by Angela L.
“I’m kidding.” He laughed.
“I know.” I grinned and immediately after, my stomach gave out the most thundering and embarrassing rumble ever that boomed and echoed around us.
“Impressive,” he said. “Could use that sound as a replacement for trumpets in those big marching bands.”
“Shut up.”
“Come on, Kaffee Mädchen. Let’s go find someplace to eat.”
Walking through Krems an der Donau during the night was like trying to figure out how to get out of a maze. Blindfolded.
We strolled down a street filled with tiny shops that sold clothes and souvenirs. The brown lampposts on the sides of the road were covered in dust as if it hadn’t rained in a long time. We turned corner after corner, each street looking almost the same except there was always something slightly different about each one; one street had the Austrian flag poking out from the windows of each shop while another had stores that seemed to have been out of business for quite a while.
“So, are you from here?” I asked, as he dragged me further down the winding paths.
“Ah. I was waiting for you to ask.”
“You were waiting for me to ask where you’re from?”
“Sort of. Usually people are curious about the stranger that’s leading them through a foreign city.” He laughed. “Vienna, born and raised. Krems an der Donau is just one of the cities that I visit now and then. What about you?”
“New York,” I lied. “How old are you?”
We walked past this book store and I desperately wanted to go check it out, but Alaric was walking so fast that I didn’t even manage to catch a good glimpse of the books displayed behind the glass window.
“Nineteen, but…I don’t think I’m nineteen.”
He was only one year older than I am. “That’s confusing.” Why couldn’t he just give me a straight answer?
“I hate putting an age on everything. I have a sixty-year-old man’s wisdom, a five-year-old’s imagination, a twenty-one-year-old’s ambition, and a thirteen-year-old’s urge to cause trouble. But biologically, I’m just nineteen. Think about it—if you didn’t know how old you were, how old do you think you would be?”
“I…don’t know.” What a strange question to think about, of course, asked by a strange man.
“How could you not know?”
I didn’t know how to answer him. I just didn’t know. It was like those moments when I sat in a circle with my new camp buddies, and we would go around telling people about ourselves, except listing out hobbies was way easier than expressing about who I really was. It’s funny, though. I could explain every detail of a book, a story, a character…but not me, myself.
He looked at me as if he knew that I was confused. “It’s okay. You’ll figure it out eventually. You just need more time, lost one,” he said.
Lost one. That name rang through my head a couple times until it was just a faint echo. I didn’t want to know. It was like what those wise guys say, how your past makes up part of who you are, and I wasn’t fond of reflecting on my past. The words left a hollow space in my chest, and I fought that empty feeling as I imagined all the aspects that Demi never had and that Skyler possessed through every bone of her body. “No. I’m not lost. If I didn’t know how old I really was, I would say I have the sense of adventure of an eight-year-old, a daring nature of a reckless sixteen-year-old, and the dreams of a professor who just got his degree.”
Alaric chuckled.
He brought me to a little restaurant near the corner of a street with a sign that said Armin’s.
The minute we opened the door, the rich smell of spices came rushing to my senses. There were only a few customers there, but it still looked pretty crowded since the entire area was so small.
The floors and walls were paved with orange and yellow bricks, and the wooden tables and stools covered in faded tablecloths created a cozy vibe for the restaurant.
When the waitress arrived, her face brightened once she recognized Alaric. She yelled out ecstatically and started speaking to him rapidly in German.
Her blonde hair slipped down perfectly under her pale white shoulders. It was so sleek that you would wonder why she wasn’t the face of a conditioner advertisement. She had those blue eyes that even when she wasn’t wearing any makeup, she still looked like a professional model.
While yelling at Alaric, she situated us to a big table near the window. The chair squeaked loudly against the wooden floor as I pulled it out.
I thought about the woman whom Alaric took money from earlier today. Who was she? And who was this waitress? And most important, who was I to him?
In the back of my head, I knew that I was only a stranger to him, probably like any girl he picked up on the street and stole from. Maybe the only reason I still had everything was that he hadn’t found the right time to take it. Or maybe I was just overthinking like usual, and he was genuinely a nice guy.
I read the menu in dead silence as Alaric and the woman continued their conversation.
“Hey, ich bin ein von Alaric's alte freunde. Und du bist...?” She turned her attention to me.
“Ugh…” I was so confused, and I looked at Alaric waiting for him to help me out because I had no idea what to respond.
“Sie kann kein deutsch. Sie ist aus Amerika. Sie ist eine freundin,” Alaric said.
“Oh, I’m sorry. How are you? Alaric says you’re a friend of his and any friend of his is welcome here anytime,” she said. Her German accent was strong as she hesitated between each word.
“A friend?” I looked at Alaric.
“Yeah. Cops chased us, I helped you hide, you didn’t report me, and I saved you for tonight. I think we can call us friends.” He raised his eyebrows and chuckled.
“Well, friend, it’ll be my pleasure spending the rest of the day with such an annoying criminal,” I responded sarcastically before turning back to the waitress.
“It's okay, and I’m fine, thank you,” I politely replied to the waitress. “And your food here already looks amazing. I can’t wait to try it,” I said, looking at the steak that a guy was eating at a nearby table.
“That’s great! What would you like to order first?” she said. “Alaric, I’m guessing you want your usual?”
He nodded.
“What do you recommend?” I asked him. The menu was written in German, so I couldn’t understand a word of it.
“You should try the stew,” Alaric said and pointed at the picture at the bottom of the menu.
“Really? Why would you recommend that? I thought you hated our stew.” The waitress rolled her eyes.
“No. I said I hated the stew that you tried to make without half the ingredients,” Alaric said and shook his head.
“It wasn’t that bad!” The waitress blushed. “Plus, it was my first attempt. So, the stew, then?” she asked me.
I nodded.
“I’ll be back with the orders as soon as possible. If you need anything, just call,” she said. She placed the tiny yellow notepad she used to write on in her side pocket and left.
“Your girlfriend?” I asked, as I watched her disappear behind the kitchen door. Somewhere deep down, I wanted him to say that she was anyone but his girlfriend. Actually, I wanted him to say he was single. My heartbeat started to race again.
Come on. I’ve got to get a grip. I just met this guy.
I can’t be falling for him.
I shook my head and tried to think of something else.
“My brother’s ex-fiancée,” he explained.
“You have a brother?” I couldn’t imagine two of him on this earth. I would have to kill one of them just to balance out the universe. “What happened?”
“He fell in love with another woman.”
“Ouch. I guess he never loved his fiancée. Well, ex-fiancée,” I said, playing with the spoon on the table.
“Oh, he loved her from the bottom of his heart. But sadly, you can’t control who you love. It was pretty random.”
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“If he could fall in love with another woman that fast, then I don’t think he actually loved his ex-fiancée,” I said. I knew this for a fact. For years, I watched my dad remarry, each time shorter than the rest.
The waitress came back, one hand holding a pitcher of cold water, another hand holding my stew with the same arm balancing a plate full of mashed potatoes and sausages.
Those were skills right there. I’d always believed waitresses and waiters should get paid more.
“That’s not true. You can fall in love and be in love a thousand times. But you can never feel the same love twice,” said Alaric.
“I don’t know. I’ve never fallen in love before,” I told him. The stew was hot and it burned my tongue. It felt like my taste buds were slowly shriveling up like dried prunes. I hastily sipped the glass of cold water to ease the pain, but the burning sensation came back within the next minute.
“Wow, cold-hearted. You ever had feelings for someone, at least?”
“Yeah, this boy back in ninth grade who later turned out to be a total jerk,” I explained. I wanted to say that I fell in love with the characters through the stories that I read in the library, but I didn’t think that counted. Also, it made me sound like a huge nerd.
“What happened?”
“He told me he was into me, then the next day I found out he kissed one of my best friends. Weeks later, they started dating,” I said. “It was nothing.” It was one of those pointless and immature high school moments that I wish I could take back. I began to like Derek and when he started flirting and hanging out with me, I thought it might have gone somewhere. I had been wrong. “What about you, huh? Ever fallen in love or whatever?”
I fidgeted in my seat uncomfortably. There was something sticking up on my stool.
Alaric got out his fingers and started counting with a serious look on his face, one eyebrow raised.
“Seriously?” I snorted as I watched him do his math.
He laughed. “I think I’ve fallen in love more times than I can count, although some of them may have been more like lust rather than love. But I’ve only been in love once.”
“Shouldn’t falling in love and being in love feel the same?” I’d always wondered about it. I kept hearing people say that falling in love was different from actually being in love. But both were love.
“Falling in love is easy. Being in love is hard” was all that he said. “It’s like hearing a song with a good first verse. The beginning of the song may be wonderful, but the real question is whether or not the chorus that follows after the first verse is worth it for you to last the entire way.”
“I have never thought about it like that,” I murmured to myself.
“Is the stew good?”
I nodded. I didn’t know whether I was hungry or that the stew was actually good, but I savored each bite like it was the last meal I was going to have.
“I know, right? I used to come here all the time as a child. It’s like home food for me,” he said.
“Doesn’t your mom cook?” I asked in between sips of my stew.
“Yeah, but sadly, she liked eating here more than cooking so we came here a lot, which is also how my brother met his ex-fiancée. Of course, for the first year or two, we didn’t even know she existed. Then one day, she came back from Spain, walked through those doors right over there,” said Alaric, pointing at the restaurant doors, “and my brother was in love.”
“What? Love at first sight?” I asked.
“Love at first sight,” he confirmed. “Let me guess, you don’t believe in the whole ‘love at first sight’ thing?”
I nodded. “It just seems…overrated, like a petty and shallow excuse to use for the person you like, when in reality, you only liked that person because he or she was good-looking.”
“Not always true, though.”
“Why, aren’t you a romantic,” I said sarcastically, rolling my eyes.
“Fine, what if I told you…you’re my love at first sight?” He looked at me with those puppy-dog eyes and grinned, biting his lower lip.
“Shut up.” As much as I wanted to believe him, I was almost positive that he was screwing around with me.
“It’s true.” He deviously chuckled to himself.
Chapter Six
(July 27, 1992, in Vienna)
After we paid and said goodbye to the waitress, we set off on the road to his friend’s place.
The night air was crisp and fresh, and I could hear the crickets around us vibrantly chirping in chorus. The streets were basically empty except for a few locals and shop owners. The tourists had probably gone back to their hotels, anxiously waiting for tomorrow as they fulfilled their thirst for another adventure in Austria.
As we walked, Alaric started humming the same tune as when we were on top of the clock tower.
“What are you humming?” I finally asked.
“Oh, it’s Billy Joel’s song, ‘Vienna.’”
“Isn’t that song, like, fifty years old?”
“Twenty, actually, but my mom used to play it all the time. It’s the song that keeps repeating in my head.”
We came upon a row of tiny shops near a river.
The river was so motionless, it was like a mirror with the moonlight reflecting off it. I suddenly had an urge to plunge in, but I knew I would drown, considering I’d never learned how to swim.
I recognized the boulevard from earlier when I was exploring Krems an der Donau except now it was less crowded, giving off a vacant vibe that made me feel so lonely. The fresh smell of baked goods hung in the air as if it had never left.
“Your friend lives here?” I asked. My voice seemed to echo in all directions even though I was basically whispering.
“Yeah. Peaceful, isn’t it?”
The little boy from earlier who had been passing out free samples in the kid’s chef suit sat on one of the wooden stools near the front door, eating what looked to be a piece of cake, all mushed together like mashed potatoes with rainbow sprinkles.
“Hey, Rodrick, wo ist deine schwester?”Alaric said in German after he opened the door and tickled the little kid, who stopped in the middle of stuffing his face with frosting.
“Sie ist in der Küche.” He giggled. I had no idea what he had just said, but the little kid looked adorable with his mouth covered with whipped cream and pieces of cake crumbs. He recognized me from earlier and gave me a smile.
“Danke,” Alaric said and patted him on his head. We walked in.
“This is your friend’s place?” I asked him. The bakery looked smaller from the outside than it actually was. One side of the wall had rows of cakes with different designs beneath the refrigerated glass counter, which was connected with a cash register to another counter that had baskets of cookies, muffins, bread; anything, you name it.
“Yep, but if you eat all of their bakery items, I’m not going to be responsible for when she gets all crazy.” He laughed. We walked through a door behind the register that looked like it led to the kitchen.
“I take it that you’ve done it before?” I queried.
“Many times, sadly. Can’t help myself,” confessed Alaric. “The fudge here is extremely good, though,” he said.
A woman came out of a door that was connected to the wall behind the cash register. She looked at Alaric, surprised, thrilled, and disgusted all at the same time.
“Du bist!” said the woman, pointing her wooden spoon at Alaric as if she were a wizard casting a spell on him. She looked like she was in her early twenties with her messy brown hair pinned back in a ginormous bun. Like the waitress, her sharp European features made her look gorgeous even in a chocolate-covered apron and with bits of flour stuck on her face.
“Vermisst du mich?”Alaric smiled and hugged her, transporting some of the flour that was on her body onto his shirt.
I stood there awkwardly as the two conversed in German.
“Du idiot wo warst du? Ich habe dich seit ein Jahr nich mehr gesehn!” Sh
e softly punched him on the arm and set the wooden spoon on the counter next to her.
“Es tut mir leid. Ich war bescheftigt. Du schaust gleich aus. This is my friend Kaffee Mädchen,” he said and shoved me in front of him.
“It’s Skyler, actually.” I smiled and smacked Alaric.
She was a hugger. She hugged me so tight that I thought my lungs needed to be rebooted.
“Ah. An American. I’m Adriana. Alaric’s friend since he was in diapers.” She slapped Alaric and laughed.
“Since we were in diapers,” Alaric corrected her.
She thought for a second. “Nope. I remember, because you kept falling in the toilet when I watched Mutter potty-train you.” She smirked, and I burst into laughter.
“Who’s mutter?” I asked.
“Sorry. It’s German for mother.”
“Okay, that’s too much information.” Alaric sighed. “Hey, you mind if we stay for tonight?”
“You can stay for an entire year. I don’t care.” She laughed and brought us to another room located behind the kitchen.
“So where have you been for the past year? How’s your mutter?” she asked. We went up the spiral stairs, which led us to a living room.
“I’ve been traveling and she’s doing good. Still holding down the fort,” he said.
“And your brother?”
“Nothing’s changed.”
“Ah. So he’s still an immature, unreliable guy."
“What happened?” I asked.
“This girl still holds a grudge against my brother for canceling on their one-week trip to Germany that they had planned months before, because he decided to go on a trip to Hungary with a girl he had just met last-minute.”
“Wow. That is an inconsiderate move,” I said. “No offense.”
“Completely inconsiderate move,” Adriana muttered to herself.
“It is.” Alaric chuckled. “But it happened, like, four years ago. From what I remember, he apologized for weeks and even offered to take you on another trip but you rejected. It’s time to forgive and forget.”
We walked into what looked like a living room. There was a couch on one side of the wall with a wooden table in front of it. “One of you guys can take the couch, the other one the floor.” She walked toward a small white cabinet and took out blankets and a couple of pillows. Alaric and I moved the table further away from the couch, creating a sleeping space.