Wait for Me in Vienna (33 page)

Thomas was stuck in meetings all day. At some point during a short lunch break, he pulled out his phone and saw Johanna’s e-mail. He almost choked on his double cheeseburger, coughing violently.
What the hell is this supposed to mean?
he asked himself. He read it again and again, then a fourth time.
Oh, it’s a joke
, he thought.
It must be a joke.
But the joke wasn’t funny at all.

New York, 12:30 p.m.: What the hell, Johanna? Is this your idea of a joke? Because if it is, I don’t find it amusing at all.

“He doesn’t think it’s amusing,” Johanna cried, her voice echoing throughout the living room as she read his reply and desperately kneaded her hands together. She didn’t answer.

In the meantime, Thomas waited and waited. After a half hour, he dialed Johanna’s number to find out what was going on. Between the time he pressed “Call” and the first ring, the advertising campaign finally popped onto his mind.
Damn it
, he thought,
I should have told her. But the campaign isn’t public yet, so how could she know
? Thomas turned his chair and looked out the huge picture window onto the streets of New York. He tried again, but Johanna didn’t pick up.
The fucking ad campaign
, he thought as he put his cell phone aside.

New York, 1:05 p.m.: Johanna, do you mean the ad campaign? I didn’t have anything to do with that, I swear! Please, we’ve got to talk.

But she didn’t answer. In desperation, he wrote her another text insisting on his innocence. Then he had to go to an important meeting that just couldn’t wait.

Johanna had finally reached Paolo. He got to her place with lightning speed and let the drunk and distraught women tell her story. She told him sincerely, honestly, and drunkenly that she didn’t want to see Thomas again. How he was an asshole, how she was deeply disappointed, depressed, and hurt, and how she couldn’t understand why he’d done what he’d done, although she kind of could because Clarissa was just so seductive and Johanna obviously couldn’t compete. She cried again, but thankfully she’d put away the wine; if she’d kept drinking, she might have gotten alcohol poisoning.

After letting Johanna pour her heart out, Paolo scrolled through Clarissa’s Facebook profile. “What actual evidence do you have, Johanna?” Paolo asked. “Okay, I see ads for Lehmann & Partners, but no proof that anything’s going on. You’ve got to keep things in perspective; talk to Thomas.”

“I’m never talking to him again,” she slurred as she fell back on the couch.

“This is childish. You have to talk to him. Basically, he hasn’t done anything.”

“Basically, hah . . . He certainly did. Look for yourself,” she slurred as she dramatically pointed at the photo of Clarissa and her shit-eating grin.

“That doesn’t prove anything,” Paolo said. “Sure, the photos of those two are intimate, but that’s from when they were a couple. To be totally honest, if somebody should be pissed off, it’s Clarissa. After all, you were with him when he was still with her.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know! Oh, Paolo, you’re not helping one bit,” she sobbed drunkenly as she pulled her hair in despair.

“Don’t be stubborn and stupid; talk to him! That’s the only advice that I can give you. After you talk to him, you can decide what to do, but please don’t jump to conclusions like this.”

Johanna wrinkled her forehead, thinking very hard about his advice.

“Okay, maybe . . . I’ll . . . ,” she slurred before she passed out.

Paolo carried her to bed, covered her with a blanket, then decided to spend the night on her couch.

As Paolo closed Johanna’s laptop, her cell phone rang and “Thomas” appeared on the screen. Paolo didn’t have to think long before he picked up.

“Hello, Thomas. This is Paolo.”

“She doesn’t want to speak to me?”

“Not today—she’s already asleep.”

“Asleep? It’s still early. Did she tell you to say that?”

“No,” Paolo answered. “She drank too much wine and passed out.”

“Oh God, is it that bad?” Thomas asked worriedly.

“Yes, she’s totally beside herself,” Paolo admitted. “She’s angry, sad, scared, and convinced that you cheated on her with Clarissa.”

“But I didn’t. There’s no way I would ever do that. I could never betray Johanna. She means everything to me.”

“I believe you, but she doesn’t. You have to come back and explain it to her. I don’t think that you can clear this up over the phone.”

“But I don’t understand what even happened. Is this because of the ad campaign?”

“Yes, she saw Clarissa’s Facebook profile. That’s where she found out about the ad campaign and saw all the photos of you two together.”

“Those are old! Still, I can only imagine how it looked to her . . .”

“Yeah, she thinks that you’re in New York seeing Clarissa again on the side. You’re not doing that, are you, Thomas?” Paolo asked him once again.

“No, as God is my witness, no,” Thomas swore.

“Then you have to come back here to straighten things out.”

Thomas looked up last-minute flights to Vienna. He was ready and willing to drop everything, terrified that his relationship with Johanna could end because of a silly misunderstanding.
Not again
, he thought as he booked the flight.

58

The periwinkle-blue sky was cloudless. Smiling people filled the cafés in Vienna’s city center. They were making plans for the future, booking hotels and flights for business trips, establishing new business relationships and deepening the ones they already had, networking, and shaking hands with great confidence in their mutual futures. However, on a side street, in a small apartment, somewhere between reason and insanity, future plans died; the past was endlessly reevaluated.

Two days later, Thomas’s airplane broke through that beautiful sky and landed in Vienna. It was different this time. Johanna wasn’t expecting him. Thomas had exactly two days and one night to straighten everything out because he was expected in New York for an important presentation. Though he was completely exhausted, he drove straight to Johanna’s place and rang the doorbell.

“Who is it?” she asked through the intercom, annoyance at being disturbed thick in her voice.

She’d been in an impossible mood the last two days, had refused to see anybody, and was a complete mess. She stuffed herself with chocolate and drank wine all day. She even crossed out Thomas’s heart, the holiest of all the drawings on her cast—and growled out various angry songs as she did it.

“It’s me, Thomas,” he said, and waited for her to buzz him in; she didn’t.

He’d had a feeling that she would react like this. He rang the doorbell again. She didn’t answer. Thomas walked across to the church to see whether her living room window was open. It was closed; he went back to the intercom and buzzed again. No response.

However, Thomas was in luck. An older lady arrived, struggling to carry her groceries. He helped her by holding open the outside entry door after she keyed it open, and then accompanied her and her purchases all the way to the top floor. The old lady was visibly impressed.

“You’re not expecting a tip or a kiss from me, are you?” she joked nervously before disappearing into her apartment with a thank-you. After that, he flew down the steps to Johanna’s apartment and rang the doorbell.

How did he get up here?
Johanna wondered as she looked through the peephole.

Only a few inches of wood lay between them. She wanted so badly to touch him. He put his palms against the door. She stretched her right hand across the white wood, on the other side of the door from where the palm of his hand rested. He’s staying outside, she said to herself. She hobbled back into the living room on her crutches and turned up the music. She was hurting so badly, but it wasn’t because of her leg. The pain came from knowing that Thomas stood at the front door and she couldn’t open it, wouldn’t open it, because a part of her wouldn’t let her—the strong, stubborn part of her ego that had experienced too much loss already and knew it had to protect her from more. So she stretched out on the couch, refusing to fling her arms around his neck, feeling hopeless and sorry for herself.

Thomas rang the doorbell repeatedly. After a while, he sat down on the steps, alternately waiting and abusing the doorbell. This went on for a few hours. Thomas decided he wouldn’t leave until she opened the door. However, for every minute he waited, he became increasingly upset, sad, and hopeless. He wrote her a text message, then a second and a third; and then he took his notebook out of his briefcase, ripped out a page, and began to write. He needed to explain that he had absolutely nothing to do with the advertising campaign. It was true that Clarissa had visited him, but he didn’t care about her and had kept his distance.

Thomas wrote two full pages. On the second page, he wrote in great detail about how much he loved Johanna, how he had never felt anything like this before, and that he wouldn’t fly back to New York until he’d gotten a chance to talk to her and clarify everything. “I’ll sit here until winter or even until next spring if that’s what it takes,” he wrote. He shoved the piece of paper under the door and went back to his spot on the stairs.

It was about eight o’clock. Thomas was asleep on the steps, his head propped up against the dirty wall, his right hand loose on his lap, his left dangling. Johanna opened the door, and, eyes swollen from weeping, she gazed at Thomas as he slept. She was happy. Happy that he was there, that he was always there, happy that he’d kept vigil outside her front door for hours. She nudged him with one of her crutches. Thomas’s eyes opened wide with shock as he woke up and gazed at Johanna. Then his face became more relaxed.

“Please let me explain,” he said as he stood up.

Johanna waved him into the apartment without saying a word.

“Sit down,” she ordered.

Thomas obeyed her command and took a place on the couch.

“How did you not know, as one of the bosses at Lehmann & Partners, that Clarissa had gotten a modeling job with your company? Or why didn’t you at least try to prevent it from happening?” she asked angrily, but at the same time remained quite aloof.

Thomas told her the entire story. He didn’t leave out any details. It sounded plausible.

“And you actually expect me to believe that?” she asked.

But in fact she did believe him. There was sincerity in his eyes. She knew that look; he was being honest.

Flooded with relief, she cried out, “I thought I’d lost you! I thought you had gone back to her again!”

Thomas sprang off the couch, and before she knew it, she found herself in his arms. He kissed her forehead as she sobbed all over both of their shirts. He cupped her face with his hands, lifted it, and looked deep into her eyes.

“I’ll always be here for you. I’m staying in your life forever. I promise,” he assured her.

That night was the most intimate they’d ever had together, despite her cast and her tears. They both knew they would remember it for the rest of their lives.

“I made you some breakfast, sweetheart,” Thomas said proudly, and brought her a tray of whole-grain toast, butter, and honey.

“How resourceful of you, sweetheart,” Johanna said in praise of his limited culinary skills. She took a bite of the bread. “Sorry there’s so little to work with. When I can’t go shopping, the fridge stays empty.”

“But they took good care of you for me, didn’t they?”

“Yes, of course. Paolo, Martin, and Linda have been wonderful. You don’t have to worry. Anyway, you’re the dearest of them all. You work hard all day long and then you fly all the way across the ocean to take extraspecial care of your jealous, crippled girlfriend,” she said, ashamed of all the trouble she’d caused; she had already asked Thomas for forgiveness.

Later, as they were brushing their teeth, Johanna asked, “So, since when did we start referring to each other as ‘sweetheart’?”

“Don’t know,” Thomas said, shrugging. Then he rinsed out his mouth. “Do you object?”

“No,” she said. “Not at all. People say that only when they’re in love, right?”

Thomas nodded. “Yes, deeply in love,” he said, then dried his face with a hand towel.

“When are you flying out today?” Johanna asked.

She began to gargle with some mouthwash, then handed Thomas the bottle. She hadn’t wanted to ask the night before. The night had been too special. The reality of separating again would have been unthinkable.

Thomas looked at her sentimentally. “Ten o’clock tonight,” he replied. “But until then, I’m yours completely.” He pressed a minty-fresh kiss on her mouth.

“Yes, you’re all mine,” she said, and smeared a little toothpaste on his nose.

“Hey, stop that,” he said as he tickled her.

“Nooo, stop, stop! Remember, I’m disabled—you can’t do that!”

“True.” He picked her up and carried her to the couch. “And you have to rest a little more if you want to finish recovering,” he said as he playfully pointed a threatening finger at her, then stroked her cast.

“Well, that’s not going to work,” he said when he noticed the crossed-out heart with their names in it.

Without missing a beat and without saying a word, he managed to turn the plain crossed-out heart into a fanciful heart, with the words “You and I” in it. To judge by his artistic lettering, he could have been a descendant of Monet. Johanna was touched.

“Now it looks beautiful again,” she said as she leaned against him.

“I would like to draw a love lock attached to a bridge, but I’m afraid that’s a little bit more than I can do.”

Johanna looked into his eyes and thought about how there was nothing he couldn’t do.

“We could fly to Cyprus or the Amalfi coast; it should be especially beautiful in autumn!”

“Mmm . . . ,” Johanna said, “or we could go to Scandinavia, I’ve never been.”

“Also a good idea.”

“We could go to Tuscany . . .” She looked at him and said nothing.

“You have any other ideas?”

“Sure, but not right now. There are so many beautiful places to see on this wonderful planet. How can I decide right now?”

Thomas smiled and got out of the shower. “You don’t have to decide right now. Think about it and let me know where you’d like to go.”

Johanna handed him the towel. “Okay, don’t worry. I will.”

The hours sped by and Thomas grabbed his suitcase.

“I’ll be back in just four weeks,” he said as he headed for the door.

“I really like Sicily, too,” Johanna said with a smile.

“That little head of yours is working around the clock, isn’t it? Sicily sounds quite tempting . . . Yes, the whole world is our oyster! We don’t have to fly. We can also drive. You could drive.”

“Yes, right. I’ll drive,” she said with a laugh, “You’re a real comedian, aren’t you?” she teased. “You have to go now. Not that I would mind very much if you missed your flight . . .”

“See you soon, Johanna. And please, no more of this nonsense. And keep away from Facebook; this doesn’t do a bit of good for our relationship!”

She nodded impishly.

He left. Johanna closed the door behind him and tried not to cry this time. Good-byes were hard because she always thought they were forever. She had said farewell to her parents with a distracted “Bye.” They didn’t come back. Had she known she’d never see them alive again, she would have told them how much she loved them and how sorry she was that when she was thirteen she hadn’t wanted to go on vacation with them because, as her mother and father, they were much too uncool. She would have apologized for smashing a vase because they didn’t want to raise her allowance and for threatening to run away at fourteen. Yes, she would have made everything right; she would have shared how much they meant to her; she would have turned back time if she could. But she never got the chance; so many things were left unsaid, so much time was wasted.

Johanna opened the apartment door. She’d planned to yell down the stairs, “Thomas, I love you,” but he was still standing there. He hadn’t taken one step. He stood there with a little smile on his face, his dimples indescribably sweet. They looked at each other and they kissed. He let her go, then disappeared down the stairs.

And disappeared forever from Johanna’s life.