by Mandy Berman
He looked into his wine, swirling it aimlessly. They were nearing the bottom of the bottle.
“I never knew this before I had a kid,” he started. “Being a parent does a number on you. Before this year, I seemed to think I would be okay with being away. I was certainly okay with being away from her. I had done it before. But with him. You don’t understand. It supersedes all else.”
He had not answered her question. She wondered if she should ask it again, or let the issue of the wife drop. They both knew she existed, and that they were here, at this lunch, in spite of her existence. Where was she right now? Was it of any consequence to Fiona to know? The woman wasn’t her responsibility, but in front of this man, in the city where he lived with his family, she began to feel guilty about his wife for the first time. What about female loyalty, the sisterhood? Did those things apply to complete strangers? This woman might be a good person who loved Oliver very much, with zero suspicions about where he was right now. Then again—being married to someone like Oliver, who was gone for the whole year, how could you not have suspicions?
She decided to ask again.
“What about your wife?”
He looked at her searchingly, trying to gauge her: her curiosity, where it came from, why it existed. Finally, he sighed, as if acknowledging that the question was an annoyance, a burden on him.
“They’re away for the weekend. At her sister’s. It’s been complicated.”
“Complicated”: an adult code word for I don’t want to talk about it. Was this what adulthood was—knowing someone was in the wrong, but never saying so? Ignoring the issue of morality to get what you wanted? Or did that only apply to Oliver?
“I see,” she said. She supposed the question of morality was only relevant to him. Where was her mistake? She was not the married one. She was the single one, the childless one. She would not be the one in the wrong.
The issue was that this was Oliver Ash, the man she had wanted for so long, who now, she finally understood, wanted her back. It was easy to sweep wrongdoings and misgivings under the rug when they were yours, when the moment to be seized was dangling in front of you, asking to be plucked. He had just given her permission to do what she wanted without feeling bad about it.
The wine was doing its work, and she found herself uninterested in food when their pastas came. He watched her take a bite, shook his head in disbelief.
“Fiona Larkin,” he said.
“What?”
“I just…” He was looking at her with a real sexual charge in his eyes now, fully appraising her. It made her feel both turned on and deeply unnerved. “Nothing. Aren’t you hungry?”
“Not really,” she said, knowing that now they could go, now they could get the check, dash out of there, find a hotel or a dark alleyway or a park, for that matter—this was Berlin, after all. But she could not bring herself to suggest movement. She was paralyzed by him. She could only follow his lead.
“Me neither,” he said, and called for the waiter. He paid the bill himself, sliding his credit card into the assigned slot quickly and discreetly, which made her feel like a concubine, a kept woman. A coquette.
* * *
—
They walked down a busy street, a tram line running through it, and toward the canal. The sidewalks were so crowded that she and Oliver had to walk single file, him in front of her, leading the way. She felt like people were looking at her, though they probably weren’t. It was both magical and disquieting to be wine drunk in the daylight, in a city she didn’t know, at the mercy of Oliver Ash.
They came to a park just before the canal. A man with dreadlocks and a Jamaican-flag beanie approached them: “Hashish? Want hashish?” Oliver shook his head. She could see a skinny tower above the tree line, like a disco ball with a stake poking from the top. Soviet-feeling in its cold silver gleam, its spire shooting toward space.
Oliver led them to a bench in the shade. He took out a pack of cigarettes, offered her one. She took it. He lit hers first, his hands cupping the flame, their faces close. They didn’t say much as they smoked. There were a few more dreadlocked men, standing together and chatting, then dispersing to approach potential clients who were traversing the park. There was an old man a few benches down, wearing a flat wool cap and holding a newspaper open, though his chin was against his chest as if he was asleep. There were young people on blankets on the grass, lying on their stomachs, feet kicking the air aimlessly, puffs of smoke rising above their heads and into that bright Berlin sky.
“This city really comes alive in the summer,” Oliver remarked.
When they finished their cigarettes, he said her name again, and looked at her with intention.
“Yeah?” she said.
He had nothing to say in response, and he leaned in to kiss her, placing one hand on her thigh. His lips were rough but the kiss was softer than she’d expected, romantic-aspiring but almost lifeless in actuality. He whispered her first name again, and nuzzled his nose against hers, an action of forced intimacy which made her recoil.
“I can’t believe I’m kissing you,” he said, the emphasis on you, as if he’d wanted her the whole time.
It was a line, but she wanted to believe him enough that she did. It felt too good to buy into this fantasy springing to life, the notion that he had wanted her, and only her, all along—that during all those nights when she was fantasizing about him, he was fantasizing about her, too. During the school year, she hadn’t believed she stood a chance with him. She hadn’t planned this far. So it seemed inconsequential, now, that she felt tentative, that she hadn’t already melted to the ground. It seemed wise to ignore that his breath was not great, that as they kissed more it felt like he could be kissing anyone, that this was just the way he kissed his students: softly at first, as if to show them he was sensitive, and safe; hands on their faces; careful to whisper their names over and over as if reminding himself of them.
It was easiest and most desirable and most life-affirming to believe that he wanted Fiona and only Fiona, that she was not just one of his students but the only one of her kind. That she was different. That she, Fiona Larkin, had made an impression.
She kissed him back, imagining that he was the man from her fantasy, and filling herself up with pride. She had gotten him. Not Liv. That, she assured herself, was worth feeling good about.
* * *
—
He took her in a cab to a trendy hotel, and bought a bottle of wine at the lobby bar to be brought upstairs. The hallways were black and the only light came from the strange experimental videos playing on screens mounted on the corridor walls. The room was white and bright and very small, with only a full-sized bed pushed up against a corner, and a toilet, and a shower with no door. The windows looked out onto the center courtyard of the hotel, which was busy with guests who were uniformly good-looking and wearing spotless white Vans, playing Ping-Pong and lying in hammocks reading novels, while servers delivered cocktails and espressos and miniature sandwiches to them: it was a youth hostel for the late-twenties set.
Oliver took glasses from the bathroom, then opened the bottle of wine and poured. She didn’t need to drink any more, but didn’t say so. They clinked, and she took the smallest sip. He closed the window curtains, though it was still bright in the room, and still loud outside. Techno music was playing full blast, which they could hear perfectly despite the windows being shut.
They fell onto the bed and fumbled over each other’s clothes. His large hands were moving frantically over her body, as if he were searching for something. She tried to shut off her mind, and the suspicion that he’d known to come to this hotel too quickly, that she was not the only woman he had brought here in the middle of the afternoon.
As Fiona went to unbuckle his belt, she felt that one of the belt loops in his jeans was ripped. She unbuttoned him and found that his smell was unpleasant,
and that he was not groomed. Sometimes men’s smells could be appealing to her, and sometimes even when they were unshowered they smelled desirable to her: pheromones doing their biological work. Oliver’s didn’t. He only smelled unclean.
He flipped her over, pulled her underwear down, and kneeled between her legs. He made an excited sound as he pressed his tongue into her. Immediately, she hated it. He was doing this clinically, like she could have been exactly anyone. His tongue was cold and slobbery and reminded her of the cold wet muscle of an oyster. She hated oysters.
“Wait,” she heard herself saying. He didn’t seem to hear her.
“Wait,” she said louder.
He looked up. “Huh?” His face was flushed, and he seemed annoyed with her for interrupting. She saw now, as he looked at her with impatience and indifference, that he was not the Oliver Ash of her imagination. He was not interested in pleasing her. She was not special. Maybe she could have ignored that if she felt turned on by him, if she was enjoying this. The thing was: she wasn’t. She didn’t want him, either.
“I don’t want to do this,” she said, pulling up the sheet and covering herself.
“What?” he said. “What are you talking about?” He came up on the bed to sit closer to her, trying for tenderness, and smoothed a piece of her hair behind her ear. She pushed his hand away.
“I don’t want this,” she said. She heard her voice shaking. “I don’t want you.”
“I don’t understand,” he said, annoyance creeping back into his voice. “You were all systems go a minute ago.”
“Well,” she said, “I changed my mind.”
She gathered up her clothes, which were strewn around the bed, still trying, in vain, to keep herself covered with the bedspread. She turned her back to him to fasten her bra.
“Where is my other shoe?” she said, and turned to see that he was holding it out to her. She took it.
He laid his head back against the white pillow of the hotel bed and put one arm up over his head.
“I don’t understand why you’re doing this,” he said again.
Dressed, she looked at him, shirtless and defeated in the bed. She asked herself if she would regret this.
He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his temples, as if willing away a migraine. He did this for several moments, and Fiona thought about leaving while his eyes were still closed.
Then he opened them, and looked around the room, and at her again. It was like he was seeing all of it for the first time, disbelieving its existence. He shook his head.
“I just saw myself,” he said.
She didn’t respond. She didn’t want to stay suffocated in this shoe box of a room a minute longer than she needed to.
“I saw what this looks like. What a fucking creep I am,” he said. “You must think I do this all the time.”
She might have shrugged, or nodded.
“I was good all year. I wanted you, you know. But I was good.”
“Congratulations,” she said.
“Poor me, right?” He looked like he was going to cry. “It’s falling apart,” he said. “My life has completely fallen apart.”
She almost felt sorry for him. She assumed his marriage was failing, that he felt like a mostly forgotten writer, that he was just trying to hold on to the last scrap of his youth. Just trying to feel desired again, through her. And she was depriving him of that. It almost made her feel bad enough to change her mind.
“I thought I could hack it.”
“Hack what?” She couldn’t help but ask out of curiosity, even as she felt herself being pulled toward the door.
He threw a hand up, as if to imply all of it. “Nuclear family life. Teaching again. Et cetera.”
“You’re not cut out for it,” she confirmed. He nodded. She understood the feeling: that you didn’t fit into any of the paths set before you, that your own life was uncharted, that no one like you had ever lived before. The world could feel so imposing, so square.
“Why are you telling me this?”
He shrugged. “I figured you would get it.”
She did get it, and felt momentarily flattered, and yet: did he really mean her? Or would he have talked to any young woman who would listen? There was, perhaps, no way to know the answer, to know if she, Fiona, was special to him, or simply another girl.
She could give in to her ego, believe that she was, in fact, special to him. But what did that actually matter? All year, she’d been thinking about what men thought of her, but she had never stopped to ask herself what she thought of them.
She patted him on the leg, more maternal than romantic, and then walked toward the door. She took one last look at Oliver Ash, lying supine on the hotel bed he had paid for.
“Good luck, Professor,” she said to him, meaning it, and she left him there and struck out on her own into the foreign city.
26.
OUTSIDE, FIONA REALIZED she had no idea where she was. She checked her cellphone: it was five P.M. It felt like it should be so much later; she’d hardly slept in the last twenty-four hours. She wondered if she was still invited to dinner with Avi and Stu. But it was early, and she had no idea, anyway, where dinner was. She hadn’t bought a German SIM card, and she didn’t want to turn on her international roaming and have to explain to her mother why she took a last-minute trip to Berlin. She should have asked for the restaurant’s name and location before, but she’d only thought as far as Oliver.
She had a spare key to the apartment, though, and she knew the address by heart now. She crossed the busy road to the nearest U-Bahn station. The U7 ran here; she had taken the U7 to meet Oliver for lunch. On the outdoor platform, she looked at a map and guessed which direction to go. She couldn’t remember the name of Avi’s U-Bahn stop.
She studied the map for several minutes, allowing a train to go by before she worked up the courage to ask someone for directions. A girl her age had been eyeing her, and Fiona could not tell if she had been checking her out or was pitying her, the poor lost American. The girl was wearing Doc Martens, baggy jeans that stopped right above the boots, and a tight, cropped T-shirt. Her hair was cut close to her scalp, and platinum white. Fiona would have looked absurd in this outfit, but this girl, with her defined cheekbones and bright eyes, appeared effortlessly cool.
She waved at the girl to get her attention, smiling, because she didn’t know how to say “Excuse me.” She asked, “Sprich du English?”—sure she was butchering it.
“Yes?” the girl said.
“Can you help me? I’m trying to get to Kreuzberg.”
“Yes, where in Kreuzberg?” She pronounced the name of the neighborhood differently than Fiona had, like “Croytsberg.”
“Um. The stop starts with ‘G-n’?”
“Gneisenaustrasse?”
“Yes!”
“You can’t take this train there.”
“Really? I thought I was supposed to take the U7.”
“You are. This is the S7.” Her English was perfect, with the slightest and most charming German lilt to it.
“What’s the difference?”
“They’re very different. What is the street in Kreuzberg?”
Fiona butchered the pronunciation of that, too, but eventually the girl figured out where Fiona was going, and told her she would need to take the U1 to the U6, and that that platform was a few blocks away. (She pointed vaguely behind them.) She showed Fiona on the map the name of the station where she would change—Hallesches Tor—and Fiona thanked her profusely, aware that people were looking at her. (She was probably talking too loudly, didn’t all Americans talk too loudly?) She walked up the steps and over toward the underground platform, boarded the train when it came, and sat in a carpeted seat facing a pair of canoodling teenagers. She heard the automated lady’s voice say the name of the stop over the train’s speakers—it so
unded completely different than it was written, like “Halaishes Towar”—and soon she saw the words in German as the train pulled up to a busy station. Fiona got off there, victorious, to change to the U6, which she would now take to Platz der Luft-something. Aboveground, she guessed a direction, and was soon proven right, coming upon Avi’s street.
“Hello?” she said tentatively as she walked into the apartment. She was elated that she had found her way here, and wanted to share her excitement with someone. The lights were on, and she heard Whitney Houston playing from Stu’s bedroom. She knew that he could not hear her, because she could hear him singing along, uninterrupted by her entrance. They used to play this song all the time at frat parties—eighties songs were popular; frat boys loved the nostalgia of the eighties. They loved the bright colors and the cheesy synth lines and the cocaine.
“Hello?” she called, louder.
Stu appeared at the end of the hallway then—or slid, rather, out of his bedroom—in his socks and boxer briefs and a white Hanes T-shirt.
They moved toward each other down the hallway. He wore tortoiseshell glasses and had curly brown hair and full lips. He was thin and freshly shaven, and when he took her in for a long hug she could feel how smooth his cheek was against hers. His cologne smelled like the woods, like a freshly extinguished campfire.
“Did you just smell me?” He pulled away, looking at her outfit. “What are you wearing tonight?”
“Not this,” she said defensively. “I need to shower.”
“Do you have leather pants?”
“No?”
“I’m on the list, so you’ll get into the place we’re going after dinner. But you’ll still want to look the part. Go shower and then we’ll talk.” He checked his watch. “We’re meeting Avi at the restaurant at seven.”
After her shower, she dressed carefully, in a different, simple black dress—thin satin, almost like a slip, and short black motorcycle boots. She appeared in front of him and he pursed his lips to the side, thinking.