Driving Home for Christmas
The engine died shortly before Bremen.
Her ancient Volkswagen Golf had been acting up ever since Laura had left Münster two hours before. At an exit called Groß something or other (there were a lot of Groß something or others along this stretch of the Autobahn A1, an area where absolutely nothing deserved a name that started with “Great”), the car suddenly refused to go faster than sixty kilometres per hour, so that even the trucks and the pensioners with their camping trailers passed her by, honking their displeasure.
Laura had just about made it to the next exit, “Driving Home for Christmas” blaring from the radio, when her car decided that even sixty kilometres per hour was still too fast and that it would rather go thirty. So she’d swerved onto the exit lane, cursing all the way, while passing trucks and trailers and campervans honked at her.
The car laboured up the exit ramp and then rolled down a four lane road towards some kind of retail park. The first snow flake landed on her windshield. Unbidden, Laura began to cry.
It was Christmas Eve, shortly after midnight, and all Laura wanted was to get home, back to Hamburg, back to her parents and her younger sister Nina and her childhood dog Bucky who was getting on in years by now.
The day had been hellish. Last minute errands, a sadistic professor who thought that it was totally acceptable to hold a class on December 23 and then handing out mugs of mulled wine and eggnog on the Münster Christmas market to entitled last minute shoppers and drunken jerks who thought it was totally okay to cop a feel, when she collected the abandoned mugs from the tables around the stall.
The ten PM news were on the radio, when Laura finally got into her car, shivering because the heating always took fifteen minutes to kick in. At first, she thought the stutter of the engine and the problems she had changing gears were just due to the cold. But even after she was on the Autobahn and the heater finally kicked in, the engine still stuttered. And then it got steadily worse.
Was it too much to ask that just one thing would go right this Christmas? As if uni and working the Christmas market on the day before Christmas Eve and only setting out on the almost four hour plus journey home at ten PM wasn’t bad enough, now her car had to give out, too. And the repairs would probably cost more than she had and then she’d have to ask Mom and Dad for money and…
Tears blurred her vision, as the Golf rolled down the road towards the darkened retail park. She didn’t even know where she was. Just outside Bremen, yes, or maybe even inside Bremen, though she hadn’t seen a sign. But she didn’t even know the name of the exit. She never had, even though she’d driven past here lots of times. Privately, she called it the IKEA exit for the huge triangular IKEA sign next to the Autobahn.
She was rolling past the IKEA store that went with the sign right now. The store was shuttered and dark, just an enormous dark blue box, barely enlivened by giant posters advertising pillow cases for nine ninety-nine and baked potatoes and schnitzel for four ninety-nine. And wasn’t it typical that the only thing that was lit on the whole bloody store were the posters?
On the other side of the road, there was a DIY store, also dark and shuttered. But up ahead, she spotted lights. A gas station and was that a McDonald’s?
Laura pressed down her foot on the accelerator, trying to coax the car to make it go a little faster than the twenty kilometres per hour it was going now. And the car — bastard that it was — decided to die for good at just that moment.
She couldn’t possibly stop here, on a four lane road, even if there was almost no traffic at this time of night. And so she used the last bit of juice the engine had to pull into the next exit. The car rolled, puffed and came to a stop in the middle of a giant parking lot surrounded by shuttered shops. And no matter how often Laura turned the key or pressed the accelerator, nothing she did would make the engine come alive again.
She fumbled for her phone. It was already past midnight, so Mom and Dad would be in bed. And besides, they’d only worry. But Laura could call the ADAC road service. Of course, Laura didn’t have a membership, but Dad did and the car was registered to him. There was a faded card with the ADAC service number stuck behind the sun visor. Laura would call the number, the road service people would come and fix her car and everything would be fine. True, she’d probably lose an hour or two, but it was doable. Things could be worse.
She found the card, squinted at the number and reached for the phone. But the phone screen was dark and no matter how often she pressed the “on” button, all she got was a “Battery low” message.
Fuck! She should have recharged the phone before she left Münster. But she’d still been at twenty-five percent charge. That should have been enough to get her home. She must have left an app open.
Frustrated, Laura dumped the phone — now just a useless brick — onto the passenger seat and stuffed the card into a pocket of her jeans. The tears were running freely down her cheeks now, in tune with Elvis crooning “Blue Christmas” on the radio. Laura lowered her head onto the steering wheel, only to jump when she accidentally triggered the horn, the resulting honk echoing across the empty lot.
She needed to get a grip on herself and figure out what was wrong. So she turned off the radio and fumbled for the switch to open the hood. After four tries, she found it.
She stepped out of the car, a blast of snowflakes and icy wind hitting her in the face. She fumbled for her coat, her gloves, her scarf. Then she looked around the parking lot, but it was empty except for a lone red truck parked a little bit away.
Okay, so there was no help here. Which meant that she’d have to help herself. So Laura opened the hood and stared intently at the engine, pretending very hard that she understood anything about this at all.
The engine looked all right to her. At any rate, there was nothing visibly wrong. No loose cables, no smoke, no visible damage. Not that Laura knew much about car engines. She’d looked at the one in her own car maybe twice in the two years she’d had it.
There was a manual somewhere in the glove compartment. Laura had never as much as glanced at it. The only reason she knew it was there was because the bloody thing inevitably kept falling out, whenever she opened the glove compartment to get the ice scraper or parking disc or the emergency supply of candy she kept in there.
Still, maybe that manual could tell her what to do. So Laura got back into the car, leaving the door open, so she had light. She opened the glove compartment, spilling the parking disc, ice scraper, a flashlight, two pens, one of them actually working, a gas station receipt, a package of tissues, a chestnut for good luck and her two last candies onto the floor. The manual had apparently decided that this was the one time it was going to stay put.
Cursing, Laura pulled out the manual and shoved everything else — ice scraper, parking disc, pens, gas station receipt, tissues and chestnut — back into the glove compartment. She did keep the flashlight and the two last candies, though. The flashlight might come in handy and the candies meant that she at least wouldn’t starve.
A gust of wind hit her in the face, blowing snowflakes into the car and driving even more tears into her eyes. All right, so maybe she wouldn’t starve, but she might just freeze to death. And tomorrow, when the shops opened and the last minute holiday shoppers arrived, they’d find her body frozen stiff in an ancient Volkswagen Golf that was half buried in a snow drift.
“Get a grip,” the stern voice in her mind that sounded like Miss Nick (always Miss, even though she was already about sixty), her first grade teacher, said to her, “You’re not going to starve and you’re not going to freeze to death. There’s a gas station and a McDonald’s only a few hundred metres further down the road. If all else fails, you can go there. And now open that bloody manual and see if there’s anything you can do about this.”
So Laura opened the manual and closed the door before yet more snowflakes could blow into the car and turn her into an icicle after all. However, once the door was closed, the lights inside the car went off. Cursing, Laura fumbled for the switch that would keep the lights on… and drain the battery.
Crap, what if it was the battery? After all, there’d been that time on the university parking lot last semester where her car just wouldn’t start, because she’d left the lights on and the battery was empty. And the only reason she made it back to her flat share at all, was because a fellow student had a battery charging cable.
But no, it couldn’t be the battery. After all, she’d had light and the radio had worked as well. So it had to be something else. But what?
So Laura tried to focus on the manual, flipping past bleedingly obvious safety tips such as “Do not operate a vehicle, when inebriated” and an equally useless diagram of the dashboard. Next, there was a diagram of the engine, which might come in handy, if she needed to locate anything specific. Even if the clear black and white lines of the diagram did not resemble what was under the hood of her car at all.
She finally found the table of contents, located the chapter on “Troubleshooting” and began to read.
The first few points were once more the bleeding obvious such as “Make sure that you have enough fuel” or “Make sure that the key in in the ignition.” Yeah right, as if she was a complete idiot.
The next point was, “Check the oil level.” Now that sounded more promising.
“Check if the warning light ‘Oil level low’ is glowing,” the manual announced and even offered a helpful sketch of where to find that warning light and what it looked like (like Aladdin’s magic lamp, it turned out).
Of course, the engine was off, so none of the lights were glowing. And since Laura couldn’t get the engine to start again, no lights would glow either. Besides, Laura was pretty sure that if anything unusual had started glowing on her dashboard, especially a miniature magic lamp, she’d have noticed.
“Use the dipstick to check the oil level,” the manual continued. Okay, that was something she could do.
The manual said that the dipstick was in the engine compartment, so Laura got out of the car again, manual in one hand and flashlight in the other, and was promptly hit in the face by another gust of icy wind and a flurry of snowflakes.
She turned away and chanced to look up and found herself looking at stars, dozens, maybe hundreds of stars. Not the stars in the sky, though a few of those were there as well, peeping through the clouds. No, these were electric stars, dangling on cables all over the parking lot and shining down on her through the swirling snow. She hadn’t even noticed the stars, hadn’t noticed any of this, when she first got here. Though to be fair, she did have other problems at the time.
Nonetheless, the whole scene was ridiculously pretty, so pretty that Laura spent a few seconds just watching the snowflakes swirl and dance in the light of the electric stars. And wasn’t it just typical that the first white Christmas in ten years was also the one Christmas where absolutely nothing else would go right?
A snowflake landed on her nose, bringing her back to the here and now again. A here and now, in which she had a mission. The mission to find that dipstick and check the oil level.
So she pointed the flashlight into the engine compartment and looked around for the dipstick. After a half a minute or so, she found it, took a deep breath and pulled it out. There was oil on the stick, though Laura had no idea if it was too little or too much. The manual should know, though.
The wind had blown the manual shut, so Laura stuffed the flashlight under her arm and flipped through the manual with one hand, the dripping oil dipstick in the other. She found the correct page and read.
“Wipe the oil dipstick with a clean rag or tissue…”
Just great. Couldn’t they have said that beforehand? Cause the tissues were inside the car in the glove compartment. Though there should be one in a pocket of her coat. So Laura awkwardly balanced the open manual on the edge of the engine compartment, reached into her pocket and fished out a crumpled, but clean tissue. She glanced at the manual.
“…and insert the dipstick fully again…”
Pull it out, wipe it off, stick it in, what the everloving fuck? Make up your mind, will you?
Still, Laura wiped off the dipstick with the tissue and managed to get some oil on her gloves in the process. The nice pale pink wool gloves she’d bought at the Christmas market only two days ago.
“Fuck,” Laura cursed out into the winter night. She kicked the wheel for good measure and managed to drop both the manual and the oil dipstick into the snow.
“Fuck! Fuckity, fuckity, fuck!”
“Are you all right?” an accented voice behind her said.
Laura spun around and found herself looking up at a man. He was tall, a good head taller than Laura, and about her age. He had tousled sandy hair and was dressed in a woolly sweater, jeans and a battered brown leather jacket. Under different circumstances — say at a student bar or even at the Christmas market back in Münster — Laura would have thought he was cute.
But as it was, it was past midnight on Christmas Eve, he was a stranger and Laura had no idea where he’d come from or what he was doing here. It was as if he’d suddenly sprouted from the snow-covered ground like the Ghost of the Most Crappy Christmas of all. And who knew, maybe he had?
“I heard you yelling,” the young man said with a notable accent, “You woke me up.”
“I woke you up?” Laura repeated, because none of this made any sense. This was a shuttered retail park, after all. No one lived her, no one slept here, no one could wake up here. Unless he was some kind of ancient king or chieftain, buried here under the car park and waiting to rise in humanity’s hour of need, just like Richard III in Leicester…
The young man pointed behind him. “I was sleeping in my truck.”
Oh, so that was where he’d come from. The parked truck. She’d completely forgotten about that.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to wake you. It’s just…”
Unbidden, the tears started flowing again. Angrily, Laura wiped them away and promptly managed to smear motor oil onto her face. She cursed. It simply was one of these days that absolutely nothing would go right.
“…my car died and…”
The young man reached into his pocket and handed her a tissue that was almost as crumpled as Laura’s own.
“I’m Jonas,” he said, “Jonas Storgaard.”
Laura took the tissue and wiped at her face and eyes. “I’m Laura Petersen,” she said and attempted a smile.
His name and accent sounded vaguely Scandinavian and he did have a touch of Viking about him, so she asked, “Are you from Sweden?”
Jonas shook his head. “Denmark.”
“Then you’ve got a long way ahead of you,” Laura said. And she had interrupted the poor guy’s well deserved rest.
Jonas shrugged. “It’s not so bad. Four and a half hours. If there’s not too much traffic…”
But he’d have to follow the A1 and maybe change onto the Autobahn A7. Both of which were always full. And it was Christmas Eve besides…
“And you? Where are you from?” Jonas asked.
“Hamburg.”
“That’s not very far. Only an hour or so.”
Laura flashed him a wry smile. “Yes, if your car works. And mine doesn’t.”
“Do you need help?” Jonas asked.
Laura nodded. “I think I do. Can you fix a car?”
Jonas crooked his head. Snowflakes landed in his tousled hair. “That depends. Maybe. What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. The car was acting up and then it wouldn’t go faster than sixty and then it went even slower and died altogether. I barely made it here and now nothing is working and I was just about to check the oil level, but I dropped the stick and…”
Laura broke off, aware that she was babbling.
Jonas, meanwhile, calmly bent down to pick up the manual and the dipstick. He handed Laura the manual, pulled a crumpled cloth handkerchief from a pocket of his jeans and carefully wiped the dipstick dry.
“Water is not good for the engine,” he explained.
“Well yeah, it’s not as if I planned to drop the stick,” Laura grumbled to herself.
Once the dipstick was sufficiently dry, Jonas inserted it into its tube again. Unlike Laura, he didn’t have to search for the right place at all, he just seemed to instinctively know. Maybe that was the secret superpower of truckers, to instinctively know everything about cars.
After a second or two, he pulled the dipstick out again and examined it by the light of the electric stars.
“You have enough oil,” he remarked.
“Well, that’s a relief,” Laura replied, trying hard to keep her teeth from chattering in the cold, “Or maybe not…”
Cause if it had been just the oil, that could have been fixed easily. She’d simply trudge over to the gas station a bit down the road, the brightly lit sign of which was just visible above a shuttered Tommy Hilfiger outlet, get herself a can of motor oil, use the manual to figure out where to pour it and then she’d be on her way again and would maybe reach Hamburg and home before three AM.
But if it wasn’t the oil, then it was something else, something that might not be nearly as easy to fix.
Jonas, meanwhile, intently examined the engine compartment and finally closed the hood. “It’s not good for the engine, if the snow gets in,” he explained.
Laura nodded, cause that made sense.
Jonas walked around the car, leaving heavy footprints in the fresh snow.
“It’s the gearbox,” he finally announced, “Your transmission fluid is leaking. See?”
He pointed at something under the car. In response, Laura bent down and now she did see it. A dark stain on the no longer quite so pure white snow underneath the car.
“Is that bad?” Laura asked, “Can you fix it?”
Jonas crooked his head again, which seemed to be what he did when he was thinking. It was quite adorable really.
“That depends. We should be able to get transmission fluid at the gas station…” He jerked his finger over his shoulder and pointed at the gas station logo that was peeking over the roof the Tommy Hilfiger outlet. “…and I can refill it. But unless the leak is fixed, it will just keep on leaking and you’ll have the same problem again.”
Laura’s spirit sank. “And you can’t fix the leak?”
“In a garage, sure. But here, on a parking lot, in the dark and in the snow?” Jonas shook his head. “Sorry. You should call… what are they called?” He scratched his head, messing up his already tousled hair even more. “…the road service with the yellow cars. Maybe they can help.”
“You mean the ADAC,” Laura supplied, “I would have called them already, but my phone is empty.”
“You can use mine,” Jonas offered, “Or we can ask at the gas station, while we get transmission fluid.”
Side by side, they trotted through the snow. Laura thought they’d have to go around the big Tommy Hilfiger outlet, but Jonas knew a shortcut that passed between the Tommy Hilfiger shop and a Lacoste outlet. There was a lit Christmas tree in the window of the Lacoste shop, surrounded by mannequins in cut-price designer wear.
The shortcut led to a plaza that was surrounded by yet more shops and even a Starbuck’s that was completely dark except for Christmas lights glowing in the windows. In the centre of the plaza, there was some kind of public art project — large granite spheres that now wore caps of fresh snow. The spheres were surrounded by planters with Christmas trees and benches covered in five centimetres of snow. And above it all, the electric stars glowed.
The whole scene was remarkably peaceful, almost magical. Come tomorrow, the plaza would be bustling with last minute shoppers. But tonight, it felt as if the world had ended and she and Jonas were the only people left alive.
“I like this place,” Jonas said, “It’s quiet and not as busy as the truck stop at the next exit. And if you leave before the shops open, no one will bother you…”
At the far end of plaza, there was another path that cut between an adidas shop and a Lindt chocolate outlet. There were chocolate outlet stores? Why had no one ever told Laura about this?
Laura followed Jonas and tried hard to ignore the festive chocolate displays in the shop windows.
“If you’re hungry, you can eat at McDonald’s or have schnitzel at the restaurant across the road. If you’re bored, you can catch Pokémon. And you can buy neat stuff, if you want…”
Laura smiled. “Like chocolate.”
Jonas nodded. “This is a good chocolate shop and there’s an even better one across the road. Chocolate makes for nice presents.”
“For your girlfriend?” Laura asked and bit her tongue, cause what had possessed her to ask such an intimate question of a virtual stranger?
If Jonas was bothered by her question, he gave no sign of it. He just shook his head. “For my parents, grandmother, aunts. Everybody likes chocolate.”
Up ahead, they could see the lights of the gas station, though they had to cross a lot full of Tesla charging stations first that glowed eerily red in the night. Only one column was occupied, a lone car with a Dutch licence plate plugged into the outlet. There was no sign of the driver, which made the whole place feel even more deserted.
The gas station was brightly lit, a beacon in the otherwise dark retail park. More importantly, it was open. And not just the night window either, no, the adjacent shop was still open as well. Jonas walked right in, shaking the snow off his sweater and jeans like a dog.
When they entered, the attendant barely bothered to look up from the gaming magazine he was reading. “Good evening and Merry Christmas,” he said in a tone that was very much the opposite of “merry”.
Christmas music was blaring through the shop, Boney M.’s cheery disco version of “Mary’s Boy Child”. A plastic Christmas tree with multi-coloured lights was flashing in tune with the music.
Jonas seemed to know where he was going, so Laura followed him, past overpriced snacks and drinks and sad looking flower bouquets.
At the far end of the shop, there was a shelf of car supplies. Motor oil, car wax, windshield wiper blades, head- and taillight replacement bulbs. Jonas scanned the shelf and selected a silver plastic container.
“But that says ‘brake fluid’,” Laura said, raising her voice, so she was audible over “Mary’s Boy Child,” “Don’t we need transmission fluid?”
Jonas turned to her. Melting snowflakes were clinging to his tousled hair.
“It’s the same,” he said with a shrug, as if that was completely obvious, “But it’s expensive. Online is much cheaper.”
Laura sighed. “But the cheaper transmission fluid online won’t help me get home. So let’s do this.”
Jonas shrugged once more and set off towards the counter, Laura in tow. He sat the container down on the counter with a loud enough thud that the attendant finally did look up. He was about their age, with washed out red hair and a bad case of acne.
He scanned the brake fluid container, while Laura tried not to wince at the twelve ninety-nine price tag. She pulled her wallet from an inner pocket of her padded coat and handed over a ten and a five euro bill. The attendant handed her the change.
“Anything else?” he asked with the same lack of enthusiasm he’d displayed earlier.
“Yes,” Jonas said, “Do you have a phone? Hers is empty and we need to call…” He scratched his head. “…ACDC? No, that’s not it…”
Laura suppressed a giggle.
“…the yellow cars, you know?”
The attendant was already studying his gaming magazine again. “That’ll be three euros.”
“For one phone call?” Laura demanded.
“Landlines aren’t free,” the attendant replied, not even bothering to look up from his magazine.
“But the ADAC help line is toll-free,” Laura pointed out.
“Not my problem,” the attendant said, “Three euros or find another phone…” He flashed her an unpleasant grin. “…if you can.”
“You can use mine,” Jonas whispered to her.
But Laura shook her head. “No, it’s fine.” After all, she’d already bothered him enough. And for Jonas, it would be a foreign call, toll-free help line or not.
She dug up another euro from her wallet and slammed it onto the counter together with the two euro change. The attendant never opened the cash register, but just pocketed the coins. Bastard.
“Over there,” he said and pointed at a grubby phone that hung on the wall behind the counter. Then he turned back to his magazine to read what was undoubtedly a very fascinating article on the latest World of Warcraft expansion.
Laura rounded the counter, nearly knocking over a display of cigarette lighters.
“Do you have the number?” Jonas asked.
Laura nodded and pulled the faded card with the number from a pocket of her jeans. She punched in the number, trying hard not to wonder just what the sticky substance that coated the keys might be.
A blast of music hit her ears, a tinny and fake sounding version of “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” that mingled with “Mary’s Boy Child” in some unholy holiday medley.
Finally a human voice, female. “ADAC service hotline, Özdemir here. How can I help you?”
“Hello, my name is Laura Petersen and my car broke down on the A1 at the exit…”
She shot a helpless look at Jonas, though it was the attendant who replied.
“Number 57, Bremen-Brinkum,” he said with the same lack of enthusiasm he had displayed throughout.
“So what exactly is the problem?” the voice on the other end of the line asked.
“I have problems with the clutch, the car won’t go faster than twenty kilometres per hour and the transmission fluid is leaking,” Laura replied, while the woman on the other end of the line was typing in the information.
“I got a bottle of transmission fluid at the gas station, but I have no idea, if that will help.”
“We can send you a truck in one hour,” the woman on the other end of the line said.
“One hour?” Laura exclaimed in dismay.
She could all but hear that woman shrug. “It’s past midnight on Christmas Eve, it’s snowing, the roads are busy and many of our mechanics are already on leave. One hour is the best I can do, sorry. I’ll need your licence plate, make and type of car and insurance number.”
Laura gave her the information.
“Can you tell me where exactly your car is? The exact Autobahn kilometre marker would be best.”
“I’m no longer on the Autobahn,” Laura replied, “I’m near the exit at some kind of outlet mall…”
She shot another helpless look at Jonas. And once again, it was the gas station attendant who answered. “Ochtum-Park Outlet Centre.”
Laura repeated his words.
“Can our driver call you back at this number, if he has any problems finding you?” the helpline woman asked.
“Ahem, that’s difficult. Cause you see, my phone is empty, so I called from a gas station and…”
“They can call me,” Jonas said. He took the receiver from Laura and recited his number to the helpline.
Laura resisted the urge to jot it down. Cute or not, he was just a casual acquaintance, a helpful soul that the spirits of Christmas had sent to cross her way in her hour of need. Her very own guardian Christmas angel. And you didn’t jot down the number of angels, cause that was not how these things worked. Besides, Laura didn’t even have a pen, at least not here.
The cold hit Laura like a blast in the face, as they left the relative cosiness of the gas station shop. She pulled up her scarf and stuffed her hands into her pockets.
Jonas, meanwhile, didn’t seem to be bothered by the cold at all. Must be those Viking genes.
“Looks like you’re stuck here for an hour,” he said, “So we can refill the transmission fluid and see, if we can get your car to start.”
Beyond the gas station, the McDonald’s beckoned. It was still open, too, and never before had the golden arches seemed as inviting to Laura as right now.
As if on cue, her stomach grumbled. After all, she hadn’t eaten anything since that afternoon at the Christmas market. And that had only been a bag of roasted almonds, because Laura just loved roasted almonds, even if they did rot your teeth.
She turned to Jonas. “You’ve been so nice to me…”
“That’s nothing,” Jonas said with another of his patented shrugs, “You needed help and I was there.”
“You could have just stayed in your truck and kept on sleeping. But you didn’t. So thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Jonas said very solemnly. His blue eyes met Laura’s grey in the glow of the electric stars.
“At least let me buy you a Coke or a coffee or something at the McDonald’s over there,” Laura blurted out, “I’m stuck here anyway, so I might as well be stuck somewhere where it’s warm and where there’s food.”
Jonas nodded. “McDonald’s sounds good.”
“Only if you don’t have to get back to sleep, of course…” Laura continued, coursing her blabbering mouth, “I mean, I know that truckers have driving times limits and mandated rest times and you have to drive all the way back to Denmark tomorrow…”
“That’s all right,” Jonas replied, “The law says that I have to rest, not that I have to sleep. And I’m not tired anymore.”
So they trotted past the gas station to the McDonald’s. The windows were covered in fake snowflakes, while the playground outside was covered in the real deal.
Laura cast a longing look at the playground. “I just to love that slide when I was a kid.”
Jonas nodded. “Me, too.”
“My parents always had to take my sister Nina and me to McDonald’s, just so we could go on the slide. And then one day, we were shopping in Hamburg with Mom and she took us to a McDonald’s in the city centre as a treat and we were so sad, because that McDonald’s didn’t have a playground and a slide and Mom just didn’t understand what was wrong…”
Jonas pushed open the door and held it for Laura like a real gentleman.
It was warm inside the restaurant and surprisingly cosy. There were garlands on the ceiling and a Christmas tree in the corner. Holiday music was blasting from the loudspeakers, Mariah Carey wailing “All I Want For Christmas Is You.”
At this time of night, the place was near deserted except for two staff members and a lone man sipping coffee and reading a Dutch newspaper at table in the corner.
“So what can I get you?” Laura asked, “Coffee, tea, Coke, something to eat?”
“Coffee and a cheeseburger would be nice. And maybe some fries.” Jonas rubbed his stomach. “I seem to be hungry.”
Laura smiled. “Yeah, me too. Must be the cold.”
She walked up to the counter. “Happy holidays. How can I help you?” the young man behind the counter asked. His nametag said “Mohammed,” which was probably why he’d drawn the holiday shift.
“We’d like a regular coffee, a cappuccino, two cheeseburgers and two small fries, please.”
Mohammed and his colleague got busy, while Laura and Jonas waited. Laura looked around. The décor looked less plasticky than she remembered.
“I haven’t been inside one of these places in ages,” she remarked.
“I have,” Jonas replied, “There’s always a McDonald’s or a Burger King near the highway, everywhere.”
“I thought truckers preferred truck stop diners, the sort of places that offer giant schnitzel and one metre sausages.”
Jonas smiled. “Those are nice, too. But not every exit has one. Or they’re closed. And sometimes, you just want a cheeseburger, not a one metre sausage.”
The plastic tray filled, while Mohammed rang up the bill. “That’ll be eleven twenty-nine, please.”
Jonas dug for his wallet, but Laura put her hand on his arm. “No, let me. It’s the least I can do for all your help.”
Once again, Jonas’ eyes met hers. “Thank you.”
The rest of the food arrived and Jonas carried the tray to a table by the window, while Laura loaded up on napkins, swizzle sticks and little packages of sugar.
They sat down on the plastic chairs. Laura finally took off her coat and remembered too late that she was still wearing the silly sweater with the ice bear that was her Christmas market uniform underneath.
She blushed. “I only wear that for my work at the Christmas market.”
Jonas raised an eyebrow. “You work at a Christmas market?”
“I sell Glühwein. But only during the holiday season. Otherwise I study English and linguistics at Münster university.”
Jonas nodded. “Ah, Münster. That’s two hours south. I drove past there earlier today.”
Laura wrapped her hands around the paper cup for warmth. “Where did you come from anyway?”
“Trier.”
“That’s a long way.”
Jonas shrugged. “Not so long. I’ve had longer. This was just Aarhus — Trier and back.”
“And what did you have to cart all that way to Trier?”
Jonas grinned. “Cheese. You know Castello Blue?”
Laura nodded.
“That’s what I was transporting.”
“Did it smell?” Laura asked, genuinely interested.
Jonas took a sip of coffee. “No. Containers for food stuffs are all sealed and refrigerated.”
“And now? Is your truck empty?”
Jonas shook his head. “It’s full of wine. Moselle Riesling.”
Laura nibbled on a French fry. “So you could have your own wine and cheese party in the back of your truck?”
Jonas unwrapped his burger and took a hearty bite. “It doesn’t work that way. I barely see the cargo. I’m just the delivery person.”
“I still think Riesling and blue cheese sounds tasty.” Laura took a bite of her own burger. “Though burgers, fries and coffee are good as well.”
Jonas was already halfway through his burger. “They are good. Pleasures of the road.”
“Is that why you wanted to become a trucker? The pleasures of the road?”
Actually, that sounded like the name of a brothel.
“Not really.” Jonas bit into a fry. “My uncle owns the transport company.”
“And you’re supposed to take it over one day?”
“No, that would be my cousin. I just work there part-time.”
Laura brushed some stray salt from her silly ice bear sweater. “And what do you do the rest of the time?”
“I study engineering at Aarhus University and sometimes, I drive a truck to earn money. Just like you work at the Christmas market.”
“Only that you probably earn more money. And that you don’t get groped by drunken perverts.”
Jonas raised an eyebrow. “People do that? Really?”
Laura sighed. “Trust me, you have no idea, If I had a euro for every time some drunken idiot tries to cop a feel… well, I’d be pretty rich.”
Laura looked out of the window where the snow was still falling in thick fluffy flakes, as if it was determined to cover up the entire world. But here, inside the McDonald’s, it was cosy and warm and so Laura and Jonas stayed on, even after they’d finished their burgers, fries and coffee.
Gradually, the conversation drifted to TV shows. Laura and Jonas found that they both liked Dark and Stranger Things and Game of Thrones and Babylon Berlin and The Killing. Laura tried to persuade Jonas to read the novels that Babylon Berlin was based upon, because they were even better than the TV show. Meanwhile, Jonas told Laura that she absolutely had to watch Rain.
Eventually, Jonas looked at his wristwatch. “We should leave,” he said, “Or we will miss the ACD… — the yellow cars.”
Laura glanced at her own watch. It had only felt like maybe fifteen minutes, but they’d been here for almost an hour. “Last Christmas” was echoing from the loudspeakers.
“You’re right. We have to leave,” she said and wondered why she felt sorry about that. After all, shouldn’t she be glad to finally get home, back to Hamburg and Mom and Dad and Nina and Bucky?
Outside, it was still snowing. The footprints they’d left on their way here had already faded, but luckily they didn’t need them to retrace their steps.
And so they made their way back to the big parking lot. Somewhere along the way, Jonas took her hand. And Laura let him.
She found herself humming “Last Christmas” to herself, her voice loud in the silence of the deserted outlet mall.
“Sorry,” she said to Jonas, “But that song is just so damned catchy. And corny…”
“…and really good,” Jonas completed.
Laura smiled. “Yes, ‘Last Christmas’ is really good. I know some people think it’s overdone and played too often. But believe me, I’ve heard every holiday song there is dozens of times at the Christmas market. And do you know which one never gets old? ‘Last Christmas’. It’s those jingling bells and…”
They stepped out between the Lacoste and Tommy Hilfiger stores onto the parking lot. The electric stars were still lit up, turning a simple mall parking lot into their own private galaxy. And there was Laura’s Golf, exactly as unmoving as she’d left it, and Jonas’ truck.
Laura turned to Jonas. “Well, I guess this is it.” She held out her hand. “Thanks for everything and…”
Jonas did not take her hand. Instead, he put his arms around her, pulled her close and kissed her, while the electric stars were shining overhead and George Michael was perpetually wailing about giving his heart to someone last Christmas in her mind. And then everything faded — the cold, the stars, the music — as Laura surrendered herself to the kiss.
But eventually, their lips had to part, if only because they were both still human, both still on Earth and they both still had to breathe. And so they came apart, both panting, their faces flushed.
“I’m sorry, I… I’m not a drunken idiot like those men at the Christmas market,” Jonas stammered.
“No, it’s all right,” Laura heard herself saying, “It was…” Absolutely, intergalactically fantastic. “…nice.”
She took a deep breath,
“Can we do that again?”
So Jonas kissed her again. And Laura kissed him back. And this time around, they kissed until the honking of a yellow ADAC tow truck reluctantly drove them apart.
“So what’s the verdict?” Laura asked the ADAC mechanic, whose name was Ali, which explained why he had drawn the Christmas night shift.
“Your gearbox is shot,” Ali said apologetically, “Nothing I can do, I’m afraid. I can tow your car to a garage, but…”
“…they’re all closed for the holidays,” Laura completed.
Ali nodded. “Normally, you’d get a replacement car free of charge, but…”
“…the rental companies are closed for the holidays as well.”
Ali’s moustache twitched as he flashed her a quick apologetic smile. “Sorry. I wish there was more I could do.”
“So what happens now?” Laura asked, “Do I just leave the car here?”
Even though the outlet mall would be overrun with last minute shoppers tomorrow. Besides, she hadn’t even parked the car properly. It was just standing where it had stopped, which might well be in the middle of the driveway. Laura hadn’t even checked — after all, she’d had other problems at the time.
“I’ll tow the car to the nearest garage,” Ali said, “It’s safer in their yard than here. Though they won’t get to repairing it until after the holidays.”
And how would Laura get home now? Dad would probably come to pick her up, but that would mean a one and a half hour drive here and back through Christmas Eve traffic.
Ali seemed to be telepathic, for he continued, “As for getting you home, I can call you a taxi…”
He must have noticed the dismayed look on Laura’s face, as she calculated the costs of a taxi all the way to Hamburg, for he added, “It’s not actually in the direction I need to go, but I can also drop you off at Bremen Central Station. At least you’ll be warm there and you can catch the first train in the morning.”
“I can take you to Hamburg,” Jonas piped in, “It’s on my way anyway.”
Ali narrowed his eyes and scrutinised Jonas like a grumpy sitcom dad interrogating his daughter’s new boyfriend. “And you are?”
“Jonas Storgaard. That’s my truck over there.”
Ali relaxed a little. Apparently, truckers were considered trustworthy enough by road service mechanics.
“He helped me, when the car broke down,” Laura added. She turned to Jonas and gave him what she hoped was a smile whose dazzle rivalled even the electric Christmas stars above. “And yes, it would be lovely, if you could take me to Hamburg.”
“I can’t take you all the way home…” Jonas shrugged apologetically. “…but I can drop you off at a bus or subway station and you can go home from there.”
“That’s perfectly fine,” Laura replied. But then she remembered something. “Can you even go? Cause I know that trucks are not allowed to drive by night and on holidays…”
“Foodstuffs are considered vital supplies and a cargo of wine is considered food, so I have an exception.” Jonas winked at her. “And besides, Danish holiday shoppers are waiting for that wine to enjoy with their Christmas dinner.”
Meanwhile, Ali was packing up his gear and prepared to load up the Golf.
“Well, it looks like we’re done here,” he said, “Just take everything you need from the car, so I can hook it up. The garage will contact you after the holidays.”
He held out his hand and Laura shook it. “Thanks for all your help and Happy Holidays!”
“Just doing my job,” Ali grunted, “And a Merry Christmas to you as well.”
So Laura fetched her dead phone, her handbag and the box with the presents for her family. She also took the lucky chestnut from the glove compartment — just in case.
Side by side, Laura and Jonas stood in the snow and watched as Ali loaded up the Golf and took it away, the beacon of his truck drenching the snow in swirling yellow light.
Once he was gone, Laura turned to Jonas. “So do we leave now or…?”
Jonas consulted his wristwatch. “Two more hours, sorry. Mandated rest time.”
Laura flashed him an inviting smile. “That’s all right. I’m pretty sure we’ll find a way to pass the time.”
The Beginning