New York for Beginners (25 page)

24

MARCH

Zoe was pretty sure that if she had to eat cold pizza out of a box one more time, she’d throw up into the next garbage can she encountered. She was thirty-four years old, and definitely not a college student anymore. She glared at the stack of pizza boxes in the hall that still needed to be taken downstairs for recycling.

“Come on, Ben, hurry up. We’ll miss the damn train.” Zoe had been waiting with the luggage for at least ten minutes now. She hated when other people weren’t as punctual as she was.

“Don’t freak out. I’m just trying one more thing here,” Ben called from the living room. She could hear him typing hastily.

“If we’d chosen to fly, you’d have another three hours to try things out now,” she retorted grouchily.

“But we didn’t.”

“But only because you couldn’t decide again, and because economy-class tickets were suddenly almost as expensive as business class. What are you trying to do, anyway?”

“I thought we could reorganize the verticals again.”

“Are you nuts? Reorganize the verticals? We green-lighted that weeks ago. And it looks great the way it is.”

“The truth is the whole,” Ben said, trying to avoid an impending fight while sounding philosophical.

“Oh, don’t try to impress me with your damn Kant quotes!” Zoe exclaimed, angry at his completely unnecessary, time-wasting solo effort.

“Hegel, darling—Hegel!”

“So it’s Hegel, freaking smartass,” she said, because she just couldn’t resist, and kicked the pizza boxes. There she was, starting a fight with Benni again. Because he was getting stuck in his work again instead of finally getting the damn job done. I’m starting to sound like my own mother, she realized with a shiver of horror. She, too, always had to have the last word.

And that was who they were going to visit now: either “delicious apple cake” Mrs. Schuhmacher or “I told you so” Mom, depending on the perspective. It was the end of March, and Ben had let Mama Schuhmacher convince him to spend Easter in Ansbach with Zoe’s parents. Zoe was, to put it mildly, royally pissed.

While standing in the hall waiting for Ben, Zoe thought about the past four weeks. She had really wanted to be able to love Ben again. Life with him would have been an alternative plan to a life with Tom. But Zoe had failed miserably. It just wouldn’t work. She just couldn’t force herself to love Ben. Of course she loved him, the way she would love a brother. “Or a dog,” she murmured and aimed another kick at the pizza boxes, which were now lying all over the hall in a messy pile. But she wasn’t in love with him.

A reheated relationship is sort of like reheated coffee,
Zoe thought.
Bitter. Just bitter.
Zoe might have guessed as much from women’s novels and romantic comedies. Now she knew firsthand. The long weekend in Ansbach would be hell.

When Zoe and Ben finally arrived on Platform 7 of Hamburg Main Station, stressed and sweaty, they could just make out the slowly disappearing red backlights of the intercity express train that would travel to Nuremberg via Hannover and Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe. The electronic display board showed that it had left seven minutes late.

“Goddamn it,” Zoe yelled. “This is all your fault!” She was aware of how shrill her voice sounded.

“Now don’t be like that,” Ben tried to appease her. “The next one leaves in an hour. Let’s go to Gosch for some shrimp with garlic sauce. My treat.”

Shrimp with garlic sauce? The guy seriously had the emotional intelligence of a piece of toast. Zoe raged silently. “But I don’t want to leave in an hour. And I don’t want shrimp with garlic sauce either. I don’t want to go at all.”

“Huh? You don’t want to go?”

“I don’t want to go to Ansbach. Especially not with you. I don’t want any of this.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? I’m sorry that we missed the train. Mea culpa.”

“Ben, it’s not about the fucking train. It’s about us. Haven’t you noticed? We missed each other. Not just here and now in this train station, but years ago.”

Ben Nigmann hadn’t changed the slightest bit, Zoe now realized. He was still the same old Benni Nigmann. And somehow, none of this was his fault. It was hers. She didn’t want any comfortable shoes; they had been worn out for a long time already, and she had to admit that to herself. She just didn’t want to keep on living the same old life with the same old Benni.

“It’s all Greek to me, Zoe. Are you breaking up with me?”

Zoe looked around. She was causing a scene on the platform like some pathetic C-list actress in a made-for-TV movie. Zoe didn’t even recognize herself anymore.

“There’s no point, Ben. Our relationship is like . . . like a wilted house plant. We tried to revive it, but it didn’t work. If we’re completely honest with ourselves, we haven’t watered it in ages.”

“That’s not true. I water it! I’m sure we can make this work.”

“It’s not enough if only one person waters it, Ben.”

She pushed through the oncoming tide of people toward the exit. She noticed from the corner of her eye that a tall man, whose hair was sticking out messily every which way, quickly switched directions and disappeared behind a newsstand. But Zoe Schuhmacher was far too preoccupied to waste another thought on a stranger.

So Zoe spent her Easter weekend alone on Hegestrasse. She happened to be home when she got a call on Good Friday from the publisher’s office of Schoenhoff Publishing.

“Ms. Schuhmacher,” a young woman’s voice said. “My name is Sophia Laubach. I’m Justus von Schoenhoff’s new assistant, and I got your number from your parents. Mr. von Schoenhoff saw your name on the attendance list for the Bright Young Things conference next week in San Diego that you will be attending with your new project. He’d like to meet you there for lunch. Is Friday afternoon OK, or do you have plans already?”

“Just a moment,” Zoe said. “Did Justus Schoenhoff rejoin the company?”

“At the beginning of February. Didn’t you know that?”

No, she certainly had not known that. “And what is this about?”

“Mr. von Schoenhoff would like to know more about your project.”

Zoe wasn’t too intent on meeting some freaks from her past, but curiosity got the better of her. She didn’t want to pass up the chance to meet the Prodigal Son.

“OK, no problem. Friday afternoon. Please just email me the exact date, time, and location.”

“Wonderful. We’re glad to hear that. Enjoy your flight!”

Zoe had been eager to register for the Bright Young Things conference, where entrepreneurs, Angel Investors, and other digital minds met once a year, and where quite a few big deals had been made in the past. She would present her concept for Yearning
in front of a panel and pitch their second round of financing. Until then, Benni would keep working on the beta version back in Hamburg and Allegra would continue searching for the man of her dreams in Bali.

The only discussions Zoe and Ben had these days were by email, primarily in one-word sentences.

Done?

What?

Subject pool!

Nope.

When?

Day after tomorrow.

On the day they’d fought at the train station, Zoe dismantled the entire computer lab on Hegestrasse
and packed everything up in boxes. When Benni drifted in on Monday morning stinking of alcohol, she explained to him that he’d have to program at his own apartment from now on. Zoe had mentally prepared for a huge fight and had been going through the possibilities in her head all weekend.

But Benni just slid down theatrically onto the hall’s wooden floor, and sat there stoically, sniffing. “It’s his fault, isn’t it?”

“Whose fault?”

“Your Yankee’s, of course.”

“He has nothing to do with this.”

“It’s not me, it’s him!” Ben said it triumphantly, as though he had just discovered the theory of relativity.

Zoe took a deep breath. “First of all, it doesn’t matter whose fault it is. The bottom line is, this thing with us just isn’t working. And second—”

“It does matter,” Benni interrupted.

Zoe thought that if Benni were standing up right then, he’d be stamping his foot. His usually carefully styled hair was greasy and stringy, and his typical two-day beard had transformed into a stubbly six-day jungle. Benni Nigmann looked deeply unhappy and insulted at the same time, like a cat that had been bathed and shampooed. Only he wasn’t as clean—not by a long shot.

“Why can’t you be in love with me, Zoe? Like you were in the beginning?”

“I tried.”

“So try harder.”

“Benni, I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

“Ben, my name is Ben, dammit.”

“Ben. I’m sorry, Ben. I’m so incredibly sorry.”

Zoe almost wanted to comfort him and tell him that she’d think about it again. But Zoe Schuhmacher had learned that lesson: You can’t love somebody just because you feel sorry for them.

25

APRIL

The flight from Hamburg to San Diego, with layovers in Frankfurt and Los Angeles, seemed to be taking twice as long as the twenty-one hours and twelve minutes that were written on Zoe’s boarding pass. That might have been because Zoe was traveling economy class. When her plane finally touched down in San Diego, the late-afternoon sun was already hanging low over the Pacific, sinking into the water with a milky-orange glow that Zoe could see from her window seat.

She grabbed her carry-on luggage, got off the plane, traversed the airport, and stood numbly at the exit. It was just the beginning of April, but it must have been about 77 degrees in San Diego. People were wearing sunglasses, flip-flops, and permanent, relaxed smiles on their faces. The palm trees across the street swayed gently in the breeze. Even the drive from the airport to the hotel felt like paradise to Zoe. That, however, was outshone by her room. As a panel participant, she wasn’t staying at the regular main building of the Del Coronado, which was located on an island across from the city right on the beach, but in one of the bungalows that were distributed generously all over the hotel grounds. She fell asleep to the sound of lapping waves and woke up again the next morning to the sound of two pelicans fighting on the lawn right in front of her bungalow. It was 11:30 a.m.—California time.

Zoe wasn’t very fond of public speaking and felt extremely nervous. Her panel would begin immediately after the organizers’ introduction at 2:30 p.m. She made herself some coffee using the bungalow’s single-cup coffee machine, which ended up tasting metallic, no matter how many instant creamer packets she emptied into the cup. But it was better than nothing at all. It was too late for breakfast now, anyway, and she had a lunch date in an hour. Just enough time to go through Yearning’s concept one more time in English so she wouldn’t have to struggle for words onstage. Then she showered and slipped on her lucky pants. Like a professional soccer player, Zoe was superstitious about her uniform. When she had to perform in front of an audience, she always wore her white cashmere-and-silk Ralph Lauren trousers and a simple black-crepe blouse. Walking down the path lined with palm trees toward the main building, she felt perfectly prepared for today. Nothing, absolutely nothing, would throw her off balance. Zoe was positive about that.

“Hi! I have an appointment for lunch with Justus Schoenhoff,” she told the hotel restaurant’s hostess.

“The gentleman is already waiting. I’ll take you to your table.” The hostess, who seemed to have a smile perpetually plastered on her face, took a menu from the stack and approached an almost scrawny young man whose hair was short and stubbly, as though he had recently shaved his head. He wore jeans and a white shirt and was looking at Zoe expectantly. She stopped in her tracks in the middle of the aisle.

“Zoe, I’m very glad to see you again,” the man said as he got up.

“Vatsayana,” Zoe finally managed to eke out. “You’re—are you . . . ?”

“Exactly.” He smiled somewhat sheepishly. “I’m Justus von Schoenhoff.”

Then Zoe ran forward and hugged him. “I can’t believe you didn’t say a word, all that time in India when I was spilling my guts to you.” Zoe aimed a light punch at his shoulder. “You swine!”

“It wasn’t about me, it was about you. You were supposed to find out how to carry on.”

The two of them eyed each other like old friends who hadn’t seen each other in years.

“You’re looking good,” Justus said once they had both sat down. “I’m really glad you’re not angry with me.”

“I am, a little bit. But what are you doing here all of a sudden?”

“I learned a lot from you in India, Zoe.”

“You? From me?”

“Anyone who believes he only has to live in the here and now is being too easy on himself.”

“Hear, hear. Now I’m curious.” That came out a little more smugly than Zoe had intended.

Justus smiled indulgently. “Everyone has a past and a future. You have a choice about how to think about the latter, and that’s what I did. Because of you, I came to understand that there are people out there somewhere who love me, and maybe even need me. Not just my mother, but Tom, too. That’s why I returned to them, and to reality.”

When Justus mentioned Tom’s name, Zoe jumped noticeably. “How’s he doing?” she asked quietly.

“Not good. Not good at all,” Justus Vatsayana Schoenhoff responded.

“He deserves it.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“Please don’t get involved, Vatsayana—um, I mean Justus. You already know far too much about Tom and me as it is. Or did he send you?”

“No, he didn’t. I’m actually here because I’m interested in your project.”

Zoe wasn’t quite sure whether to believe him. She picked at her blueberry pancakes, lost in thought. But curiosity won out, as usual. “So why do you think Tom doesn’t deserve this?”

“His marriage to Vicky was already over long ago, Zoe. Tom put a clear end to things when he handed in his notice at Plachette, moved away from London and Vicky, and started with Schoenhoff in New York.”

“So why didn’t he ever mention Vicky to me, then? Justus, you don’t just keep something like that to yourself. I felt like a complete idiot when that woman suddenly showed up in New York, accusing me of sleeping with her husband.”

“He’d already filed for divorce before he left England.”

“Divorce?” Zoe gasped. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

Zoe postponed her discussion with Justus about Yearning to a later date, because her head was now suddenly completely empty and full to the brim at the same time. Tom had filed for divorce. Even before he’d moved to New York and had eaten breakfast with Zoe. So why in heaven’s name hadn’t he ever told her anything about it? Why hadn’t he tried to tell her sometime later when she was in Germany? None of this made any sense.

After lunch, Zoe walked into the conference room as though in a trance and registered with a young lady whose nametag said “Speaker Liaison
.
”
She was given a small black microphone to attach to the collar of her blouse and a cell phone–sized sender to hang on the back of her pants. Normally, she would have been frantically going through her notes one last time and trying to take deep breaths so as not to succumb to the urge to flee the conference room, but she was perfectly calm today. It was like she was on autopilot. She introduced Yearning with a short video clip, then rattled off her well-memorized answers in the Q&A session that followed. She presented the whole thing so well that she was received with applause, and also approached by two interested investors. They came up to her right after her presentation. But Zoe only wanted one thing: to get back to her bungalow as quickly as possible and to be left alone. She suddenly felt incredibly exhausted.

“We could meet for breakfast tomorrow,” she told Investor Number One.

“I already have three breakfast meetings,” he answered drily. “But I’ll be doing some yoga at 6:30 in La Jolla. You could come with me, and we can talk in the car on the way to the studio.”

“Wonderful.” Zoe pretended to be happy about the plan. She quickly calculated that 6:30 California time would be 9:30 p.m. German time. “See you tomorrow then.”

She handed one of her shiny new business cards to Investor Number Two and waited for him to finally hand out one of his own.

“Business cards are so last year,” Number Two said, slightly amused, as though Zoe had just asked him for change for a public payphone. “Just message me on Facebook real quick and we’ll find something.”

Back at the bungalow, she pulled off her lucky pants and threw them at a wicker chair. Had the pants only felt a sense of responsibility to her professional life and not her private life? Zoe dug through her carry-on bag, snatched out a T-shirt, and pulled it on as a pajama top, even though the sun hadn’t even set yet. She would skip dinner, despite the potential contacts that would be there. All she wanted to do was to pull the covers up over her head and disappear from the world. She fell into a dreamless slumber.

After the sun had set and the palm trees wrapped in strings of lights in front of the bungalow were glittering in the darkness, Zoe was suddenly awakened by the deafening wail of a siren.

“Fire alert! Please leave your rooms immediately! Do not use elevators, only the stairwells,” an urgent voice recording ordered.

Zoe slipped out of bed, still half asleep, and padded over to the door that led to the patio. There was no smell of anything burning, nobody seemed to be in a rush, and in general, everything seemed peaceful. Even the hotel guest in the bungalow next to hers was sitting on his patio, apparently relaxed, with his feet resting on the railing. Zoe started wondering if she’d been dreaming when her neighbor self-consciously dragged his right hand through his hair and said, “Hi there, stranger.”

Zoe felt as though the ground had been yanked from beneath her feet. She fell backward into one of the deck chairs. Her heart beat a double staccato. “Stranger yourself,” was all she could manage.

Tom only grinned.

Zoe pulled her legs up onto her chair, hugged her knees, and rested her chin on them. Her eyes didn’t waver from his for a second. “What are you doing here?” she asked quietly.

“Hoping,” he responded, smiling that charming lopsided smile that should have been illegal.

“So the fire alert was you.”

He nodded.

“Nothing like a little merciless creativity,” she said.

“I thought it was a stroke of genius,” McNeighbor said, but his expression betrayed the fact that the Master of the Universe was a little insecure all of a sudden.

“You sicced Justus on me, didn’t you?”

“Only a little. He’s actually interested in Yearning.”

“And you are, too?”

“I’m interested in you.”

Zoe shook her head faintly. “It’s too late for that now. You should have thought of that earlier.”

Tom jumped up and took a step toward Zoe, but when Zoe raised her hand in warning—Stop! Not another step!—he stopped short and fell back into his deck chair, defeated.

Zoe felt better, and also a little safer, with that distance and the garden fence between them.

“I’m so incredibly sorry, Zoe,” he confessed and looked into her eyes. “I should have told you.”

Zoe had been imagining this scene over and over again for the past few weeks. She’d pictured him coming back to her to apologize. In her imagination, she’d jumped up angrily, yelled at him, and thrown a vase at his head. But apparently that only happened in movies. Now all she could do was say again in a resigned voice: “It’s too late, Tom.”

He looked at her searchingly. “It’s only over when it’s over.” Then he said urgently, “At least listen to me.”

Zoe only nodded.

“Our little adventure on that first morning was really just another hunting trophy for me,” he admitted. “Another notch in my imaginary bedpost. There was this attractive woman standing in front of my door—”

“Dressed only in her underwear,” Zoe interrupted.

“Exactly. And things just took their course from there,” Tom continued. “When I heard at breakfast that you were going to work for me, I didn’t care in the heat of the moment. I thought we’d manage somehow.”

“But?”

“But the more I got to know you, the more I started to like you. You were so different from the women I was used to dating. Self-assured, funny—and you weren’t trying so hard to make me like you.”

“OK, OK, Romeo,” Zoe said, not really keen on belated professions of love. “Get to the point.”

“And that’s why I avoided you from then on.”

Zoe felt as if she had just missed the two most important minutes in the plot of a thriller because she’d gone to the kitchen to get a glass of water at exactly the wrong moment. “Huh? I thought you found me attractive?”

“Not just that, Zoe. I thought you were too good for me. I’d just gotten over a terrible breakup and filed for divorce. I didn’t want you to get caught up in my emotional mess.”

“So why didn’t you tell me that?”

“I did.”

“Bull!” Now Zoe was getting angry. “You just kept blathering on, saying stuff like ‘Stay away from me. I’m not good for you.’ But you never told me the truth. You never told me that you were married, Tom!”