Thomas Pletzinger - Funeral for a Dog

From the roof you can see the island behind the bridges and the smokestacks of the empty factories on the riverbank. We’re sitting on the edge, behind us two Russians are playing Ping-Pong. We’re drinking gimlets, and the girl with the red hair puts down the rusty birdcage on the tar paper, fuck off, will you, says one of the Russians, her search for hope is interfering with his serve. Lawyer, says a long-haired guy in a white suit and metal tie, Morgan Stanley. Illustrator, says a guy named Christoph, and the ice cubes clink in the vase he’s drinking from, New Yorker and New York Times and this and that, he says. The Mexican guy pees off the roof, the red wine stains on his shirt look like my fashion statement. The guy with the Super Soaker gives him a whack in the face, order must be maintained, he yells, cha-cha-cha, shouts the Mexican, and the two of them dance over the abyss. The roof trembles, Pierre weaves a wreath for Kiki out of hanging geraniums and says, Morgan Stanley has been flattened, they were in the South Tower, at which point the long-haired guy in the white suit loosens his metal tie and says, everything’s going to be okay. My telephone vibrates, Svensson Home , to answer would be too simple, it would be too easy. I sit on the edge and think about what the metal-tie man said. What exactly is going to be okay? I think, and how, I wonder, and where is Tuuli right now, I’m always wondering where Tuuli is. Kiki gives me a book, writes “646-299-1036 Kiki Kaufman!” in it, and I put it in my jacket pocket.

I drink another glass and lie down on my back, I look into the sky, into the clouds, I haven’t been this drunk in a long time, I’m smoking one of Tuuli’s cigarettes, I notice that I feel my feet less and less. Why does Tuuli always have to call when they’ve finished fucking surrounded by my books, I wonder, can someone that pregnant still fuck, or is it only Felix on the phone, wanting to know what Tuuli’s favorite breakfast is? Tuuli eats cold pizza with capers for breakfast, she drinks her coffee with milk and no sugar, she hates nail scissors but tolerates nail clippers. She feels at home when she eats snails. Her father has a snail farm in Lapland. I know how she folds sheets and that she sings the Finnish national anthem when the weather’s bad and seriously believes that will make it better. I know that she thinks Felix kisses like a rock and I like a cup of tea. She told me that, definitely didn’t tell him. I know all this and also that we miscalculated, we’re three, we said, we’re not alone. A hand gives me a light. If Felix only knew that he kisses like a rock, but I won’t tell him.

It smells like autumn, it is autumn, I hear people talking, I see people dancing, the music is playing far away, Kiki with the geranium wreath and the camera is holding my hand, I close my eyes. How long it’s been since everything has spun like this! Kiki lets go of my hand, the dog lies down between us, I plant a foot to stop the spinning. Take it easy, says the dog, everything all right? Yup, I say, today the thorn is getting taken out. Do you like pizza? asks the dog. Yes, please, I say, with capers, then I can save a piece for Tuuli. The dog licks my ear. Mr. Dog, I say, how I’d like a slice of pizza right now, how I’d like to be somewhere else right now. Then let’s go, says Lua, licking my face, the taxi’s waiting below, he says, and when he takes my hand and the telephone vibrates and I open my eyes, when the Chinese girl in the suede coat suddenly flicks her tongue in my ear, nothing is spinning anymore. I’m Svensson, by the way, I say. Grace, says Grace. I’m going to get some pizza, I say to Kiki and Lua, but Kiki and her geranium wreath are nowhere to be seen, and Lua under the Christmas tree doesn’t wake up until I’m climbing in my socks down the fire escape behind Grace and getting into the back of a taxi. West Eleventh and Greenwich, Grace says to the driver, Lua performs his taxi trick, Grace kisses me, and the girl with the red hair buckles up the birdcage next to us as if it were a person. Okay, I think. The taxi is crossing a bridge to Manhattan, I’m hungry, the telephone is ringing, and I don’t answer, have you found hope? I ask. In the front the girl with the red hair sings her reply, and Grace tastes like smoke.

My pizza is called Earth Mother, and I take it to go. The girl with the red hair and her cage got out along the way. I was asleep on the edge of the roof longer than I thought. I have to piss. In the bathroom of Two Boots in the West Village, I put my shoes back on, check my teeth in the mirror and tense my abs. I hold my telephone over the toilet bowl, but then just turn it off. Grace and Lua are waiting outside with the pizza. We turn the corner onto Waverly Place, it looks like something out of an American film set in Paris. Small trees are growing out of the sidewalk, the street is a miniature boulevard, the garbage truck is blinking orange and collecting the black bags from the sidewalk in front of the cafés. Under a streetlight Grace stops and asks, my place or yours, and I ask, where do you live? Here, she says, and points to number seven, and I’m not wearing anything underneath. Grace puts down the pizza box, lifts her suede skirt and takes my hands. She really doesn’t have anything on. Grace kisses me, she bites my neck, she pushes me past the streetlight and against the glass door. I’m hungry, I say, the pizza’s getting cold, but as Grace breathes heavily in my ear I notice I’m getting hard. She breathes directly into my ear, makes soft squealing sounds and fumbles with my pants button. Lua is standing under a streetlight, the garbage men are watching us, I say. I just wanna fuck you right here, Grace says, and sounds like an actress. From an upstairs window comes “Downtown Train,” Tom Waits’s voice and the French scenery get mixed up, I take my hands off Grace’s naked ass under the suede skirt and her hands off me, let’s go upstairs, I say, and Grace jiggles the key in the lock.

In the hallway she briefly lifts her skirt again and looks me directly in the eyes, I have to decide and vacillate as quickly as possible between eyes and shaved patch, which is narrower than Tuuli’s. I come to rest on her mouth and kiss Grace against the elevator door, this time longer and deeper. My hand searches for her narrow butt, finds it and conforms to it. The elevator’s out of order, says Grace, her fingers above us clawing into the elevator grate. Okay, race you, I say, okay, carry me up, says Grace, and Grace is calling the shots here. She bites and then clings to my neck, until on the fourth floor I can no longer breathe. I put her down. Lua is already there, yawning. Grace points to a door and says, that’s where Moby lives. Who’s Moby? The singing vegetarian, she says. Does Moby want my cold pizza? I ask, and take the box from Grace’s hand, or does he only eat plankton? Plankton? Grace takes back the box, that’s the sort of thing you find funny, is it? Yup, I say, and pound the artichoke-shaped doorknocker against Moby’s door. Ist Moby dick? I ask, and bound up the stairs, Grace runs after me, but no one opens Moby’s door. Moby is on tour, says Grace, and tries to take off my T-shirt. Then we can listen to loud music, I say, opening the pizza box. In it there are a garlic shaker and a very small pair of orange underpants. I hold the underpants in the air. When did you take these off? I ask. Outside the pizzeria, says Grace. And no one saw? I unlock Grace’s door. Maybe, she says, there’s something to drink in the fridge.

When I enter the bedroom with a container of milk, Grace is standing in the middle of the room between her suede skirt and her white shirt. In the corner stands a giant porcelain greyhound, Lua is lying next to it and sleeping, Grace is posing like a ring card girl. I meant the vodka, she says. Milk is good for you, I say, and give her the container. She sits down on the bed and as she drinks the milk, her nipples get erect. She’s taller than Tuuli, I think, but just as thin. She sits cross-legged on the bed, her labia are unexpectedly dark, three stars are tattooed under Grace’s left breast, one red, one yellow, one green.