Clouds (12 page)

“What of it,” Shelly said, teasing her sister with a hand on her hip.

“Nothing. It’s fine. It’s girlie. It’s you. It’s just that Jonathan has never seen it. I think once he recovers from the shock of seeing you, he’s going to be enraptured by how you look. You know, don’t you, that you’ve never looked better?”

“It’s all those vitamins I’ve been taking,” Shelly quipped.

“Well, then leave the bottle out on the counter for me, Sis!”

“Like you need any beauty enhancement.”

Meredith didn’t have a comeback. She glanced out the door at the cobblestone street lined with fascinating shops and said, “What do you think? Should we stand here and continue this mutual admiration stuff, or should we go exploring?”

“Exploring,” Shelly said, slipping on her coat. “Definitely exploring.”

Into the perfect afternoon they ventured, browsing through gift shops and book shops until the sun cast long shadows down the alleyways. They returned to Mike and Jana’s to find a note on the table saying they had to go out and Shelly and Meredith were welcome to help themselves to anything they could find to eat.

While Meredith took a bath, Shelly made some improvised grilled-cheese sandwiches. The bread was small, hard rolls, cut in half, and the cheese was white with a strong, not-so-pleasant smell. A jar of applesauce was in the cupboard and bottles of mineral water were lined up on the floor against the cold wall beside the stove.

Jana had explained that their apartment came without a kitchen, and they had bought all these appliances and cabinets and assembled the kitchen themselves. It cost them thousands of dollars and was far from what Shelly would consider an efficient, modern kitchen. But everything worked, and she thought it was kind of fun “playing” cook in this little home. It made her wonder what Jonathan’s living situation was like. Did he cook for himself on a narrow little stove like this?

Leaning against the sink, Shelly allowed her daydream to drift on. What if she and Jonathan got married? Would they live in Belgium? Would she one day soon be puttering around in a little kitchen like this? What if he wanted to get married right away? Would she perhaps stay and not even return to Seattle? She felt no remorse at the thought of giving up her job, such as it was. Meredith could pack up and ship over the things that were most valuable to Shelly. She had so little; her life was already compact. It wouldn’t be difficult to pick up with a brand-new life in Europe with Jonathan.

Tomorrow. I’ll see him tomorrow
. A smile as broad as the dawn spread across Shelly’s sun-kissed cheeks.

Chapter Eleven
 

L
ike all momentous days in history, this one dawned like any other. Shelly had slept only in snatches, but her dreams were sweet enough to lure her back into a few more hours of floating between two spheres. She showered before the others were up and spent an unusually long time trying to decide what to wear. She finally chose a straight, simple dress she had brought for special occasions. This was definitely a special occasion. Since it was so chilly, Shelly wore a turtleneck under the dress and wondered why she had never thought of wearing it that way at home. It almost looked better as a jumper than as a sleeveless shift.

Her hair reacted strangely to the water, or perhaps it was the foreign shampoo she borrowed. To tame the fly-away wisps around her face, Shelly scrounged through the bottom of her bag and came up with a scarf that she twisted in her hair like a headband to keep the feathery rebels off her face.

It wasn’t until she began to apply her mascara that she
became aware of how much her hands were trembling. She could barely contain herself. It was only seven-twenty. The next two hours until they met at the church would seem like two days. Two years. Two lifetimes. She had to get out of this closed-in apartment and collect her thoughts.

Slipping into the kitchen, Shelly found Jana in her robe making coffee. A pan of boiling water gently tumbled four brown eggs.

“Good morning,” Shelly said. “I hope I didn’t wake you guys by getting into the shower so early.”

“No. I’m glad you found everything okay. You look bright and ready for the day,” Jana said. “Did you sleep well?”

“Pretty good. Meri’s in the shower. I was thinking of going for a little morning walk. Do you have any suggestions?”

“You should go to the
Floh Markt
. It’s a lot of fun, especially this early in the morning. When you go out the main door of our building, turn left and walk to the end of the block. Then turn left again for two more blocks. The outdoor market starts there on the right side of the street and goes on for almost three blocks. The first part is all vegetables and fruits, but keep going and you’ll hit the flowers and other fun stuff.”

“Sounds perfect,” Shelly said.

“You might want to take this shopping sack with you,” Jana said, reaching for a canvas bag with two long shoulder straps that was hanging on a peg behind the kitchen door. “Do you want some breakfast before you go?”

“I think I’ll grab something there.” Shelly looped the canvas bag over her shoulder. “This is going to be fun. Where should I meet you at nine?”

“At nine?”

“Yes, didn’t you say your staff meeting is this morning at the church? I was going to stop by to say hi to Jonathan.” Shelly
tried to make it sound casual, yet all the while she was thinking,
Say hi, take his handsome face in my hands, kiss his lips … Oh, man! Don’t get me started thinking about his lips!

“Oh, that’s right,” Jana said. “You guys wanted to come over this morning. The church is easy to find. You can see it from the end of the
Floh Markt
. Go all the way to the last stall, and the church is across the street on the right.”

“Perfect,” Shelly said, checking her watch. “Tell Meri I was eager to go exploring and I’ll see her at the church at nine.”

“I’ll tell her.”

Just then the phone rang, and Jana shook her head. “It’ll be like this the whole time the staff are in town.”

“ ’Bye,” Shelly said with a smile and a wave. She stepped out of the apartment and then through the large double doors into the wide, wonderful world. Right on cue, some birds twittered in the tree across the way. She felt as if she had stepped into a fairy tale.

The early-morning light was kind to the old, yellow building, causing it to look like a fine duchess of regal standing. Any lady who could stand for so many years, unwavering on these worn gray, rust, and brown cobblestones, had to be a fine lady, indeed.

At the end of the road, a round woman wearing a white apron over her dark blue dress and a pair of black, overly sensible shoes, stood on her doorstep, shaking out a braided rug.
“Morgen,”
the woman said cheerfully as Shelly strolled past.

Shelly smiled and nodded.
“Guten Morgen,”
she said. She quickly tried to pull to the forefront of her memory all the mental files she had retained of her high school German. There wasn’t a lot to draw from. Fortunately, that was all the neighbor woman said.

Continuing along the course Jana had described to her, Shelly was delighted to find that the streets were a merry maze all connected by the flecked cobblestone arteries. The rising sun was at her back as she turned the last corner. Her figure cast a long shadow. She felt every bit that tall.

Browsing through the fruit stands, Shelly found each vendor eager to strike up a conversation with her.
“Nein, Danke,”
became her standard answer accompanied with a bright smile. Not because she wasn’t interested in buying their wares, but because she couldn’t figure out what they were saying. She stopped at one stand and pointed to the bosc pears.
“Einen Dissen, bitte,”
she said, hoping she had just asked for one pear.

“Eine Kilo?”
the vendor in the wool cap asked.

“Nein,”
Shelly said. She didn’t want a whole kilo, only one pear.

“English?” the man asked, squinting his eyes as the sun poured over his deeply wrinkled face.

“Yes,” Shelly said and nodded, trying to hide her embarrassment at not being able to speak German well enough.

“You wish one kilo?” he said with a deep accent.

“Nein!”
Shelly spouted.

The man scratched his head. “You wish nine kilos?”

Shelly waved both her hands in front of the man as if her action could erase all her language goof-ups. “I only want one,” she said slowly, holding up one finger.

“Ja, ja,”
the man said, nodding and reaching for the pears.

Shelly breathed a little easier and glanced around, hoping no one had been watching her little cultural faux pas. When she looked back, the vendor was speaking to her in rapid German and motioning for her to open her canvas shopping bag. He had weighed out one kilo of pears on his scale and was prepared to pour them into her bag. She was about to stop him and then decided it wasn’t worth it. One pear, nine pears, five
pears. It didn’t matter. She opened her bag.

He rattled off the price, and she tried to figure out what he had said. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out some money and held out to him one of the bills. With all her heart she wished she knew what she was doing. This guy could rip her off, and she would never know it. She could just see herself relating this story to Mike and Jana and having them tell her she had spent thirty-five dollars on five pears.

The man nodded, said,
“Ja, ja,”
a few more times. He handed her two bills and eight coins on a tiny tray that looked like a square coaster.

“Danke,”
Shelly said.

“You welcome,” he said.

She grinned as she walked away.
How pathetic. I took two years of German, and I can’t even buy myself a single pear. And he speaks English to boot!

Rubbing one of the pears carefully on the side of the canvas bag, Shelly hoped it would have the same effect as rinsing it would. Then she took a bite. It was a wonderful pear, sweet and firm. Actually, it was the best pear she had ever eaten, simply because it was a German pear.

She made her way down the row as the crowd of early-morning shoppers thickened. Everyone carried a tote bag, Shelly noticed. And all the Germans seemed to be speaking so loudly. Or maybe it was the tone of their language that sounded gruff. More than once she turned to look at what had sounded like a threat or a command only to see two friends greeting each other warmly or a vendor greeting a customer.

The other thing Shelly became aware of was the way people looked at her. They stared. She checked her skirt more than once, ran her tongue over her teeth in case any pear skin had stuck between them. She even checked her scarf headband to make sure it wasn’t sticking up. Nothing seemed out of place.
Maybe it was a cultural thing. These people simply felt comfortable staring unashamedly at foreigners.

And that’s how she felt, like a self-conscious foreigner who couldn’t even order a pear for herself.

To lift her spirits, Shelly stopped at a flower stand. Under a striped umbrella, bunches of fresh flowers waited in big white buckets, showing off their upturned faces to the shoppers. Shelly decided to buy a bunch of bright yellow daisies for Jana and Mike as a thank-you gift. She lifted a bouquet from the bucket, and a large woman wearing a pink knit sweater over her dress and an apron over that, rose to her feet and began to speak rapidly in German. It sounded to Shelly as if the woman was scolding her.

“I’m sorry,” Shelly said. “I just wanted to buy these.”

“Ja, sehr gut,”
the woman said, extending her pudgy hand. She rattled off some words that sounded like numbers to Shelly.

“Oh, yes. Here,” Shelly said, fumbling for the money in her pocket. “Here you go.” She handed the woman a bill.

The woman looked at it, then held it back out to Shelly and barked a few more words, shaking her head.

Stumped, Shelly asked, “You need more?”

The woman spoke again, this time louder.

Shelly pulled a few more bills from her pocket, and the woman snatched the small bill and put the larger one back in Shelly’s hand.

“Oh,” Shelly mumbled. “You didn’t have change to break a fifty. Why didn’t you say so?”

The flower vendor returned Shelly’s change on the same kind of tiny tray the fruit vendor had used. Then the vendor spoke loudly again, pointing to something down by Shelly’s foot. She looked down. She hadn’t dropped anything. Was the woman criticizing her shoes? Then Shelly noticed the roll of
plastic bags to wrap the wet flowers in. “Oh, yes. I see,” Shelly said. “Thank you. I mean,
danke
.”

“Bitte,”
the woman immediately replied.

Shelly wrapped her daisies and carefully tucked them into her tote. With a last-ditch effort, she smiled warmly at the woman and then turned to move on, eager to be out of this embarrassing situation.

When she turned toward the flow of people, her eyes caught on a figure striding toward the flower stand. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. This tall, muscular man brushed his light brown hair off his forehead and wove his way through the crowd. He wore a denim work shirt that matched his stormy, gray eyes. His face was fuller than she remembered. His stature taller and more broad shouldered. And that handsome face was wearing a tight but determined smile.