Christopher Kloeble - Almost Everything Very Fast

Violet sat up, and as she rubbed the back of her head, Albert remembered how much he’d liked kissing her there, once.

“Can I have one, too?”

“You smoke?”

“No.”

Albert shrugged, lit a cigarette, and passed it to Violet, who propped herself in the open roof, sucked at it, and didn’t cough once.

“You’ve smoked before, though, right?”

“Surprised?” Violet smiled, pleased. “It’s my first time.” Then she said, “I found a tin box in the trunk. There’s a rock in it that looks almost like …”

“Gold.”

“Fred’s?”

“Yep.”

“It looks real.”

“It is real.”

“Must be pretty valuable.”

“No question.”

“Where did he find it?”

“In the sewers.”

“What?!”

“Don’t ask me how it got there.”

He liked the way she blew the smoke through her nose. “You’ve really never …”

She flicked the cigarette into the field. “I’m leaving tomorrow.” She looked at him. “If you don’t need me.”

Of course he needed her, more than ever, but something in him shrank from saying it as long as she was waiting for him to say it.

“I was almost on my way yesterday. And then, halfway, I turned back. Stupid of me.”

“You could stay for another day,” he said, finally.

“And then?”

“I don’t know.”

“That hug the other day did me good,” she said suddenly, putting into words precisely what he was thinking.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t understand her. They’d been on the road together for three days now. Without Violet they’d all still be sitting in Königsdorf. That Violet had questioned Fred against Albert’s will, way back when, that had been a mistake — but she’d only wanted to help, wanted to see if she might be able to uncover something he’d missed. And wouldn’t it have been wonderful to find his mother with her by his side? To accomplish something so big together? Sure, she’d touched a sore point, but had it really been fair to split up with her on that account? In any case, it hadn’t been fair to call her up and beg her to drive Fred and Klondi and him to Saint Helena. For the sake of his mother. Whom Violet had been searching for. For which reason Albert had left her. And now they were here in a field, in the middle of the night, and everything that had happened between them lay months in the past, and he asked himself what, really, Violet had done wrong, and let his cigarette fall, and kissed her.

The next morning Fred opened his eyes, ignored the objections of the nurses, marched to the bus stop by the parking lot, and waved to Sister Simone, the cook, as she drove off to do her shopping in her leek-green VW.

Once Albert had managed to bring him back in, Violet served them breakfast.

Fred eagerly munched his food, as if making up for the meals he’d missed over the past few days. “Caramel pancakes!”

“You shouldn’t talk with your mouth full,” said Albert. “How are you feeling?”

Fred swallowed. “Ambrosial!”

“You look like it.”

“Aren’t you going to have some, too?” asked Violet, sitting down beside Albert and playing with his hair.

Albert glanced at the rolled-up pancakes. Fred stopped chewing. Violet urged him on with a nod. So Albert took one of the rolls, and tasted it. They were magnificent.

“Caramel,” said Albert.

“You shouldn’t talk with your mouth full,” Fred objected, and turned his attention back to his plate.

Albert said softly to Violet, “He’s feeling ambrosial.”

Her smirk was worthy of Sister Alfonsa. “He’s not the only one.”

Albert wasn’t sure if, as Violet would have put it, it had been the right thing to kiss her. He worried he was longing to be close to her only because he was feeling afraid of what was yet to come. The kiss had allowed him to forget — for a moment, at least — that Fred was dying, that his mother was living in an old-folks home on the Zwirglstein, which he’d have to set out for, sooner or later. Albert didn’t know what that would mean for him and Violet, and he didn’t want to worry about it anymore either, so he more than welcomed Alfonsa wanting to meet him out in the orchard.

“I like it out here,” she greeted him in the shadow of an apple tree. She acted as though two whole days hadn’t passed since they’d last spoken.

“You used to have agoraphobia, right?”

Alfonsa stopped. “What makes you say that?”

“The other sisters always used to praise me for getting you outside so often. Once I looked the word up in Fred’s encyclopedia.”

“You were still very small. And you had too much imagination.” Alfonsa went on. “Maybe that’s why your girlfriend thinks so highly of you.”

“Violet? She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Does she know that?”

Albert dodged her glance.

“It seems to me,” she said, “that we haven’t sufficiently prepared you here for the world of women.”

From the very beginning he hadn’t really thought of the sisters of Saint Helena as women. As teachers, tutors, yes, as parochial know-it-alls, oh certainly, but never as females — apart from a brief phase when, at the age of five, Albert had believed that the anatomical conspicuities specific to women were called “bad timing,” because he’d surprised Alfonsa while she was undressing in her room, and asked her, pointing, what that was.

Albert picked an apple, inspected it for wormholes, polished it on his pant leg, and took a bite. It puckered his mouth.

“They need more time,” said Alfonsa. “Another month at least.”

“In a month we won’t be here.”

“You could stay. What are you looking for elsewhere that isn’t here?”

Their eyes met for a moment.

“What in the world would keep me here?”

She smirked. “Shoelaces?”

“Sounds tempting.”

“Albert,” she said, stepped over to a crooked tree, plucked a rosy-cheeked apple, sniffed it briefly, and handed it to him. He took a cautious bite. You could taste the sun in it. “There were reasons not to tell you about her.”

Albert dropped the apple.

“You were three years old when you came to us. Not old enough to hear such things. And when you were old enough, I waited for the right moment to tell you. But it never arrived. Eventually I thought maybe it was better that way. There are certain things it’s better one never learns.”

“Then why precisely now? ”

“Because we’ve been worried about you.” Typical of Alfonsa, not being able to say I. “When your call came, it confirmed our worries. We should never have let you go, especially not in this difficult situation with Fred. Only, you were so unbelievably stubborn. We didn’t see any other way to bring you back.”

“The ends justify the means,” said Albert.

“You could put it like that.” Alfonsa bent over, tasted Albert’s apple, and showed her teeth in a pleased grimace. “I’ve always had a way with the precocious ones.”

“I want to see her. For all I care, come along. But I want to get it over with.”

Alfonsa brought the apple to her mouth, paused, then bit even deeper. “Fred feeling better?” she asked with her mouth full.

Albert hated her chomping. “Yes.”

She looked at him. “Then what are we waiting for?”

As evening fell on the parking lot, Violet, Alfonsa, Fred, and Albert said good-bye to Klondi, who’d voluntarily given up her seat in the car. If they left right away, they could make it to the Zwirglstein by the next morning, including a rest stop during the night.

Klondi turned to Fred. “Take care of Albert, okay?”

“Albert is very young,” said Fred, knowingly.