Ingo Schulze - One More Story - Thirteen Stories in the Time-Honored Mode

People were still laughing as a man in a gray suit sat down on the coffee table, raised his glass, and called out to Marco: “Here’s to your not being let go!” I took it for a joke, but Marco turned to stone and Claudia set her glass down. This did not prevent the tall guy from finishing off his wine in several quick swallows. His shirt collar stuck out from under his jacket, which drew your eyes to his pointy, bobbing Adam’s apple. Then, as if making a crucial move in a game of chess, he put his glass down among ours. With a smack of his lips he stood up and left the room.

Claudia’s friend Sabine, who probably wasn’t the woman from the night before after all, said she hadn’t been able to arrange for a taxi before three o’clock. She said that on a night like this money was no issue, but that she herself wouldn’t work tonight, not for all the world, because nothing could compare to a change of millennia. Julia asked what she would be paying the cabbie tonight, twice or three times the usual?

Somehow everything seemed to go off track. Later on Julia started making one weird remark after the other. It used to be, she declared, that we at least got something of an education in comparison with schools nowadays. At one point she mentioned her father, too, and it sounded as if financial difficulties had put him in his grave. Marco said that she should be glad that she could finally live in freedom, and Claudia’s colleague Sabine added that she wouldn’t give up her freedom for anything now.

“Which freedom do you mean?” Julia asked, which brought Marco to his feet. Shaking his head, he made for the buffet.

It wasn’t till Ute was standing in front of me that I realized Fritz had fallen asleep under my arm. Ute extended a hand to Julia. Since this required a slight bend of the knees, it looked as if she were curtsying to greet her. Claudia introduced her two good friends to each other.

There wasn’t time now to take Fritz back to our place. So I left him on the couch and helped Marco open the champagne. One after another the guests found their way up the narrow spiral staircase to the penthouse, where the door to the terrace stood open.

At midnight I toasted with Ute, I toasted with Julia. I toasted with Claudia, I toasted with last night’s doppelgänger and her husband, I even wished the tall guy in the gray suit a “Happy New Year!” Ute and I went back downstairs to wake up Fritz so he could watch the fireworks, or at least what could be seen of them in the haze.

After that I had to assist Marco and Dennis. Although we kept firing off several rockets at once, it soon got too cold or too boring for our audience out on the terrace. I wanted to go downstairs as well, where people were dancing now. Ute took Fritz back to our place.

Julia was dancing alone. Again and again our eyes met. When she left the room — Julia still had that same unique walk she’d always had — I took it as an invitation. She was waiting just outside the kitchen for me. I took her by the hand and opened a door at the end of the hallway — the master bedroom. It was cold and smelled, to put it politely, unaired. We embraced, we kissed, I stroked the back of her neck.

My life was suddenly like an equation that’s easily solved. What I was doing now seemed to be automatically derived from what I had always dreamed, as if I no longer had any need of my will, or my courage. I was caught up in the feeling of having come to the end, having achieved finality — and all was well.

“I didn’t know,” Julia whispered, “that you were married.”

“I’m not married,” I said and noticed the narrow band of light coming from the door and falling across the unmade bed and nightstand with two lumps of Ohropax on it.

“It’s the same thing, you live together.”

We held each other tight, two actors at a rehearsal, waiting for the director’s instructions. I even attempted to slide my hand inside Julia’s blouse, but quickly gave up.

“I’m leaving now,” Julia said. We kissed one more time and returned to the living room together.

It took a while for Julia to say her good-byes. Claudia saw her to the door.

When after a good while Ute had not yet returned, I was pretty sure she had decided to stay with Fritz.

Claudia asked me to dance. It didn’t take me long to get into the swing of things.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had danced.

Sabine, Claudia’s favorite colleague, didn’t budge from my side. Surprisingly, she danced in a lumbering sort of way, just kept repeating the same moves, no matter what the music. Claudia on the other hand was a wonderful dancer, she must have taken lessons. Marco was fairly drunk. He bad-mouthed the actor who had never showed, and soon vanished into the bedroom.

Once she started to dance Claudia evidently no longer saw herself as a hostess. She stopped seeing people to the door and helping them find their coats.

Each time a guest left, we nodded to each other as if counting the ones that remained.

By about four thirty the tall guy with the gray suit and pointy Adam’s apple was the only one left. He had moved in close to us as we danced, swinging his burgundy tie above his head like a lasso. Now he was watching us from an armchair — the tie was dangling from his pocket. It wasn’t hard to see what Claudia and I had on our minds.

Claudia then said the party was over, and turned off the music. I helped her gather up glasses. The tall man was holding his empty glass with both hands and grinning to himself. Suddenly he said, “I still get a peek.” We could barely make it out, he was slurring so heavily.

“You’ve had your peeks,” Claudia said.

He checked her over from head to toe, rocking his head and thrusting out his lower lip in approval.

“Clear out!” she said.

“Still wanna peek,” he muttered.

We laid into him — which is to say, by now Claudia was so angry that I hardly got a word in edgewise.

“I wanna fuck,” he blurted out. “And it’s you I wanna—”

The tip of Claudia’s shoe met his shin. He fell silent, bent forward, rubbed his leg, raised his head, and grinned. “Ouch, ouch,” he said. “Bad girl.”

Claudia gave another kick, but as if expecting it, he grabbed her foot. Claudia stumbled, he took hold of her other ankle, jumped up, and yanked her upside down as if trying to hang her by her feet.

I’ll never forget the look of that mug, the ogling, the grin. It was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.

I punched him in the face, then landed one to his belly — all of it stuff I’ve only seen in the movies. We fell onto the sofa, Claudia’s legs between us. He wouldn’t let go of her. We slid to the floor. Was it panic, was it rage — I didn’t know how to go at his neck and head. I couldn’t start strangling him or knocking his teeth out or smashing his nose. So that it was actually a relief when he finally let go of Claudia’s ankles and we began to wrestle. Normally, if he hadn’t be so sloshed, I would have been no match for him. Claudia jumped around behind us and kicked him in the ribs, again and again, and with each kick he bellowed like an ox. Then Marco showed up.

The three of us expedited the tall guy out, stuffed him into the elevator, tossing his coat in with him, and pressed the button for the ground floor. Marco never even struck him, all he had to do was just haul back with his massive balled fist. Curses boomed from the descending elevator car. The neighbor’s door closed with a click.

Marco thanked me repeatedly. He looked more bloated than he had early that morning. He kept reaching under his pajama top to scratch himself.

We each drank half a glass of whiskey, and Marco did his routine again of how he had pressed the bottle into its carton.