“But you’ve been drinking.”
“I only had two glasses.”
We drove through the night, stopping at a motorway hotel outside Milan. I went to school on Tuesday. Three months later her cancer returned and this time it proved too strong for her.
Tanzi appears in my doorway, making me jump. “The chicken’s ready. You want to eat with us?”
/
At the beginning of October the sky lowers over Berlin and an east wind whips dead leaves into vicious spirals. Angela Merkel embarks on her third term in office after victory in the elections. Uncontrolled Gypsy migration from Bulgaria and Romania is causing tension, and the last existing stretch of Hitler’s motorway network — the A11 — is to be resurfaced. On Paul-Lincke-Ufer a black umbrella leaps from a man’s hand and somersaults into the canal. I have a Russian visa but can’t use it yet. I feel thin-skinned, irritable. There’s the sense that I’m treading water. Marking time.
One afternoon I meet Oswald in Café Einstein. He starts talking about life at KaDeWe, and he’s being so outrageous that the waitress with the chestnut hair stops at our table to listen. Oswald’s supervisor — the burly woman — has been seen leaving an infamous nightclub in Mitte, but he isn’t overly surprised. A day job handling meat, a nocturnal fixation with leather. It’s only to be expected, he says. He has often felt the urge himself. We’re all still laughing when my phone vibrates. It’s Cheadle and he comes straight to the point. My services will be required that evening.
By the time the call is over the waitress has moved away and Oswald’s texting.
“Who was that?” he says.
I stare at the screen. “No one special.”
“Your mood’s changed completely. You’re like a different person.” Head cocked, he considers me. “Your phone never rings.”
Back at the apartment I wash my hair and shave my legs. Later, I slip into the clingy golden dress and the high heels. Standing in the hall by the front door I study myself in a dusty full-length mirror.
“You look great.” From where he’s sitting, in the kitchen, Cheadle can see all the way down the corridor.
“I look like an escort,” I say.
“High-class, though. Top of the range.” Cheadle rolls the tip of his cigar against the edge of the ashtray and reaches for his beer.
“That’s not the kind of thing a father’s supposed to say.”
“I’m new to this. I make mistakes.” He brings the cigar up to his lips. “Anyway, you haven’t agreed to be adopted yet.”
His phone beeps twice. It’s the taxi firm, he tells me. My car’s outside.
Our conversations always go like this. He veers between affection and callousness, and expects me to be able to handle both. There are times when he seems to think I’m too full of myself and wants to see me come unstuck. Like now.
I check myself in the mirror one last time. Thigh-length dress, gold high heels. I’m reminded of the girls I used to see on Via Flaminia, or on the dark sticky roads that surround the Stadio Olimpico. I have never looked so unlike myself, and for a moment I feel capable of anything. I put on my cashmere coat and pick up my purse, then I move across the hall to the front door.
“Not out of your depth, are you, baby?” Cheadle says.
I give him a look. “No one says baby anymore.”
He touches two fingers to his forehead in a mock salute. “Viel Glück.”
The dim light in the corridor and the upright rectangle of the doorway combine to frame part of the kitchen. A man hunched over a simple wooden table. The blue of cigar smoke, the dull gold of a glass of beer. If it were a painting it would be an Old Master.
Later, in the taxi, my thoughts circle back to the American who keeps asking if he can be my father. There was an uncharacteristic tenderness in the roundness of his shoulders and the attentive angle of his head, and also in those last two words, which he probably didn’t mean to say. Good luck.
In Potsdamerplatz a man who looks Turkish steps out in front of the taxi. My driver brakes, then swears at him. There are too many bloody foreigners, he says. They’re taking all the jobs.
“So there are all these Germans, are there,” I say, “desperate to clean offices at night?”
“You know what I mean.”
The Kempinski slides into view, its lobby brightly lit, its front steps carpeted in red.
I pay the fare on the meter, then lean close to the grille. “I know one job they should take.”
“What job’s that?”
“Yours.”
Before the taxi driver can respond, a man in a top hat opens the car door for me, his face a mask, revealing nothing. I thank him and set off up the steps. In the lobby of the Kempinski there are shiny wooden pillars ringed with polished metal and sofas the color of tangerines. The murmur of voices mingles with subdued Peruvian pipe music. The air feels staticky, filled with ions, as if a weather front is moving in.
/
The moment I enter the Bristol Bar I feel his eyes on me, even though I have yet to work out which of the many men he is. I’m acutely aware of the skin that covers me; it’s as if I have goose bumps. Then I see him. He’s sitting on a bar stool. Dark-blue suit, white shirt. No tie. I walk towards him. He doesn’t look round but watches me indirectly in the mirror where all the bottles are. He’s built like a wrestler, with wide shoulders and a deep chest. His hair is black.
“Raul,” I say.
He turns to face me. “Yes.”
“I’m Misty.”
When I shake his hand it feels warm and smooth and oddly padded. I have the sensation that his fingers are stuffed with something other than blood and tissue. Silicone maybe. Or down. I wonder if Raul is his real name. It’s possible we’re both using false identities.
“There is a car waiting to take us to the restaurant,” Raul says. “Or perhaps you would like a drink here first.”
His English is flawless. I can’t even detect an accent.
I look around. “This place is a bit depressing.”
He smiles, then makes a call.
As we leave the hotel a dark car draws up outside. Neon slides over the roof, smooth as a hand stroking a cat. The man in the top hat is there again, opening the door for me, and this time I sense something protective rising off him, something almost paternal, though his face doesn’t alter in the slightest.
Once in the car Raul addresses the driver in a language I have never heard before. I ask him where he’s from. Croatia, he says. Zagreb.
“I don’t know Zagreb,” I say.
“No.” He looks straight ahead and smiles, as if I have just stated the obvious.
For three or four minutes neither of us speaks. Now we are in a confined space I’m picking up a sweet charred smell, a little like burnt sugar.
“I’m glad it’s you,” he says.
I’m not sure what he means or how to respond. Instead I ask him where we’re going. He says a name that begins with B. I stare out of the window. Judging by the route we’re taking, the restaurant is in the east. A line comes to me. But what shall I say of the night? What of the night? I can’t remember where it’s from. A book I studied while at school. Something I loved. I feel Raul’s eyes move across my face, then down my body. This happens several times during the journey and not always when I’m looking the other way. He doesn’t seem to care if I notice. He isn’t even faintly self-conscious or embarrassed.
We stop on a tree-lined street near the Gendarmenmarkt. The restaurant is located on the ground floor of a grand stone building that looks as if it might once have been a bank or an insurance company. When we walk in, I gather from the welcome we receive that Raul is a regular customer.