Girl from Mars (12 page)

I'd rather live in a gray house.

“Let's go,” says Phillip, and Laura pulls me by the sleeve.

The streetcar rattles. At the sixth stop we get out. The houses here are gray, too. There are pigeons and old fountains. People walking in the street.

We turn into a laneway up a gentle hill. We stop in front of a big house. Phillip runs his finger along the name plates.

“We're here!” Laura whispers in my ear.

The door buzzes open.

The stairs are dark. The only light comes through big green windows that seem to look out onto a courtyard. We climb three flights up. A door opens and in the doorway stands a man with reading glasses and spiky gray hair. He's dressed entirely in black. He shakes hands with Laura and me while Phillip introduces us.

“I'm Frank,” he says. Then he gives Phillip a hug.

Laura grins at me.

“Come on in. Make yourselves at home. If you're thirsty, help yourself. If you're hungry, the same. Everything is in the refrigerator,” he says, giving us a tour. He shows us the kitchen, the bathroom and two rooms — one with a big bed and another with a sofa. “I don't know how you want to arrange things. Two of you can have the guest room and one can take the study. Doesn't matter to me.” Then he looks at his watch. “Unfortunately, as I told Phillip, I won't be able to join you this evening, but here's a key.” He takes a ring of keys from a chest of drawers. “And here is my cell number in case you need anything. Otherwise I'll see you tomorrow morning.”

And then he sweeps by us and out the door.

For a moment we just stand there looking at the door. Phillip is the first to move. He goes into the kitchen and
I hear him open the fridge. Laura hears it too and plunges after him.

***

“So, what's the plan?” asks Phillip, after he's put his dish in the dishwasher.

“Have fun,” says Laura.

“Do you know your way around here?” I ask him.

“No. But we're right in the middle of town. Something must be going on. I think we should just leave it to chance. But first, ladies...” And he pulls Laura's tobacco pouch out of her pocket.

Smoking on a balcony again. I take a drag and look down at the street. The streetcar clangs around the corner and clatters up the hill. I take another drag. This time it isn't so bad.

Another streetcar. I imitate the sound it makes, and Laura and Phillip laugh.

And then we go out. We walk around the streets a bit and look in the shop windows. Junk shops. Fruit and vegetable shops. An old-fashioned cafe with lace tablecloths. And then we see a bar that looks cozy.

“Phillip, you get the drinks. You're the biggest,” Laura says.

Phillip pushes through the crowd. Laura watches him, then suddenly she gives me a big hug and says, “It's nice that you came with us.”

She holds me tightly. For an eternity.

Phillip comes back with three bottles of Beck's.

“They're pretty easy-going here. This is practically a student pub,” he says. I look around. The bar is full, the music is loud.

So this is what university students look like.

My parents didn't stay in school. Dennis and I are the first ones in the family who might even be able to go to university. Dad had an absolute fit when Dennis once said that he didn't know whether he would bother graduating.

“Do you want to go to university?” I ask Laura. She shrugs her shoulders while she clinks her bottle against mine.

“Prost!” Then she raises her glass to Phillip. “What about you?” she asks me.

I look at the people in the bar and wonder what their lives are like. To wake up every day in your own apartment, in a city far away from a little town that you only talk about when someone asks you where home is. Always carrying books and papers under your arm, spending time in big libraries where you have to be quiet. Listening to professors, maybe even saying something yourself and maybe what I say might even be right.

“Yes, maybe,” I say.

“And what do you want to study?” asks Phillip.

“I have no idea.”

A couple in the corner have started to dance. Laura watches them and moves to the music. Then she leans over and asks me if I want to dance.

I don't. I'd rather watch the people. Laura stands up
anyway and goes over to the dance floor. Phillip drinks the last of his beer, raises his bottle and asks me if I want another. I rummage around for my wallet.

“Hey, don't worry about it. It's on me. You can pay for the next round.”

Laura's eyes are closed. She's standing in the middle of the dance floor, and I wonder what song she is dancing to, what she is listening to in her head. All around her people are hopping around and flinging themselves against one another crazily, but no one touches her. She smiles.

Phillip comes back to the table with the beers and I try to finish up my first one in a hurry.

“Prost,” he says, and we clink bottles. “Not many people drink as fast as I do.”

“And that is just one of my many talents,” I say. I try to peel the label off the bottle with my thumbnail. I have to think more about whether I want to go to university, whether I want to keep studying, and if so, what. Again I imagine myself climbing the stairs in a big old building, maybe hurrying to get to a lecture on time. The steps are old and made of marble. Big lecture halls filled with hundreds of students.

“What are you thinking about?” Phillip asks.

“Stuff.”

“Aha.” He nods and turns to look at the dance floor, too.

When they start to play a new song, he suddenly jumps up and rushes over to Laura, who has stopped dancing. He starts to dance — actually he just bobs
around and moves his lips to the lyrics. Laura looks at him, her eyes wide, and grins. Then she comes over to me at the table again, takes a drink from her bottle. She takes her tobacco out of her jacket pocket and rolls a cigarette. She sticks it in her mouth, grabs the candle from the middle of the table and lights her cigarette.

“You know, in Hamburg you can get thrown out of a bar for doing this, because it means a sailor will die.” I didn't know that. She inhales and blows out the smoke. The candle flickers. “Poor sailor.”

Laura looks over at Phillip and smiles.

“That's the only song he'll dance to, the absolutely only one.” Then she looks at me again. “Are you still going to dance with me today?” She shifts closer to me and leans her head on my shoulder, and suddenly I am back on the hill that night — her head on my shoulder. “Oh, please, Mi. Dance with me, okay?”

It's fun to dance with someone when you are only dancing for that person. To shout out the lyrics together if you know them, to be together inside a song. From now on every time I hear this song, I will think, that's the time I danced with Laura. That's the place where she put her arm around my shoulder. And on that night everything was right, because the DJ played the right song — maybe Madonna, Pixies or “Blister in the Sun” by the Violent Femmes — and because we were far away, in a completely different city. That was the time we simply took off for a trip to the east, and Ines and Suse stayed home. Because Laura just wanted to be with me.

We drink a lot. I pay for the next round. Then Phillip buys the next one because he's thirsty and doesn't want to wait for Laura.

I'm not drunk, just a little tipsy maybe. And I'm thirsty because I've been dancing so much.

Laura takes me in her arms and says, “You have no idea how much I love you.”

How much do you, then?

Then the DJ puts on a new song and Laura sings along with the lyrics again.

***

Phillip is tired. There are only a few people left in the bar. Only one woman is standing alone on the dance floor and swaying to the music — not Laura this time, but I can't stop watching her standing there, hardly moving.

“Let's go,” says Phillip. So we get our jackets. It's cold outside. Laura is still singing, “Into the sea, you and me,” and she starts hopping around in circles on one leg. Phillip has sleepy eyes, and he doesn't say much.

At a fountain in the middle of a square Laura stops singing and pulls me by my sleeve onto the side of the fountain.

“So. We've waited long enough.” She has to struggle a bit to keep her balance.

I stand there, wondering what she wants. Phillip just looks at her, too, until finally she says, “I want to hear you recite ‘Erlking.' Please. Just for me. And Phillip.” She
looks around and adds, “There's no one else around to hear you.”

Phillip laughs quietly, but the noise echoes off the walls of the houses and sounds louder than he intends.

“Please,” says Laura as quietly as she can.

“Oh, yes, please,” Phillip adds. “It's about time.”

I think about it, and the first line comes to me. We had to learn “Erlking” by heart in the seventh grade. I got an A, and I still know it.

So, here in the middle of the night, in a strange city, I tell them the story about the father whose child dies while they're riding home.

The father now gallops with terror half wild
,
He clasps in his arms the poor suffering child
;
He reaches the courtyard with toil and with dread
—
But the child in his arms lies motionless, dead
.

Then I bow and Laura applauds, her gloves muffling the sound of her clapping.

And I jump down from the fountain and am not the least bit embarrassed.

14

Déjà vu
. Once again we are lying together in a bed. On the way home we danced. Then we watched a horror film. Frank wasn't home and he still hasn't come back.

“I'll sleep on the couch,” Phillip said, and we all brushed our teeth together.

We've really had fun.

“Are you asleep already?” whispers Laura.

I turn over.

“No.”

“Good.” And then she giggles.

Suddenly I am very nervous, because she doesn't say anything else. And it's dark. I can smell her and hear her breathing. My stomach feels very warm.

She just wants to be my friend. She doesn't want to kiss me any more.

“Are you still awake?” she asks again.

I nod. Suddenly she is very close to me.

“Really?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“Awake?” she asks, and her mouth is very close to mine.

And then she kisses me very softly.

“A goodnight kiss so that you can finally go to sleep,” she says.

She stays so close, though. What's happening?

The apartment door opens and closes.

“Shhh!” she says. We hear Frank pull off his shoes and put something on the floor. Steps. The toilet flushes. More steps. A door is pulled closed.

We keep listening.

“I am still awake,” I say quietly. And then she kisses me. And again. Just little kisses. But soon more. And more. And longer ones.

I am getting warm. Laura slides closer to me and I move closer to her. Suddenly we are lying without the covers on. And we are kissing. Laura strokes me — first just my arm, then her hand reaches down and slowly moves up my leg. I hold her hair. It feels like feathers, so soft. I stroke her neck and we look at each other. There are no shutters, only curtains, and the streetlights are shining through, orange. Laura looks at me and slowly strokes my thigh. I'm wearing a T-shirt and panties.

Suddenly she stops, pulls her hand away and says, “I'm sorry, I...you...”

I sit up. And then I pull off my T-shirt and look at her. I take her hand and place it back on my leg.

Everything is very easy. To be naked is easy. Kissing, too. Her neck, her stomach. She kisses me back — my
neck, my breasts, my stomach, and then she looks up briefly and smiles at me, and I close my eyes.

***

The streetcars are clanging again. I hear a door open and the drone of a radio. A coffee machine.

We lie here. We are both awake. I smile, because she is smiling.

“Breakfast,” she whispers. I nod.

“What now, Laura?”

“I don't know,” she says. “What now, Mi?”

I don't know. I get dressed. Underwear, T-shirt, jeans, sweater, socks. Laura does the same. Then we go into the kitchen.

15

We've been lying in bed a long time. It's eleven o'clock when we start breakfast and it gets later because Frank starts talking. But I can't listen. I look at Laura, at the clock, and I think, after another six-hour trip we'll be home. What then? Only six hours.

Phillip is checking to see which connections we take. I call home and leave a message on the answering machine asking Mum to pick me up at the station at nine o'clock.

Soon we leave. Every now and then Laura looks at me, then back down at the floor.

It is Sunday.

I hate Sundays.

***

“Why are you both so quiet?” Phillip asks when we're on the train.

“Don't worry about it, Phil,” Laura says.

“I'm going to the bathroom,” I say. When I close the
washroom door behind me, I lean against the wall and look at the shaky reflection of my face in the shaky mirror.

Do I look different? I think about last night and my stomach lurches. But then I think about home, and I feel sick.

When I go back to my seat, Phillip gives me a strange look. Then he stares deliberately out the window, a big frown on his forehead.

Suddenly he jerks his head back to Laura.

“And what happens to the two of you now?” he asks her.

“You told him?”

Laura shrugs. “He guessed. He already knew.” She searches through her bag and pulls out her pack of tobacco.

“No smoking in here,” Phillip reminds her.

“Shit,” she murmurs. She puts it back.

“Are you making it official? At school and stuff?” asks Phillip.

“Are you crazy?” Laura says.

“Why not? It's not a crime,” Phillip says.