Читать книгу You - Zoran Drvenkar - Страница 17

It feels as if you’re being dragged down the street on your ass. Except that it doesn’t hurt. It is a weird feeling to sit so low. Glance to the right and you could scratch people’s kneecaps. The Jaguar purrs. You don’t say much, that’s a good feeling too, just driving around and not having to say much, understanding each other without words, drifting through the city with an empty head and a cigarette between your lips. Pure luxury.

“Hungry?” asks Neil.

No, you’re not thristy either, you’re just more content than you’ve been for ages. Your heart is still fluttering, as if someone had placed one of those hummingbirds into your chest. Flutterflutter. You give Neil a sideways glance and without thinking you place your hand on his thigh. Neil doesn’t react, doesn’t look at you, doesn’t say anything, goes on driving, hands on the wheel, wind in his face. You just have to ask, “Where are we going?”

“What?”

You are shouting it.

“Dancing,” he replies.

“Good,” you say, and leave your hand on his thigh.

The bouncer doesn’t want to let you in, Neil waves a few banknotes, the bouncer still doesn’t want to let you in, Neil draws him aside. He’s exactly the same height as the bouncer, but only half as wide. He talks in a lowered voice. Very controlled. Then the bouncer looks at you again, rubs his forehead as if someone’s hit him, and waves you in. No problem now. He even smiles at you. The asshole couldn’t get close to you if he was the last guy in the world.

“What did you say to him?” you ask.

Neil makes a gun out of his thumb and forefinger, holds it to your temple and laughs.

“I threatened him.”

You push your way through the crowd, the flickering lights are dazzling, the people are jostling each other, it smells of cigarettes and artificial smoke and very faintly of limes. A gap appears at the bar, you lean against it, shout into each other’s ears, laugh loudly. There’s a mirror hanging above the bar, at least thirty feet long, and for one terribly long moment you can’t see yourself. Your palms are clammy. You see Neil, you see the people around him, light and smoke and fog, but you yourself aren’t there. Like a vampire. Invisible. Then you spot your piled-up hair, your sulky mouth, and you meet your own eye and wonder if you’re really as small and insignificant as the mirror is trying to tell you. You’ve never seen yourself like that before. You’re a sektschbeascht, Alberto used to say. But he said lots of things.

“Do you like it here?” Neil calls to you, and you say yeah even though the music isn’t your thing. Nonetheless, you bob up and down as if you listened to nothing but soul all day long. You’re inches away from singing along. Before it can come to that, Neil hands you a beer with a wedge of lime in the neck of the bottle and you clink drinks and then the beer’s gone too and you dance and touch each other and everything’s as it should be, and a bit better.

You smell Neil among all those smells—his aftershave, the sweat beneath it—and he smells good, he smells so good that you press yourself against him, and he smiles and puts his arms around you and says in your ear, “Restroom?”

You wish he would go on dancing, and yet you take his hand and follow him to the restrooms. You notice that you’re thinking too much. You’re missing the special little moments. You want to stop and say it’s going too fast.

He hasn’t even kissed me. He’s barely touched me. He’s—

Stop thinking, you tell yourself and keep your hand in front of your mouth and hope your breath doesn’t smell bad, and hope your makeup isn’t too smudged with sweat, and try to remember what sort of underwear you’re wearing.

Please, not the red ones with the little blue flowers, please not those.

Neil steps inside the men’s room and pushes past a few guys. He rattles at the doors, finds a free stall and drags you in behind him.

Trapped.

The music is just a murmur now. The ultraviolet light makes Neil’s teeth gleam, his eyeballs are like the magnesium flare you saw in chemistry. Cold and alien. Your nervous trembling is ebbing away in little waves, the hummingbird sinks exhausted to the bottom of your chest. You’ve lost your drive, you’re fearful and shy. You don’t feel the way you did when you got into the car beside Neil. You’re an outstretched hand. Naked and sensitive. It would be nice if you could turn off the voice in your head: If he kisses me now I’ll do anything he likes. It’s the only way. I won’t cause any trouble. I’ll go along with it all, because I think Neil knows what he’s doing. He’s going to—

“I’ve got a problem,” he says, interrupting your thoughts.

“Okay,” you say far too quickly and try to smile.

“No, really,” says Neil and then tells you about that girl, maybe you saw her? On the other side of the dance floor? Just below the DJs’ cabin? Did you notice her? No? Doesn’t matter, anyway it was because of her that Neil has driven from Hamburg to Berlin. Of course he wanted to see his father, too, but he’s really here because of this girl and doesn’t know what to do now. He needs help. Help from you.

“From me?”

“Yes, from you.”

“Why from me?”

He shuts his eyes as if he can’t bear the restroom any longer. When he looks at you again, you have the feeling he’s just woken up. His expression is almost embarrassing, as if he’s about to burst into tears. Stop it, you think, and regret going with him. Guys should solve their girl problems themselves. Is that why he talked to you in the first place? Do you look like Dear Abby or something?

“Do I look like Dear Abby or something?”

“No, you look real,” says Neil and leans against the stall door and shuts his eyes again. “That’s all I know.”

Her name is Kira. Neil met her at a party in Hamburg, and hung out with her. Then he lost sight of her and Kira disappeared, she’d just gone. And Neil started burning, that’s exactly how he puts it.

“I started burning.”

He discovered that Kira was living with the girlfriend of a friend in Berlin, and that is why he borrowed his mother’s car. Kira doesn’t know he’s here. Neil doesn’t know what to do. And you sit between them and feel as if you’re still in the cinema, back row, the picture’s out of focus, the people are too noisy, and the movie’s a dreary mixture of relationship crisis and sex comedy.

Let’s see who laughs first, you think when you’re back at the bar. Neil has organized two new bottles of beer and asks what you think of Kira.

“Look at her,” he pleads.

You look across. Kira’s one of those smoothies, what did you expect? Smooth hair and smooth face, and when she laughs even her teeth are smooth. She reminds you a bit of Taja, one of those girls everybody wants to have as their friend. Except that Taja isn’t really smooth, she has hidden corners and edges, and that makes her especially beautiful. But you don’t want to think about Taja now. Neil is waiting for an answer. What does he want to hear? His Kira looks great, and you wish that she’d get her period or a rash all over her face. But girls like Kira never get rashes, and they only get their periods when no one’s looking.

“And?”

You roll your eyes. What’s wrong with this guy?

“Look for yourself.”

Neil shakes his head: no, he can’t. He stares into the mirror above the bar.

“What are you scared of? She’s just another beautiful bitch, she will definitely remember you. You’re not sixteen anymore, why are you farting around?”

Neil turns the bottle in his hands, then lifts his shoulders as if to say I don’t know and stands there like an idiot with his shoulders lifted. You’ve just got to ask him, “Are you in love?”

The shoulders come back down, his gaze avoids you and carves scratches in the mirror above the bar.

Bull’s-eye.

You laugh.

All this because he’s in love?

“I’m cursed,” he says.

“What?”

“No, really. I’ve been this way for as long as I’ve been able to think. And it never stops. I search and search and I can’t find the right love. I’ve been behaving like an idiot and I can’t even … Have you never been in love?”

“It’s nonsense.”

“What’s nonsense?”

“You know, falling in love. It’s just nonsense. It’s for people who have nothing better to do with their time. That’s why I’m not going to fall in love, right? If I want pain I can pinch myself.”

“It’s not the same.”

“You don’t know how hard I can pinch.”

Neil flinches when you reach for his arm. You take a swig of his beer, even though your bottle is still half full. What a spoilsport.

“So you’ve never had a boyfriend?” he asks.

“You want a list?”

“And you were never in love, not once? I don’t believe it.”

Neil looks away from the mirror and looks you straight in the eye. Real headlights. You feel some beer trickling from the corner of your mouth, and quickly set the bottle back down again.

“I’d fall in love with you in a blink,” he says. “If Kira wasn’t there, I’d be head over heels already, that’s the way I am.”

You cough. It’s like in a slasher movie. Now all you have to do is go over there and cut Kira’s throat and you’ll have a new boyfriend, and one who’s in love with you.

“Okay, I’ll take care of her,” you say and walk over to Kira.

As you shove your way through the dancing crowd, there’s a sentence of Neil’s that you can’t get out of your head. You look real. It could have been intended as an insult. What did he mean? And why did he single you out, of all people?

Because I was standing on my own, because there was no one else around, because …

All nonsense. There’s no such thing as chance, Schnappi said once, everything happens the way it’s supposed to. Why should you doubt that now? Why are you so goddamn insecure? Just wait till your girls hear what’s happened to you. They’ll be green with envy and they won’t believe a word of it.

“Hi.”

You stop in front of Kira, your hands are shoved into your back trouser pockets, your pelvis is sticking out. She smiles at you, she’s in her early twenties, just right for Neil. Kira leans forward and you lean forward too as if you were about to hug each other, then you tell her your name, your real name. She holds out her hand. Fingers cool as marble, green flecks in her irises.

Dammit, she’s pretty.

“Do you know that guy over there? The one standing at the bar?”

Kira looks past you. Neil still has his back turned to you. You’re sure he’s watching both of you in the mirror above the bar.

“The guy who’s looking away. The one with the ponytail. He’s my friend. You met him at a party in Hamburg. He followed you here and he brought me with him. He wanted me to see who you are. You get that? He’s completely confused. He doesn’t know who he wants. You or me. Do you want him?”

“Who?”

Kira is confused, you can tell by her frown that she has no idea who you’re talking about.

“Neil.”

“Neil?”

“Yes, Neil.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Oh.”

“Is he sweet?”

“Very.”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry about what?”

“That he’s confused, but I don’t remember him.”

You nod as if you understand.

“He’ll be devastated,” you say and walk back to Neil.

“So?”

He asks without turning around, eyes on the mirror; you’re sure he’s been watching you all along and at the same time he’s peeled the whole label off his beer bottle, total coward. But that’s okay, even cowards have to exist. You press your lips to his ear and say, “She wants to talk to you,” before you turn away, leaving him at the bar.

And there you are, it’s too early, the night has just begun and you can go and meet your girls at the playground. You can if you want. But what do you want?

It feels as if a whole day has gone by. The time with Neil has stretched, as if someone had taken hold of the minutes and pulled them apart.

He could at least have kissed me.

You imagine what that would have been like. His lips, your lips, and off you go. Nothing happens in your head, you have no imagination, as soon as things get serious the screen goes blank. There’s the taste of beer and lime in your mouth, and it reminds you of the beach and the sea, you think you can hear the rush of waves and there is the salty taste of the water on your lips, but you can’t imagine a simple kiss.

Damn.

You look up at the sky. The stars above Berlin are always a marvel. The city is far too bright, Ruth once explained to you. Because of all the lights you can’t see the sky. Reflections and stuff. That bitch always knows everything. But you wish she was here now. Ruth, and Schnappi, and Nessi. And Taja, of course, Taja too. She would know right away where you went wrong with Neil.

The longing creeps up on you, and you bite your lower lip. Taja, where are you? It’s like a hole in your belly that the wind blows through, and there’s always a cold spot, whatever you do, you can’t keep that spot warm. It’s been six days, and you can hardly remember her face.

What if she’s gone forever?

“What’re you doing up there?”

You look to the right. Neil is standing beside his Jaguar.

“Looking for the stars,” you say, and slip off the car roof.

Neil rubs both hands over his face.

“Have you been crying?”

He brings his hands down. He hasn’t been crying. He’s just completely wasted.

“She doesn’t remember me. She says she was so drunk that she doesn’t even know whose house the party was at.”

You wait to hear if there’s anything else; there isn’t anything else. Of course you can’t leave it there.

“So? Are you still in love?”

He lifts his shoulders again and lets them fall, which could mean anything, then he opens the passenger door and you get in. He walks around the car. You belt yourself in, he belts himself in and starts the engine and drives off. You sense that there’s nothing more to say. So you check your face in the side mirror and you smile at yourself and contentedly fold your hands in your lap.

They’re sitting in the playground like a flock of fat crows, surrounded by pizza boxes and beer cans. Your crowd. Neil doesn’t want to meet them, he doesn’t even get out, he sits in the car and scribbles his number on the cinema ticket, smiles wearily and says, “Just in case.” He probably isn’t even aware of your kiss, but you are aware of the thin film of sweat on his cheek and imagine him driving back to Hamburg now, down the highway, on the road for hours, on his own for hours, even the trucks will overtake him. You know one thing for certain: he’ll forget Kira quickly enough, but he won’t forget you.