Christopher Kloeble - Almost Everything Very Fast

The distance that Violet and Albert had overcome at their first meeting they built up again during the course of their second. Sitting across from each other by a window hung with toast-brown curtains at the Hofherr Tavern in Königsdorf, neither of them said what they most wanted to say. Albert kept silent about his life at Saint Helena, about being a two-thirds orphan, and about Fred. Violet, for her part, kept up with him. She didn’t have much of a talent for lying, but pretended to be a college student (even though she was, like Albert, in her last year of high school), making an argument for communal living (though she still lived with her parents in a four-thousand-square-foot villa on Lake Starnberg with a private dock and a sailboat) and demonizing Germany, particularly its publicly subsidized TV (which had — indirectly — funded her entire life, as well as having paid for the coffee that, in their nervousness, they both drank so quickly that they burned their tongues).

It probably would have been their last meeting if, as they were leaving the restaurant, they hadn’t run into Fred, who was on his way to the bus stop.

“Hello, Albert!” chirped Fred.

“Hello, Fred,” said Albert, tugging at his earlobe.

Violet looked at him, but he made no move to introduce her. So she stepped up to Fred, extended her hand, and said, “I’m Violet.”

Fred considered the hand. “Who are you?”

The question struck her — the valedictorian, the star of family videos, the editor of the school newspaper, the only child — with unexpected force: her second Violet had an interrogative lilt to it.

Albert shook himself out of his stupor. “This is Violet, Fred. A friend.”

Fred looked at her for a moment, as if trying to reconcile Albert’s information with what he saw in front of him. His sudden grin was spectacular. “Friends are ambrosial!” He embraced her, and Albert wanted to intervene, but she shook her head: It’s okay.

“I’m Frederick Arkadiusz Driajes,” said Fred, letting her go.

Violet smiled. “An ambrosial name.”

Fred gave a start and looked at Albert.

“Did I say something wrong?” she asked.

Albert shook his head. “On the contrary.”

Fred whispered something into his ear.

“Don’t do that, it’s rude,” said Albert. “Anyway, you can ask her yourself.”

Fred struggled visibly to lift his gaze from the ground. “Will you come with us?”

Violet asked, “Where to?”—though she’d already decided.

Albert nodded in the direction of the bus stop. “To count green cars.”

They counted over fifty of them that day, not because traffic was heavy, but because they stayed so long. While Fred noted the individual vehicles in his journal, Violet questioned Albert about his life with Fred. Albert noticed that Violet’s hands were shaking, and she stuck them into her pockets as she confessed that she liked him — which clearly sounded, to her, once spoken, much too moderate, so she added that she was sure she’d always remember the time they’d spent here today, and Albert sat stiffly beside her, because he wasn’t sure what she expected from him. Violet asked if she could spend the night with them (he presumed she hadn’t said “with him” in order to sound less obvious), and he was so delighted to hear it that he forgot to work in a cool, strategically placed hesitation before nodding yes.

Albert moved up his next visit to Königsdorf, returning later in October and inviting Violet over for lunch. When he went to dish up his homemade chili con carne, he found little shreds of paper in it, and confronted Fred. “Why is there paper in the food?” he asked, and Fred widened his eyes: “It wasn’t me!” and Albert raised his voice: “Don’t lie, Fred,” and Fred screamed, “I never lie!” and Albert said, louder, “You can’t mess around with the food!” and Fred declared, “I didn’t want to mess around!”

Violet’s more understanding approach elicited from Fred the confession that there was a question he hadn’t dared to ask, so instead he’d written it on a piece of paper, torn it up, and mixed it into the chili.

“You can ask me anything,” said Albert.

Fred ran a hand across his face. “Why do you two make such funny noises when Violet is here?”

Albert gulped. Violet laughed, and said, “We’re making whoopee.”

“And when do people make whoopee?”

She glanced at Albert, who, drinking a glass of water, avoided her eyes. “When they feel very, very good.”

“Ambrosial?”

“Completely ambrosial.”

That night, Albert was woken by odd noises. Violet was already awake, sitting upright in bed. “Making whoopee,” she said, pointing toward Fred’s room and chuckling, and after they’d made love a second time that night, Albert admitted that had he been alone he’d have found Fred’s imitation annoying, but with her everything was different, with her he was different, as if, since he’d known her, he could see Fred better, or was able to make more of an effort. Now he traveled to Königsdorf because he wanted to, not because he was obliged to, and for that he was grateful to Violet, he whispered to her, very grateful, and Violet replied that nobody had ever given her such a beautiful compliment, and she kissed him, and they made love a third time, and Albert felt so happy that for the first time in his life he wasn’t yearning for a different life. Everything could stay just as it was.

The following evening she introduced him to the Cyclops Eye.

The Cyclops Eye

October 27, 2001

Blurriness slowly gives way to focus. Rumpled bedding. Light of sunrise or sunset. Albert blinks. He has bags under his eyes. The scar on his cheek is shimmering. He asks, “And what am I supposed to do now?”

Violet’s giggling from offscreen. “Be yourself.”

“How can I not be myself?”

“Plenty of people are only rarely themselves.”

“Well, at the moment I feel very much like myself.”

“Do you find it uncomfortable, being filmed?”

“A little. But exciting, somehow, too.”

“You’ve really never been on camera before?”

“At Helena, they only take pictures on birthdays, and at Christmas.”

“I wish I could see you as a kid, I’d love to know how you crawled, how you walked. How you talked.”

“…”

“I’m sorry.”

“I wish I had a shelf full of tapes, like you. It wouldn’t matter so much to me whether it was a good past or a bad one. As long as there was one.”

“The last thing you want are bad memories.”

“How do you know? Not only can you look at most of your life whenever you want, but it’s mostly good, too. It says, Look here, Violet, you have a pretty good life.”

“We could go looking for your history.”

“I’ve done that, more than once.”

“Somewhere in this house there must be …”

“A heap of Hansel and Gretel crumbs.”

“A heap of what?”

“Hansel and Gretel crumbs. You follow them because you think they’re going to help you get out of the forest. And all they do is lead you deeper and deeper in. Till you can’t tell the day from the night anymore. Then, all of a sudden, the trail ends.”

“You don’t get lost so quickly if you’re traveling with someone else.”

“Or else much quicker.”

“You’re living in your own head again.”

“It would do most people good to live in their heads a little more. They’d cause less harm.”

“We’d make it through the woods.”

Albert’s hand obscures the picture.

“What’s wrong?”

“That’s enough.”

“Why?”

“Please, turn it off now.”