Broken Glass Park (22 page)

“How old are you?” I ask.

“Twenty-four.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, why?”

“What do you do when you are not at the city fair?”

“I’m a college student.”

“Engineering?”

“No, I dropped out of that. Computer science.”

“Here at the technical college?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Where there are a hundred and thirteen boys and two girls?”

“Five girls. So?”

I don’t answer. I think. He’s not exactly a thrill a minute. But this fog isn’t too much fun either.

I’ve got to get out of here. Maybe the city fair will be just the ticket.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Volker. What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Really? Volker?” I ask, intrigued. It’s as if someone has found a secret password in my mind and revealed it to him.

“Yeah, why?”

“No way. Hardly anybody your age is named that,” I say, though now I’m having a hard time talking.

“Do you want to see my ID?”

“Yes,” I say.

“What, right now?”

“Yes.”

He reaches into his pants pocket and fishes around, unable to find it at first. Then he shows me his driver’s license. That tips the scales.

“We can meet up tonight,” I say. “But not at the fair. Let’s meet in North Park. Do you rollerblade?”

“A little,” he mumbles. He doesn’t look thrilled. “I’m not very good.”

“Perfect. Me, too. Eight o’clock at the main entrance? In rollerblades?”

“Okay,” he says, doubt written all over his face. He’s probably already regretting having chatted me up. Maybe he won’t even show up.

But if he does—well, then I’ll be out with a Volker tonight.

He does. From the first glance two things are clear. One, from the way he’s holding on to the metal fence it’s obvious he’s very shaky on skates. Two, he doesn’t appear to be exactly bursting with anticipation.

It changes a bit when I skate up to him and grab hold of him.

“Nice dress,” he says, nearly losing his balance in the process of saying it.

I don’t like dresses. I almost never wear them. But sometimes they’re very practical, I think, though I don’t say any of this, as he’d probably hop out of his rollerblades prematurely.

We take a spin around the park. He holds my hand as we do—not because it’s romantic but because otherwise he’d fall. It’s tough to skate that way, with our sweaty palms clamped together. And my arm gets stiff because I have to hold the guy upright.

We do all the things you’re supposed to do on a first date—if you are in the fifth grade. We don’t talk. We stop at an ice cream stand where, in line, he finally lets go of my hand and I shake out my arm. I don’t bother to conceal my relief.

We eat our ice cream on a bench and crumble up the ends of the cones and toss them to the pigeons. Then I drag him deep into the park where couples are scattered around the grass. His hand is even stickier now from the ice cream. I would love so much to be able to wash my hands.

He stumbles at one point and pulls me down with him. Then once we’ve both gotten up again and lumbered over to each other, he kisses me. Out of the blue. I barely manage to spit out my gum. Afterwards he seems very happy, and I am happy, too, because he ate mint ice cream and the flavor makes me think of something far away and pretty.

I figure he’s ready. So I pull him to a patch of lawn that’s still free, behind a lilac hedge in full bloom. As I let myself fall to the grass, he stays upright, looking around as if he’s lost his way in the dark woods.

“What’s up? I say. “Are you worried about ticks? Or mites?”

“N-n-no,” he answers. I hadn’t realized he stuttered a little. Maybe he hadn’t done it earlier.

It takes all my self-control not to laugh.

“Are you really twenty-four?” I ask.

“Just turned,” he says.

“Can you help me get these heavy things off?” I ask.

“What things?”

“The rollerblades.”

“I’ll try,” he says, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Man, it’s hot here.”

He kneels down and gives me another kiss. Then he starts working at the buckles of my inline skates. Finally he has my foot in his hand and asks, “What are you laughing at now?”

“It tickles,” I say.

He lets go of my foot and lies down next to me. He plucks a blade of grass and starts to run it along my arm, from my fingertips, past my elbow, up to my shoulder, and on to my collarbone. I wonder whether he thought that up himself or saw it in a movie. It’s all I can do to keep a straight face. It tickles.

Then he traces the same route with his pointer finger. Collarbone is once again the last stop.

He looks into my eyes. I look away so as not to laugh. Then I turn back to him and we make out in the soft grass for a little while—until he starts working at my arms again.

I’m dying to ask him whether all computer science students are so hesitant, but I contain myself.

I roll onto my stomach and bury my face in some daisies. I feel the blade of grass on the back of my knee. It heads down toward my feet, as if this guy has never heard of the practical aspects of a skirt. But then again where would he have heard about it, with only five girls in his department.

It dawns on me that the night isn’t going to go according to plan unless I push him along a bit. Not that this is so awful, but I just don’t have forever. Back home I’ve just started reading interviews with the American surgeon Robert White, who wanted to transplant heads. It worked on monkeys.

I turn onto my side, prop myself up on my elbow and look pensively at the guy in front of me. Short blond hair, pale face, light eyebrows. He’s chewing on this sorry blade of grass and blinking his eyes nervously.

“What’s the deal with you, Volker?” I ask.

How can it be so difficult to say a name? It’s just a word. The most painful word in the world.

He frowns.

“You mean, how far along am I towards my degree?”

“That, too,” I say. “Do you not find me attractive?”

“Of course I do,” he says quickly. “Very. Lie back down.”

I fall expectantly onto the grass and look up at the sky, and then feel his hand on my arm again. And once again he stops at my shoulder.

I really have to use every ounce of restraint not to flinch and giggle.

“You are so thin,” he says quietly. “Incredible. I really like that. How do you do it?”

I forget to eat, I think to myself, annoyed. Not to please you, you wax-faced jerk. But because I usually have other things on my mind. I think of Clara, the anorexic girl in my class who comes home once in a while between stays at the clinic. And Katharina, who wears long sleeves in the heat of summer because she constantly cuts her arms with her father’s razor. Not to try to kill herself, just to cut lines in her skin.

But in summer—or in gym class—the long sleeves stick out a lot more than a few slits would. There’s something creepy about the long sleeves because they are clearly concealing something. Katharina seems to know this, too. Sometimes she looks proud of the reaction she gets.

I don’t understand either one. Starving yourself or cutting yourself. I mean, it’s idiotic to take out your anger on your own body. And pointless. It should be enough to be the target of everybody’s ridicule.

I have to consider the fact that what I’m doing right now is not so very different.

But I don’t want to quit halfway through. If I get up this minute and go home, it’s possible that I might end up grabbing for a razor blade in the bathroom and testing that out. What a feeling. If Katharina does it so often, maybe it would do me some good.

It’s getting cooler.

“Listen,” I say, irritated, “is it possible you’re shy?”

“Me?” He opens his mouth and forgets to close it again. “Why would you think I’m shy?”

“I don’t want to lie around here in the grass all night, you know.”

“Where would you rather be?”

I look at him for a long time. We just don’t understand each other.

Suddenly he flushes, turning red beneath his sunburn, and begins to stutter again.

“It’s j-j-just a little f-f-fast for me,” he says. “I can’t just do it straight away.”

“You can’t? How long do you need?”

“Oh, man. I’ve never met anyone like you before.”

“You don’t like me?”

“I do. A lot. You have an amazing body and nice skin, darker than mine.”

“Yes, which is why I never get sunburned. Get that god damn blade of grass away from me. Please.”

He tosses the blade of grass onto the lawn, thinks for second, then leans over and kisses me. I close my eyes so I don’t have to see him. I try to imagine it is someone else. I guess Felix was right. All men are the same. If I keep my eyes closed, this guy isn’t even here.

In that case the only person here is the one I picture. I put together an image of Volker’s face from my various memories, building it like a mosaic from countless shards. But it slips away from me. I’m not sure anymore what he looks like. I can’t picture his face anymore. And the more desperate I become trying to piece it together, the more details fade.

To distract myself, I try to figure out when the right moment is to alert this college kid to the condoms in my bag.

Just then my mouth is freed again.

“Have you overexerted yourself?” I ask. Immediately I’m upset with myself. I could have asked him that afterwards. If I scare him off too quickly, I’ll feel really lonely and ugly.

“It’s just weird that we don’t know each other at all,” says this other, false, blond Volker. He sounds tortured. “It’s just not normal. Shouldn’t we talk first?”

I’m taken aback. “We’ve already talked,” I say. “But if you want to, we can talk some more. What do you like to talk about?”

“I’m sure you’d find it boring,” he says sheepishly.

That’s for sure, I think. But I say, “That’s not true. What are you into?”

“Cars,” he says quietly, in a tone suited to describing a first, shy, romantic experience of love.

“Cars,” I repeat. “Cool. What kind of car do you want to have when you’re all grown up and rich?”

“Porsche Carrera,” he says without a second’s hesitation.

There is nothing more boring than cars, I think, but answer competently, “I know somebody who wants a white Mercedes.”

“Which model?”

“No idea.”

“Mercedes are good, too,” he says appreciatively. “A Mercedes would work. I’ll never drive a foreign car.”

I sit up. “Never? Not a Citroen, or a Volvo? A Saab? A Mazda?”

“All crap,” he says, a look of disgust flashing across his face. “Never.”

“Oh,” I say, lying back down on the grass. The evening sky is gray with a few shimmering red clouds in it. The ground is getting a little moist. “You’re a nationalist.”

“Call it whatever you want,” he says, twisting a strand of my hair around his pointer finger. “I hate foreign crap.”

“Even Miele manufactures vacuum cleaners in Asia these days,” I say.

“Miele? No way!”

“Yes, they do. Maybe not the entire vacuum cleaner, but components for it. Something. In China. I read it somewhere.”

“Shit.”

“I’m just saying, all that’s left these days is foreign crap.”

“Yeah, it’s a shame,” he says dejectedly. “We’re drowning in it.”

“Who—we?”

“We Germans, of course. Me and you. We’re losing everything—our economy, our language, our genes.”

“Our music,” I add. “Culture in general.”

“Exactly. In twenty years there won’t be any ‘we’ anymore.”

“It’s horrible,” I say. “Who will be left?”

“The Chinese and the Turks,” he says, grabbing another strand of hair. He’s lying quite close to me and speaking very softly. The crickets around us are louder.

“You don’t like them, do you?” I ask empathetically, pushing my hair behind my ears before he can grab any more between his fingers. “The Chinese, the Turks, and other antisocial vermin.”

“Fffff,” he sneers. “When we take power, they’ll get theirs.”

“When we who?” I ask tiredly. I think I already know. “The Republicans? Who’s funding your student group?”

“The Republicans? Ha!”

“Okay, so tell me.”

“Guess.”

“You’re with the National Party.”

“Hey, you’re good.” He probably thinks his kiss is sufficient reward. Now he’s talkative and animated. He starts stuttering again. The talk is all about duplicitous politicians and fraud and volk and lost honor. I tune out.

I want to move on to something that has a little more to do with me.

“The Russians are worse than the Chinese, right?” I ask during a short pause. The sunset glows red in the sky above us.

“The Russians? Nah. They used to be bad. But you can forget about them nowadays. They drink themselves to death. They’re degenerates.”