hate Leonore. In my defence, Leonore can barely stand the sight of me either, but we’ve both realised the symbiotic advantages our friendship offers us. Because all my other friends are in relationships, and therefore turn into pumpkins on the stroke of midnight, she’s the only one I can go out with, and with me Leonore can pretend to be young and single again instead of old and married to Gerhard, or the Beige Man as I like to call him (not in front of her).
Leonore is from England and has a son of pre-school age who always wears an eyepatch for some reason. The Beige Man is the manager of Red Bull’s finance department which means that Leonore never has to work again and instead she’s able to devote all her time to producing, directing and marketing plays in which she takes the lead role. Last February she played Malcolm X as part of Black History Month, sponsored by the American Embassy. Leonore’s not black.
‘Does Mike still work at Berlitz?’ asks Leonore.
I nod and take a sip of my vodka tonic. Fuck you, Stephen King.
‘I don’t know if I should give him a part in my next play or not,’ says Leonore. ‘I’m planning on staging Closer by Patrick Marber. He could play Clive Owen’s role.’
I circle the see-through plastic stirrer between the ice cubes. I’m still bitter about Stephen King having written The Shining almost forty years ago, a small detail I only remembered as I put my hands to the keyboard to start typing.
‘I saw Mike today, and I’m pretty sure he’s sick of being an English teacher,’ I say. ‘He’d probably be really glad to get a part in Closer. There’s a limit to how many times you can have the same lesson on the difference between the present tense and the present progressive, believe me. If I have to explain one more time why the McDonald’s slogan “I’m lovin’ it” is totally unacceptable, I’m going to bang my head against a wall. God, I get so angry with McDonald’s every time I think of it. So yes, you should probably give Mike a part.’
If her forehead wasn’t full of Botox (there are eleven years between us, after all) Leonore would have creased it now to show how much I was boring her.
‘I don’t know if we have the right chemistry,’ Leonore says.
I’m not sure whether we’re still talking about Mike.
‘Yeah, you probably don’t have the right chemistry,’ I mutter, and take another gulp of my drink.
After the cocktail bar we go to Passage. The nightclub is already full of people, and we have to wait behind three dark-haired girls in tiny skirts and white high heels before we can hang our coats in the cloakroom.
‘Don’t you think all the girls here look like high-class prostitutes from the Balkans?’ I shout at Leonore over the music.
‘I hope you mean us too,’ Leonore shouts back.
Before I can reply she pulls me to the bar. We order our drinks and pretend to chat to each other while we look at the guys. I actually have no idea why we always end up at Passage. The DJ plays unbearable music, the drinks are watered down, the toilets are filthy, there’s nowhere to sit, and the guys are all from Germany and have girlfriends.
Within half an hour we’re each standing talking to a guy. Mine has grinning sweat patches under his arms and eyebrows that meet in the middle, but he’s not wholly unattractive.
‘Where are you from?’ he asks in German.
‘Sweden,’ I say in English. To be honest, I can speak German, albeit with my own interpretation of the grammar, but I decide to speak English to give me the advantage.
His eyes widen and he smiles at me.
‘Have you been to Sweden?’ I ask.
‘Nah,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘But after reading so many Swedish crime novels it almost feels like it. Sweden is Wallanderland.’
‘Wallanderland sounds like a theme park,’ I say. ‘One where everyone dies.’
I see Leonore trying to make eye contact with me. Probably because the guy she’s talking to is a head shorter than her and is wearing a necklace with a Mercedes symbol on it. Going to a nightclub in Austria often feels like being thrown back to a time when eighties jewellery wasn’t worn ironically and Ace of Base still ruled. I ignore Leonore and turn back to my guy.
‘A Swedish told me there’s not actually any crime in Ystad,’ he says.
‘That’s because Kurt Wallander’s solved all the crimes,’ I reply.
The guy laughs and suddenly I hope something will happen between us.
‘Where are you from?’ I ask.
‘Munich,’ he replies. I tick box one.
‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ I ask.
The guy looks surprised at first, then smiles boyishly.
‘Yeah,’ he says. After a few seconds he adds: ‘Sorry.’
I tick box two. In spite of this, I give him my phone number when he asks for it.
When I get home I watch eighties porn on RedTube and give myself an orgasm to help me sleep. But it doesn’t work. I lie on my side and stare at the dark wall. I decide that next weekend I will arrange my books in colour order.
My first group the next day is an AMS group. When I come into the room they’re already sitting there like three wax dolls. There’s a woman with a double chin and gold rings that cut into her fingers. A young girl with white-blonde hair and dark roots is sitting tearing her cuticles with her teeth. The guy with a moustache and a checked shirt has a spookily absent gaze, but at least he’s ready, pen in hand.
‘Hi!’ I say. ‘My name is Julia and I will be teaching you today.’
None of them responds.
Once I actually had a job I loved. Just after Matthias and I moved to Vienna I got a position as a journalist. The paper was called VIenna frOnT – the capitals were meant to show the paper’s disregard for norms and traditions. We had a tiny office in the fifteenth district and we were fuelled by Almdudler, Leberkäse sandwiches and irony. Aside from covering the domestic news, I also got to write columns about right-wing politicians’ fondness for tying jumpers round their shoulders, and analyses of the German-speaking world’s relationship to yoghurt drinks. VIenna frOnT was supposed to hold a mirror to the world and make it draw breath. We lasted five months before the paper went bust.
‘Hello, what is your name?’ I say to the woman with the sausage fingers.
‘Bettina,’ she replies.
‘My name is …’ I correct her gently.
‘My name is Bettina,’ she says.
Bettina’s cheap, pink, butterfly-print viscose top strains over the bulges of her belly and her eyes have that desperate look that says
