someone’s name into your skin usually hurt. Erasing it, scratching through it, probably didn’t hurt any less.

“No idea.” I looked at Clara. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Leah’s proud profile. “It just kind of happened all by itself.”

The concert hall was sold out to the very last seat, and everyone there was warmed up and ready to party. The noise was intense, but a good quarter of the audience seemed to be deaf. I didn’t understand that. Everywhere I looked, I saw groups of teenagers talking in sign language. We looked for a free spot in the crowd.

“Signmark comes from Finland,” Clara informed me. “He has quite a big fan club in Germany.”

So he was Finnish. Maybe that’s why Leah had picked out this concert. The lights in the auditorium dimmed and the glittering stage lights came on. At the same time, a hard sound filled the room. Three good-looking guys appeared onstage and the crowd cheered them on.

“He’s the one in the middle,” Clara yelled. “Watch out, any minute now it’s going to get really loud!”

She was right. When the music started, my eardrums seemed to implode for a while. The floor below us shook; the bass turned my stomach into a pulsating pit. Two of the three guys started singing, and Signmark rapped to the music in sign language! Incredulous, I looked up at the stage. Leah, Franzi, and Marcel were dancing in time to the music. They could feel the beat and were getting the words performed for them live. The sound was earsplitting.

“Unbelievable!” I looked over at Clara. “Come on, dance!” she urged. She laughed, and finally, I gave in to the music.

I don’t know how the strange argument even came about. But it started right after the concert, in the car. I sat in the old Beetle, tired but happy, and felt the CD I had bought in the pocket of my jacket. Claudio loved rap. He’d definitely like it.

“Do you want Clara’s address?” Leah asked me in sign language. She leaned against me pensively and had rested her head on my shoulder. All night long, I had had to stop myself from touching Leah. Okay, she had given me a couple of clear signals, but I wasn’t entirely sure. Maybe deaf people were just like that. Maybe they got right up close to people when they wanted to be friends and didn’t think anything of it. Didn’t think anything of it when they gently touched someone at every opportunity.

I looked at Leah, confused. “Clara’s address? No, why?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Because you two fit together. At least I think so.”

Clara didn’t catch any of our silent exchange. She was staring out the window, lost in her own thoughts.

“Look, Mika!” Clara said suddenly, and I looked to the left. Leah followed my eyes. She hadn’t heard Clara’s comment but saw that we were talking to each other.

A fan club bus slowly made its way past us. In the back window were photos of Signmark, and two girls hung out the window screaming and waving.

I turned back toward Leah. “Clara is nice. But I’m not interested in her. You got that?”

“But she can hear.”

“Yeah, so?” I had no idea what that comment was all about.

“If I could hear, I’d definitely want to have a boyfriend who could hear, too,” Leah stated with a determined expression on her face. I was having trouble following her hands again. She was just too fast. The darkness in the car didn’t help. “And as a deaf person, of course, I imagine it would be much better to have a deaf boyfriend. That just fits, a hundred percent. Marcel is taken, but fortunately there are lots of other deaf guys out there.”

Oh, great. So that’s what she had meant with that comment on our way to the concert. And I, being an idiot, had thought she meant me.

The truth was, she wasn’t really interested in me. She wanted someone who wasn’t constantly getting lost in the middle of a conversation, who could imagine what it was like to only experience music through the bass, and feel it deep in your diaphragm. Someone who knew how awful it was not to be understood, not to be able to go to college. And to not realize that a police car was right behind you with its siren wailing . . .

Clara tapped Marcel on the shoulder. He looked in the rearview mirror and quickly pulled over. The police car shot past us. The three deaf people had only noticed it when the car was right behind us and the blue light reflected in the windshield.

“But it’s the person that matters,” I said to Leah, feeling tired. Tired as I was, I got two terms confused. “But it’s the clothes that matter,” I mistakenly said. The signs for clothes and person were somewhat similar. But this time I noticed my mistake right away. “It’s the person that matters. It doesn’t matter if someone can hear or is deaf.”

Franzi had turned around and caught that part of the conversation. “True,” she jumped in. “But you hearing people don’t understand our lives. We think it’s great to be deaf. Actually, we find it even better. Even if there were a way to be able to hear, I’d rather be deaf!”

I stared at Franzi. She couldn’t possibly be serious! “What do you think?” I asked Leah. She gave me a scornful look. “Sorry, Franzi is right. You people can spare me your pity. We manage just fine without being able to hear. I’m proud to be deaf. I wouldn’t want to be different even for a minute.”

Marcel had arrived in front of my house. He parked the Beetle in the driveway. Dumbfounded and in disbelief, I looked at the two girls. What was that supposed to mean, it was better to be deaf? Of course it was better to hear, that was obvious! I found the whole conversation incredibly stupid.

“When I have a kid someday, I hope she’s deaf, too!” Leah said, looking at me. Why did she say that? Because she thought I wanted to run off with Marcel’s sister who could hear?

“Super plan,” I said gruffly. I said it aloud and without signing. Leah glared at me angrily. She got out and I slid past her to get out of the car. “You’re nuts!” I said. “You don’t even know what you’re saying!”

I had no idea if she had understood all of that. My lips were moving fast.

For a moment, we stood there and looked at each other angrily. Finally, she turned around and got back in the car. With its exhaust pipe whistling, the rickety car disappeared around a curve.

I roamed through the city like a hungry wolf. What was I looking for? I just didn’t get Leah. One minute she seemed to like me—and the next she treated me as if I were her worst enemy.

Impulsively, I had taken the last streetcar into the city. My parents hadn’t noticed that I was back from the concert, so it was no problem to go somewhere else.

I was driven by a childish defiance. Leah could go jump in a lake! She thought a girl who could hear was a better match for me? Fine. I’d be happy to do her that favor. It was time for me to do the hearing world the honor of paying it a visit again. The bouncer at the club just waved me in. And there was no problem at the bar, either.

“Whiskey and Coke!” The barkeeper looked at me and nodded. Oddly, I seemed to have aged.

The dance floor was filled. They were playing hip-hop, and the floor shook. Sweaty bodies moved like a single, pulsing entity to the beat of the music.

A bright laser beamed shooting stars around the room. “When I was little, I used to think shooting stars sounded like shattering glass,” Leah had told me after the concert. We had stepped outside for a minute. She touched me as if by accident. We were standing close to each other in the parking lot gazing up at the night.

Somewhere a shooting star fell from the sky.

“When I was little, I used to think shooting stars . . .”

My eyes followed the flashes of light in the pulsating room. Down here, Leah could have shooting stars with sound effects. They were so loud it hurt. They were endless, and each one of them awakened a deafening new wish.

I felt alone. And thirsty.

I ordered myself another whiskey and Coke. Someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was Tobias, holding a cigarette in his hand.

“Since when do you smoke Marlboro Lights?” I lifted my glass to his health and drank the whole thing down.

“Since I started living a healthy life.” He took a drag. “Ellen is out with the girls tonight, and I can do what I want. Cool that we ran into each other. Haven’t seen you in a while.”

He scanned the dance floor. “Fantastic chicks, right? Did you see the one with the fake tits? Been flirting with me the whole time. She must be almost twenty-five. How did you get in here, anyway? I had to slip in with someone who knows the bouncer.”

I didn’t answer. The girls who were dancing in front of me moved like a giant wave. I’d bet none of them had ever heard of the Lazarus syndrome. None of them knew that there were only three people left in the world who still made top hats, and not one of them thought that shooting stars made noise. None of them could talk with her hands, and none of them would just come right out and ask me if I were still a virgin. None of them managed to generate the feelings that welled up in me when I thought about Leah.

When had that happened? I had absolutely no idea.

The woman with the overdone boob job shoved her way past us. It looked gross, as if the things were about to explode any second.

Longing for Leah practically consumed me.

“Sandra’s going out with that Daniel dude.” Tobias yawned. “Seems not to be going very well, though, there’s always trouble. They’ve already called it quits twice and fight all the time. But it must be going good in the sack!”

Tobias was a true friend and helper. I set my empty glass down on the bar.

“What are you doing?” Tobias followed me.

“I’m gonna dance.” In the exact center of the room.

I left the club at 5:00
a.m.
with the last stragglers. I was exhausted, and I’m sure I stank like a pig. I had drunk three whiskey and Cokes too many.

On the stairs leading up to the street, I spoke to a girl with short, blue braids who had been dancing near me the whole time. She was wearing a hair band with blinking red hearts.

“If you want to steal the glass you have to stick it under your shirt. Otherwise the bouncer will take it away, guaranteed.”

I had in fact taken a whiskey glass with me. How long had it been in my hand already? At least half an hour. The girl laughed insultingly. The blinking of the hearts was slowing down; the battery would probably run out soon.

“Do you want to go get some breakfast together? There’s a really good diner right around the corner.”

“It depends.” My words were slurred.

Amused, she put her hands on her hips. “On what? Whether or not I pay for you? All right, I’ll do that.”

“Whether you can solve a riddle.” We had left the club. In the east, the sun was just rising. A light rain had started to fall, and the wet street glistened.

The stranger tucked her blue braid behind her ear. “I love riddles. I’m really good at them.”