One Step Ahead

by J. J. Kapka

  Sure enough, Heike held her to her word, pulling over at a pleasant Konditorei in a small town close to the castle to have coffee and strudel for breakfast. They had left Munich so early that none of them had had anything to eat. The old-world setting of the quaint café immediately charmed Maddie. The café primarily served drinks and light meals, in addition to a mouthwatering assortment of baked goods displayed in the glass-enclosed cases they passed on the way to the dining area. Maddie had put herself in Heike’s care when it came time to decide what to order.

  During the short ensuing wait, she renewed her conversation with Heike’s great aunt and uncle, who had migrated to Minneapolis after World War II. They were a delightful pair, and despite their apparent advanced years, they seemed to be undeterred by the rigors of travel. By all accounts, they were having a ball on this, their first trip back to Germany since they’d left.

  It had taken many years for them to establish themselves in the U.S., but eventually, through a series of jobs in various factories and shops, they’d managed to scrape together enough to buy a small dairy farm, which they’d steadily and successfully built up over the years. They’d finally sold the farm at a decent profit last year, and aside from buying a smaller home in the city, they were using the proceeds to pay for this extended visit to their birthplace.

  As they regaled Maddie with stories about growing up in a small farming community in the Bavarian countryside, the waitress deposited their order on the table. The apple strudel Heike had resolved to have Maddie try was swathed in a light dusting of powdered sugar and accompanied by a large mountain of whipped cream. There was that Schlag again. Piercing the thin pastry with her fork, she found it sinking into a soft mound of apples, intermixed with a respectable sprinkling of plump raisins. There certainly was no false advertising in this package. Whereas some of the baked goods she’d sampled on this trip had been all looks and no taste, this particular strudel delivered. The cook didn’t have an overly heavy hand with the sugar, and there seemed to be just a hint of lemon to liven things up a bit.

  Meanwhile the coffee, which had been delivered in its own little pot, was bracingly strong. So much so that by the time she’d finished both the strudel and the pot, Madison was jazzed enough to consider climbing the surrounding German Alps and breaking out in a chorus of “Do-Re-Mi” from The Sound of Music. Fortunately, the succeeding tour through the castle, comprising plenty of walking up and down slopes and stairs, allowed her energies to have a fair bit of welcome release.

  Maddie was surprised to learn from the guide taking their group around Neuschwanstein that the castle had never been finished and that King Ludwig II had only managed to live 172 days there before his death. When Heike saw both Maddie’s disappointment and that of Heike’s aunt and uncle, who also hadn’t known about the castle’s work-in-progress status, she told them there was another castle nearby that had been finished, and they had plenty of time to visit it before heading back to Munich. In fact, they quite enjoyed their tour of Hohenschwangau, with its baronial rooms reminiscent of the times of the knights, which made a nice juxtaposition with the more fanciful finished rooms in Neuschwanstein.

  Feeling satisfied in their quest for castle appreciation, and having long since burned up their mega-calorie breakfast by hauling up and down an untold number of staircases and ramps, Maddie’s little group agreed to a side trip on the way home to the picturesque resort town of Garmisch in order to have a late lunch. It didn’t take them long, after parking, to locate a suitably tempting Konditorei.

  After settling into a corner booth and glancing over the menu, Maddie gave Heike a quizzical glance. “What is Kaiserschmarrn?” she asked.

  “It’s delicious. What a good idea,” Heike exclaimed. Without further debate, they ordered four servings, accompanied by hot chocolate. Even though it was summer, Heike assured Maddie that hot chocolate was the perfect accompaniment to Kaiserschmarrn.

  When their meals arrived, Maddie realized the connection: both were sinfully rich. The Kaiserschmarrn was apparently some type of crêpe that had been cut into strips, sautéed in butter with rum-soaked raisins, and then heaped high in a jumble upon the plate and liberally sprinkled with powered sugar. The result was so lip-smackingly good that even after Maddie had cleaned off every last crumb on the plate, she had to physically restrain herself from lifting it up and licking off the powdered sugar and buttery remains of the crêpe.

  Breathing a sigh of pleasure, mixed with guilt, Maddie leaned back in her chair and shook her finger at Heike. “You are much too dangerous to be ordering my food. I can’t go on like this. I only have one plane ticket, but if I keep this up, I’ll need two seats, plus a wheelbarrow to get me to the airport.”

  Heike only laughed and waved her hand in quick dismissal of Madison’s accusations. “Look at me,” she ordered. “Do I look like I need two seats?”

  In truth, Maddie had to admit that the vast majority of the German women she saw were quite trim, and further, took a great deal of care with their dress. What magic formula they’d found to turn those monster-portioned meals into calorie nothings had not been revealed to her yet, but she suspected she would give lie to the formula were she to stay in the country beyond her scheduled four days.

  Since then, one or another of the original crew of women from around the table that first night had taken her in hand and shown her around and about Munich. They handed her off to the next person almost as if she were a baton in a relay, and she was a grateful baton at that. It was so much more personal and rewarding to learn all of the background on the city from natives, as had been the case in Paris with Thierry.

  At the same time, it was exhausting. Maddie returned to her hotel close to midnight every evening and collapsed into bed after having expended her last ounce of energy crawling into her pajamas. Yet she had to be up early every morning to start again. As much fun as she’d been having, she knew her body needed a break if she was going to be in any shape to finish the rest of the trip.

  So tonight, at the Hofbräuhaus, before the endless rounds of beers had started, she’d expressed her desire to slow down her pace. Apparently the Germans were quite big on the concept of taking restful breaks, where they would get away from the world for weeks at a time, often even covered by insurance under the terms of their employment. Before she even knew it, this collection of concerned advisors had developed a game plan for her. She’d always heard about the orderly bent of Germans. After her experiences with menus and rest breaks, she knew it was true. What’s more, she liked it.

  ~~~

  July 13

  That was how she found herself checking into a pension-style hotel in Baden Baden, nestled in the Black Forest area in the southwestern part of Germany. The bus ride down from the Frankfurt airport after the short plane ride from Munich had shown her rolling hills, where farmlands and evergreen forests battled for predominance, with the forests having gotten the leg up on the contest the closer she got to Baden Baden.

  Renate, one of the band of women from Munich, had just taken a Kurs here. She had not only recommended a spa, but also had booked Maddie in for some treatments tomorrow. Maddie decided to go by the spa today in order to get her bearings, and also to give herself extra time to try to explain her appointments in the event no one spoke English. Her fear in that area turned out to be laughable. The people in this internationally flavored resort not only knew English, but to her untrained ear, it seemed they knew at least five other languages as well.

  Following Renate’s recommendations, Maddie planned to spend her first afternoon enjoying the town’s famed thermal baths. At the front desk, she obtained a key, a towel, and directions to find her way to the locker room. After locating her locker, she slipped into her swimsuit, grabbed her towel, and followed the signs to the baths. Leaving her towel on a chair, she tentatively plunged her toe into the hot water and gradually eased herself into its depths to take a seat on a jutting shelf. Easing her head back, she at last relaxed in the water,
sending fond thoughts of gratitude back to Renate and company. Slowly but surely, she allowed her accumulated muscle aches and pains to unwind and unknot themselves to the soothing ministrations of the mineral water.

  The time slipped away. As her body started to float, she found the feeling of near weightlessness extremely pleasant. She’d always been too busy to take advantage of the many day spas all over New York. If it wasn’t work, it was doing something around the apartment, or shopping, or cooking, or going out with Becker. Uh-oh: Becker. Maddie’s body began to sink the minute she thought his name. Okay, banish that thought, Maddie quickly admonished herself. All in good time, she reminded herself for the hundredth time, before once again releasing her thoughts and letting her mind become a blank slate, with no sounds allowed to penetrate save for the bubblings and burblings of the water all around her.

  Having arrived earlier than 1:00 p.m., she realized, after a time, that she must have taken advantage of the emptying out of the spa for lunch. As the crowds gradually started to drift back in, she could no longer realistically ignore the goings-on around her. She decided to step out of the water and wander around the thermal complex. It wasn’t long before she found an off-the-beaten-path area with a small pool that had jets of water she used to give herself impromptu massages in various worn-out target areas. On the soles of her feet, the jets were a bit too ticklish, but on her back and shoulders, oh, it was heaven.

  Having suitably relaxed herself by doing next to nothing, she decided to explore even farther, which led her to a whole outdoor area with fountains, waterfalls, and a large open space where she could swim or sit back and people-watch, playing a little game of trying to guess the nationalities by the faces and the bathing suits.

  After an hour or so, having had her fill of the thermal baths, Maddie set out in search of the various saunas that Renate had described. Settling into a traditional Finnish-style sauna, which was surprisingly empty, she lay down on her towel and felt the intense heat seeping into every one of her pores. Some fifteen sweaty minutes later, she gratefully jumped into the cold plunge pool located just outside the sauna. Having tested the water in advance, only to determine that it was unbelievably cold and there was no way on earth she would ever be crazy enough to dip a toe in there, let alone her entire body, she was pleasantly surprised at her about-face upon exiting the sauna, feeling like a roast turkey. She was even more pleasantly surprised at how good the water felt. Come to think of it, the most pleasant surprise of all was how good she was starting to feel. The physical toll she’d inflicted on her body with her relentless schedule, coupled with the psychological stress caused by Becker, began to dissipate thanks to the day-long dose of TLC.

  Reveling in this new feeling of burgeoning wellness, Maddie spent the rest of the afternoon dabbling in the various saunas and steam baths, in between repeated dips into the plunge pool, before she realized that maybe her skin didn’t exactly appreciate the vast extremes of temperatures to which she was subjecting it. She showered off one last time and changed back into her clothes. Overcome with a heavy lethargy, she felt like taking a good long nap but decided instead to grab some takeout food and retreat to her room for the night, where she could quietly eat while reading a book. Now, that’s a change from my normal pattern, she thought ruefully. Following up on her plan, she found an Imbiss offering serviceable-looking kebabs and was back in her room by the unprecedented hour of 6:00 p.m.

  ~~~

  July 14

  Maddie was startled awake at 8:00 a.m. the next morning by her alarm, which she’d somehow known she would need to wake her up, given how sleepy she’d been when she’d gratefully laid her head on the pillow at nine o’clock last night. After her initial consternation at having to get up, Maddie brightened at the thought that today was Treatment Day. Anything a spa could possibly do to a body was going to be done to hers—starting with a full-body massage.

  However, first things first—breakfast in the hotel’s dining room. In her excitement to see what the day had in store for her, Maddie quickly wolfed down a simple Bröttchen, or roll, with some butter and jam, and a hot pot of coffee.

  Out the door in just ten minutes, she took a short walk and soon strolled into the ornate lobby of the historic spa, which had been visited by royalty in the nineteenth century when Baden Baden was the place of the moment to see and be seen.

  She gazed around at her surroundings. The almost overpowering old-world richness of the building gave her a feeling of foreboding. What kind of masseuse would she get? Those sitcom shows, where the masseuse was an older woman with her hair in a tight bun and built like a bull on steroids, didn’t seem so far-fetched after all in a setting like this. She could just see herself being slapped up and down her back while the woman squeaked around the table in her rubber-soled shoes, and, in a heavy accent, barked orders to roll over.

  With some trepidation, Maddie checked in with the receptionist and received directions to her locker in the massage treatment center. After tentatively winding her way through a few corridors, she looked up and gasped. Dressed in white and bearing down on her was the exact replica of the kind of woman she was thinking of. Maddie panicked, ready to jump into the next hallway to cower, when the woman pulled open a door and removed a janitor’s cart.

  Phew. Maddie exhaled with relief. I thought she was going to pick me up and carry me to the massage table, and I’d never be seen again.

  Shortly afterward, a very nice attendant showed her into the massage room and instructed her to strip naked, lie face down on the table, and cover herself with a towel. Apprehensively, Maddie awaited the roll of the dice that would determine her masseuse. Don’t conjure up negative thoughts and bring back the stress knots I was starting to work off yesterday, she cautioned herself. Still, she couldn’t help but twitch a little when, without a knock, the door swung open to reveal a man who looked to be a cross between The Rock and Brad Pitt: tall, very muscular, blond, and—could it be? Yes, twin dimples on his smiling cheeks.

  “Guten Morgen,” the man said through a wide smile.

  “Hello,” Maddie said, feeling like she was retracing old territory in the negotiation of language spoken. “I’m afraid I don’t speak any German.”

  “American?” the man asked.

  Madison replied with a quick nod.

  “No need to speak German to have a good massage,” he said with a chuckle. Moving over to a side table and busying himself with some preparations, he called over his shoulder to ask her if she had any “problem areas.”

  Problem areas? How can I tell him my whole body is a problem area because I’m petrified at the thought of a man giving me a massage?

  Pausing in his efforts at the table, he turned around, the smile still radiating from his face. “Have you ever had a massage before?”

  Maddie meekly shook her head no.

  “You probably didn’t expect a man, did you?”

  Slowly, Maddie shook her head again.

  His eyes lit up, and a rumble of laughter erupted from his enormous chest as he leaned down close to her face, placed a hand on her back, and gave a squeeze. With an impish grin, he announced, “I haven’t had a virgin in a long time. Today will be a good day.”

  Maddie froze as though she were a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming semi truck. She would have bolted out the door faster than you can say “pressure point,” except that she was buck naked and the towel was, at this point, her only defense. Before she could come up with a Plan B, the man turned around, and in one swift movement, whisked the towel off of her and threw it to a nearby chair.

  Clutching the table in absolute terror, Maddie envisioned the many ways she was going to hunt down and exact revenge on Renate for putting her into this predicament. What can I do to her that won’t result in jail or deportation and still…Whoa! What’s that?

  Some kind of liquid was being dribbled all over her back, snapping her back to the present and reminding her that she needed to find some way out of this m
ess. How can I get from the table to the…Hellloooo there.

  The hands were on her back. The warm, strong, supple hands were kneading into her flesh, spreading the scented oil all across the starved geography of her back. They were pulling and pushing and grasping. Oooohhh, this is heaven. Nirvana. Bliss.

  In the ensuing two minutes in which the man told her that his name was Hans and that all her muscles seemed very, very, tight, she came to the conclusion that she would do anything for Hans…and Hans’s hands. She was ready to cancel her entire vacation and book daylong sessions with Hans. Do I really need my job, when instead, I could be with Hans and his hands?

  Ninety minutes later, as Hans took his leave of her, Maddie could do nothing to keep him from going. She could only remain on the table in one quivering, limp, completely drained mass of soothed muscles. The most she could bring herself to do was to sigh, repeatedly. Some ten minutes further on, someone knocked on the door to inquire if she was okay. Maddie reluctantly gave up her sighing. “I’ll be out in a minute,” she called.

  She wanted to ask if they could bring a wheelchair to take her to her next appointment, because surely she wouldn’t be of one piece to walk, would she? Well, she could try. She sat up and was quite amazed to find that her happy muscles were still all connected and talking to each other. Dreamily, she got dressed and somehow managed to get to her next appointment station despite her drowsy state.

  This time, the appointment was for a whole-nine-yards facial, complete with aromatherapy steam, face and neck massage, deep cleansing, eye treatment, etc. Nothing in Maddie’s past experience of quickie facials prepared her for the pampering she underwent at the competent hands of the French woman into whose care she’d entrusted her face, which likely still had a silly grin all over it at the start, courtesy of Hans. The long-neglected skin on her face slurped up the moisturizers and other products which were abundantly administered throughout the course of the ninety-minute treatment. By the time the woman had finished, Maddie truly felt like she was glowing.