Freak City (4 page)

“Linzer Torte and a Coke.” My waiter had returned. I wondered how he could find his way around in this blackness.

“Can I pay right away?” Now I was getting suspicious of this game. I wasn’t about to give some total stranger my money in total darkness!

The waiter laughed. “Don’t worry. We’re a hundred percent honest down here. And we have a template to make sure the amount is right. If you like, you can try it yourself, and see if you can do it. The coins and bills each have a different size.”

I pulled my wallet out of my back pocket and opened it. If I dropped it now, I’d have a real problem. Nervously, I fumbled around in the coin pocket. What was that? A euro? Fifty cents? I was hopelessly lost.

“That’ll be three thirty,” my waiter said patiently. I put some coins down on the table randomly. The waiter drew them into the palm of his hand. “Almost right,” he said. “You gave me three seventy.”

“The change is for you,” I said, exhausted. The man’s steps withdrew again.

Uncomfortable, I poked around my cake. It was weird to eat something without seeing it. I tried to picture it in my mind. Was there a layer of whipped cream on it? Tommek had been right: it really was a new experience. A ways behind me to the left I heard a familiar laugh. I put down my fork. Finally, I had picked up Sandra’s trail again!

Quietly, I pushed my chair to the side. I left the Coke on the table, certain I would never find my way back there again. I felt my way through the room to the corner where I thought Sandra and her friends were.

“Haha, very funny!” That was Vanessa. I stood still at what felt like several feet away from the girls’ table. When I was a kid, I had often wanted to be invisible. Now I was and didn’t have the slightest twinge of a bad conscience listening in on my ex-girlfriend.

“Well I definitely need a bit of a break from him!” Sandra declared.

“That sounds like you’re not finished with Mika.” Nadine sounded surprised. “Is he still bothering you, calling all the time?”

I blushed. It was true. In the two weeks since the breakup, I had called Sandra a few times. And a few times I had sent a text during the night, when I woke up and thought about her. But bothering was too harsh!

“He just can’t get over it,” Sandra said with a sigh. She sounded pleased with herself, actually. “I mean, what we had was true love, the real thing. Really strong emotions, a serious relationship . . .”

Steps drew closer and a woman’s voice could be heard. “I’ll bring the drinks.”

Hot chocolate,
I thought. That was Sandra’s favorite.

“Latte macchiato,” Sandra said. “I love them!” The waitress served the drinks and moved away again.

“Where were we?” Nadine sounded eager.

“Sandra needs a break,” Vanessa picked up the conversation.

“In the meantime, maybe I’ll figure out that I really do belong with Mika,” Sandra said softly. “We had some beautiful times together. But maybe I’ll realize that it can’t work out between us in the long run. Mika just doesn’t have enough spunk to be a good partner.”

The blood pounded in my temples. Sandra talked about me as freely as if she were rattling off the most recent pro soccer results.

“Not enough spunk—do you mean in bed or what?” Vanessa asked with a squealing giggle.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sandra slurped on her coffee. “I mean his personality.” Somehow, I almost wished she had meant sexually. “The problem is just that Mika always takes the easiest way. He’s so content with how things are.” Sandra slowly worked herself into a rage. “He would never get involved in anything. He just accepts things the way they come to him. Spending time together means hanging out on the sofa and turning on the TV. Sure, I like to do that sometimes, too, but not
all the time
. The guy hardly has any hobbies, any interests. I do still love him, but if he doesn’t change, and fast, we’ll never get back together again.”

The words coursed through my brain like a floodgate had opened somewhere. The easiest way . . . what was so bad about that? And Sandra was wrong: I was interested in things. Her. I had spent the entire last year doing nothing but getting to know everything there was to know about Sandra. I knew how to make her laugh. I knew what kind of music and what groups she liked best. I was the only one who understood why she had to cry when she watched movies about real-life princesses. I knew where she had spent her summer vacation the year she was eight and that she loved ice cream with hot raspberry sauce on it. I knew her shoe size and her favorite color. I was an expert in all things Sandra. How could she claim that I was a bore who didn’t take interest in anything?

A cell phone rang. Vanessa whistled through her teeth. “It’s probably him,” she said to Sandra excitedly.

“Who? Mika?” Nadine apparently hadn’t gotten it yet.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Sandra answered her phone. Her face was just visible in the weak light the cell phone gave off. She was smiling. Not a smile copied from Pink, but a genuine grin. She had smiled at me like that sometimes when we were just falling in love. That seemed like an eternity ago.

“Hello?” Sandra listened intently. “Oh, Daniel! It’s you. Where did you get my number?” Her voice trembled slightly, and she sounded tipsy. “Listen, I’m in a café with two of my friends. This isn’t such a good time to talk.” She listened again, and then laughed clear as a bell. My stomach cramped together.

“Sure. We’ll talk later tonight.” She hung up. “That was him,” she said, as if she were high. “Isn’t that crazy? He figured out my cell phone number!”

“And who, may I ask, are you two talking about?” Nadine sounded curious. Just then, you could hear the clatter of something falling on the ground. Someone at the table must have knocked over her glass.

“Damn!” That was Nadine.

Vanessa gasped exaggeratedly. “You blew the international blindness test with that move!”

“Very funny.” Nadine sounded annoyed. “So come on, Sandra. Who was that? Won’t somebody please tell me what’s going on?”

“That was Daniel, the guy who’s a DJ at the Waikiki Club. We bumped into each other yesterday at the movies. Now he wants to get together with me tomorrow, some party at the quarry. He asked if we want to spend the night together in a tent afterward.”

Distraught, I leaned my head against the wall. Daniel. So that’s the new guy’s name. Sandra sounded excited.

The empty spot I had left behind had already been filled. Sandra was still thinking about getting back together with me, that was true, but at the same time, she was scouting around on the market of lonely hearts.

New, new, new.

My throat burned.

I thought about the little red tent in Sandra’s grandparents’ yard. I thought about Sandra’s face above me. It had been so beautiful, so different than I had imagined it. Our shared secret, the first time for both of us. In that moment, everything had been just been right.

“Just so I get this straight,” Vanessa said, “didn’t you say it was a pain to sleep with a guy in a tent? Wasn’t there an ant invasion or something like that?”

Nadine corrected her. “Sandra just said it wasn’t a good idea to do it for the first time in a tent. With this Daniel . . . well, that would be more of a repeat experience. Sex in a tent, that’s so romantic!”

So even that Sandra had already discussed with her girlfriends in detail. Our shared night of love had been turned into an anecdote about ants. I turned around and went back the way I had come, carefully feeling my way through the rows of chairs toward the exit.

“Ow!” I had stepped on someone’s foot.

“Sorry,” I muttered. The air suddenly seemed stifling, and I felt like I was in a prison down here. When I reached the exit, I flung it open and fled through the curtain into the open.

I took the stairs three at a time. I was breathing fast, and my heart pounded as if it would burst. “No,” whispered a voice inside me. “No, no, no!”

When I reached the ground floor, I stopped. To the left was the exit, but I turned to the right instead. There was an open doorway to Freak City. Tommek squatted on top of a blinking pinball machine, and two guys with dreadlocks sat at a table playing chess.

In the middle of the room stood a pool table and bent over it was a girl with long, dark curly hair. She looked up at the same moment that I stared over at her in disbelief. Her eyes were remarkably big and green, almost exotic. When she noticed the Hello Kitty autograph book in my hand, she broke into a wide smile. I grinned back bashfully.

At the site of my greatest defeat, I had found the mystery girl.

Before I even realized what I was doing, I walked straight over to the girl. Apparently, I had lost my mind down there in that dark basement. Never in my life had I just started a conversation with a complete stranger. In that respect, I had always been more of the shy type.

She was still smiling. “Hi,” I said. “I’m Mika.”

She nodded and looked at me teasingly. The hint of a smile played around her eyes. She was pale but in an attractive way. With her dark curls, she almost looked like the stuffed Cinderella doll Iris had gotten for Christmas. But she wasn’t wearing any makeup and there was something untamed about her.

She reminded me of Ronja Robbersdaughter. My mom had read that book to me a long time ago. The girl who lived in the woods, led a band of thieves, and talked to pixies. “Ronja,” I murmured. I had thought out loud.

But she didn’t respond to that embarrassment in the slightest, just looked at me in a challenging way. As if she were waiting for something. An apology, maybe?

She had probably turned around briefly three days ago when Claudio, Tobias, and I had been chasing after her. Maybe she had memorized my face and wanted an explanation from me now. It had been stupid of me just to waltz in here.

She handed me the pool cue. I had only played pool once in my life. Bashfully, I took the stick, aimed, and missed.

The curly-haired girl looked focused. She still hadn’t said a word. Maybe that was her way of punishing me for the chase. She took the cue from me again, aimed, and sank the blue ball in a pocket.

“Cool!” Tommek jumped down from his pinball machine and came over to us. He gave her an enthusiastic thumbs-up of appreciation and beamed at the girl. He must’ve liked her, too. Maybe they even knew each other well already.

She continued to maintain her dogged silence. I wished she would say something. Anything.

There were footsteps near the entrance. A woman wearing a leather jacket and tight jeans sailed in. In her hand, she held a red motorcycle helmet that had a sticker of a dying soldier. “War is kind of dumb,” stood under it. I smiled.

“Hi, people!” She waved at Tommek and tossed her helmet onto a table. Then she went behind the counter, as if the place belonged to her, took some seltzer water from the shelf, and drank it right from the bottle.

“Sweet, dear, hardworking Tommek!” She came over to the pool table and poked him in the side. “You still owe me the registration lists. Have they reappeared somewhere in your chaos? I can see you’ve been unbelievably busy here again.”

Tommek blushed. “I think the lists are in the filing basket in the office,” he murmured without conviction. Awkwardly, he stuffed his hands into his pants pockets. The woman rolled her eyes. Her gaze wandered further, and she looked at me with curiosity.

“And you’re a friend of Leah’s?” she asked, winking at the girl.

Leah. So that was her name. A name that consisted of just four letters. Now Tommek looked over at Leah, too.

I had no idea how I should reply to that. “I, uh . . . ,” I mumbled uncertainly and lowered my eyes.

And then something strange happened. The woman raised her hands and formed a few shapes with them in quick succession. It all happened so fast that I didn’t understand what was going on. Her fingers practically flew through the air. She briefly gestured toward me but continued to look at Leah. I watched the two women with fascination. Now it was Leah’s turn. Her hands executed the same strange moves as her conversation partner. She looked at me snidely out of the corner of her eye and made a face. I had no idea what she was saying.

Sign language! Of course, I knew what that was. I had seen it on a talk show on television. But live and right next to me?

“Is she . . .” I started to stutter and looked helplessly at Tommek. “Is she deaf-mute?”

Leah put her hands on her hips and looked at me challengingly. She stamped her foot, and her eyes flashed. Then she slowly made a gesture. She touched her ear with an index finger and then brought both hands together in front of her, palms facing downward. She spoke without making a sound, but so slowly that I understood what she said.

And indeed, Tommek translated. “She isn’t deaf-mute, she just can’t hear. And she can read lips a little bit, as you can see. By the way, almost no deaf people are mute; they just don’t feel like talking.”

“Why?” Confused, I looked at Tommek.

“Negative experiences and all that.” Tommek shrugged his shoulders. “With lots of deaf people it sounds pretty strange when they talk. Kind of monotone. People often don’t understand them or think they’re stupid. Who would want that?”

And suddenly I got it. The girl wasn’t as hard nosed as I had thought she was on the street; she just hadn’t heard my friends and me! She wasn’t aware of any of those things we had called after her. And the truck had just been a silent shadow for her. All at once, everything made sense.

Leah’s face still had a closed expression. But then she smiled again. Her hands flew through the air.

“She’s asking if you were in the Dark Café,” said the woman next to me. Taken a little by surprise, I nodded. Leah’s hands were still forming their astonishing gestures.

“Did you like it?” That was the woman again. Leah had asked her to translate.

“It was strange down there,” I said. I looked at the woman. “Has Leah been to the Dark Café?”

Leah made a face and her hands made a dismissive gesture. The woman translated for her. “She says she almost freaked out down there. To be deaf
and
blind is just too much.”