Wait for Me in Vienna (23 page)

30

Thursday night arrived in a flash. The days flew by as Johanna and Thomas spent every evening together and phoned or texted daily. Barely two hours went by without their letting each other know they were still there, still alive.

“My mother asked me what you like to eat,” Thomas said on their way over to his parents’ place.

“Everything,” she said as she tugged at her jacket, trying to get her shoulder pads adjusted properly. She got them straightened out, but maybe she should have worn the other blazer without the shoulder pads. This blazer made her seem too domineering; it just didn’t suit her at all.

“Well, I don’t like organ meats.”

“I know, I already warned Gabriele.”

“Gabriele? I thought your mother’s name was Henriette?”

“My second mother. The housekeeper.”

Johanna smiled, then adjusted her blazer again.

“You’re adorable when you’re nervous,” Thomas noted as he peeked over at her.

She hadn’t felt well for a couple hours; it seemed like her nervousness was affecting her stomach.

“Concentrate on driving instead of staring at me, okay?”

“All right. All right,” he laughed, and looked at her again.

“Didn’t you hear me?”

“Okay, okay,” he said as he laid his hand on her thigh to calm her down. “Gabriele cooks for us. I don’t think my mother’s seen the inside of a kitchen for a long time.”

A little later, they turned onto a side street and rolled into a driveway.

“What a gorgeous house,” Johanna said as she closed her car door.

“Yes, it is.”

Thomas was obviously proud of his parents’ home. He held her hand as they walked up the white gravel driveway to the Japanese cypress trees standing guard near the front door.

“Psst . . . Do I look okay?” Johanna asked as she backed up so Thomas could take a good look at her.

“You look amazing!”

“Okay, I guess we can go in. Should I ring the bell?”

“Yes, go ahead.”

“Okay. I’ll do it. Should I really?”

“Yes!”

“Are you sure?”

“Come on, just do it . . .”

Johanna rang the bell. Thomas noticed Johanna’s surprise at the gold-plated doorbell; the opulence of the place wasn’t helping her nerves.

Gabriele opened the door and greeted them warmly. Gabriele loved Thomas like a son—Johanna could see that immediately. His mother and father followed behind, hugging Thomas and shaking Johanna’s hand.

“Come on in,” Henriette said sweetly but firmly.

As she took her place in the dining room, Johanna’s nervousness started to make her nauseous.

“I’m so glad that you could come to visit us, Miss . . . ,” said Thomas’s mother, seeming genuinely pleased.

“Oh, please, just call me Johanna,” Johanna said.

“Okay. I’m Henriette and this is Karl.”

Gabriele served the soup as Thomas’s father tried to start a conversation.

“So, you work at a cooking school. What do you do exactly?” he asked as he scrutinized her.

“I cook and I also assist the head chef. Recently, I’ve been handling the marketing.”

“She’s a fantastic cook,” Thomas gushed as he lightly touched her hand.

“That’s good, because I can’t cook at all.” His mother held up her glass as she giggled.

Johanna noticed the elegant way his mother ate. She picked up her spoon slowly and deliberately each time she brought it to her mouth, almost as if she were conducting a choir singing a lullaby, or as if she wanted the spoon to dance
Swan Lake
.

“You’re Martin’s sister, right?” Henriette gazed at her questioningly.

Johanna nodded.

“Oh, he’s such a doll, but unfortunately, we don’t see him often. Well, when Thomas still lived here, we saw him a lot more, of course.”

“That soup was really excellent,” Johanna said, and the housekeeper grinned and nodded as she took the empty plates away, obviously pleased with the compliment.

“How is Martin anyway?” asked Karl.

“Very well,” Johanna started to say. “He’s doing really well at work, and, more importantly, he’s planning to marry his girlfriend soon. He proposed to her just recently.”

“Yes, he practiced his proposal on me,” Thomas joked with a wink.

Karl gave him a look.

“Yup, he got down on one knee and popped the question,” he kidded.

“Oh, how lovely, a wedding!” his mother exclaimed as the faint lines around her eyes became more visible than usual.

“And I said yes!”

“I’m ever so happy for you both,” Johanna teased with a giggle as everybody else ignored Thomas’s silly banter. She was trying to keep her spirits up, though she didn’t feel very well.

Johanna scrutinized Henriette. She was a neat, well-kept woman, somewhat advanced in years, but with amazingly few wrinkles.
She must be around sixty, but maybe she’s had a little Botox
, she thought.

Gabriele served the main course. As per family tradition, Thomas’s father grabbed his knife and fork first, nodded, then everybody followed shortly thereafter; it must have been hard on Thomas to learn the intricacies of Austrian etiquette as a child.

Suddenly, Johanna felt her stomach lurch.

“Excuse me, but where is the bathroom?” she asked as she sprang out of her seat, covering her mouth with the fabric napkin.

“Wait, I’ll show you.” Thomas hurried with her to the ground-floor bathroom. He waited at the door like a gentleman.

“Are you all right? Do you need help?” he called to her, not just once but many times.

Johanna wished that he would leave her alone in her moment of misery. “I’m all right. I just need a minute,” she said. She threw up twice in a toilet bowl that looked right out of a Mr. Clean commercial.

When she finally came out, Thomas gave her a puzzled look.

“Are you sick? Maybe it’s food poisoning? Or maybe you’re pregnant?” he teased.

Johanna shook her head, not realizing he was joking. “Pill,” she murmured.

“What?”

“I’m on the pill.”

Thomas was somewhat relieved.

“I think I probably have some kind of stomach bug.”

“Uh-oh, should we get you home then?” Thomas stroked her head gently as she leaned on him, completely exhausted.

“Should we call a doctor?” Henriette asked, having rushed over from the dining room, worry evident in her voice. “One of Karl’s friends is an excellent family doctor, and he doesn’t live far from here, just around the corner.”

“No, thanks. I think I just need to go home and lie down.”

Thomas helped Johanna into the car and said good night to his parents. The visit came to an abrupt end.

Not bad for a first meeting with the parents
, Thomas thought ironically, as he steered the car away.

31

Johanna was down with a stomach virus for three days. She vomited everything that she’d eaten in the last month—at least, that’s what it felt like. Between the vomiting and diarrhea, the weekend wasn’t exactly as romantic as their previous one.

“Be glad that you’re going through this now, since we’re flying to Dublin next weekend. Now that would have been really crummy,” Thomas said as he lay on the couch next to Johanna.

He stroked her head, read a book, and ate nachos, the smell of which brought a wave of nausea over her. She wordlessly pushed Thomas off the couch, jumped over him, and bolted to the bathroom. Again.

She visited her brother’s place on Tuesday evening.

“We were just trying to pick a date for the wedding.”

“When?”

“In September,” said her future sister-in-law. She excitedly showed Johanna a stack of forty wedding magazines. “Leaf through the pages that I’ve marked if you want to see the locations we’re considering.”

“Wow, these are really beautiful venues.”

“Yeah, and very expensive,” Martin said as he stirred his coffee.

Linda shot him a look.

“But you only get married once,” he agreed quickly.

“Would you like a glass of wine?” Martin stood up to move toward his supposedly secret liquor cabinet, which wasn’t actually a secret because the cabinet door was made of glass.

Why not?
Johanna thought, a little glass to loosen her up enough to tell them that she and Thomas were a couple.

“By all means,” shot out of her mouth.

Martin scrutinized his sister. He was concerned that she might be drinking too much after the stress of all that had happened, but he poured her a glass of wine and handed it to her anyway. Linda’s attention was on magazine number three.

“Look at this one, Johanna. Do you like this castle better?”

Johanna looked at the photo closely. “Yeah, that one’s also quite lovely.”

“Come on, that doesn’t help me at all. Which one do you like better?”

“I have something I have to tell you,” Johanna declared as she pushed the magazine aside.

Martin and Linda looked at her expectantly.

“I’ve been seeing Thomas.”

“Which Thomas?”

“Well, Thomas.”

“My Thomas?”

“Yes, your Thomas.”

“My former best friend, Thomas?”

Johanna nodded.

Martin was confused, knitting his eyebrows together. Linda shook her head in disbelief.

“Since when?”

“Not long . . .”

Johanna started to tell them about how she and Thomas had run into each other. As Martin and Linda listened to her tale, their jaws practically hit the floor, especially when Johanna revealed that it had been going on for over a week already.

“Why didn’t you tell us sooner?” Martin was disappointed; his forehead wasn’t wrinkled anymore. The wrinkles seemed to slide down to the corners of his mouth.

Johanna tried to justify renewing her relationship with Thomas.

“Fine, whatever. That’s your business.” He stood up to get a glass of water.

“Oh, don’t be so inflexible,” Linda said to her fiancé. “Thomas has never been guilty of a single indiscretion in the past. He was always faithful to Clarissa. And it wasn’t going well at all; you even told me that he had a crush on somebody else, and you were afraid he was about to end things with Clarissa,” she continued.

Johanna nodded in agreement that Thomas was loyal; she had no doubt about that now. Martin recognized it, too, though it was hard for him to admit it. After all, this was his little sister, and he wanted to protect her from heartbreak. Hadn’t she suffered enough? Hadn’t they both suffered enough? Still, he had to admit that Thomas had always been a good guy and that he missed his friend—not just a little bit, but a lot. They’d always been like Starsky and Hutch.

“He would love to see you again.” Johanna looked at her brother piercingly. “He misses you.”

“Well, I’d really like to see him again, too, but . . .”

“It’s really not that difficult,” Linda said as she lightly stroked Martin’s cheek. He turned his head away from her, not wanting to be touched.

“Let’s get together for dinner here next week; I’ll cook something for all of us.”

“That’s a really good idea, isn’t it, Martin?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

32

“So, according to the weather report, the weekend is supposed to be sunny,” Johanna said as she heaved her small, metallic-blue suitcase onto the scale at check-in. Seventeen pounds. Thomas was astounded; Clarissa’s suitcases were never that light—that woman always overpacked, even for short trips.

As they boarded the plane, Thomas surrendered his window seat to Johanna like the gentleman he was; he was a frequent flyer anyway, and he wanted to spoil her a little.

“Why are we in business class? That wasn’t necessary,” Johanna insisted, but she immediately discovered the benefits and took a magazine out of the well-stocked cart the flight attendant rolled down the aisle.

“I know, but I did it because they feed you up here. There aren’t any meals in the cheap seats.”

“Cheap seats, you say?”

“Yeah, that’s what people say.” Thomas strapped on his seat belt.

A harsh wind blew through Dublin. They took a taxi to their hotel in the city center. It wasn’t the kind of hotel where a bellhop opened your car door, then carried your luggage to your room, where red carpet led the way to the entrance and the staff greeted you with an exuberant, “We are honored to have you as a guest, and we hope that you have a pleasant stay at our establishment.” That kind of hotel had never been in Johanna’s budget; she’d always stayed in low-end places or shared a room in a hostel. She’d never slept in a
Pretty Woman
hotel. This hotel was fancy, but she was relieved to find that it wasn’t arrogant or pretentious; it was youthful and stylish; you felt welcome and not underdressed.

“It’s lovely here,” she said.

Thomas was delighted that his surprise pleased her. He’d done well in choosing this hotel. Johanna looked around in amazement. The hotel exceeded all her expectations. It was certainly the hippest place she’d ever stayed.

Their room was spacious. Thomas took Johanna’s hand and pulled her toward the bed.

“Maybe we should start with something a little different?” he asked her slyly, and kissed her tenderly on her neck.

She took off her high heels and let herself fall on the bed. Then they wrapped their arms around each other. Slowly but decisively, Thomas unzipped her black satin skirt and unbuttoned her blouse. She felt his breath on her breast. He didn’t hesitate, she was demanding . . . and the rest was extremely satisfying for them both.

“Let’s go find a real Irish pub and have a drink,” he suggested as he stroked her naked belly. Her rosy cheek rested between his chest and his shoulder.

“Yes, that’s why we’re here.” She grinned, kissing his chest. “There’s plenty of time for the other stuff at home.” She teasingly sprang off the bed and looked for her bra on the floor.

“No, that could only happen here—now I can say I had sex with Johanna in Dublin. This is crucial for posterity’s sake.” Thomas hopped out of bed, stretched, and watched with pleasure as Johanna buttoned her blouse while he pulled on his jeans.

The new couple left the hotel shortly afterward. They laughed as they wandered down Dublin’s streets. She looked for security in him, not in a fearful way, but in an intimate, affectionate way. They whispered to each other as he put his arm around her, more supportively than protectively. They were in sync, sensitive to each other’s pace and different strides; they walked gracefully side by side, just a hint of a gap between them. She had put her feminine feet in delicate heels, not designer ones; it didn’t matter to either one of them that her shoes didn’t have the sex appeal of Manolo Blahniks or the wicked seductiveness of Louboutins. His size-eleven feet sported plaid Converse sneakers; the muffled sound of his shoes contrasted with the click-clack of hers.

“Whew, it’s kind of cold out,” Johanna said as she pulled her jacket tighter.

“We’re almost there,” Thomas said, looking for the right alley.

He remembered the pub with affection. Two of his friends had barfed outside the front door because they’d had too much poteen, a very potent kind of Irish moonshine. Fortunately, he wasn’t among the not-so-lucky heavy drinkers that night.

“You’re going to like it,” he said as he held the green door open.

The dark bar was packed. Glasses overflowing with Guinness crowded each table as patrons drank, laughed, and shouted; typical pub music played in the background. The pub smelled of a mixture of sweat and fried food. Johanna and Thomas bowed to Irish tradition and drank only Guinness. If somebody had said a few weeks ago that Johanna would become a passionate beer drinker, she wouldn’t have believed them.

“This is really good!”

“You’ve never had Guinness before? Did I introduce you to something new?”

“You did indeed,” she answered, and gave him a kiss.

“Let’s toast to the start of a long list of things I want to show you, Johanna,” he said as he touched his mug to hers.