I push my bike, which is glued to my hands, and follow them like a zombie, watching their backs. I feel pretty stupid. The sidewalk is far too narrow for three people and a bicycle. I can’t hear what they’re saying, not that I care what they’re talking about.
I would like to know, though, what Laura wanted so badly out of the gumball machine.
I didn’t even look to see what else was in there.
The farther we walk, the angrier I get. I’m mad at myself for running after them like a bloody dog. I’m mad at Laura for not telling me what we’re doing and why I have to go with them. And I’m mad at this Phillip guy, because he’s acting like an arrogant pig. Thinks he’s so cool.
Laura is wearing a parka that’s way too long for her. Now and then she runs her fingers through her hair and scrunches it up. She has short black hair that sticks out all over. You want to grab hold of it and scrunch it up yourself, just to see what it feels like.
Now and then Laura looks back and winks at me. Are they making fun of me?
Maybe I should just stop. The gumball doesn’t even taste good any more. It’s stale and getting tough. Gumballs from the machines are always shit.
I imagine them just leaving me behind or...or...I don’t know. What does she want from me, anyway?
“We’re here,” Laura says.
We’re standing in front of a house on the other side of town. I don’t come over this way very often. We’re practically in the country. A lot of the houses are only half finished, owned by young families who have planted small trees in the gardens and are waiting for them to grow big. Swing sets. Lawns that still haven’t sprouted.
Laura unlocks the door and Phillip goes past her into the house. I stand there with my bike, still looking like an idiot. Miriam, the one “in your class” who has just pushed her bike all the way across town. No, don’t bother inviting Miriam into the house with —
“Stick your bike over there by the tree. That’s where I usually chain mine up,” Laura says, holding the door open.
Slowly I wheel my bike over to the tree and chain it up where it’s safe, where you can’t see it from the street, even though no one would steal a bike around here anyway.
When I turn around, Laura is still standing in the doorway.
“Come on in! It’s cold!”
Every house has its own smell, but maybe I’m the only one who notices. Whenever I visit Ines or Suse, the strange smell puts me off a bit. It smells different. It smells like other food, other soap, carpet and drapes, like dogs or canaries, maybe.
Here it smells like wood and wax.
Laura takes my jacket, half pulling it off my back, and hangs it in a corner with the others. I hear music.
We go into the kitchen. Something’s bubbling. It’s the coffee machine. Laura pulls the rest of the gumballs out of her bag and puts them on the table. She opens a cupboard and pulls out three mugs.
The kitchen isn’t very big. There’s a table by the window — an old wooden table full of dents. Everything in here seems to be made of wood — the floor, the kitchen cabinets, the doors — all brown and waxed. Scattered around are little pots filled with herbs.
Phillip is sitting at the kitchen counter ignoring me. Laura smiles at me. She fetches sugar, and milk from the refrigerator. She pours the milk into a little pot and puts it on the stove.
“This is the first single from their new CD,” Phillip says. “I can burn it for you.”
“Is it worth it?” asks Laura, stirring the milk with a whisk.
“Of course. But you really have to listen to it. I’m going to their concert in June.”
“I don’t have the money,” says Laura.
“Really? Come on, you’ve got to be able to manage thirty Euros. Man, they’re coming right to our area, you’ve got to go.”
“We’ll see. There’s lots of time until June,” Laura says.
The milk is getting hot. Laura stirs faster and takes the pot off the stove. Phillip takes the coffee pot off the machine and hands it to Laura. She fills a cup, adds a splash of milk and hands the mug to Phillip. Then she pours coffee into the other two mugs and fills them with milk. I sit down at the table, feeling like wood myself, because I don’t know how to move, whether I should, whether I should say something or not.
Laura sits down at the table across from me and pushes the mug and the sugar bowl toward me. She smiles, and then she looks right at me and says, “Holy shit, do you even like coffee?” Then she starts laughing and can’t stop. And somehow it’s nice. It means Phillip finally shuts up, I have a coffee sitting in front of me and enough sugar to cover the Alps. While Laura is laughing, I put five spoonfuls in my mug. Stir it. Pull the chair closer to the table.
And then I sit there and listen to Phillip ramble on. Laura listens and smiles at me every once in awhile and at some point she gets out some cookies.
It’s a little coffee party. I just sit there and warm up again, my hands thaw out. Laura rolls herself a cigarette and one for me, too, and I get a bit tired, even though coffee is supposed to keep you awake. But it’s so sweet, and what with the cookies, and the cigarettes that wrap me up in smoke, and another new song on the radio, it’s just so comfortable. One of those moments that just fits, that just feels right. You’ve eaten and drunk, you’re not cold or sick. Those are moments that feel like fluffy fat cats sitting on the windowsill with their eyes closed. Listening to U2.
Laura is asking me little questions that she nudges over just like the cookies. Whether I’ve seen a certain movie. Whether I’ve ever played tennis. Whether my grandparents are still alive. Funny questions, but I answer them — sometimes yes, sometimes no, not much more than that.
And then it happens. Just like it always does, and just like always, I notice it far too late.
I start to hum. I don’t know why I do it. It just happens, when I’m listening, or thinking about something, or writing. It’s kind of like people who unconsciously let their tongues hang out of their mouths, except without the drooling.
Phillip is going on about how stupid some book was that he read “...and I struggled through three hundred and twenty-five pages and at the end all I could think was, so that’s it? That’s the whole thing? Three hundred and twenty-five pages.” Then he shakes his head and Laura grins into her coffee cup.
Phillip suddenly looks over at me like he’s angry, and I think, what an idiot. Then I realize that I’m doing it again. I’m humming.
Shit. I stop immediately. Maybe Laura didn’t notice.
But she looks at me and says, “Can you sing, too?”
“No.”
“Really?”
“No.” Have never sung. Don’t sing. Can’t sing.
“What can you do, then?”
“Pardon?”
“Well, everyone can do something, can’t they?”
“Yeah?” I ask. Right. I can spell my own name. I can still recite the poem “Erlking.”
“I can recite ‘Erlking.’” Terrific. Now I have really made a bad impression.
“I used to know ‘The Bell,’” Phillip says.
“That’s a really long one, isn’t it?” Laura asks.
“Maybe,” he says. “I don’t know it any more.”
“You see?” Laura says. “You still know ‘Erlking’ off by heart. I don’t.”
“You don’t want me to say it now, though, do you?” I can just see myself standing on the table reciting ‘Erlking,’ and tomorrow the whole school will hear about it and I’ll be disgraced forever, and here I wanted to graduate, or at least try to.
“Only if you want to,” says Phillip, grinning.
“Another time, maybe.”
Maybe? Never!
***
And before I know it, it’s nine o’clock.
“I have to go now.”
And then I do. I ride home and wake up a bit, ask myself whether I’ve been sleeping, wonder what I was actually doing there in her kitchen for all those hours.