by Sofie Cramer
sven
Well, if nothing else you’ve still got to call her to get her to sign off on the article,” Hilke says encouragingly, like a caring grandmother who means well but hasn’t got a clue.
“I’ll do that over email,” Sven replies, his face totally blank.
“Okay, and in the email you could gently hint that you would be . . . um . . . very interested in working with her again,” she suggests, not sounding particularly convinced herself.
“I’m not going to go to pieces just because a woman turned me down. So don’t go making a big deal of it. I only told you that we met because you would have found out about it anyway.”
“But it is a big deal if you’re just going to give up now!”
“Dear Hilke, this isn’t a movie; this is real life, and in real life I’ve got a lot of work to do. So may I go back to doing my job, please?”
“Dear Sven, it doesn’t matter if it’s real life or the movies: You always have to fight for love.”
“Says who?”
“Says me. Me and everybody else. And Clara for sure, as romantic as she is.”
“Yeah, so romantic that she let me crash and burn like a race car smashing into a cement wall!”
“But you said she’s attractive. And . . .”
“And what?”
“I take no pleasure in saying this. But you’re also attractive.”
Sven looks out the window, embarrassed. He’s used to receiving insults from his colleague, not compliments.
“Mmm . . . But that hardly means that Clara is into me.”
“What did she say again exactly?”
“I just told you that.”
“You did not! Okay, fine, you did. But I have to know the exact words. We’re talking about very small but subtle differences here!”
“Women! Okay, I politely said goodbye and said that it had been really nice and we could also do it again sometime without the interview if she wanted.”
“And what did she say?”
“Nothing! She just smiled, wouldn’t look at me, just like she hadn’t looked at me during the whole conversation, and wished me a good trip home.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean she turned you down!”
“This right here does,” Sven says with a lot more of an edge in his voice and reaches for his phone.
When he shows Hilke Clara’s last text, she’s too embarrassed to say anything.
Even a hopeless romantic like his colleague simply has to realize on seeing these words that Clara is still way too hung up on her ex, thinks Sven. There just wouldn’t be any point in pursuing her.
“You see,” he says, “she feels like she’s cheated, even though she never even looked at me!”
Hilke frowns, disappointed, and takes a deep breath. In a way, Sven is relieved—now at least she’s finally letting it drop.
clara
Clara lies in bed unable to sleep. They’d spent the whole weekend fixing up the studio, and even though she was so exhausted she could barely stay on her feet, she still took Katja out to dinner at Castello Sunday night to thank her for her help.
Naturally her friend had to use the opportunity to pump Beppo for information about the journalist—and above all about the woman he was with. It was true that he couldn’t say for certain that the two of them were a couple, but he couldn’t convincingly claim that the opposite was true, either. After that Katja drove her so crazy with her matchmaking attempts that Clara finally promised to at least send Sven a text message.
Good thing she’d gone ahead and saved his number after he’d called to say he was going to be late.
Now Clara opens the Sent Messages folder on her phone for the third time that night to make sure that she didn’t write something completely stupid. Something that wasn’t clear enough, or maybe was too clear and would make him think he’d better not respond. She reads her words aloud and tries to imbue them with an unmistakably friendly tone, at least after the fact:
Hello, I totally forgot to thank you for the invite. So: thanks! And if you’re still up for it, I’d be happy to do it again next weekend. Yours, Clara S.
If only for politeness’s sake he should have replied by now—or was my text maybe too direct after all? Clara wonders, cursing herself and the awful dating world, with all its little games and rules that she thought she’d never have to torture herself with again. With Ben it had all been completely different. When they first met at Cheers, he talked her into another date right there and then and wasted no time in trying to win her.
Clara looks through her sent messages again. Except for two texts that she sent to Katja, all the others went to Ben—and then of course the one to Sven Lehmann. In this moment she becomes bitterly aware of the fact that there’s barely anyone left in her life whom she’d describe as a friend. It’s like everyone always says: When a crisis hits, you find out who your real friends are.
At first all the people she knew would check in regularly and ask how she was doing. But now, after more than half a year, Clara doesn’t want to be the one who brings awkwardness and sadness with her whenever she happens to reach out. And conversely, everyone else probably feels overwhelmed just trying to act natural around her.
Clara resolves that in the future, when she meets new people, she’ll do everything she can not to let her past get in the way. She wants to be able to get to know a new man in as natural a way as possible and not immediately scare him off with her history.
Because with Sven Thursday night, at the train station, at her studio, and later on at Cheers as well—Ben was present everywhere. Above all when the journalist was looking around her studio and photographing her, in a strange way she had felt Ben close to her, almost as if he were signaling to her that she was in good hands.
But in his own way Sven Lehmann had also given her a feeling of intimacy and trust. And this even though he’d made her so nervous!
Maybe he just reminds me of someone, Clara thinks, without really being able to put her finger on it. In any case, this someone isn’t Ben, she thinks, then she snuggles down deeper under the covers. Really, in a lot of respects, the guy seems to be the exact opposite of Ben. Clara asks herself if that’s a good or a bad sign. But then she admonishes herself not to waste any more time thinking about it. The fact that he didn’t even respond to her text shows how superficial he is. No doubt he asks one woman after the next if they’d like to “do it again sometime”—while the truth is he wouldn’t even remember their first meeting.
* * *
• • •
The next day Clara receives confirmation that her opinion of Sven Lehmann was correct. She sits at her computer and forwards the email that just came in to Katja without comment. After all, this level of coldness and arrogance requires no further elucidation.
Dear Ms. Sommerfeld,
I’m attaching the finished article and would be grateful if you could provide your approval in a timely fashion.
Many thanks for the pleasant conversation, and all the best in your new freelance career!
Best regards,
Sven Lehmann
Clara doesn’t know who she should be angrier at: this stuck-up jerk or herself. After all, she was the one who had tried to tell herself that there was something special going on between them that night. If they’d gotten together a second time, the encounter would in all likelihood have just been awkward and inconsequential. But still, to just not respond to a text, and then write as impersonal an email as possible—this, she feels, is simply an affront. This she just can’t stand for!
If nothing else, she’ll read the article hypercritically and beat Mr. Lehmann over the head with every word she doesn’t like.
Only now does Clara see that the attached article also includes photos. She had almost forgotten about them. There are photos of other freelancers in the article a
s well, a woman and two men who have likewise ventured to make the leap to self-employment this year. Clara is surprised that she’s the only one pictured twice. And she’s amazed how well some of her paintings and her sign come across, even though everything is just lying scattered about on the floor of her studio. Sven Lehmann was right that these were just the photos he needed: images that showed the persons portrayed in the starting blocks, so to speak.
Clara has to grin in spite of herself when she reads the caption:
Clara S. in her newly rented studio and shop Art & Praxis: “A fair amount of naivete and appetite for risk are just part of the mix.”
Did I really say that? Clara asks herself, and before she knows it she’s searching her memory of the stimulating exchange with the witty scribbler at Cheers that night.
He had called her a “refreshingly naive but shrewd and interesting artist.”
After briefly objecting to this characterization, Clara had added honestly: “An artist who clearly doesn’t understand much about business.”
That got a hearty laugh from him. Really both of them had done a lot of laughing, well into the night, whether they were talking about the topic at hand or were off on one of the few digressions into more personal territory.
It did get weird though when Clara started talking about her paintings. Even though she had the impression that Lehmann was hanging on her every word, his response was very muted when she admitted that her moon series had a very personal element that she would prefer not to talk about.
He’d given her such a strange look then, as if he was just about to confess something very intimate to her. But in the end he just admitted that he knew next to nothing about art, and yet nevertheless—or maybe all the more so because of this—he was impressed by the power of her canvasses.
And so now Clara is very anxious to see what language he chooses to describe her work in the article.
First she skims through the text, only to take her time and read through it again line by line, even if it means giving up her lunch break to do so.
A short while later she is both relieved and at the same time disappointed that the so-called beginner’s enthusiasm of the four entrepreneurs profiled isn’t at all reflected in the tone of the article. It remains bone dry throughout—the kind of piece that only someone like Sven Lehmann could write.
Without waiting for Katja’s reaction, Clara goes ahead and hits Reply.
Dear Mr. Lehmann,
Thank you for the objectively faultless article, which I’m happy to approve.
I likewise wish you all the best for the future in both your professional and personal life!
Yours sincerely,
C. Sommerfeld
She hits Send and forwards this email, too—again without comment—to Katja.
* * *
• • •
The days remaining until the official opening of her studio are going by in such a blur that Clara is more than happy to have some time away from the agency. Not that there’s any play involved. The list of things that have to get done by next Sunday seems endlessly long and would be impossible to get through without her mother and Katja’s help.
“So, I’m not trying to be annoying or anything, but tell me,” Katja says one evening as she’s looking through the list of people to invite, “why isn’t Sven Lehmann on here?”
“I thought you weren’t trying to be annoying . . . ,” Clara says without looking up from her stack of envelopes.
Her friend knows that trying to have a discussion at this moment would be pointless and reluctantly backs down. “Okay, then give it here; I’ll do it. You worry about your paintings. But hold on! What are all these names? I don’t know these people. Are these your coworkers?”
“Yeah, I’m killing two birds with one stone. I’m just going to tell them that the opening is doubling as my going-away party from the agency. Plus a few of them have really helped me out a lot.”
“I see, got it.”
“Not as much as you, of course!” Clara calls out before disappearing into the next room to hang her paintings.
“Mm-hmm, and sometimes you just have to keep on helping people, otherwise they’ll never find happiness,” Katja says so quietly that Clara can’t hear. Then she stuffs an invitation into one of the unaddressed envelopes and drops it into her purse on the sly.
sven
Ugh, finally,” an agitated Hilke greets her favorite colleague as he walks into the office.
“Morning, morning. What’s up?” Sven asks, still half asleep.
“You’ve got mail!” Hilke says momentously and points to Sven’s desk. “From Lüneburg!”
“I see,” Sven grumbles and goes off to get a coffee, knowing full well that it will make Hilke livid.
“All right, open it already. Chop-chop!” she demands when he returns a few minutes later and holds a silvery-blue envelope right under his nose.
Annoyed, Sven tears the envelope open and scans the few lines printed on the paper within. As soon as he’s done he drops both paper and envelope right into the wastebasket.
“Are you nuts? What does it say?”
“It’s just an invitation.”
Hilke stares at Sven, aghast.
“To the opening of her studio.” Sven turns brusquely to his desk and turns on his computer.
“And you don’t want to go?”
“Why should I?”
“Because it’s impolite not to go.”
Sven looks at Hilke like she’s a small child who has just said something incredibly dumb.
“And because it’s nice of Clara Sommerfeld to invite you,” she adds meekly.
The look on Sven’s face is unchanged.
“And besides,” Hilke ventures another attempt, “what do you have to lose?”
“My heart,” Sven mutters softly and stares at his screen.
Hilke walks over to the wastebasket, fishes out the letter, and reads through the invitation.
“Hey, you know what? We’ll just go there together,” Hilke says happily, already looking forward to it, and nods euphorically at her colleague.
Sven bangs his head against his desk melodramatically. “What have I done to deserve this?”
clara
Clara takes a moment to type a quick text to Ben before the excitement of today really gets going. Her mother and Reinhard are already here, as well as Lisbeth and Willy. Katja and Andy still haven’t shown, of course. But the person whose absence is most glaring, Clara thinks, is Ben.
She doesn’t really know if she should be laughing or crying, and she hopes that texting him real quick will calm her down a little.
My darling, I’m so insanely excited, but so thankful, too. And even though I’m missing you so incredibly much today, I know that you’re still here all the same. Thank you!
The invitation Clara sent out listed an eleven o’clock start time, but it’s already half past eleven and there’s still only a smattering of people in the two rooms of the studio. Every now and again, though, people she doesn’t know stop in.
On this rare Sunday when the shops are open, the people are flocking to the city in droves and filling even the side streets. Anyone who’d like one gets a glass of prosecco or orange juice, plus canapés. Despite Clara’s vehement protestations, Beppo had insisted that today’s catering was a housewarming gift.
Clara steps away from a small group of former coworkers to pause for breath for a few seconds and take in this unreal moment.
She really appreciates it that Niklas and his wife have come. It wasn’t easy for her former boss to let her go. Things still aren’t going well at the agency. But everyone congratulates her on her talent and also on her courage. And even if things have been changing so fast in the past few weeks and it all still seems a bit strange, deep down Clara continues to feel that this is
the right move.
She’s just about to leave the side room gallery and head back down the half flight of stairs to the main room when her heart skips a beat.
Sven Lehmann is here! He and an attractive brunette have just started mixing among the crowd of what must be about twenty people at this point. Six or so feet behind them Clara can see that Katja and Andy have finally arrived as well.
Katja seems to be hiding behind her boyfriend so as to be able to observe the arrival of the new guests as closely as possible. Clara casts a glare her way as she slowly walks down the stairs.
Katja gives a sheepish shrug, walks over to Clara, and says, her face flushed with nervousness: “Okay, guilty as charged. This was entirely my doing. But only where he’s concerned. I don’t know what the floozy is doing here!”
The woman with Sven not only looks pretty, Clara thinks, she also seems totally likable, unfortunately—which of course you couldn’t say about Mr. Lehmann at the moment. It’s true that the brown corduroy jacket he’s wearing suits him really well, but he’s got a pretty bored expression on his face as he looks around the room. That arrogant jerk, Clara groans. His girlfriend is at least paying attention to the paintings on the walls.
“Well, go on already!” Katja orders with a certain bluntness, but only because they both know Clara doesn’t have a choice.
“Uh . . . hello,” Clara greets the surprise guest and offers her hand to shake. “How nice that the two of you are here.” As she utters this lie, Clara looks at Sven’s attractive companion.
“I’m Hilke Schneider, Sven’s colleague—and your biggest fan!” says the brunette with an enthusiasm that sounds quite sincere.
“Clara Sommerfeld. Thanks very much! Would you like a little something to drink?” Clara gestures over to Katja, who is just then making the rounds with a tray of prosecco and clearly having fun attending to the guests.
