Alina Bronsky - Broken Glass Park

“Would you like to have some time to yourself?”

I nod.

“Call me if you need anything. I’ll be. . somewhere in the house. I’ll pick out a book for you.”

“Okay.”

He closes the door. I hear his shoes squeak on the wood floor.

I take off my socks. Who else lives here? Do you have a wife? They would have been such easy questions. Curiosity is not a sin but it can get messy. That’s what my mother always said. It’s a Russian expression, too. She was very curious. I’m not. Maybe that’s why I experience things early. Usually earlier than I would like.

I pull my pajamas out of my backpack. I open the drawer of the armoire and touch the snow-white bath towels perfectly folded inside. I pull one out. In the process I step on my mobile — it must have fallen out of my backpack.

I pick up my phone and hold it in my hands until it’s warm. Then I dial the number.

“We can’t pick up the phone right now!” screams Alissa’s voice in my ear.

“You should answer ‘Alissa Naimann.’”

“I know!” she shouts. “Sascha! When are you coming home?”

“Soon. But not yet. Why aren’t you in bed?”

“We’re reading.”

“What are you reading?”

“Little Red Riding Hood.”

“Do you like it?”

“Nope. Little Red Riding Hood is stupid. She should be able to tell it’s a wolf and not her grandmother.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to see. Maybe she is so afraid of the wolf that she wants the wolf to think she believes him. She’s fooling herself, thinking he won’t hurt her if she plays along.”

“It’s baby stuff.”

“No, no, it’s actually quite grown-up. Say hello to the others, Alissa. Tell them I called. Sleep well.”

Alissa hangs up without saying goodbye. She probably nodded her head. She doesn’t understand that people can’t pick that up over the phone. She holds pictures up to the phone. Once she even held up a piece of cake. “Smell that,” she said. “Fresh out of the oven.”

I walk down the hall to the bathroom. It’s gigantic, gleaming, covered in mirrors. I feel like the hooker in the movie “Pretty Woman.” It’s an unsettling feeling. I lock the door, throw my clothes onto the bathmat, and get into the shower. I stand under the piping hot water for half an hour — until my skin is all red. Afterwards I wrap myself in a towel and comb my hair.

With my clothes in my arms, I walk back toward my room in my pajamas. I hear the strange noise again. It also sounds as if people are talking upstairs. Quiet, distant voices, but I can’t tell whether it’s two or more.

I’m relieved when I make it into my room and close the door.

There’s a pile of books on the bureau. I look through them: the autobiography of Marcel Reich-Ranicki, John Irving’s latest novel, Max Frisch’s Homo Faber, and Der Schwarm by Frank Schaetzing. Next to the books are two apples.

There’s a bottle of mineral water and a glass on the round table now, too.

I look around more closely. I even kneel down and look under the bed, to see if anything has wriggled its way under there. I’m not sure what I’m looking for — or perhaps I don’t want to admit what it is to myself.

But there’s nothing else to find. So I lie down in bed, stick my mobile phone under my pillow, pull the covers over my head, and close my eyes. I don’t cry.

I fall asleep quickly. When I wake up again it’s dark outside. I grab my mobile and look to see what time it is. Three-thirty in the morning.

I sit up.

I know exactly where I am. But suddenly I’m frightened and uneasy — much more so than earlier. The blossoming cherry tree in the garden spreads its ghostly boughs across the window.

I’m cold. My hair is still not completely dry.

Maybe they have a hair dryer in the bathroom. Of course they do.

I push aside the covers and put my jean jacket over my pajamas.

I can’t find my socks in the dark — or the light switch. I tiptoe into the hallway.

Right now I wish from the bottom of my heart that I were home. It’s so intense my eyes almost well up with tears. Maybe next time you should think of that before you do something like this. Thinking first is probably a good idea in general.

Upstairs must be the bedroom where the owner sleeps. Or owners? I heard multiple voices. Or were they just voices coming from a TV?

I turn the corner and find myself in the living room. I have to shield my eyes because there’s a bright TV on. The sound is off. Christina Aguilera is dancing on the screen, her blond dreads flying around and her mouth straining. She seems distraught that she’s unable to make a sound.

Against the wall is a couch, long and oddly shaped, like a giant shrimp. There’s a mound on the couch.

Shit, I think, trying to back out of the room.

But the mound begins to rise. It sheds its husk — a blanket. I retreat, startled, and step on the remote. Christina Aguilera’s voice blasts through the air at full volume.

The noise is so jarring that I squat down and put my hands over my ears. My eardrums feel like they’ve just burst. And it’s still loud as hell. The mound on the couch morphs into a human shape, jumps onto the floor, and pounds a button on the remote.

The TV screen goes dark. I can hardly believe how immediate the silence is. I stand up again. In the dark, I can’t tell who is standing in front of me.

But one thing is clear: It’s not a woman.

“You can stop covering your ears. I turned it off.”

“What?” I ask.

The person in front of me grabs my wrists and pulls my hands away from my ears.

“Hello,” I say, pulling my wrists out of his hands.

“Hello.”

He takes a step back and sits back down on the couch. Throws the blanket over his legs and looks me up and down. It’s a guy, skinny, but tall — must have been a head taller than me when he was standing. I have no idea how old he is. His hair falls to his shoulders in scraggy strands.

“You must be the. .,” he says, knitting his brows.

“Sascha.”

“Right. Volker told me about you. You stayed out of sight all evening. I was wondering where you were hiding.”

“I was tired. I fell asleep.”

“Aha.”

I lean against the wall and examine him. He’s still eyeballing me unapologetically.

“I’m Felix,” he says. “Can you understand me?”

“Can you understand me?”

“Don’t be insulted. Volker said you were Russian.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Why are you so pissed off?”

“I’m not pissed off.”

“You speak good German.”

“Thanks. You, too.”

“I fell asleep out here, too,” he says. I can see his teeth in the dark as he smiles. “I was lying awake for ages. So I came out to watch TV and fell asleep at some stage. Until you decided you needed to wake me up by cranking the speaker up full blast.”

“You were already awake. You sat up — that’s what startled me.”

“True, I was half awake. But I only really woke up after that jolt.”

I smile despite myself.

“My name is Felix,” he says.

“You said that already. I’m not that forgetful.”

“Seriously? I am.”

“I think I heard you earlier,” I say. “Voices upstairs. Was that you?”

“I only have one voice. But it could only have been me or Volker. Or the computer or the TV.”

“Only you or Volker?” I ask.

He looks at me quizzically.

“Yes,” he says. “Nobody else lives here. Other than a few friendly ghosts. Haven’t you seen any of them? There’s a swarm of them under the bed in the guest room.”

I smile back at him.

“Do you know Calvin and Hobbes?” he asks.

“No.”

“It’s a comic strip. Calvin’s a little boy and Hobbes is his stuffed animal — a tiger. In one strip Calvin is sitting on his bed, scared, and asks, ‘Are there ghosts under the bed?’ And from under the bed comes a speech bubble saying, ‘No.’ Then Calvin, trembling, asks, ‘If there were ghosts under my bed, would they be big or small?’ And the speech bubble from under the bed says, ‘Very small.’”