Eight clean glasses. Taro took them out of the cabinet in the dining room and held each one up to the light. Clean. All of them.
"I know I didn't ..." he trailed off as he hurried back to the kitchen. Bad habit, talking to himself.
He'd come in after midnight on a delayed flight too tired to think about unpacking, drank a glass of water, left the glass on the counter—water ring and all—and went to bed. Now, the glass had been cleaned and put away and the counter wiped down. Taro checked the doors and windows in case he'd had a neat-freak burglar break in, but the house was locked tight.
"Sleepwalking. Everything's been so weird, I've started sleepwalking."
Already he was rethinking touring his new properties a week at a time. He needed to extend his stay in each place. As soon as he felt settled, his self-imposed schedule moved him on to the next house or condo or villa. A week had seemed so long when he'd made the plans in New York. With travel, time changes, and adjusting to a new place every Sunday, it was all much more grueling than he could have imagined.
Breakfast. Marburg. I am in Marburg, right? He checked his itinerary, went outside to look at the front of the house, and confirmed that, yes, he was indeed in his newly-purchased country house outside Marburg. Of his twelve properties, this wasn't the biggest or the most unique, but the little fachwerk house had a quiet charm, tucked away behind ancient trees and nestled beside a softly chattering stream.
"This is a good place to get my head back together," he told the robin singing in the bush by the door. Talking to a bird was not talking to yourself, right? He was guessing about the robin part too. Tiny guy with a red front, nothing like the big, attitudinal robins back home.
Frau Voss, the housekeeper, had left eggs and bread for him, and coffee beans, bless her. With a soft-boiled egg—boiled six minutes and twenty seconds precisely—a heavenly cup of dark coffee, a thick slice of fresh bread with honey, and his laptop, Taro settled on the patio in the back garden to regroup and plan.
His notes on Marburg had him scheduled to visit the castle and the old gardens that day, the next items in a long list of sightseeing since he'd left his home base in New York. He'd managed to keep to his schedule up until that morning. I'm just too damn tired today. My feet hurt, my back hurts, my everything hurts.
Maybe if he'd been twenty-five instead of nearing forty, he might have kept up the grueling schedule. From New York to Chicago to San Francisco, a week in each city had been fine. He'd been running on adrenaline and excitement. The first exhaustion crash had hit him in Hawaii after several airline delays and the long flight, but his house on the big island set back in the ohia trees had been the perfect place to recuperate. Slower pace, perfect weather, and he'd been ready to go again.
Then came Tokyo, Chiang Mai, Chandigarh, Paris and Barcelona, all with too much he wanted to see, too much to take in at once. Near the end of his first world tour, Taro knew he wasn't doing so well. Sleep-washing of glassware was proof of that.
"No tourist stuff today," he told the robin who had joined him in the backyard to partake of the ornate ceramic birdbath. "I'm going through my notes and napping. That's the plan."
His spot on the slate patio was comfortably warm. The neighborhood was blissfully quiet. Taro woke with a start when footsteps crunched on the gravel path at the side of the house. His coffee was cold, but at least he'd finished his egg.
"Yoo-hoo! Herr Torres, are you here?" A sturdy woman in sensible slacks and a button-down shirt strode around the corner, waving when she spotted him. "Guten morgen! I'm Helga Voss, your housekeeper. I was ringing at your doorbell, but you did not answer."
Taro struggled up from his patio chair and held out a hand. "Frau Voss, I'm so sorry. Must've fallen asleep. Very nice to meet you."
She nodded and shook his hand in a no-nonsense way. "You have been doing much traveling, I've heard. Maybe too much. I am here to see if everything is in order for you and to ask if you have a shopping list for me."
"Shopping list?"
"Yes. I left a few things for you, but I did not know what you like yet. Maybe I should have asked by email." She shrugged. "I did not think of it."
"I ... Oh." Taro struggled for words. People wanting to do things for him still made him uncomfortable. He had changed what he did for a living but not so much how he lived. "I think ... Would it be all right if I come shopping with you? I'd like to get to know the area. Do the shopping myself when I'm here?"
Frau Voss stared at him. "So. You pay me to clean an empty house that does not need cleaning and look after a little garden that does not want much. You come for a week at a time and do not intend to let me do what I should. I feel as if I am stealing your money, Herr Torres."
"No, no!" Taro waved one hand over the other. He supposed what she said made sense. A house that stayed shut up with no one living in it wouldn't need much cleaning. "I don't ... I'm just used to doing things myself. I think ... What I think I need is an ear and a guide right now. Someone to listen and help me plan and orient myself. Could we do that? Have some coffee with me and help me feel like a person again and not a butterfly?"
The frown didn't ease, but she nodded, strode past him into the house, and soon returned with a heated carafe and a second cup. "So. Tell me what it is you do, Herr Torres."
"Taro. Please." The tight guilt in his stomach eased as he settled back in his chair. "I suppose I don't really do anything right now."
"It is family money, then?"
Taro blinked at the sharp tone. Of course. Most likely, he was either the lazy spawn of a wealthy tycoon or a criminal in her mind right now. "No. My family never had much, and I've had decent jobs, but nothing special. Accounting sorts of things. One day I bought lottery tickets. I don't usually, but the jackpot was so huge."
He told her all if it—the disbelief, the anxiety, the strange despair that he wouldn't do the right things; the final separation of funds into annuities for taxes and living expenses and for family members; trust funds for youth centers, scholarships, and medical research; the house in Florida for his parents, and finally, the global ring of real estate for his travels.
"It has been very confusing for you." Frau Voss sipped her coffee, still frowning. Her expression hadn't so much as twitched during his recitation. "Travel is important. But what is it that you do, Herr Torres? You cannot simply wander aimlessly from place to place."
Taro ducked his head. "You'll probably think it's silly."
"I may. Though I do not know unless you say."
With a wave at the laptop containing all his photos and notes, he said, "I want to be a travel writer. Like Rick Steves or someone. I want to show people what's out there besides taking selfies at tourist spots. Understand other places so I can share them. I'd ... only left the country once before. Rarely left my home."
She nodded, her frown suddenly less fierce. "Why Marburg? Why not Berlin or Frankfurt or Munich?"
"My mother was born here. I wanted to get to know the city where she grew up." He pointed with his chin at the house. "And now I have a place here where she can visit with me."
Frau Voss put her coffee cup down in a crisp, decisive manner. "Where did your mother live?"
"I don't... I guess I don't know."
"You have a phone, I'm sure. Call her. I will take you shopping and then take you there."
Taro jumped up to find his phone, her sharp tone and a new, strange thought driving him. Nine properties and seven countries into his journey, he'd finally had a real conversation with someone. Maybe the lack of real interaction was contributing to the strained disorientation of his extended journey.
Grocery stores weren't something Taro had researched in his itineraries, so the number of them around the city surprised him. Just because he lived in a cute country house and narrow winding streets of medieval houses occupied much of the center of the city, he hadn't been expecting modern grocery stores. Little corner stores for milk and eggs, yes. Bakeries and Konditoreien, those lovely confectioner shops where you could stop in for a slice of cake and coffee, yes. The Aldi and the REWE out by the Erlenring? Not so much.
Discovery about a city was good, of course—that was the whole point to his travels—but he was embarrassed about his assumptions.
For her part, Frau Voss was more interested in grilling him on his food and condiment preferences, insisting on building a standing list with which she could stock the house prior to his visits.
Groceries procured, Frau Voss had parked the car and walked with him to Weidenhäuser Strasse, one of the charming cobblestone streets where the old houses leaned in on either side as if they were eavesdropping on passing conversations. As long as they weren't physically dropping eaves, Taro thought he could live with that.
She stopped in front of a three-story house with a sharply sloping roof, its bright white walls crisscrossed with brown fachwerk beams. "This one."
"This one? It's so..."
"Yes?"
"Cute. Storybook cute. Wow."
"Your mother had no pictures of her parents' house?"
Taro checked behind him and took a few steps back to make certain there would be pictures now. "She had photographs from when she was little. But all the pictures were people. There weren't any of the house. It's so cute. The sun carvings on the door, oh my god."
When he glanced at Frau Voss, she had that tight-lipped smile of the rigidly reserved, but her eyes had crinkled at the corners—probably the closest she was willing to come to laughing at him. "It is a wonderful house, Herr Torres."
His big goofy grin persisted, and he felt lighter than he had since he'd started this journey. He'd been so focused on sites that he'd forgotten this was what he'd set out to do, to share a connection to places rather than just a checklist of things to see. Of course, this was his first time around the globe, and he was a tourist still. He was determined to get better at this with more experience, though he had to admit not being alone had helped a great deal.
Maybe a traveling companion? He realized with a dull ache that Craig would've made the whole experience much more difficult. Complaints about beds, food, service, traffic, unfamiliar smells, Taro getting lost—Craig had been a pain just going to the Poconos. Taro had excused it because of Craig's headaches, which had probably been as fictitious as every other Craig excuse.
Wanted: fellow traveler. Must be open-minded and considerate. Self-centered liars need not apply.
Someday, perhaps, but Taro was done putting his life on hold for someone else. He'd come to that conclusion even before the lottery win.
At the end of the day, as Frau Voss helped him put his groceries away, Taro was wilting with exhaustion. So much for not moving from the house that day. After he thanked his housekeeper/tour guide and said goodnight, he made himself a teewurst sandwich, dragged himself upstairs, and ate his dinner in bed. The plate would just have to sit on the bedside table until morning. He wasn't moving again unless the house caught fire.
The next morning he woke to the sun streaming through lace curtains, his robin friend singing in the hazelnut bush outside, and no plate on the table. Taro wandered downstairs, yawning, to find the plate and the knife he'd used the night before washed and put away. At least he felt better rested, but he hoped the sleep-cleaning thing wasn't going to become a habit.