Then Leo to the elevator, so fast I couldn’t follow him: I’m not so lightfoot. Next to me, the woman says to the tie-guys “What a pity. It was really mah-vell-ous.” To which one of them “Okay, but he really isn’t very appealing.” And the third: “I thought it was so-so.” And the woman again, to me “And who are you?”
Didn’t want to talk to them. So button lip and leave, head for bar, order whisky. Then another. Charged to the company of course. And another. Tie-types went by, turned their heads toward me, laughed. You know, those people who at a certain point grab a gun-thing and then it’s blood by the square yard, I can understand them. It’s just I’m not that type. I don’t know artillery, wouldn’t know where to get it, unfortunately.
One whisky doesn’t do much for me, I need several before I feel anything. After the fourth however, downhill slalom. Vertigo, thick tongue, eyes frozen, the whole effectsofalcohol program, you know it all, don’t have to explain. But suddenly I was so sad. And didn’t know what to do anymore.
Lara Gaspard. Now or never. So I got up (ethylo-alcoholic impediments notwithstanding), took elevator to the third floor. 305.
Knocked. Nothing.
Knocked louder.
Nothing.
Banged with fist.
Chambermaid suddenly next to me. Of course total panic and sorry and my mistake and started to go when she: “Did you lock yourself out?”
And me right away: “Exactly!” Because when in need, I can cogitate like lightning, Spock’s a koala compared to me. So she does the card thing into the slit, beep, door opens, I’m in. Switched on the light. Everything empty, bed untouched, no Leo.
Sweat event. I had thought that was over, but you know what? With sweat, there’s always more. Leo Richter’s room, I thought. Looked around, opened drawers, cupboards—Lara Gaspard’s room. Somehow hers as well. My God.
Usual stuff in the cupboards. Underwear, a laptop (booted it up, but required password), couple of books: Plato, Hegel, Bhagavad Gita. Unnecessary, the lot of them, it’s all in What the Thinkers Tell Us by Auristos Blanco, only much clearer and easier to pierce. I squatted on the bed. Listen, no bullshit, I was completely at fours and fives. And afraid of course: if Leo came in now he’d be perfectly capable of calling for help. But I had to reach his awareness somehow. Had to get into the story. Because what else did I have? It was a one-time opportunity. I’d have hit him in the chops if that would have helped, but he wasn’t there.
As I looked around, the room looked—well, don’t ask. Craziness: drawers pulled out, papers strewn around, computer on the floor, screen probably busted. Sheets torn out of the notepad and all crumpled up. Bedcover on the carpet, in the bathroom, everything dropped onto the tiles, glass splinters. Was that me? I couldn’t tell you. Then I lay in his bed for a bit. So soft. Cried for a long time into the pillow. Thought about Lara.
Then out again, quick. Along the corridor to the elevator, down to my room. Just made it to bed. Legs collapsed, lay there, and the ceiling was spinning abovebelowabovebelow me, everything mixed up with everything else, my God was I drunk.
I woke up to pounding head. Everything soaked, banging behind my forehead and taste in my mouth as if some animal had died in there. Seven a.m. Seven messages on the phone from mother. Had slept in my clothes again. Two clicks and it all came back to me.
I had to talk to him. That was it: talk to him, admit everything exactly the way it happened, the way I’ve just told you now. Didn’t matter what he did next, he wouldn’t be able to resist it, because it was a real story. My entry into fiction. Right now, at breakfast.
So took myself to breakfast room and waited. Ate toast, ate muesli, ate scrambled eggs. Drank coffee. Leafed through two newspapers. Not familiar with TheeveningNews in print version, only online, interesting, there was a tech-page that wasn’t half bad, but it only reminded me that I couldn’t get online, so I quickly set it aside. Ate some rolls, two sausages, some salmon, chunk of salami, two pieces of toast with marmalade, more scrambled eggs. Mother never makes a decent breakfast. Always says “make it yourself, buy your own stuff if you don’t like mine!” and so on. So nervous. He’d be here any minute.
But he didn’t come. Only nerds from yesterday who looked at me and grinned and whispered. I swear to you: if I weren’t such a peaceable person, then it would be pumpguns, hell, shots to the head, inferno, the whole load.
Finally went out into the hall. The woman behind the Reception desk was already shaking her head: “no, no, no Internet yet.”
“Want to speak to Leo Richter!”
“He’s no longer here.”
“What?”
“Left last night.”
Okay, so I got a little loud. I shouldn’t have banged on the table, at least not with both fists. But I shouldn’t have asked her whose room I’d just totally zeroed. Luckily her understanding pierced nothing and I clammed asap, I do not have a brain of mush. Then I abandoned the field and called mother.
All alone, she said. Had cried all day. “Are you going to keep doing this? Do you have a tramp?”
None, I promised her. Anywhere!
“Don’t believe you!”
I began to cry too. I know it sounds crazy-pitiful. But I’m telling you because you don’t know me and you don’t know who I am. Right there in the lobby.
Okay, she said, it’s all right. “I do believe you. But promise you won’t ever do it again. The whole weekend. Alone in the house. Never again, okay?”
I promised.
So okay, why not? I had no problem with it. Would anyone else ever want to spend time with me? At least I now had some stuff for the SpottheStars forum. But I can see already that it has no punch line, no hooks, nothing. No basis for a story.
For I’ll never see Leo again. I did a posting on literaturehouse.com that his books are all shit, did it on Amazon too, bigtime. But this changes nothing. He’ll never read that stuff.
The hotel guys didn’t want to give me a thing, no address, no phone number. He won’t write anything about me, I’ll never meet Lara. Reality will be the only thing I have: job and mother at home and the boss and the Überpig Lobenmeier, and the only escape forums like this. (At least I’m no troll like lordoftheflakes, or a brainless custard like icu_lop or pray4us.) All I have forever is me. Only right here, on this side. I’ll never get onto the other side, never. No alternative universe. Early tomorrow, back to work. Weather forecast terrible. Even if it were good, so what? Everything goes on the way it always has. And I know now that I’ll never, ever, be in a story.
How I Lied and Died
I met Luzia one Wednesday evening at a reception in the Bureau of Regulation of Telecommunications Licenses, and from that day on I became a liar and I was lost.
I had been together with Hannah for nine years—in principle at least, for she lived with our son and our baby daughter, a somewhat strange infant, in a peaceful dull town on a lake in southern Germany where I had been born and now spent the weekends. The workweeks, however, I spent alone in a gray suburb of Hannover which the enterprise that employed me had chosen as its headquarters. Hannah was a little older than I was and she was comfortable being on her own. I wasn’t that important to her anymore—she knew it, and I knew it too, and each of us knew that the other one knew. But she was Hannah, we had a noisily suckling baby at home, and it was clear to me immediately that Luzia must remain unaware of this.
I’ll describe her later, when the moment comes. Here, let me just say that she was tall, with dark blond hair, and her eyes were brown and round like a hamster’s: brilliant, never focusing on anything for more than a few seconds, a little anxious. I noticed her when she dropped her glass on the floor and then immediately broke a vase of flowers that someone had foolishly left standing around on a pedestal. She was wearing a sleeveless dress, the skin on her upper arms was flawless, and as I saw her standing over the debris, I knew I would rather die than renounce the chance to hold her in my arms, mingle my breath with hers, and watch her eyes right up close as they rolled back under their lids.