I go out with Leonore again. It’s ball season and there are young girls and women in long dresses and rock-hard hairdos everywhere, shivering in the cold. For the next two months, the staple diet of Vienna’s population will be prosecco and Krapfen, the sweet doughnut with apricot jam inside.
Leonore and I are in a bar in the Metropolitan Hotel, which is clearly the place to be right now. According to Leonore, anyway. Just like Optimus, she looks at me with a forgiving, yet condescending gaze.
‘I was thinking of putting on The Vagina Monologues,’ she says. ‘All the proceeds will go to the women’s refuge in the thirteenth.’
‘Isn’t The Vagina Monologues a bit passé?’ I ask. ‘A bit nineties maybe?’
Leonore looks at me.
‘How could it ever be passé to fight for women’s independence and liberation?’ she says.
Something hot and red explodes inside me.
‘Fight for women’s independence and liberation?’ I repeat. ‘You’re not going to go out and fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, you’re going to stand on a stage for two hours and talk about vaginas. In a show that centres on quite brutal sexual experiences and which is incredibly negative about sexual relations between men and women. And which has that tasteless monologue about “a good rape” a 13-year-old is exposed to. I hate The Vagina Monologues!’
Leonore looks at me without blinking. I’ve even managed to surprise myself. Truth be told I don’t even have anything against The Vagina Monologues.
‘Are you some kind of anti-feminist?’ she snarls.
‘Oh no, Leonore, my secret’s out,’ I say. ‘You’re right: I hate all women. Damn me if we don’t all belong in the kitchen.’
The last thing I want is to go back to my flat, so why am I trying to sabotage the evening?
‘Maybe we should go home now,’ Leonore says, her voice laced with frost. ‘I have to get up early tomorrow.’
‘No! Please, stay,’ I say. ‘Sorry I was a bit short. Of course you should put on whatever you want. You would make a fantastic …’ I try to say the word as normally as possible: ‘… vagina.’
Leonore brightens up immediately.
Five minutes later she takes my arm.
‘Hey, what happened with that guy … what was his name again … who was living on the street?’
‘Simon,’ I say, because Leonore knows perfectly well what he’s called.
‘No? Was it really Simon?’ she says. ‘What happened to him?’
‘He had to go to Amsterdam for a while,’ I say.
‘Aha,’ Leonore says and then starts telling me about the trip to Hawaii that she, the Beige Man and their son have been planning for the Easter holidays.
When we’re at Passage an hour later it feels like I’m in some awful déjà vu which not even the huge quantity I’ve drunk can shake off. Everything is the same, and yet not. Because Ben came into my life and now he’s gone. The floor inside Passage is covered in brown pools from the ice that’s melted off everyone’s shoes, and the air is more humid than normal. I buy Leonore and me a cocktail each. Around me, several of the men are in tails and their hair is slicked back, which means they must have escaped from some nearby ball. Someone taps me lightly on the shoulder. It’s Mike, the actor from the language school.
‘Hi Julia.’
‘MIKE!’
I throw myself on him and kiss him twice on the cheeks. Even though we saw each other at work a couple of hours earlier and have never kissed each other on the cheek before. This evening seems to be full of surprises.
‘Do you come here often?’ Mike asks and looks around.
‘Is that your best chat-up line?’ I say in a deep voice and try and give him a seductive look.
‘I-I … it-it wasn’t a …’ Mike starts to stammer.
I give him a punch in the arm.
‘Relax,’ I say. ‘But honestly: what do you say when you’re trying to chat someone up? Ask what the time is, or what?’
Mike thinks a while.
‘I probably just ask what her name is,’ he says. ‘Have you heard that our branch of Berlitz might be closing and moving somewhere else? Apparently the rent’s too high.’
‘No, Mike! No!’ I say angrily. ‘No work talk. Naughty boy! Now I want to get to know the person behind the actor behind the English teacher Mike. Or the actor behind the person Mike. The person behind the person Mike. Mike person: who are you?’
Mike stares at me. But the last – and biggest – surprise of the evening still awaits. That I have sex with Mike.