Greg Baxter - Munich Airport

Cologne is nice, she said.

Is this your first time here?

It is.

Would you like to do anything?

Nothing in particular, she said.

What’s got you so busy in Berlin?

I’m doing a degree in nutrition, she said.

You like living in Berlin?

It’s probably the only place I can afford to live.

Are you still singing?

Still singing?

When you were in London, you said you were taking voice lessons.

Oh, no, that was temporary. Are you still in the same place?

Still in the same place, I said.

The drive from the station to the hotel took a long time. The streets were full of slow, drunk pedestrians, and the traffic was heavy. The snow fell into the city, into the light of the city. When we got to the hotel, some people from the conference were there. It was the last day of the conference, and I guess quite a few of them had decided to abandon the last talks and go out drinking. A man I recognized from our first night out saw me arrive with my sister and gave me a thumbs-up from across the lobby. I thought he was going to come over and invite us out with them, or introduce himself, so I hurried Miriam into the elevator and we went up to my room. She took off her coat. I said, Miriam, you’re really thin, are you okay? She didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to push her, because I didn’t want her to leave. But I couldn’t conceal my worry. Surely your nutrition course would wake you up to the dangers of being so skinny, I said. I’m fine, she said. You’re obviously not, I said. She said that she didn’t want to argue, and if I must know, ever since London she’d been losing weight, eating less, and she felt really empowered by denying appetite — the nutrition course was something to discover whether this denial of appetite, which became easier with each missed meal, could be sustained. You like not eating when you’re hungry? I asked. But she said she didn’t want to have to explain herself, and I could see that if we were to have a nice time together, I would have to change the tone of my voice. She went into the bathroom with some clothes, freshened up, and changed. I dozed off, I think, while watching television. She came out in an olive-and-black sleeveless dress, but wearing a gray polo-neck sweater underneath it, and black tights. You look nice, I said. In fact she looked sick. Her arms and legs were bony, and through the back of her dress, her shoulder blades protruded. She said, Thanks, I really love this dress. I stood up and took her hands in my hands. They were thin, too. Then I gave her another hug and said, Thanks for coming. I felt all the bones in her back.

When I went back to Miriam’s apartment for the third and final time, during my last week — it turned out to be the day before her body was released — I looked for, and found, this dress. I propped a tall mirror against the wall and held the dress out in front of me. It was tiny. I really could not believe how small it was, now that I was standing with it. It was not olive and black, and it was not sleeveless, and it was almost nothing like the dress my memory described — but I was certain it was the dress she wore when she walked out of the bathroom in that hotel in Cologne. Later, after we’d been out, I pretended to sleep while I watched her take that dress off. We were both quite drunk. I was lying in the bed near the door to the room, and she was standing by the window, between the second bed and the big window that looked out over the city and the cathedral, clumsily undressing. She took her dress off, and she stood there for a moment in her gray polo-neck sweater. It looked to me like she was dying. Her hips were sharp, the only shapes in her legs were the joints of her knees. Then she fell down. I got out of bed. She’d only had two glasses of wine at dinner and, later, a cocktail, but it was too much. I tried to wake her. Her eyes opened. Come on, I said, trying to lift her. Let me sleep on the floor, she said. I ignored her. I put one arm around her shoulder and neck, another under her hips. She didn’t weigh anything. She said, Let me down. I ignored her again. I stood straight up with her in my arms. What are you doing? she said. I said nothing, because it was obvious — I was putting her in the bed. Let me down, she said. I said, You’re drunk. So what? she said, and she started to squirm. I turned to put her down on the bed and she started to claw at my face. She clawed at my cheeks and nearly got my eye. I dropped her. There was a big knock. The lamp on her nightstand fell over. I didn’t know what had happened. But then I realized she had hit her head on the nightstand. Are you okay? I asked. She was rubbing the back of her head. I was just trying to put you back in bed, I said. She sat up a bit, asked for water. I went to the bathroom to get a glass, filled it with water from the tap, and came back. She was in the bed, asleep. I stood over her for a while, wondering how bad the knock had been, and if I ought to call a doctor. I was also furious. I did not understand why she refused to be lifted into her bed.

In Miriam’s Berlin apartment, when I went back that third and last time, I took the dress I recognized from Cologne and sat down on a chair. I laid the dress crosswise on my lap and smoothed the wrinkles out. It was around five in the afternoon. Somehow I had got inside without alerting Otis. Maybe at last he felt that everything in Miriam’s apartment was safely his. He had organized drinks with some people who knew Miriam, and I had promised to give him the keys. We were meeting around seven, somewhere nearby. My father said he would drop in later, probably with Trish. My father was completely listless, and kept saying morbid things. I sat in that chair with Miriam’s dress across my lap for almost two hours. I didn’t move. I guess it was a long time to sit. It started to get dark. Then my phone rang. It was Sedat, from the antiques store right down the street from our apartment. I answered the phone. He was outside. Very good, I said. I told him to ring the bell and I’d buzz him up. I reminded him to be absolutely quiet. I waited. I turned on a light. Sedat came up. He had a friend with him. I shook hands with them. I closed the door. Sedat looked at the furniture. I had already shown him some photos, but now that he was here and saw the furniture in person, he nodded. This is very nice, he said. His friend went around looking at everything else. When he was finished, he and Sedat spoke briefly, then Sedat came to me and said, Everything is in order. I asked him to place the keys in Otis’s mailbox on their way out, and reminded him that he shouldn’t do anything, shouldn’t even leave the apartment, until he got a text from me saying it’s okay. I had explained to Sedat about Miriam’s death. I offered him all the furniture he wanted for free, so long as he cleared the place completely. When I told him to wait for a text from me, he became suspicious, but now that he was in the apartment and had seen the furniture up close, I was sure he wouldn’t refuse it. Sedat’s antiques store had very nice furniture in it, and the furniture was hugely, criminally, overpriced. He asked if I was taking anything myself, any books, any clothes — the dress I was holding. Nothing, I said.

I went along to the bar Otis had specified. It was a nice place, small in floor space but with high ceilings, and with gigantic windows overlooking a dark and quiet, dimly lit street. It was in a part of town I hadn’t been to, right next to the Schlesisches Tor underground stop — Schlesisches Tor means Silesian Gate. I was on my own for almost an hour and a half. I ordered a whiskey, because I had to order something. But I wasn’t drinking anymore and I did not drink the whiskey. The bartender didn’t care. The place was virtually empty. There was a man reading a newspaper at the bar, and I didn’t see him drink anything, not even a coffee. I think he just came in to read the paper and smoke cigarettes. He read the paper the way people read novels, line by line, page by page, front to back. And when he was finished, he folded it, pushed it to the side, and thought about it for a while. At around half past eight, the man got up, put his coat and hat on, said good-bye to the bartender, and left. When he opened the door to go outside, Otis was there. The man let Otis in, then departed. Otis went straight to the bar. I got my phone out and sent Sedat a message telling him to begin. Otis came over to the table and sat down with a beer. Look at you, he said. I assumed he meant the beard, maybe the suntan. I probably looked quite healthy. But I hadn’t eaten in five days — or had eaten very little — and I had a constant headache, and other flulike symptoms. I said, I went by Miriam’s apartment today, my last visit.