Wait for Me in Vienna (14 page)

Thomas was waiting. He sat at a small table in the right corner drinking a glass of beer.

“Hello, Johanna,” he said, standing politely when she came in and approached his table.

He shook her hand tentatively. He would have loved to give her a little peck on the cheek, but he didn’t want to push his luck. Neither one knew exactly how to conduct themselves at first. They were like two excited fourteen-year-olds meeting for the first time, their hearts throbbing, both quite insecure.

“How’s your head?”

“Oh, it’s fine. It’s nothing. Just a little bump.”

“Show me . . .Yikes, it’s really not that little.”

“Really, it’s not a big deal.”

Thomas realized that Johanna was embarrassed about the bump and let it go.

“What would you like to drink?” he asked as he reached for the menu. He carefully shoved it over to her from his side and let his fingers linger on it until she picked it up. Her fingertips brushed his gently, like windswept rose petals falling softly onto the ground.

“Um . . . a glass of Muscat,” Johanna instructed the waitress.

“Good choice,” Thomas confirmed, even though he seldom drank Muscat. “So, how long have you been working at the cooking school?”

“Not long at all.”

In no time, the waitress brought the wine and a glass of water to the table.

“What do you do when you’re not cooking with us?”

“I work in an IT department,” he said modestly, and went no further.

He didn’t want to brag about his position, because what he did wasn’t all that significant. His main task was keeping Lehmann & Partners computers free from destructive viruses. He didn’t wear a white coat or remove brain tumors on a daily basis.

Their conversation couldn’t seem to get going. It was like a car that was revving up, but despite giving it some gas, it just wouldn’t roll on down the road. There were times when two people felt a mutual attraction but didn’t seem to have enough common ground for stimulating conversation. After the initial burning desire, both would wake up to the depressing disillusionment that, in reality, they really weren’t made for each other after all. Was that the situation?

Their conversation continued for a while: stilted, distant, and formal; an outsider might describe it as boring. If they’d been characters in a play or movie, there would have been almost no one in the theater—maybe just their mothers, who would be proud of the stilted performance, no matter how awful. Finally, though, one subject seemed to break the ice: Paolo. When Thomas asked Johanna about the chef, she seemed to thaw out. She told him enthusiastically about how witty and creative Paolo was, how many of his great qualities she’d noticed in just the short time she’d been working with him.

Thomas observed that Johanna was shy and much more reserved than Clarissa. She was fragile in an interesting way. It wasn’t like she seemed ready to break at any given moment; he saw that behind that veil of shyness was great strength. He also perceived undertones of a palpable sadness. This type of complexity intrigued him and made him eager to spend more time with her; he could tell she wasn’t the kind of person you got to know in an hour and then got bored with after a week. He didn’t quite understand her, which was exactly what fascinated him.

After a second beer, Thomas switched from beer to wine. As they each had a second glass of wine, they chatted about cooking, their favorite recipes, and organ meats—“Disgusting,” Thomas and Johanna both agreed as they laughed. They also talked about restaurants in Vienna. Johanna was clueless on the topic, whereas Thomas was an expert; he probably could have made a great PowerPoint presentation with graphs and charts.
In this neighborhood, I recommend
X
, which has reasonable prices and high-quality food compared to
Y
in the next neighborhood over . . .

Thomas had very little experience with cooking; in fact, he wasn’t just inexperienced, he was embarrassingly talentless. He was a master of warming up prepackaged food. He went out to eat so much partly because otherwise he’d end up eating processed junk from the corner market by the truckload. Johanna didn’t have a lot of cooking experience, either, but Thomas addressed her like she was some sort of master chef. Because of her current profession, he was convinced she could cook anything; he flattered her with this assumption. He was right to be impressed to a certain degree, because even though she’d just started working at the cooking school, she’d already acquired a solid base of cooking knowledge, although a lot of it was more theory than practice at this point.

Thomas went on regaling her with his knowledge of excellent restaurants in the city. He often went out for business dinners, and he’d grown up in a family that could afford nice places. Besides, he could always count on Clarissa to sniff out the most expensive and prestigious restaurants in town; she was born with a nose for such things. He didn’t say anything about Clarissa, of course. They were talking so much that they both forgot to drink as Thomas told Johanna about an award-winning restaurant in the City Park district.

“The bread cart is awesome. There are so many types of bread; I’m positive that some of them would be totally new to you. Blood-sausage bread, for example . . .”

Once again, they’d arrived at the topic of organ meats! Johanna scrunched up her face as he reassured her by patting the back of her hand for a few nanoseconds.

“And the wine list! Pages and pages with white, red, and rosé wines from all over the world, for every palate. You simply must see it. They even have a cheese steward pushing a cheese trolley at least as big as the bread cart . . . No, bigger even; and the service is simply top-notch. It’s paradise, especially for someone like you!”

Thomas took a sip of his beer; his mouth was dry from so much talking. He let his gaze hang on Johanna for a moment, then he went on. His enthusiastic descriptions intrigued her: his eyes glowed, he gesticulated wildly, he was excited and genuinely devoted to the subject of fine dining.

“Wow! I guess I’ll need to eat there sometime soon. You’re like a walking, talking commercial. Do you get a commission from them?”

Thomas laughed and shook his head. “No, unfortunately not . . .”

Someday, she’d indulge in a dinner there.
Someday when my hourly wage exceeds ten euros an hour
, she promised herself.

Not only could Thomas spin a good yarn, he could make Johanna laugh. He shared a story about the time when his parents had a company dinner.

“I was maybe nine or ten years old. I don’t know exactly anymore. In any case, everyone else was eating fish, mussels, caviar, and all sorts of other decadent things . . .I liked fish and stuff, so I refused to eat it, and I had spaghetti instead.”

Johanna looked at him questioningly.

“Well, I loved to go scuba diving. My logic went something like this: I couldn’t possibly eat what I wanted to see underwater, because if I ate it, it wouldn’t be there anymore. What would I be able to see underwater then?”

“Very logical for a child . . .”

“Well, as I slurped up my spaghetti, I laughed for some unknown reason, which made the noodles stick in my throat.” He paused briefly. “After that, everything went south. I couldn’t breathe, which was quite perplexing to me, and then I threw up. The table, which had been beautifully decorated with violets, was covered in spaghetti-sauce vomit.” He told the story succinctly, leaving out extraneous details. “The noodles came out through my nose.”

Johanna tried desperately to keep herself from laughing, but she couldn’t; tears of laughter streamed down her face.

“Well, no one knew what to say or whether they should laugh or not. I think my parents were mortified. But I was just a kid, and as you know, you have to indulge children no matter what!”

Johanna laughed until her sides ached and she started to snort, which attracted the attention of other guests to their table. She could imagine Thomas as a little boy with messy hair and a rascally smile who ran around constantly or climbed trees, who sometimes got a scratch but never cried. She gazed at his dimples and his flawless teeth. He could be in an ad for an orthodontist’s office. Honestly, Thomas was so handsome that she asked herself what he wanted from her.
He’s the type who could have a model as a girlfriend
, she thought anxiously, and knocked over her glass of water.

“Thank goodness, just water! Wait a second; we’ll take care of it right away.” He pulled out a handkerchief from his black leather briefcase, then carefully dabbed her arm and the surface of the table.

As he did, she noticed his fingers weren’t perfect. They seemed to be slightly misshapen. Johanna was relieved to have found at least one little flaw, but other than that, she thought he was perfect. If asked, he could have pointed out several of his other flaws immediately: his ears stuck out a little, almost imperceptibly, but they weren’t perfect. His hair had a tendency to be oily, so he had to wash it every day. He had a scar on his right knee from an accident—that was the defect that bothered Thomas the least, but naturally, Johanna didn’t notice it. Thomas was perfect just the way he was.

“So, what else do you do?” asked Thomas as he took out a second handkerchief to stop the water from running off the tabletop.

“Actually not much, I haven’t been here very long. I got sick of living in the country and decided to move to the city,” Johanna explained, knowing that this wasn’t entirely truthful, but she didn’t want to talk about her past.

She wasn’t in the mood to tell her tale of woe right now, and she didn’t want to be labeled as a poor, pitiful thing. They were having a fun, relaxing evening, and it wasn’t the right time to talk about such tragedies. Their date was going so well, not at all boring like it had been in the beginning. They were having an excellent time together. Thomas hadn’t had this kind of rapport with a woman in a long time.

“Well, I mean, what do you do in your free time?”

Johanna thought it over. Except for cooking, she didn’t have any other real hobbies. She thought that was somewhat sad.

“Cooking,” she said, and laughed.

Suddenly, Thomas’s phone started ringing, and the other patrons looked at them irritably. He’d left it set to a reasonable volume, but it seemed loud as it blared through the quiet café. Thomas peeked at the display. It was Clarissa. He turned off the ringer.

“How would you like to go to a concert with me, so that you have something to do besides cook?” He had two tickets for a Travis concert, and Clarissa wasn’t in town.

“When?”

“In two days,” he said as he gazed at her expectantly.

Johanna paused deliberately, biting back the desire to answer like a bullet shooting out of a gun.

After a few suspenseful moments, she finally said yes.

Less than two minutes later, they exchanged cell phone numbers.

16

Those were two of the slowest days of Johanna’s life. But for Thomas, they went quickly, too quickly. Johanna didn’t have much to do. She reviewed the entire evening with Thomas while she organized and cleaned the apartment’s bookshelf five times. She cleaned the kitchen three times and took ten minutes to iron Martin’s shirt. She made her bed three times. She tried to imagine Thomas and what he did, what he thought about her, whether he wanted to kiss her, whether he was a good kisser. She closed her eyes. She had to lie down on the bed for a moment. Her daydream took her away, and she wanted to enjoy it completely. She forgot all about Daniel and thought only about Thomas.

Thomas called Martin to help him test-drive a new car, a BMW.

“Damn, this thing just flies!” Martin exclaimed. “It’s a pretty cool car, really sharp.”

Thomas was excited. He liked the BMW; the design suited his tastes exactly.

“I think I’m going to get it,” he grinned as he accelerated, easily overtaking the slower cars on the highway that seemed to be creeping along; maybe they all had boring, law-abiding drivers behind the wheel.

“Linda and I are thinking of going to a spa next weekend. You and Clarissa want to come?”

Thomas stepped on the gas. “I don’t know exactly what to say. I don’t think Clarissa and I are going to be together much longer,” he said.

Martin looked at him with astonishment. “The other girl?”

Thomas nodded. “Possibly, but I don’t know her that well yet. I’m taking her to a concert tomorrow. I like her; she’s got something that’s really attractive to me.”

Thomas put on his turn signal and headed for a rest stop.

“You mean her appearance?”

“No. It’s really just how she moves, how she speaks, her smile, her eyes. I can’t quite tell you exactly what it is. She’s just the total package.”

“But you know that you’re putting everything you have with Clarissa at risk. I mean, if you break up with her and the new relationship doesn’t go anywhere, then you’ll be all alone. Don’t rush into anything.”

Thomas sighed. He knew all that.

“Besides, there are always lulls in any relationship; things can’t go well all the time. Maybe you and Clarissa just need a change of scenery, a vacation.”

At the rest stop, they swapped places so that Martin could drive a bit. Thomas thought about it. He’d had a stable relationship with Clarissa for over two years now, but was that a good enough reason to stay with her when he wasn’t happy? He wasn’t that old and set in his ways yet. Sex wasn’t everything, either. He still had time to take some risks and do something new and daring. He was no coward.

“Wow, this thing drives so well. I’d love to get one, too.” Martin started to mentally extrapolate how he would finance the car over ten years. Once he did the math, he instantly discarded the idea of purchasing the new, hot car and decided to stick with his old Audi for a while. He was pretty attached to it, it was reliable, and rejecting it based on old age alone didn’t make financial sense.

“You can borrow it any time.”

They traded places again, then Thomas took another spin around the city. He managed to make it back to the dealership without getting a ticket.

“Looks like I’m going to buy it!” Thomas said to the car salesman. He signed all the necessary paperwork, paid, and got the keys.

“So, things didn’t work out with Daniel?” Linda asked in amazement. She had called Johanna.

“No, the night was kind of a bust, and we haven’t been in contact since then. He’s not right for me.”

“I’m sorry about that. How are you dealing with it?”

“Pretty well.”

Linda was worried because it wasn’t easy to lure Johanna out of her shell. Daniel seemed to have done it to some extent because Johanna certainly seemed happier and in a better mood these days. Linda decided to talk to Martin about it; she was afraid his sister might get depressed again.

“Are you going to celebrate All Saints’ with Martin and me? We’re going back home.”

“What do you mean?” asked Linda in surprise.

“We wanted to put some candles on the graves over at the cemetery.”

“Oh, okay, um, Martin hadn’t mentioned that. I don’t know whether that’s going to work, since I should really drive out to see my parents. I’ll talk it over with Martin.”

“That’s fine. We’ll see each other this week, right?”

“Of course, I’m coming over tomorrow evening.”

“I won’t be there tomorrow. I’m going to a concert.”

“Oh, no problem. Have a great evening.”

“You, too. Ciao.”