Rain Girl (21 page)

They were quiet a moment. “All right,” he said then. “Go to Berlin. I’ll come with you. I’ll leave my wife. We’ll get married, and I’ll find a new job.”

Marie laughed, stabbing at her fish. “You’re crazy,” she said. “No, you’ll do no such thing.”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes I will. I can’t lose you again.”

She lifted her head and gave him a strange look. “What do you mean
again
?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.”

But she already knew anyway.

52

“Yes I do have information,” the Monroe look-alike said. She’d finally released Arthur’s eyes, pursed her lips, and was tapping the photo on the table with the perfectly manicured fingernail of her right index finger.

“Of course I recognize her. She was in the private room with her guy. They came in Monday night around ten o’clock, acting like they didn’t want to be recognized by anyone.” After a brief pause she added, “At least
he
was.”

She fluttered her blue eyelids, laughing a deep, cooing laugh.

“Why didn’t you contact us earlier?” Arthur asked. “Her picture was all over the newspapers.”

She tilted her head to one side and put on a rueful expression. “Oh, you know,” she said, “unfortunately, I’m not much of a newspaper reader. I never got into it. But now you’re here, thank God.”

She beamed at him sincerely, which made his heart beat faster.

“He was so hot for her, I can tell you that,” she said with some amusement. “Horny as a bull, excuse the expression. I can tell things like that, believe me.”

“I have no doubt about it,” Arthur said, losing himself in Monroe’s eyes, which were at least as blue as her eyelids. He realized he was feeling the same way about her. “Yes,” he said. “I bet you can tell with absolute certainty. But can you describe the man, too?”

She could.

She described him so thoroughly and accurately that Arthur’s jaw dropped. He imagined Marilyn must have spent two hours standing next to the poor man, devouring him with her eyes.

“Wow!” Arthur said admiringly. “I’m blown away! Would you mind coming by my office tomorrow so we can prepare a sketch? We hardly ever get such a detailed description. You’re incredibly observant.”

She gave him a pleased smile, and he was sure she had talents in other areas as well. Then she surprised him again.

“Yes,” she said, slowly licking her bottom lip. “I am, aren’t I, Herr Detective? But I have to admit I had plenty of time to study him closely. After all, I spent two years in his class.”

53

At dinner, she asked, “Do you know where I’m from?”

And he said yes, he did. He’d known from the start.

The name had made him sit up at first. He used to know a carpenter named Gleichenbach in his village. Then the principal’s secretary brought her into his classroom, and she stood there. He looked at her, and he stopped breathing. The room began to sway, and his legs practically gave way.

He asked the secretary to take over for a moment—just for a short while. They were writing an exam . . . all she had to do . . . he really needed to, just quickly . . .

He walked out of the room, ignoring the puzzled look on the secretary’s face and the students’ giggling. Then he started to run, which calmed him down. When he reached the staff toilet he locked himself into a cubicle, leaned against the wall, tried to stop shaking—to breathe—and inhaled two cigarettes so deeply his lungs burned.

Had he seen a ghost?

He soon found out that it was much simpler than that. She was the daughter of the carpenter from his village. But more importantly, she was Judith’s daughter.

“Everything all right?” the secretary asked with a sneer when he returned to his classroom. “Did you see a ghost?”

He smiled uneasily. “No, no, don’t worry, I just remembered . . .”

She shook her head and left.

The class had been taking a chemistry exam. Judith’s daughter looked at him with Judith’s eyes out of Judith’s face.

He cleared his throat. “Your name?” he asked.

“Gleichenbach,” she said. “Marie.” And smiled.

She hit on him. She could sense that he wanted her. She could always sense things like that.

He was slightly annoyed. Until now he’d never had to pay for sex. But she was Judith’s daughter. That changed everything.

She called him at the most impossible times from the most impossible places and ordered him to come. “That’s just how I do things,” she had said with a little smile. “That’s how I do it with all of them.”

She didn’t even pretend he was the only one. In a soft voice she told him what and how she’d already done it with the others, and what she’d do in the future, while his breathing became hoarse and he drowned in her.

He lost control as she chased him from climax to climax, like a tiger chasing its prey. Often he lost all sense of time and Marie and Judith became one and the same.

If anyone had told him he was plunging headfirst into disaster, he wouldn’t have believed it.

They drank champagne. It tickled as it went down. She barely touched her fish.

“Listen,” she said. “I’ve fallen in love.”

“With me?” he asked. “That’s good.”

“No,” she said. “No, not with you. You know that.”

He gave her a dark look.
We can solve this problem,
he thought.

She brushed her hand through his dark hair. “You’re smart and handsome,” she said. His heart twitched, it sounded like good-bye.

We can solve this problem,
he thought again.

Before dessert he slid his hand between her legs. He traced her collarbone with his tongue, and then her neck. “You taste so good,” he whispered.

She hesitated at first, but then she let him continue. “No charge today,” she said. “Because it’s the last time, and because I’m happy.”

He nodded, feeling humiliated, but he nodded. They drank champagne; it tickled in their throats.

She ran out into the rain, arms wide open, and said: “Take me to Berlin.”

“When?” he asked. “Now?”

“Yes!” she shouted into the rain. “Now, right now, and we’ll be there by the morning!”

“Yes, OK, I’ll take you to Berlin. I’d drive you anywhere, wherever you want to go.”

He took this for a good sign. It fueled his hopes. He was tipsy enough—they hadn’t stopped at one bottle.

They had stopped at the rest area because he needed to pee. When he returned, she was sitting on a bench underneath the ugly tent-like shelter, talking on the phone. That was when he first began to see red. He sat down next to her, but she just kept talking as if he wasn’t even there. That irritated him.

“Great,” she said. “So we’ll meet there tomorrow. You’ll have to get up early. Yes, one o’clock. I’ll be there.”

She laughed. Cooed. “I can’t wait to see you.”

Like a pigeon,
he thought,
disgusting.

Then he confronted her. “What’s that supposed to mean, ‘one o’clock; I’ll be there.’ What’s all that about?” he asked. “Who did you call? Who are you meeting tomorrow?”

She gave him a blank look. “That’s none of your business,” she said.

Her bluntness had pushed him over the edge. “What are you trying to say?” he shouted. “I’m driving you to Berlin, remember? So I think it’s damn well my business if you’re meeting someone else there!”

She glared at him. “You already got your reward tonight, remember?”

He thought he was dreaming. How could he have been so wrong?

“But I love you,” he said. “We’re going to Berlin together.”

She shook her head, stunned. “No,” she said. “No, we aren’t.”

“I’ll leave my wife,” he said. “I told you! Only an hour ago! And I’m coming to Berlin with you.”

“No!” she said. “No!”

She shrank back slightly, as if she sensed danger, like a faint vibration in the air.

He laughed, trying to defuse the situation.

“Come on,” he said. “Relax. Don’t be so serious. Where’s your smile? I’ve got a bottle of wine in the car. I’ll get it and we’ll crack it open. Then you can tell me all about this guy you’ve been talking to. And then we’ll tell him to forget about it, OK?”

He stood up and walked to the car, getting the bottle and a corkscrew from the trunk. “I’m afraid we’ll have to drink from the bottle,” he said. “I don’t have any glasses for madame.”

He bowed gallantly and waited for amused laughter. But it didn’t come. She was in defense mode.

“Listen,” she said. “There’s something you don’t understand, and I want to sort it out once and for all. I’m going to Berlin with Ben. Not with you, but with Ben. Ben’s a friend—my boyfriend. We’re both going to school there, and we’re going to live together. I’m meeting him tomorrow at one o’clock at the train station. Do you understand?”

He just stood there, bent forward, breathing heavily. He was holding the bottle in one hand and the corkscrew in the other. His eyes had narrowed to hostile slits. His mouth had taken on a bitter expression.

Marie’s heart contracted with fear. She lifted her arms.

“Don’t worry about taking me to Berlin,” she said, frightened by the trembling in her voice. “It’s just too far, and we’re both tired. Let’s just go home now. I’ll take the train in the morning.”

Slowly she edged closer to him. She wanted to touch his face and comfort him in her good-bye.

He slapped her hand away, angry, hurt. The bottle slid out of his hand and went flying through the air, crashing onto the pavement and narrowly missing the car. The bottle broke with a muffled sound and the wine disappeared in the rain. He took out a cigarette, and then another.