I head down the stairs.
At quarter to six, a silver Audi winds its way into the complex. I’m sitting on a planter, trying to calm my racing heartbeat. I hop down once I can see the license plate.
He gets out and waits as I walk over.
“Hello,” I say, smiling like an idiot.
“Good evening. You still want to get out of here?”
“Otherwise I would have called you back.”
“Good.” He opens the trunk. “Give me your bag.”
I hand him my backpack. He holds it up as if he’s gauging the weight.
“Is that it?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” He opens the passenger door for me. It smells nice in the car, new leather and decent cologne.
He gets in. “Last chance to hop out,” he says seriously.
I hold tight to the sides of the seat.
He notices, smiles, and turns the key in the ignition. “Off we go,” he says.
We’re silent for almost the entire trip. I have to keep myself from looking over at him too often. I look straight ahead as houses, trees, and street lamps rush past. The car glides quietly and easily over the asphalt, but I continue to hold onto the sides of the seat as if I might fall out.
Once we’re on the autobahn he glances briefly in my direction.
“Put your seatbelt on,” he says.
“Huh?”
“Please put on your seatbelt.”
I grab the belt and wrestle with it for a while before I finally manage to click it into place. He turns on the radio for the six o’clock news. I peek at him sideways. He’s concentrating on the road ahead, his hands on the steering wheel. He has big hands and not a single ring on his fingers.
I feel butterflies in my stomach.
“Do you know where Bad Soden is?” he asks without looking at me.
“Not really,” I say. “Somewhere around here.”
“True.”
Two miles of stop-and-go traffic, the radio says. It’s music to my ears. I’m hoping we make no progress at all.
I lean back and feel the cool leather on my back. All of a sudden I’m incredibly tired. I’m interested in who is waiting for him — and for me — at his house. But not that interested. I’ll find out soon enough.
“Look,” he says. “Frankfurt.”
I look out at the concrete desert off to the right of the highway with its silhouetted skyscrapers. “I know,” I say. “Nice.”
“What’s nice?”
“Frankfurt. I like big cities. They look best when they are lit up at night. I’ve liked that since I was a kid.”
Then we are silent again.
I close my eyes and try not to smile. Then I jump, startled by a shrill, grating noise.
“The windshield wipers,” he says as I relax back into the seat. “It’s raining.”
“But the sun is shining.”
“And it’s raining.”
The wipers smear the dusty drops across the windshield. Gleaming holes have been punched through the gray clouds exposing patches of improbably blue sky.
“Do you think there’ll be a rainbow?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “It would be too kitschy.”
«Life is kitschy,» he says. «Nothing but kitsch and clichés and things you’ve heard a hundred times before, tasteless plotlines and dialogue that wouldn’t make the cut in any halfway decent screenplay. A rainbow over the Frankfurt skyline — what would you think of that?»
“It’s just blind rain,” I say.
“Sorry?”
“Blind rain. Haven’t you ever heard that before?”
“No.”
“That’s what you call it when it rains while the sun is shining.”
“That’s what who calls it?”
“People where I live. Have you really never heard of it?”
“No, never. We don’t call it that.”
Soon he exits the autobahn. The car zips around through an area that’s more rural than I expected it to be. In one field are sheep — hard to believe they stay outdoors overnight. He looks over at me. One corner of his mouth turns down. “Not the big city here,” he says.
“So I see.”
Around another bend and then we go steeply uphill. He stops at the top of the slope and puts on the emergency brake.
“We’re here,” he says. “Welcome.”
I open the passenger door.
It’s a big house next to a few others along the ridgeline. He holds open the gate for me and we go up some stairs to the door of the house. There are flowers to the left and right of the door and lawns beyond.
“It’s beautiful,” I say unprompted.
The entryway is dark and cool. I start to take off my sneakers.
“You can leave them on,” he says. “The floor’s cold.”
“I’d rather not,” I say. I’m standing in my socks in front of a big entryway mirror, trying not to look at myself in it.
He has my backpack slung over his shoulder.
Now what, I think.
And for a moment I’m happy not to have any parents to be accountable to. I feel free. There’s not a single person who cares whether I misbehave here. I can do whatever I want. I’m in charge of myself.
But I’m still nervous.
The house is very, very quiet.
“Are you tired?” he asks. “Do you go to bed early? Normally?”
“Depends,” I say. “If I have to get up early, then yes. But lately I’ve slept through entire days.”
Weighty conversation here.
“I’ll show you the guest room,” he says. “Come on.”
He walks ahead and I follow. There are a lot of stairs in this house. At one stage I hear a noise I can’t place. Screechy, fast, but off a ways.
“What’s that?” I ask, but so softly he doesn’t hear me.
“Have a look,” he says. “This look okay for you?”
He opens the door to a room that’s twice the size of mine at home. My room at home is only eighty square feet. Here there’s a bed at the window, and the light-colored sheets seem to glow in the dark room. Next to that is a heavy old bureau, a little round table, and a rattan chair.
I take a step and am inside the room. I breathe in the air, the scent of freshly washed linens. I take another step and am face to face with a glass door that leads out into the garden.
“What kind of tree is that?” I ask. “The one with the white blossoms.”
“Cherry,” he says. “Can you not tell? Behind it are blackberry patches. But they won’t be ripe until August.”
“I don’t know anything about trees,” I say. “My mother knew a lot. She always explained what you called various herbs and all that, but I never cared. I have a hard time remembering things that bore me.”
The silence he answers with is awkward.
“Thanks,” I say sheepishly. “For the room. It’s really nice here.”
“My pleasure,” he says. “Are you hungry?”
“No,” I say.
“What do you mean? What do you like to eat for dinner?”
I think. He does, too.
“We have bread and cheese in the house, I think,” he says. “But I can also order a pizza.”
“I’m fine,” I say. “I’m going to go to bed.”
“You should eat something. You are already so thin.”
“I’m just kind of tired.”
“Okay. There are towels in the armoire. The bathroom is over there. You need anything else?”
“A book,” I say. “I didn’t bring anything to read.”
“What do you like to read?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I say. “Everything.”
“Then you can pick something out yourself. Come on, I’ll show you the living room — that’s where we keep the books.”
We.
“I’d rather you recommend something.”
“Okay.”
I sit down on the bed. He puts the backpack down at my feet and looks at me.
“Would you like to have some time to yourself?”