Inseparable

by Heldt,Dora

  Christine rested her chin on her hands. “I don’t really know. Richard wanted to come yesterday evening, but he canceled when I was just about to get the food for dinner because his wife was in Bremen out of the blue. I was so angry I thought I’d explode if I didn’t do something. So I phoned Sven. At first it was just plain revenge, but then I realized how silly that was while I was waiting for him in the coffee shop. I could see him in his office from there, and there was something I really liked about that. About him, I mean. And then we went for dinner, and it was really nice. I drank a lot of wine and suddenly this image of Richard and his wife in a hotel bar came into my mind. It was like the devil got me. Or my hormones are all over the place, who knows. Anyway, we ended up at Sven’s and I kissed him. The rest just happened.”

  Dorothea was listening, magnetized. “And? How was it?”

  Christine looked at her thoughtfully. “Wonderful…he surprised me…It was really wonderful, in fact. So wonderful that I feel guilty.”

  “About Richard?”

  “That’s the funny thing, no, not about Richard. I think Sven’s really falling for me, and I feel as though I just used him.”

  “Well you did. I mean, that’s how it sounds at least.”

  Christine nodded. “To start with, yes. But then something changed. When I first met him, on Sylt, I already thought that I would really like him if Richard weren’t in the picture. Now I’m not sure. And it seems I was talking in my sleep. Sven asked me who Richard is.”

  Dorothea was horrified. “Oh, shit. What did you say?”

  Christine looked at her sadly. “I told him that I would tell him when we had more time to talk, that I had to go. He gave me a funny look; he seemed so hurt.”

  “Oh, great.” Dorothea rolled her eyes up to the ceiling. “You finally have the opportunity to get out of this shitty situation with Richard and you throw it away.”

  “It wasn’t a shitty situation! And what was I supposed to say?”

  “Ha, interesting that you’re using the past tense. Honey, you could have said anything, that Richard was your first hamster when you were a kid, whatever you wanted. But not the truth.”

  Christine looked at the clock and stood up. “Everything is so confusing. Anyway, I have to go to work soon, I don’t want to, but I have to. Stay and have another coffee.”

  Dorothea shook her head. “No, thank you, I have to go, too.” She stood up and gave Christine a hug. “Chin up, it’ll all work itself out. At least you’ve talked about it. See you later, have a good day.”

  Christine watched Dorothea go until the door swung shut behind her. Then her glance fell on the roses and candles that were still on the table. She felt torn, and her emotions were riding high. She just didn’t know for whom anymore.

  Questionnaire

  Name, age, and place of residence?

  Ruth, 34, Hamburg

  When and where did you meet Christine?

  Four years ago at the publishing house’s Christmas party. We were at the same table and ending up making a bet with each other.

  What was your best experience together?

  Paying my debt after I lost the bet. I had to make roulades, managed to roll up ten of them, and the kitchen looked like a bomb had gone off. But we had a great laugh and a lovely meal together.

  What made your friendship stand out? And what sets Christine apart as a friend?

  The knowledge that women can work well together. That you can separate your work and private life without making any sacrifices. And that not all women are the same.

  What’s your motto in life?

  I can achieve anything, as long as I want it enough.

  A friend is…?

  Someone you should look out for.

  What was your first reaction to this invitation?

  This question doesn’t apply to me because I was part of the organizing committee. And it was my idea.

  Hamburg

  Ruth shoved the completed questionnaire into an envelope and put a stamp above Ines’s address. She hadn’t taken too much time over it; she had wanted to get it over with because the questions unleashed some strange thoughts for her. By contrast, she had spent three evenings now working on her welcome speech. She wanted it to be good. And it would be; Ruth was sure of that.

  When she had originally written the questionnaire she had seen herself as a friend. On question four she had thought back to lots of funny stories about times she had shared with her friends. Or at least, in her memory they were funny.

  She had thought question five was an easy one to answer back then, too. But sitting in front of it just now, it had made her brain hurt. It was relatively easy to answer the question, at least when it came to her relationship with Christine. They were coworkers, which sounded a little inadequate, but true. Presumably Christine would see it like that, too.

  Ruth thought back to the conversation on the banks of the Alster in the spring. The conversation about friendships, when Christine had become more and more defensive. Ruth had been caught up in wedding fever back then. Hanna, her best friend, was getting married a few weeks later. Ruth and Karsten had arranged no end of surprises. They had filled balloons with helium and tied a note to each one: “Hanna and Lars are getting married, please send best wishes to the following address…” Fifty balloons had flown off into the sky. Ruth had put together a wedding book for the newlyweds and had made a speech: the party was a success.

  A few weeks ago Ruth had dropped by to see Hanna. As she rang the bell, Lars had opened the door: his wife was at the gynecologist but would be back soon. Hanna was seven months pregnant and had put on twenty pounds so far. She came back an hour later to find Lars sitting in the kitchen with Ruth: he had opened a bottle of red wine and was just telling a funny story about his father-in-law. Ruth, dressed in a short skirt and close-fitting pullover, had roared with laughter and stood up to hug Hanna.

  But her friend had kept her distance, her arms stiff and a stern expression on her face.

  “Oh, Ruth, it’s good you stopped by; I wanted to show you something. Can you come with me?”

  Ruth followed her friend into the nursery, where Hanna turned around to her and said the words that had been ringing in her ears ever since:

  “Listen up. I don’t know exactly why your and Karsten’s relationship failed, but I don’t want you hanging out with my husband while I’m not here. You were flirting with him at the wedding, too; don’t think I didn’t notice, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want any stress. Now that we’re pregnant we have better things to do than mollycoddle single women. Is that understood?”

  Ruth stared at her best friend. She had no idea what the world was coming to. She had known Lars for years, and Hanna was her closest friend. Her attempts to explain that just bounced off of Hanna, who looked at her with an icy expression.

  “I don’t care how long you’ve known Lars. He’s my husband.”

  When Ruth got back home, she burst into tears of anger and confusion.

  Cutting up the strip of four passport photos that she and Hanna had taken in the booth at Cologne train station for two Deutschmarks fifteen years ago, her thoughts turned to Christine.

  Hanna hadn’t been in touch since then, and Ruth had tried her best to stop thinking about it. And now she had to fill in this questionnaire, and every question made her think of Hanna. How stupid was she not to have noticed how immature Hanna was? As if Lars were her type, with his funny beard and belly.

  Ruth stood up to look for her cigarettes. They always used to be in the cabinet in the kitchen. At the kitchen door, Ruth stopped abruptly. She realized that the cabinet was in Karsten’s kitchen now, not hers. She went into her study and pulled open the drawers in her new desk, finding them in the fourth. See, she was getting by; what did it matter if things changed?

  She fell back into a chair, lit her cigarette, and thought about her old life. Since she had met Markus, everything had been turned upside down. She had a new apartmen
t in a different part of town, her best friend Hanna had turned into a distrusting rival, and Gabi had changed, too; she didn’t tell Ruth anything anymore and seemed to have secrets from her. Markus had turned out to be a superficial egomaniac; he never listened to her, he just wanted to have fun and party, and if they weren’t in bed she had no idea what to do with him.

  Her job bored her; the city magazine always went over the same old topics: hip events, trendy places, beautiful people, the right books, the right music, the right films. And to top it all off, she was organizing a surprise party for old girlfriends. It was all so bitterly ironic it would be almost funny.

  Ruth sat up straight. Things weren’t that bad. She didn’t miss Karsten, strangely, so it seemed she must have been pretending for years now. She was beginning to realize just how little he had been involved in her life in recent years. Her apartment was beautiful, and she felt at home there; from the very start it had given her a feeling of freedom. Admittedly, Markus hadn’t been in touch for three weeks now, but Ruth was actually relieved about that.

  It had been a long while since she and Hanna had spent much time together anyway: if it hadn’t been for the fact they had known each other for so long, they probably wouldn’t even still have been friends.

  Her whole life was changing.

  She lit her second cigarette, then stubbed it out again immediately. She didn’t even like smoking really; she just used to buy them because both Hanna and Karsten hated them. So instead, she reached for her address book and looked for Christine’s number. She seemed to have things under control despite not having a man in her life and her restrained approach to girlfriends. Ruth needed a distraction. Or some validation, one or the other.

  Ruth dialed the number. Christine answered after the third ring.

  “Hello, Christine, I just wanted to test out the cliché that single women always spend Friday evenings on the phone.”

  “Well, if it was true, then my line would have been engaged. I’m not, I’m slaving away at my ironing board.”

  Ruth whistled. “Wow, how exciting. I hate ironing; either my mother does it, or I take everything to the dry cleaners.”

  Christine turned the iron off. “My mother lives on Sylt, so she’s unlikely to come here just to do my ironing. Did you really want to talk about that or is there something else?”

  Ruth answered: “Well, I was just getting a little fed up of my own company, so I wondered if you might like to go for a glass of wine with me; after all, we live just around the corner from each other. So we can afford to be spontaneous.”

  Christine didn’t hesitate long. “To be honest I hate ironing, too. Good, let’s meet in fifteen minutes at Franco’s.”

  Franco’s was full to the rafters. As Christine walked in, she saw Ruth waving at her from the bar.

  “Hi, I couldn’t find a table. But this is OK, right?”

  Christine waved at the handsome Franco, who threw her a kiss and pointed to the bar, calling out: “All the tables are taken, but one will be free in a moment and you can sit down then. How about a Prosecco on the house until then, ladies, bene?”

  Christine nodded and sat down next to Ruth on a barstool. “Sounds perfect, Franco.” She looked at Ruth. “So, what’s up? Tell me.”

  Ruth tried to look nonchalant. “Nothing in particular. I just wanted to have a glass of wine with you, that’s all.”

  “Well,” said Christine skeptically, “I got the feeling that you were a little down on the phone.”

  Before Ruth could answer, Franco came over.

  “So, the table in the corner is just paying; then we can get you seated. I’ll bring your Prosecco over to the table.”

  Within five minutes they were sitting down opposite each other. Ruth immersed herself in the menu for a while, then clapped it abruptly shut. “You know, I think I would like to talk to you about something after all. Something happened a few weeks ago that really threw me for a loop. And the fact it did really annoys me, by the way. I already told you about my friend Hanna, my oldest friend, the one who got married in May?”

  Christine nodded and listened as Ruth told her about the scene with Hanna, then about the wedding, Lars, and finally about her leaving.

  By the time Ruth finished recounting the story, the helplessness she had felt at the time had come back. She looked up at Christine, who, to her amazement, was laughing softly.

  “I’m sorry, Ruth, but as I’ve always said, women are a funny breed.”

  “Why? What do you mean? I thought it was awful.”

  Christine tried to look serious. “It’s just that stories like that about women never surprise me much. We spoke about it back in the spring, remember? I think it was even on the very day you were telling me about Hanna and her wedding. I don’t really remember what I said at the time, probably not much.” She laughed again, this time at herself. “But I can tell you now what I was thinking. All this crap about ‘the best friend.’ Mine was my maid of honor, and I was hers, too, and godmother to her children as well—because, after all, she was my best friend—and then she goes and starts an affair with my husband. Whereas one of my close girlfriends who didn’t like my husband right from the start, I just cut out of my life. You know, it makes me cringe nowadays when women go on to me about their best friends. It’s as much of a façade and myth as the words ‘we’ve been happily married for thirty years.”’

  Ruth was skeptical. “But it can work out sometimes, too. If Hanna had her hormones under control, it would have been completely different. It’s just that she’s changed so much.”

  Christine looked at her thoughtfully. “If you start a relationship with someone, then you have to be able to handle the fact that they will change over time, whether it’s a lover or a girlfriend. It would be silly if everything just stayed the same. Love changes; everyone knows that. And if it does, you talk about it, try to save the relationship. But everyone always expects the best friend to stay exactly as she was in the beginning. It’s a completely unrealistic expectation. And instead of talking about it, we just go on and on about how essential it is to have a best friend. How often have you seen Hanna in the last five years? And how much does she have to do with your day-to-day life?”

  Ruth thought for a moment. “Not that often really. Lars and Karsten weren’t particularly keen on one another, and I was always pretty busy.”

  “How often?”

  “Well, around six or seven times, I guess. And we spoke on the phone now and then.”

  “That’s exactly my point. And despite that you just call her your best friend and brush everything else under the carpet. If a woman you only vaguely knew had reacted like Hanna did, you would just have shaken your head and told her to leave you alone. You wouldn’t have given it any thought, apart from perhaps pitying her for having so little trust in her darling husband. And by the way, I find her lack of trust in him quite depressing.”

  Ruth wondered to herself what Hanna had told him after Ruth left without saying good-bye.

  “Oh, Christine, I’m just finding life a little too much at the moment. First Karsten, then Hanna, all my old surroundings are just crumbling away. I don’t know what to believe in anymore.”

  Christine looked at Ruth without saying a word. She looked amazing: her blond hair was piled up on top of her head, she was wearing tight jeans and a little black pullover, and was impeccably made-up. Ruth turned around to Franco and pointed to the empty carafe of wine. Moments later, he brought them a full one.

  “Salute, beautiful lady.”

  Ruth smiled briefly and then turned back to Christine.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “I was just wondering how you really are. I mean, I don’t get the impression that you’re finding your situation that difficult. After all, you coped really well with the move, the separation, and the new start.”

  Ruth tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m not doing too badly. I just find it all so irritating. Hanna’s bitchiness
got me really worked up; I have no idea how she got those ideas into her head. And my love life isn’t exactly great. And my job is really getting to me. I can hardly bear to look at the Kult cover anymore. I’ve made changes in my private life now, and I’d really like to do the same in my career.”

  “What do you want to do?” asked Christine.

  “I don’t know. I don’t have that many options. I’ve been at the publishing house for thirteen years now. First as an intern, then in sales, then advertising, and then the city magazine. I’ve been doing Kult for five years now, and I want something different. I’ve always enjoyed my job, but the magazine isn’t enough for me. I need a challenge now and then. You know, I really envied you writing these columns for Femme; it’s really great.”

  “Ellen Wagner’s pregnant.”

  “Really? But she already has a daughter.”

  “Yes, and now she’s having another baby. And I don’t think she’ll be back straight after the birth by any means. Why don’t you talk with her? There could be an opportunity for you to get on board.”

  Ruth beamed at Christine. “At Femme? That would be amazing! Thanks, Christine, I’ll drop by there tomorrow.”

  A little later they paid and left the bar. Christine walked Ruth back to her apartment; it was on the way back to her own. As they got to the front door, Ruth said:

  “This was nice; I’m feeling much better now. But tell me, you don’t steer clear of friendships with women altogether, do you?”

  Christine laughed. “No, no more so than I do friendships with men. But I don’t differentiate between them anymore. It takes more than just sharing the same gender to be friends. My sense of female solidarity is a little limited by now. But then, I don’t like all men either.”