The young hippy couple are standing outside the McDonald’s on Commercial Drive. They’re holding one another’s hands and watching the people eating inside. The girl has short hair and a long, rainbow-dyed dress; the guy has a ponytail and flared jeans.
I can’t stop staring at them. There are no hippies in Vienna. If they ever existed they must have been rooted out quickly. Like weeds. With operas and Sachertorte as weedkillers. I can’t remember ever having seen a real hippy. And now here are two of them standing right in front of me. The guy has even drawn a big peace sign on his denim jacket with felt tip. Suddenly they start banging on the windows of McDonald’s.
‘Pigs!’
‘Nature-wreckers!’
‘Murderers!’
‘Hypocrites!’ they yell.
Several of the diners inside McDonald’s look up to see where the noise is coming from.
‘Do you know what you’re eating?’ the girl shouts.
‘How can you eat at this horrible place?’ the guy shouts. ‘Don’t you know McDonald’s is destroying the rainforest?’
‘Of all the places on the Drive you came here?’
‘You’re eating our planet!’
I’m touched by the couple’s passion. I grew up as part of a generation that takes passivity for granted, and my eyes fill with tears at their energy and their entreaties. It’s almost as though I align myself with them, even though my protest would be of another kind.
‘Stop using “I’m lovin’ it” as a slogan!’ I would be screaming. ‘You never use the progressive present tense for emotions, you language-massacring bastards! You say “I love it!”’
A man in his forties inside McDonald’s gives the couple the finger before returning to the paper in front of him and taking a sip of coffee. All the diners start eating again, ignoring the couple, who are still shouting and banging on the window. It’s only when an employee comes along brandishing a broom as though they were two stubborn pigeons that the couple move on. Though not before the guy has made a peace sign at everyone and no one in particular.
Commercial Drive is long and wide. Apart from the out-of-place McDonald’s, vegan restaurants jostle for space with homeopathic shops, and the people are a heady mix of ethnicities. Two men in neon vests are collecting something with litter-picking sticks. At first I think it’s rubbish, but a closer look tells me it’s syringes that have been left on the street. The sky is just as grey as yesterday. My jet lag is still making me feel ill and as though my body is being pressed in from all sides by invisible forces.
When I can no longer see the hippy couple, I head in the direction where 1348 should be. In front of me a homeless guy picks up a whole cigarette from the pavement. He turns to me and holds up his lucky find.
‘A smoke!’ he says. ‘I was walking along hoping for cigarettes and I found one!’
He closes his eyes and starts to pray.
‘A hundred dollars, a hundred dollars,’ he mutters.
‘Good luck,’ I say, smiling.
I walk on down the street. 1302 is an acupuncture clinic that also sells Chinese medicine. In the shop sits an old Asian woman in a white lab-coat, staring into space. The next few doors lead to apartment buildings. Most of them have different-coloured doors and in one of the windows there’s a sign with a Ken Kesey quote: ‘You’re either on the bus or off the bus.’
1324 is a bookshop specialising in LGBT books. My heart starts to quicken. Suddenly I catch sight of the black canopy I saw on Google Street View. As I get closer I see that the name Caffé Amici has been painted over but that the place is still a café. I wonder how old the Google photo actually is. Since it’s still several months until the summer, the trees aren’t green of course, and the houses look a lot more dilapidated than in the photo.
My heart is beating like a percussion section now. I get to number 1348. It’s a dry-cleaner’s that’s closed down. On the wall outside there’s a public telephone with the name Bell on a sign above it. I walk up to it. The receiver is hanging down and there are large burn marks around the numbers. Every surface is covered with graffiti and something I don’t want to look at too closely has been smeared on the buttons. I hang the receiver back up gingerly.
For several minutes I stand there by the telephone. In the image online there was no dry-cleaner’s and no phone box, and now it all seems so obvious. Part of me probably knew that I would never find Ben at 1348 Commercial Drive, and that the whole thing was just a crazy, unrealistic dream. Clutching at straws. For the first time it strikes me like a punch in the stomach that I’m never going to see him again. And that I’m never going to find out why he disappeared. Something breaks inside of me. I want to shout: ‘WHERE ARE YOU?! WHY DID YOU LIE TO ME? YOU SAID I WAS STUCK WITH YOU FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!’
My legs can’t hold me any more, and I sink down under the telephone and fold myself into a little ball. The people who pass by ignore me. I’m just another wreck on Commercial Drive.