Strangers in Vienna

by Angela L.

  Strangers In Vienna

  by Angela L.

  Published by Clean Reads

  www.cleanreads.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used. Except for review purposes, the reproduction of this book in whole or part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation.

  STRANGERS IN VIENNA

  Copyright © 2015 ANGELA L.

  ISBN 978-1-62135-416-1

  Cover Art Designed by MELODY POND

  To Teresa P. and Donna Y.

  Part 1

  Chapter One

  (July 26, 1992, in Vienna)

  My uncle’s place was buried deep in the city of Vienna.

  He sent a taxi to pick me up at the airport. When I arrived at his apartment building, I realized that I never got his floor number.

  Stupid, right?

  I stood by the locked door, looking at the rows of last names with dread to see which button to press so that my uncle could buzz me in.

  You would think that I’d at least know my uncle’s last name, but sadly I didn’t. (Raya only told me his first name.) After my father passed away, my stepmother, Raya, decided it would be best if I spent the rest of my summer vacation with her brother in Vienna before going back to high school and finishing my senior year.

  Raya told me that she would write down the floor number and give me an extra key so that I could get in. The problem is, when I reached into this tiny pouch in my luggage, I realized Raya forgot to give me both of those things.

  Most people travel because it’s vacation, but for me, it was more of a “your dad just died so your stepmother’s going to send you off for a week to a foreign place to stay with an uncle you’ve never met, and hopefully you’ll have fun and prove to everyone that your stepmother is an angel for coming up with this idea” sort of thing.

  I know I should have been excited that I was in Europe, but in all honesty, I didn’t exactly know how I felt.

  It had been a quick decision to come to Europe.

  Two days ago, Raya handed me a two-way ticket to Vienna, along with a speech about all the benefits of traveling. I could see she had set her mind on me leaving and there was no point arguing with her. Everything happened so rapidly that I didn’t even get a chance to pack all my things.

  My fingers lingered up and down the buttons a few times. I wondered if I should just press a random one and pray to God someone would buzz me in accidentally, but instead, I placed my luggage behind me and slumped down on the cold, hard stairs in frustration.

  I waited for someone to come through the locked door from the inside, or anyone who had a key from the outside. My luggage sagged behind me awkwardly, casting a weird-looking shadow over my shoulders. I saw an old lady walk toward me, her oversized dress flowing gracefully behind her, but then all my hopes crashed down when I realized that she was going to the other building.

  As I waited, I flipped open my worn-out wallet to count how much money Raya had given me. It wasn’t much, but it was surely enough. I turned my attention to the picture stuck in between two tiny folds of my wallet, of my two best friends back in Missouri. Noelle and Jacob. I could imagine Noelle’s voice as if she were here: “If you want to get in the building, just break the glass door, and if the police come, give them the finger and run for your life.” And then Jacob would probably talk some sense into her and tell me to wait instead of causing mass destruction.

  Through the tinted glass, I saw a tall figure approaching from inside the building, and a sudden rush of relief came over me. The door swung open and a dark-haired, middle-aged man appeared, paused, and scanned my face to make sure I was someone he recognized. Then he gave me a warm, welcoming smile. “Hey, you must be Demi.” He had a faint German accent. “I’m your uncle, Marcel.” He walked to me and shook my hand with a businesslike firm grip.

  “Oh. Hey,” I said after I wetted my lips. I felt nervous and my mouth had dried up. I didn’t know what to say or do, so I just sat there and awkwardly observed his face. I’d always been bad at meeting people for the first time. I was usually quite awkward and most of the time I just stayed still and silent as my mind tried to process my next move.

  He looked nothing like Raya. Not even one single feature. Raya was blonde and short with a bird-like nose while this man was lean and could possibly pass off as an actor. He looked like those classy guys who would wear suits during the day even if there wasn’t a special occasion and drink fancy bourbon at night while smoking a Cuban cigar just because he could.

  “Why didn’t you buzz in? I was actually waiting for you until I looked down from my window and saw you sitting there.” He took my half-filled luggage and carried it toward the elevator door. The inside of the apartment building looked like it was designed for a ballroom. A large chandelier hung from the middle of the ceiling, surrounded by pure white wallpapered walls. Even the floors were designed elegantly with a carefully laid stone pattern of a majestic blue phoenix.

  “Um, I didn’t know which button to press. Raya only gave me your first name,” I explained. We went up to the fourth floor.

  Apartment 4G.

  How hard would it have been for Raya to write Apartment 4G? Not hard at all. It was literally one number and one letter.

  Marcel opened his apartment door and a strong ray of sunlight beamed through the huge windows from across the room.

  “I’m not surprised.” He chuckled. “Raya’s not that responsible. So, um, you doing okay? I, um, heard about your father.” He set his keys down on the counter.

  My foot sort of lingered behind the door. I felt like it wasn’t the right place even though my uncle was standing there.

  The first rush of realization that I was now in Vienna came to me, although half of my brain was still frozen. Probably in denial. I’d never traveled far from my town. No one left Missouri. Everything was familiar back home. All my friends’ places were within walking distance and the school was only a ten-minute drive away. Everyone knew each other. Even the weird old lady who lived five houses down, whom I’d only talked to once over the past year, knew my birthday. Everything you needed was in a one-mile radius.

  But this—this was completely new. I was halfway across the world with nobody that I knew in a place that I had never seen. The unfamiliarity sent chills down my spine, and I wasn’t completely sure if that was a good or bad thing.

  “Well, you coming in?” Marcel asked as I awkwardly stood at the door.

  “Yeah. I’m good. Raya thought it was best if I saw the world to get my mind off my dad,” I explained. We walked past the kitchen. It didn’t look like he cooked. Either that or he was extremely good at cleaning. His apartment was quite big compared to my home in Missouri; his kitchen was about twice the size of mine, and his dining room alone looked like it could fit twenty people.

  “That’s nice. Raya used to always travel—she said it was good to visit a new town where no one knew who you were. She called it a ‘fresh start,’ which doesn’t make any sense to me, considering she only stayed at one place for less than a month,” Marcel replied. We walked through a hallway. Old photos of Raya and him as kids covered the yellow walls. A photo of Raya as a teenager at the beach, rearranging seashells with her hair dyed red and braided, caught my attention.

  “That does sound like her,” I said. I wasn’t paying much attention to our conversation. I was too distracted by the pictures. It was weird seeing her so yo
ung compared to how she looked now with a big pregnant belly, messed-up hair, and newly formed wrinkles everywhere.

  Honestly, I didn't know Raya that well. I’d lived with her for the past eight months, but I didn’t even know when her birthday was. I think the only time when we talked was about dinner plans or when we had to plan Dad’s funeral.

  I remember when she and I tried to bond for a week after she and my dad got married. She took me to the opera. I don't know what made her think that any teenager, especially me, would like to sit through three hours of a fat guy in a suit bellowing his throat out. Anyway, we didn’t talk much, considering that her idea of bonding was watching a movie or something like the opera where we just sat there in silence. And when we did talk, there would be awkward silences in between our conversations that seemed to linger forever. But hey, at least she tried.

  Marcel opened the last door in the hallway. “This is your room.”

  “Thanks.” The room smelled fresh, like laundry detergent, as if he had just washed the bed sheets yesterday.

  “Demi, I know you probably want to explore Vienna, but I have to go in for work tomorrow. I would have asked for a few days off with my boss in advance, but Raya didn’t tell me early enough, and I won’t be back until later at night. But I’ll be free in a day or two to show you around the city,” Marcel said.

  “Oh. It’s okay, and thank you for letting me stay for a week,” I said.

  “It’s all right. For now, wander around. Vienna’s gorgeous but don’t go too far from this apartment building or else Raya will kill me,” he jokingly announced, halfway out the door.

  “No problem.” I smiled and closed the door. Raya’s whole point of sending me off to Vienna was for me to get my mind off my father’s death. But instead, I was going to use this trip to get my mind off where I came from in general. The little hometown in Missouri was the definition of being trapped in chains. You were stuck there with the same people, dealing with the same sucky stuff for the rest of your life, and then you died on the same dirt you were born on. But I still loved my town, considering it had been my home for the past seventeen years, along with my four best friends’. I didn’t know how I would have survived without them.

  Before I came to Vienna, I had made a promise to myself on the plane to get the most out of this trip. I thought back to my dad’s funeral and felt regret for the life he lived. I realized life was just too short to waste.

  In my mind, everyone’s life was just like a song—each short with its own one-of-a-kind melody—and my dad’s life was the definition of a sad country song. Ironically, he’d looked a lot better in his coffin than he had in real life: dressed in a suit, hair combed, and face well shaved. It wasn’t him in the coffin, though. The dad I knew would have been buried with at least four bottles of whiskey, his hair ruffled up like a crow’s nest, and the shirt he wore would have had at least one or two holes in it with a few buttons missing near the bottom. Looking down at him, I hadn’t recognized him at all.

  He lived his whole life stuck in one place, working a job that he hated, finding love over and over again, and then giving up when he realized it was all hopeless. He’d wasted his life and barely tried to relate to me. I wasn’t that close to him; the old man didn’t even know my birthday. And on his last day alive he spent it alone, angry at the world after a fight with Raya.

  Even dead he was dressed as somebody else. An image that society approved of.

  Clean cut.

  Well groomed.

  In the end, as I caught my last glimpse of him, I knew I didn’t want his same sorrowful melody playing throughout my life. On the plane ride here, I’d decided that this trip was going to be my chance to have a taste of life outside my town even though the thought of roaming an Austrian city alone scared me.

  I believed the chorus defined the song, and I wasn’t going to let my time back in Missouri be my chorus. No. Right now, this was my chorus playing, here in Vienna.

  You only live once, right?

  “Oh, and one last thing.” Marcel poked his head in just as I was about to get my clothes out from my luggage. “You hungry? It’s going to be dinner time soon and there’s a café down the street that has great Hungarian food.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I replied, not knowing how Hungarian food tasted or whether or not I was going to like it. But hey, there was a first time for everything.

  After I unpacked all my clothes and took a long, hot shower, we headed out for the night.

  Vienna’s golden lights illuminated the sky like an untamed roaring fire. From afar, I could make out a long bridge with dozens of headlights racing from opposite directions. If you gazed long enough, you would think there were bright red lasers shooting from either sides of the bridge.

  Marcel caught me staring. “It’s called the Reichsbrücke Bridge,” Marcel said.

  “Rei-chis-brook Bridge?” I said with my lips twisted in a weird shape.

  “Well…your pronunciation isn’t that horrible.” He laughed.

  It wasn’t like I spoke German, but one thing was for sure. Vienna was absolutely magnificent.

  It was also not what I expected. The sophisticated architecture, the beautifully paved narrow streets, and most of all, the lingering smell of new adventures that hung in the atmosphere around me. It was like a fairytale. Everything was so different, so movie-like, compared to the bland scenery back in Missouri.

  Even though it was the city, it was calm. My hometown was so small that if you blinked, an entire week could fly by. But here, here in Vienna, it seemed like time could have stopped and nobody would have even cared. I stood there and turned around in a full circle and felt time slowing down just for me as I soaked in the view that stood before me.

  “So, how are things with you and Raya?” Marcel asked, disrupting my thoughts. I could tell he was trying to relate to me after an awkward five minutes of silent walking. He didn’t look like he was the type of guy who would have kids, let alone get along with a teenage girl. Poor guy hadn’t even known I was coming until the very last minute.

  “We’re good. She’s stressed out about having the baby now that Dad’s gone,” I said.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. It’s Raya—she’s strong as a bull and if she ever needs help, tell her I can fly by anytime,” Marcel announced. “Has she found out if the baby’s a boy or a girl yet?”

  “The baby’s a girl,” I informed him.

  “You excited for a baby sister?”

  “I don’t know how I feel about it. I’ve always wanted an older brother, but I guess that’s too late now.”

  “Just a tad bit late,” Marcel laughed and slightly shook his head. “Did she pick out the baby’s name yet?”

  “No, not yet.”

  But my attention wasn’t on our conversation. My eyes gravitated to a boy playing his violin outside the café that we were going to. His eyes were closed and I could tell he was completely soaked into the music. I must have stood there for the next minute or two without even realizing it. Even though his eyes were closed, his fingers danced around the violin strings as if they had eyes of their own. It was like watching a child experience heaven after having his or her first bite of chocolate. He didn’t seem to care that he was begging for money and wore rags that had holes the size of my fist. He was at that state of pure oblivion where his soul had completely flowed into the music that drifted through the atmosphere.

  I quickly snapped out of it and looked away in embarrassment when he opened his eyes after finishing his piece. He looked at me and his green eyes glimmered when he charmingly grinned as if he knew I had stared at him the entire time.

  “Here, give this to him,” Marcel whispered to me.

  I’d forgotten he was with me.

  Marcel handed me some change and said, “If a street performer manages to stop you in your tracks and amazes you, then you owe him a few schillings.”

  Chapter Two

  (July 27, 1992, in Vienna)

  The moment I o
pened my eyes, I was blinded by the rays of sunlight that shot through my window. I should have closed the curtains yesterday. I moved my arms, which accidentally knocked over my half-closed book that I had fallen asleep reading last night.

  It was eight a.m. I’m usually asleep till after lunch. I guess I was just jet-lagged.

  I lay in bed, trying to fall back asleep, but I gave up when I realized I was staring at the clock as the seconds ticked by. You ever do that thing where you try to fall back asleep but you end up staring at the second hand tick by without even realizing? It happened to me just last night—the more I tried to sleep, the more I gazed at the clock. The repetitive tick, tick sound hypnotized me.

  I dragged myself to the kitchen like a sloth.

  “Marcel?” I called out, wondering if he had left already.

  Silence.

  There was a note stuck on the counter.

  I stepped toward it and picked it up. “‘Morning, Demi. I’m out at work. Sorry, there’s not a lot of food at my place, but there are a few restaurants near here to get breakfast and lunch if you want. Try not to get lost and call me with the number I gave you yesterday if there’s an emergency. Marcel.’”

  I crumbled up the note and tossed it in the trash. I grabbed one of the water bottles from the side shelves of the fridge and went back in my room to get dressed.

  As a kid, I spent most of my time in the library. I practically lived there. I loved the smell of old books so much that if they had an air spray made of it, I would spray it all over my bedroom so that it would feel like home.

  I even started to write my own stories, but I could never seem to finish them. I somehow progressed to writing song lyrics instead. They were short and simple, and after a while, I started coming up with melodies with the skills I had developed from the few piano lessons I took back in sixth grade. I usually just stuck with writing lyrics. It wasn’t like I’d had a piano wherever I went. But I could never seem to finish writing my songs. I’d write two verses, stick the chorus in between, and, when I got to the bridge, hit a stone wall.