Wrecked (32 page)

With my hand already on the doorknob, I breathe deeply and try to look relaxed as I open the door. Our friend Jochen is there with his baby daughter in his arms. I’m always happy to see him. He’s not good-looking, but he’s funny and very dirty. His sense of humor is dirty, I mean.

He doesn’t want to bother us and apologizes for waking us up. Huh? Do I look so disheveled? Ah, who cares.

Georg calls from the living room with false indignation, “Who is it? What stranger are you talking to?”

“It’s just me, Jochen. Don’t worry.”

Yeah, as if. No worries? If I could, then it would be him! Definitely.

He hands me a DVD case—something Georg lent him. I let my fantasy play in my head and try to catch his eye. He’s got something else on his mind, though, and as he rocks his baby he says he has to get out to his car—he’s double-parked. He says good-bye and squeezes the baby between us so we can kiss on each cheek, right, left. Nice. He calls out, “See you later, Georg,” and is gone. My top candidate for an affair.

I breathe in and out once more in the foyer, gather myself after the rush of wild thoughts, and go back to the couch. I put the DVD down on the table.

“Want to watch some more?” asks Georg, pressing
PLAY
on the remote. We try to get back into it. A beautifully made-up actress from the late 1970s with particularly striking pubic hair
is masturbating on a paisley bedspread accompanied by spacey synthesizer music.

Suddenly Georg says, “If I absolutely
had
to agree to someone, then it would be Jochen.”

What’s going on? I look at him out of the corner of my eye and suppress a grin. He is looking at the TV screen, seemingly unperturbed. The woman is now clawing at the bed and moaning as a man licks and fingers her.

Did he just give me the go-ahead? I think he did!

He did, right? Right? Right? Yes!

But for now, concentrate on
Glory Hazel
.

Woo hoo. Here we go!

Tim Mohr is the award-winning translator of works by Alina Bronsky, Wolfgang Herrndorf, and Dorothea Dieckmann, as well as Charlotte Roche’s prior novel,
Wetlands
. He has also collaborated on memoirs by Doff McKagan, Gil Scott-Heron, and Paul Stanley. Mohr’s own writing has appeared in the
New York Times
, the
Daily Beast, New York
magazine, and the
eXile
, among other publications. Prior to starting his writing career, he made his living as a club DJ in Berlin, Germany.

CHARLOTTE ROCHE
was born in 1978 in High Wycombe, England, but was brought up in Germany, where she still resides. Her first novel,
Wetlands
, was an international sensation, selling over two million copies worldwide. She lives with her husband and daughter in Cologne.

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Also by Charlotte Roche

Wetlands

Wrecked
Copyright © 2011 by Piper Verlag GmbH, Munich.
Translation copyright © 2013 by Tim Mohr.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

EPub Edition © APRIL 2013 ISBN: 9781443412988

Originally published in German in 2011 by Piper Verlag GmbH under the title Schossgebete.

First Published in Canada by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd in this original trade paperback edition: 2013

FIRST CANADIAN EDITION

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
2 Bloor Street East, 20th Floor
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M4W 1A8

www.harpercollins.ca

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication information Roche, Charlotte, 1978–
W
recked / Charlotte Roche ; translated by Tim Mohr.
Translation of: Schossgebete.

ISBN 978-1-44341-296-4

I. Mohr, Tim II. Title.
PT2718.O34S3613 2013
8
33′.92
C
2012-908454-9

RRD 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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