One Step Ahead

by J. J. Kapka

  As the little group traveled up and down the length of the red-light area, and the hour wore on, more and more disreputable types started spilling onto the sidewalks from bars and doorways, causing her four companions to protectively cordon themselves around her. Cocooned in this way, Maddie suddenly felt a heartwarming gratitude for these four young men and the way they’d taken her into their circle. She instinctively reached out and grabbed the arms next to her, which happened to be those of Peter and George. They glanced down at her and smiled, as they all continued their running commentary of the pros and cons of the kind of lifestyle they were seeing, although the pros were running far behind the cons, at least from the male point of view.

  After an hour or so of rubbernecking, it was clear to Maddie that their collective energy was beginning to wane. Regretfully, after a brief consultation with each other, they decided it was time to call it a night.

  Looking down at her watch, Maddie realized it was far too late for her to feel comfortable walking back to her hotel with much degree of safety. She started to ask the guys to accompany her to the central station area nearby, where she could easily catch a taxi.

  Before she’d even finished her sentence, Peter had stepped forward, taken her arm, and said he wouldn’t think of allowing her to take a taxi back to her hotel by herself at this time of day. “I’ll be more than happy to walk you home,” he said.

  He talked and acted with such assurance that neither Maddie nor his friends considered any other course of action possible. So while the other three peeled off with visions of a long night’s dancing in their heads, having recovered some of their energy, Peter and Maddie set off on their own in search of her hotel.

  Madison feared they might have to spend a considerable amount of time just getting from their present Point A to the hotel’s Point B, but after telling Peter the address, he nodded confidently and seemed to know exactly how to get there. In fact, it was only a short twenty minutes later of comfortable strolling and chatting that they found themselves on the hotel’s doorstep.

  Gratefully, Maddie turned to Peter to express her thanks for the wonderful time she had spending the day in the company of him and his friends. But it wasn’t a look of friendship that Peter had in his eyes when he gazed down at her, while at the same time raising his hand to caress her cheek. Before she knew it, his lips had descended to hers and he was gently kissing her.

  And damn if he isn’t a good kisser, she thought. She guessed that she must be about eight years older than Peter, so his kissing prowess struck her as an encouraging testament to the capabilities of the younger generation. Images of Becker, and then Thierry, briefly flickered through her head, before she simply decided to abandon herself to the pleasure of the moment.

  The moment ended up lasting some fifteen minutes and had caused her to break into a cold sweat of desire before they separated. Peter smiled his goodnight to her and told her how much he’d enjoyed her company. Maddie turned and watched as he disappeared into the shadows along the street, her heart full of wonder at the fluky turn of events her life had taken since she’d dumped the plate of bangers and mash on Becker’s head.

  ~~~

  The Becker Chronicles—Amsterdam

  With a renewed air of confidence, Becker descended from the plane in Amsterdam. He was going to start fresh in his quest to appreciate the freedoms of being single again. And Amsterdam was the city in which to do it. Renowned for its freewheeling pleasures—and not having a reputation of hating American tourists to overcome—Amsterdam, Becker felt in his heart, was going to be the place where he would take the bull by the horns and get his life back on track. He therefore wasted little time on the formalities of getting settled. He’d barely flung his suitcase into his small room before he set off for the famous Leidseplein area to take the plunge into Amsterdam nightlife.

  After a quick dinner at an informal restaurant, he ensconced himself on a seat at a nearby bar, settling in to let his eye wander over the various possibilities at hand. Before long, a breathtaking blonde seated at the end of the bar grabbed his attention. As casually as possible, he tried to make eye contact with her, almost as he if were trying to catch her in the act of eyeing him first. What surprised him was that this tactic worked. His confidence had been sorely shaken in Paris, but now here he was with a woman giving him full-bore come-hither looks. Paris must have been the aberration he’d suspected it was.

  He scooped up his drink and moved down to where the blonde sat. Swallowing hard, he struck up a conversation with her. Not only was she gorgeous, but friendly and down-to-earth to boot. Her flawless complexion and smoky voice, along with just enough curves to be alluring without being excessive, set his heart to beating overtime. So much so that he kept reminding himself to take it easy and not scare her away by being overly eager.

  Some two hours later, they were laughing and joking and were both somewhat lightheaded from the continuous rounds that Becker had requested. He felt a bit more comfortable having something to hold in his hand, lest he give in to temptation and lay that hand in any of a dozen places that passed through his head. By this time, they’d established their identities, and Becker had learned that she was a local. Her typically Dutch flawless command of English made it incredibly easy for him to engage her in conversation on a variety of subjects. Feeling that the time was finally ripe for him to make a move without seeming to rush it, he asked her to recommend a place for them to go to continue their date. He nearly had to claw to maintain his seat when she suggested that they instead visit her apartment to enjoy a bottle of wine.

  He tried to hide his shallow breathing as they walked along the streets. He was so wrapped up with gazing at her and second-guessing what was going to happen next, that he paid no mind to the route they were taking so as to remember how to get back later on. He nearly stumbled over his feet going up the long flight of stairs to her apartment, which occupied the entire second floor. When she inserted her key, his hands trembled as he grasped the doorknob.

  As she collected the wine and a couple of glasses, he spent his time regaining his composure and reminding himself to stay cool and collected. That’s exactly what he managed to do in the course of the next hour or so, until she moved over from her chair to sit next to him on the couch, so close that they were touching from shoulder to shin. Caution flew out the window at this juncture. When he encircled her in a tight embrace, they angled backward on the couch and abandoned themselves to their unchecked desire.

  Clothes flew in every direction. When the final layer revealed that his Dutch treat was actually a he, Becker recoiled in horror. In something less than a minute, he found himself thrown out into the street, followed by his clothes. He was swathed in nothing but imprecations from the blonde, who said that only a complete idiot could have sat in that bar for so long and not known exactly what was going on there.

  Becker’s face blazed with embarrassment, but the state of his face was the least of his concerns. He scurried around picking up his clothes and finally glanced up to assess how many people had been audience to this moment of mortification. What he didn’t expect was to find himself looking up into a plate glass window in which two half-naked women roared with laughter. Nor did he expect to find an ever-growing throng gathering in a semi-circle around him, pointing and snickering, having a pretty good time at his expense. Never having dressed in front of a crowd before, he did as good a job as he was able, before finally slinking off through a small opening in the throng. For the first time since he was eight, he wished for the miracle of invisibility.

  It took about five blocks of fast and furious walking before he felt he could pull up and take his bearings without fear that any of the mocking crowd would still be around. He slowly took a 180-degree perusal of his location smack in the heart of the red-light district. He shook his head at his own stupidity. Trying to keep a shred of dignity, he mainly desired to get back to his hotel as quickly as possible so he could lick his wounds and somehow come to grips
with what had happened tonight.

  He planted his feet and got ready to set off straight ahead again, when his already addled brain received its second great shock of the night: no more than fifty feet ahead of him was his wife, surrounded by four young men, tripping merrily along the middle of Sodom and Gomorrah. Blanching, he slipped down a side street as quickly as possible, escaping detection by fractions of a second. He didn’t know what she was doing here, but he sure as hell didn’t have a ready story as to what he was doing here, either, and he didn’t have the presence of mind at this juncture to try to ad lib, not after what he’d just been through.

  From the shelter of the side street, he watched in amazement as Maddie and her four companions ambled by, chatting and laughing, casting occasional glances into the windows, followed by whispered observations. Before tonight, he would have felt he had more dignity than to slip into the flow of pedestrians and follow his estranged wife, but he readily admitted to himself that tonight’s experience of the single life had left him with not a shred of that dignity. Curiosity, acting as a magnet, pulled him along in Maddie’s wake.

  After an hour of following the group up and down the district, carefully slipping across the street when they came to the house that had caused him such acute embarrassment, for fear that he’d be recognized and laughed at all over again, he’d come to the conclusion that Maddie and the young men were no more than fellow travelers who had happened upon each other and were simply exploring together. How long this had been going on, he couldn’t hazard a guess, although none of the men seemed to resemble the man with whom Maddie had shared a seat on the Parisian bateau.

  Lost in his thoughts and assumptions, Becker suddenly found himself getting alarmingly close to the group because it had pulled up short, and a discussion was obviously underway. As he carefully stepped backward to maintain his distance, he saw one of the men take Maddie by the arm as they separated from the others and set off in a different direction.

  Well, well, Becker mused, what’s going on here? As he followed the pair out of the red-light district, it dawned on him that all that was going on was the man was walking Maddie back to her hotel. Sure enough, that’s exactly what it was, as he observed from about thirty feet back when they stopped under the sign for a hotel. Good night. End of story, Becker said to himself, preparing to turn around to try to find his own hotel after having successfully satisfied himself that Maddie wasn’t up to something.

  No sooner had that thought entered his head than he sucked in his breath as the man leaned down and kissed his Maddie full on the lips. Becker took a few steps forward before abruptly stopping himself. Turning around, he sat on a nearby stoop. Expecting the goodnight kiss to be over shortly, his consternation continued to mount as it lasted much longer than he’d initially anticipated. Some fifteen minutes later, Maddie and her mystery man broke their clinch. He fumed as she lightly bid the man good night and entered the hotel.

  The man was now heading in his direction. What should I do? Becker worried. Nothing, of course. The man didn’t know who he was. Still, he couldn’t help but feel some chagrin that this stranger had been passionately kissing his wife. Unable to help himself, he stood and put himself on a collision course with the man. By the time they drew nigh to each other, Becker’s anger had somewhat tempered itself with common sense. Still, he couldn’t resist thrusting his shoulder into the man’s arm as they passed each other.

  The man stopped and looked at him quizzically.

  Now that he saw him up close, Becker swore that he was only just barely out of his teens. What is Maddie thinking? Becker wondered to himself, but he felt sufficiently contrite to mumble a quick apology to the tune of it being dark, and he’d been looking down.

  Becker continued on down the street, pausing to look into the lobby of Maddie’s hotel. His heart wrenched to think that he wasn’t joining her in her room. Gazing up at the only light shining from a window three stories above the entrance, he wondered if maybe, perhaps, he’d misread his own feelings about breaking up with Maddie. Judging by his thundering heart and his reaction to seeing her kissing another man, he certainly had to entertain the possibility. He had some serious contemplating to do to sift through what he really wanted versus what he thought he wanted.

  Chapter 5

  Munich

  Hofbrau—a Damn Good Beer: Refreshing

  July 12

  “Skol.” Heike lifted her beer stein in the air while giving her rousing, if incoherent, toast to…the table?

  Maddie wasn’t sure, even though Heike’s English was perfect. However, her own presence of mind after a night in a famous beer Keller, which had included countless trips by the strong-armed waitress boosting ten steins at a time to their table, was another matter. Maddie had struggled to keep up with her table partners, but had long since given up and attributed her lack of endurance to the proverbial nature and nurture. She’d been to many a beer-guzzling party in her college days, but they were nothing compared to the wholehearted relish with which the Germans quaffed their famous brews. Gazing around at the table of local women with whom she’d struck up a short acquaintance, she also reckoned that equality of the sexes when it came to drinking beer was a foregone conclusion, at least in Munich.

  Munich. It was hard to believe that she’d been on the road now for some nineteen days. So much had happened that her head was overflowing with incredible experiences. The remarkable thing was that they were all good, except for the awful freeze frame of that first night in London. She’d met so many wonderful people. Because of them, she’d really had a far richer connection to the cities she’d visited than if she’d simply been on a typical ten-cities-in-eight-days kind of tour. What she’d initially perceived as being a Grand Tour of each city’s landmarks had morphed into an appreciation of the people and their own unique view of their respective countries, a completely different animal altogether.

  After leaving Amsterdam three days ago, she’d flown to Munich. Having settled herself into a hotel close to the central square, she spent endless hours exploring the various museums, old town streets, and just enjoying the Bavarian architecture. In the course of her wanderings on the first day here, she’d felt compelled to venture into the storied Hofbräuhaus for lunch, but was disappointed to find the cavernous hall was packed to the gills with both tourists and locals enjoying the place’s hearty lunchtime fare.

  After wandering the length of the hall searching for a table, and even having peeked into the outdoor Biergarten to no avail, she was heading toward the exit when a sympathetic waitress grabbed her arm and steered her toward a table full of women that happened to have room for one more person on one of the long benches. The women looked up and barely batted an eye as the waitress announced her arrival in German. Perhaps this was common practice. At any rate, it wasn’t long before they’d made her feel perfectly at home among them, trading names and occupations and effortlessly switching their conversation over to English as it became obvious that Maddie’s German didn’t verge beyond Bier and danke.

  Taking advantage of being seated with a tableful of local experts, Maddie had queried them for their recommendations on what to see and do. She mentioned that she was particularly interested in going farther south on a day trip to see the famous Neuschwanstein Castle built by “crazy” Ludwig. A woman named Heike, seated on the other side all the way down at the other end, had leaned forward and said, “Come with me. I have some relatives from the U.S. in town, and I’m taking them there tomorrow.”

  Maddie demurred. “Oh, but I couldn’t impose.”

  “Why not?” Heike asked. “There’s just the two of them and one of me, which means there’s room for one more. The more the merrier, as you say. Right?”

  “I…but…” Maddie stuttered, unable to think of a rejoinder that would adequately encompass her hesitancy brought on by her feeling that it would be taking unfair advantage of Heike and would interfere with her family time.

  There was no hesitation on Hei
ke’s part. “Good. I’ll pick you up at seven a.m. We need to make an early start to get there before all the tourist buses do. Where are you staying?”

  That put an end to her protestations. She finalized the rendezvous details with Heike, and they proceeded to dig into their enormous lunches. Having ordered the pork schnitzel with mushroom sauce, Maddie found herself overwhelmed when presented with the results. The schnitzel had been pounded so thin and long that its ends were hanging off the plate. It had been crumbed and fried to a deep golden hue and was accompanied by Rotkohl: cabbage which had been marinated with apples and vinegar and spices and had a good, earthy crunch to it. There were also the requisite boiled Kartoffeln—potatoes—which were sprinkled with parsley and doused with butter. And this is lunch? What on earth do these people do for dinner? Maddie wondered. Or do they just sleep for the rest of the day?

  There was nothing for it but to tuck in and give it her best shot. Cutting through the tenderized pork meat, Maddie lifted a forkful to her mouth and was pleasantly surprised at the schnitzel sensations. The buttery crumbs were a perfect foil for the texture of the meat. She was amazed at how much of her plate she actually cleaned off. Game as she was for new experiences, however, she still had to shake her head no when her tablemates tried to encourage her to try the apple strudel. “Maybe tomorrow on our trip,” Madison said with a nod to Heike. That seemed to be capitulation enough to allow her to bow out gracefully from unadulterated gluttony, tasty though it would likely be.