Taxi to Paris (16 page)

If ever a thought of her entered my mind, I hunted it promptly to extinction. I reassured myself again and again - when it came to that - by reminding myself that a relationship with a prostitute (I could say the word now) was doomed to fail from the very beginning. Sure, I was still in love with her now, but how would things have looked in a year or two? She'd never even hinted that she might give up her trade and do something else with her life. And I'd only been denying that I was jealous of every one of her clients. I wanted her for myself alone.

So? That's normal, isn't it? A relationship with a woman who definitively did not live in the "normal" world - whatever that meant - who sold her body like a commodity, was a contradiction in itself. From the very beginning, we'd had completely different views of the world.

Did we? So what had we laughed about together? Oh, that was just banal stuff! Things that anyone would laugh at.

I became more hermitish every day. I was rarely home, and when I was home, I never answered the telephone. I'd long since taken it off the hook. I went shopping in another town, or at least another part of town. As close to each other as we lived, the danger of meeting her accidentally was much too great if I did such things in my own neighborhood. Back when I was looking for her, it of course hadn't worked out. But now when we'd rather avoid each other - I would, anyhow - we certainly would've run into each other.

After a couple of days, an old girlfriend of mine called me at work. When I answered, she said, "Well, at least you can be reached here! You don't seem to have a telephone at home anymore. Or don't you still live there?"

"Oh, hello Karin," I greeted her weakly.

"And you don't seem to be doing terribly well, either." She was right about that. "Are you in love?" she asked curiously. She knew me well.

"No," I denied disapprovingly.

"Mm-hmm." She'd known me much too long to be satisfied with that. "Did she leave you?"

I laughed scornfully. "Leave me? I left her."

"But you're not happy about it." That wasn't a question. She was simply stating a fact.

"No," I contradicted defiantly. "No, I'm very happy about it."

"Mm," Karin continued. "Then it's worse than I thought."

"Nothing is bad." My stubbornness grew. "I'm doing very well!"

"Yes, I can see that," said Karin, without any particular inflection. Changing the subject entirely, she continued, "Do you still have some vacation time left?"

"All kinds of comp time," I reported, surprised. "Why?"

"The reason I'm calling is that I want to go away for a couple of days, and I'm looking for another woman to go with me. And I thought about you right away."

"But Corinna -".

"Corinna doesn't have time. She's right in the middle of final exams. And really, I'm just disturbing her studies. That's why I wanted to go away - so she can work in peace." That sounded entirely logical.

"Yes, but..." She'd always caught me off guard with ideas like this. Now, the effect of the surprise was even greater than usual.

"Corinna doesn't mind if you come along. She knows there's nothing more going on between us." She didn't seem at all like she was trying to convince me of something. She just listed one fact after another. I'd always been amazed by her powers of logic.

This was all moving too fast for me. "Still..."

"No excuses! We're going up into the mountains. Do you still remember the cabin?"

I remembered it well. The cabin had been our first lovenest together. We'd spent our best times together there. I felt a tear in my eye when I thought about it.

"Yes." I swallowed.

She ignored my dismay. "How soon can you get out of here?"

I glanced across my desk. "Actually... Actually, I have an awful lot to do. I'm a little behind."

She laughed. "I understand," she thought aloud. "You've always been that way."

I was insulted. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, come on." She brushed that off. "When can you go? Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow?" Words like "next week" or "next month" didn't seem to be part of her vocabulary.

I surrendered. When she wanted something, she got it. In the end, I knew her well enough. "In two days," I supposed, "I could have most of my work either finished or delegated."

"Very well then," she confirmed, as if she'd already known it. "So Wednesday then. I'll pick you up at 8 a.m." She already had the whole thing planned.

"At eight?" I echoed.

"I know you're not awake yet then. But it takes two hours to get there. I'll drive. And then we still have to hike up another half hour." It sounded like a firm itinerary. Changes not accepted.

The cabin was really quite remote. There wasn't a paved street up there, or even a passable dirt road. "Fine." I admitted defeat. "If you drive."

She laughed. "Didn't I always?" She waited a moment to see if I had anything else to say. "Well, then, until Wednesday. And be punctual. Otherwise I'll toss you out of bed myself!" She was laughing when she hung up.

All that threw me for something of a loop. I'd gotten so used to my solitary melancholy, it seemed like someone had suddenly shot me out of a catapult.

Chapter 18

O
n Wednesday, we almost left on time. Karin really did make enough of a racket to drag me out of bed at eight in the morning. She even forbade me my morning coffee - despite my forceful protests - and we hit the road as soon as I was decently dressed. I grumbled about the lack of coffee for awhile, then fell asleep in the car. When I woke up, we were already heading through the pass. She noticed that I was awake. "We're almost there, you see? - You really love to sleep, don't you!"

"Yeah, yeah," I mumbled again. She made me nervous with all that energy. It reminded me of... Stop it! That was no longer an issue!

She parked the car at the trailhead, and we loaded up the backpacks.

"I thought we were only going to stay a couple of days," I protested when I felt the weight of the pack she gave me.

"You can't have forgotten that we have to carry up everything we need for the whole time," she explained cheerily, handing me yet another bag. "And back down again, too. There's no supermarket and no garbage service here."

"That always did annoy me," I grumbled crabbily.

She looked at me coquettishly. "I don't remember you ever complaining about it back then."

I dismissed that. "That was something entirely different."

She was not to be deprived of her good mood. "The longer we stand around down her, the longer it'll be before you get your coffee. As a matter of fact, you're carrying it in your backpack."

I sighed. "That's why it's so heavy."

"Now, then!" Happy as the leader of a girl scout troop, she marched on. I tramped along behind her.

Up top, we had to prepare the cabin for use first; it was apparent that no one had used it in some time. That meant starting everything up - heater, boiler, gas. By the time I got my coffee, another hour had passed.

When we finally sat down, she cornered me. "Now then, tell me all about it." She was totally serious.

"There's nothing to tell," I deflected brusquely.

"Of course there is," she persisted calmly. "Otherwise, you wouldn't be so guarded."

I shrugged my shoulders. "It was just an affair. A rather short one at that. It's not that important."

"So unimportant that you retreat to a hermit's existence? Or were you planning to enter a convent all along?" She looked at me. She knew. She knew me too well to believe anything I was likely to make up. She gave me a foothold. "Not too long ago, you fell in love with a woman."

"A woman!" I snorted contemptuously. "She is a -". How could I explain it to her?

Karin looked rather irritated. "Well, of course she's a woman, and it doesn't matter much what else she is, now does it?"

"Yes." I just couldn't hold my own against her logic. "Yes, she's undoubtedly a woman. And what a woman!" I made another contemptuous gesture.

"So what did she do to you that's making you so mad at yourself?"

At first I didn't quite hear what she'd said, but then it sank in. "Mad at myself? At the very most, mad at her!" What did I have to do with it? I hadn't done anything wrong, had I?

"No, I don't believe that. I know how you act when you're mad at someone else. That doesn't make you flip out like this. You only do that when you think you've made a terrible mistake." She'd made her diagnosis of me.

Reluctantly, I had to admit she was right. "What else is it but a terrible mistake to fall in love with a woman who..." I couldn't say it out loud. I might be able to think it, but I couldn't say it.

"You're jealous," Karin stated without another word from me. "Did she cheat on you with another woman?"

"With one?" I laughed bitterly.

Karin looked at me with interest. "It sounds like she's some sort of nymphomaniac."

"She's no nymphomaniac." Even I didn't think that. "She's a prostitute." Now it was out!

"Oh." She was surprised, but not particularly shocked. "That's a new one."

"Is that all you have to say about it?" I poured out my despair for her to see, and she just found it "new"?

Karin looked at me empathetically. "But you said she cheated on you with other women. Doesn't she sleep with men, too?" She hesitated. This was all rather "new" to her as well! "I mean ... professionally?"

Although I thought I'd gotten used to it, the word took on a new feeling of obscenity in this context.

"No," I replied dismissively. "As far as I know, no."

Karin put one and one together in her head. "That means she's a prostitute for women?"

"Yes." In that time, I'd gotten used to the topic again. "That's what she is: a prostitute for women."

Karin let out a whistle. "I've heard that there is such a thing, but somehow I could never quite believe it. That there's enough demand for such a thing..." She discussed it like an economics exercise. A simple matter of supply and demand.

"Oh, yeah," I assured her bitterly. "The demand is greater than you think."

"Excuse me, please." Karin looked at me sympathetically again. "I'm handling it like an abstract problem, but of course for you it's very concrete."

"No it isn't," I denied stubbornly. "Not any more."

She smiled understandingly. "So you're getting all upset about nothing, right?"

I flared. "Oh, if you only knew ... that's not nearly all!"

"Okay," she said, leaning back comfortably in her chair. "So tell me everything then."

At first, I didn't want to. There was just so much that I didn't understand myself. But then I slowly began to thaw under her understanding gaze. And I told her everything.

She listened quietly and let me talk. She didn't ask anything - she didn't want to question my view of things just yet. When I finished, she said, "Boy, you've been carrying a lot around with you!"

Although that didn't exactly help me at the moment, it calmed me straight off, and made my anger with myself easier for me to understand.

She went over to the stove and got us each a fresh cup of coffee. During this, she said nothing. She was thinking. After she sat down again, she said, "You're still in love with her."

She raised her hand to stop my protest before I could start. "And if I'm judging correctly - the way I know you - I'd even say that you really love her."

Now I couldn't say anything, because I was completely confused. How could she say that with such certainty? Something that was so wrong?

She smiled at me understandingly. "I remember your jealous streak well. It makes you completely irrational. After everything you told me, I don't believe her to be the woman you describe. Of course, I don't know her, and my experience with prostitutes is rather limited," she laughed a little, "but in the end, I have no reason to defend her. Whether she will speak to you again after that confrontation, I'd have to bet not." Her conclusions were as logical as they were plausible. I had nothing with which to contradict them.

"I don't think so either. But a relationship like that never had a future anyway." That was, for me, irrevocably certain.

"That may be." Karin thought about it for a moment before continuing. "It's even probable. But that's still no reason to behave like a bull in a china shop." She looked at me with mild reprehension. "To put it mildly."

I was ashamed. All this churned inside me. The memories came rushing back. Above all, the good memories. But I just wasn't ready to allow that. I shut them off.

My days with Karin were full of deep internal recovery. She knew me. She knew how I reacted to a relationship, and she'd fought her own battles with my jealousy when we were together.

I felt like she'd allowed me to bathe in her concern and sympathy. As my body began to relax, I realized how I'd been mistreating it. The sleep deprivation made itself noticeable, such that I sometimes slept through half the day as well as the night. The isolation of the cabin did me good as well. There was no telephone, no radio, no connection with the outside world beyond what we carried up on our backs and saw there with our own eyes.

The last evening, we opened the last bottle of wine that we'd tiresomely packed up there. Karin had planned everything so well, we'd be carrying nearly empty backpacks down the hill in the morning.

I still hadn't come to a decision. I said, "I know I won't be able stand it for any length of time to wonder constantly what she's doing. And I can't ignore it either."

Karin shook her head with annoyance at my obstinacy. "But that's not what a relationship is made of. With whom and how many one sleeps."  She looked at me penetratingly. "Certainly not in this case, where it really doesn't mean anything."

"I know," I said. "You said that back then. But I can't change it. I'm jealous. I can't differentiate love from sex." I laid my head in my hands and looked up at her. "So of course it had to happen to me: meeting a woman whose profession that is."

Karin laughed. "Serves you right. When I think about how much you drove me crazy in those days... I couldn't even look at another woman!"