Absolute Zero: Misadventures From A Broad (Val & Pals Book 1)

by Margaret Lashley

  ***

  When I awoke Monday morning, Friedrich had already left for work. I suddenly realized I didn’t know the rules. Could I go downstairs for the hotel breakfast? Was I even allowed to stay in his room? I checked the clock. It was quarter to nine! I really must have been beat last night. Friedrich, as well. When he’d come to bed, he’d given me a peck on the lips and flopped over onto his pillow. He’d started snoring three seconds later.

  I dressed and waited my turn at the cranky elevator. It jerked to a stop. The doors opened. Standing before me was Jersey girl Tina.

  “Hey Val. Saw you get in last night. Having a nice ride?”

  I smirked and joined her inside the tiny elevator.

  “What do you mean, nice ride?”

  “Come on, Val. Don’t play coy. I knew you were screwing Rick Steves. Hand over the gory details.”

  “Geeze, Tina. I haven’t even had a cappuccino yet.”

  We both laughed. The elevator jerked its doors open to reveal the hotel lobby.

  “Join me for breakfast?” I asked.

  “Sure.” Tina sauntered along behind me as a surly young man in a suit led us to a table. When he dumped our menus at a small table for two and left. I turned to Tina.

  “Where’s Giuseppe?”

  “Vacation. His substitute is a real gem.”

  “I can see that. So, what about your gem. What was his name? Jessy?”

  “Jonny.”

  “That’s right. How’s it going with you two?”

  Tina’s gaze shifted to the table. “Okay, I guess.”

  For this tough girl, that was almost a confession of undying love.

  “Do I detect a hint of amore going on?”

  Tina shrugged and smiled.

  “There is something about this place, isn’t there,” I confessed. “It’s like… one big stage for romance.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Tina. “If you’re not in love in Italy, you’re wasting your time.”

  “Exactly! So, are you in love?”

  “Maybe. Are you?”

  Even though I’d pondered the question privately, being asked it point blank took me by surprise.

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “Why not? Being in love is easy. The trick is to not make a big, hairy deal out of it.”

  I wasn’t sure if the girl in front of me was a naïve idiot or an enlightened sage. But I did know that for the past few days, everything around me had seemed lighter and fresher. Colors were brighter. Food tasted richer. Everyone seemed nicer – except for our new waiter. Did that mean I was in love? Or was I just finally learning to enjoy the moment? Was it amore, or something I’d yet to define?

  ***

  Friedrich came through the door with a stunned look on his face.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing. It’s just that…I’ve been called back to Germany.”

  “Is that good?”

  “The project here is finished. The company wants me to report to the main office on Donnerstag.”

  “Donners Tag?”

  “Oh. Excuse me. Thursday.”

  “This Thursday?”

  “Ya. We leave tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow!”

  “Yes. We take the train.”

  “What about your car?”

  “I cannot take it to Germany. Not yet. My divorce is final in a few weeks. I come back and get it then.

  “Your divorce? I thought…I don’t understand.”

  “If I take the car to Germany, I have to register it and claim it as assets for the divorce. In a few weeks, it is all over. Then I come and get it.”

  “What? I…I mean…I thought you were already divorced.”

  “It is only paperwork left. I haven’t seen her since I took this job in Brindisi.”

  “Oh. What will you do with all of your things?”

  “I pack them. I put some in the car. Then you and I take the train to my apartment in Landau.”

  “Where is Landau?”

  “Near Karlsruhe.”

  “In Germany, right?”

  “Ya. Of course.”

  I knew nothing about Germany. But at the moment it didn’t matter. Friedrich needed my help, and we had too much to do to waste time pondering anything else. I got caught up in the whirlwind of Friedrich’s urgent mission. He disappeared for half an hour and returned hauling several large, metal trunks he’d retrieved from somewhere in the bowels of the hotel. He packed his electronic equipment while I wrapped his kitchen things in newspaper and stuffed them into a crate. By midnight, we had everything packed away.

  I made some grilled cheese and sausage sandwiches with the contents of his fridge, accompanied by the last of a bottle of white wine. We chewed tiredly, said little, and collapsed into bed.

  The next morning, Friedrich woke me, a cup of cappuccino in his hand.

  “For you, mein Schatz,” he said.

  I smiled, sat up and took a sip. There was no sugar in it, but the bitterness seemed to give me strength. It perked up my exhausted body enough that I could haul it out of bed. I looked around at the room. It was empty except for the hotel furniture and a couple of suitcases.

  “Where are the crates?” I asked.

  “Stored away with the car. Now get dressed, mein Schatz. We have a train to catch.”

  ***

  A million hours later, in the middle of the night, we got off yet another train.

  “How long before the next connection?” I asked, too tired to really care.

  “No more trains. We are here.”

  I looked around, but all I could make out was the yellow blur of street lights.

  “This way,” Friedrich said. He turned and started walking, pulling two suitcases behind him in the street.

  I grabbed the handle of my suitcase in one hand, my carry-on in the other, and followed him like a tired, lost kitten, down the dark, empty street.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Just like that, my Italian vacation was over and I was living with Friedrich Fremden in Landau, Germany.

  During our long journey from Brindisi, Friedrich had kept me awake and entertained with stories about his family and interesting tidbits about Landau, the city where he was born and raised. In its heyday, Landau had been touted as the garden city of Southern Germany. But, according to Friedrich, the city’s glory days were far behind her. The flower beds in her once attraction-worthy parks were bare now, but neat and well maintained. Though many shops were empty, others still bustled with business.

  Friedrich told me the region, known as The Pfalz, could be compared to the American South. People there lived slower-paced, more rural lives than most of Germany. At one time, tobacco had been king. After its demise, the locals had turned to farming apples and wheat and rapeseed for oil. They also raised pigs and chickens and the occasional cow. But mostly, the people of The Pfalz cultivated vineyards for making wine.

  The entire, hilly outskirts of Landau were lined with row upon row of carefully tended grapevines. According to Friedrich, every fall, the fruit would be harvested and pressed and fermented into good-quality bottles of Riesling, Chablis and Dornfelder. At the first frost of the season, grapes intentionally left to freeze on the vine would be harvested and pressed into the coveted, regional specialty – ice wine. The Pfalz was an important part of The Southern Wine Route, a string of picturesque villages that lived and died by the grape harvest and the tourist dollar.

  ***

  After two days of non-stop travel, we’d fallen into bed exhausted and bleary eyed. Today, in the morning light, Friedrich’s quaint little apartment had turned into an outdated, dusty hoarder’s hovel. While he went to fetch us coffee and buttered pretzels for breakfast, I had a look around the place.

  Books and boxes filled with junk lined the living room and bedroom walls. Every cabinet and drawer I opened was stuffed to the brim with chipped cups, dead fountain pens, socks with holes in the toes and other useless junk. How could he live like t
his? Then I remembered he hadn’t lived here in years.

  Friedrich’s two years in Brindisi explained the dust. But what about all the junk? Being both a woman and from the South, this was a situation beyond toleration. His filthy bachelor pad was in desperate need of a good scrubbing. I decided to surprise him and clean it up while he was away at work. I couldn’t help myself. It was in my DNA.

  I heard the door open and I tucked my thoughts away for the moment.

  “Here is your coffee, mein Schatz.” Friedrich’s blue eyes sparkled to match his half smile.

  “Thank you. I mean, danke.”

  I took a sip of the coffee and was immediately disappointed. It was a poor imitation of an Italian cappuccino. In fact, it was really nothing more than rusty water disguised as coffee.

  “Bitte,” said Friedrich.

  I took another sip. “No. Not bitter. It’s too weak to be bitter.”

  Friedrich looked confused for a moment. “Ah. Not bitter. Bitte. It is how you say ‘you’re welcome’ in German.”

  “Oh. Danke is thank you. Bitte is your welcome.”

  “Precisely. You will be speaking fluent German in two years, I am sure of it.”

  I nearly choked on my coffee. Two years? I haven’t even been here two days. I had no idea yet if I wanted to stay. But, truth be told, there was something comforting in knowing that Friedrich had said, in a way, that he wanted me here.

  “I must go to work. Did you try the pretzel? It’s from the Fuss family bakery. They make the best in Germany.”

  I took a bite. It was soft and buttery and gooey. “It’s delicious.”

  “So, I should be home by four or five o’clock. What will you do today?”

  “Um. Eat pretzels and learn German. Maybe take a walk into town?”

  Friedrich nodded, but I could tell he wasn’t listening. His mind was somewhere else. He gave me a peck on the lips and disappeared out the door.

  I chewed my pretzel and looked in the cabinet under the kitchen sink. It was stuffed with old rags and shoe polish containers and used-up sponges. I found an empty plastic bottle that looked as if it had once held household cleaner. There was some dried up yellow crust in the bottom, and a date stamp of 1989. I found a piece of paper and wrote down the name on the bottle’s faded label. I fished around a little deeper and found a few other containers and wrote down their names as well. I got dressed and was ready to hit the pavement.

  I stepped out the entry door to Friedrich’s apartment and turned left. I followed the road toward the center of town, in search of a store to buy the cleaning supplies. There may have been shops much closer by on another street. But given my horrible sense of direction, I was afraid to make a turn and end up lost to the annals of history. American skeleton holding list of misspelled German cleaning supplies found in rural cornfield.

  So I limited my trek to the shops along Felder Strasse. In the daylight, Landau didn’t look half bad. Several ornate, three-story houses made of the region’s yellow sandstone still looked regal and charming, kind of like the antebellum homes near Greenville. I noticed a sign over a doorway of one house. It displayed the date 1888. I smiled. Somehow, these old beauties had found a way to coexist with the small shops sandwiched between them. Maybe there was a space for me here, as well.

  I shuffled by small, family-run bakeries, boutiques and butcher shops that appeared to still be eking out a living despite the chain-store grocers and discount clothing shops. I peeked in a storefront full of books. I stopped in and bought a German phrasebook. I looked up the word for cleaning. Putzen.

  I trudged onward, my confidence reinforced by my newfound German word. Another half mile or so down the road, I found a grocery store called Rewe. I tried to free a grocery cart from the line of stacked ones, but it wouldn’t budge. An old lady in an unintentionally vintage dress from the 1970s stared at me like I was a degenerate. She took out a silver coin and placed it in a slot near the cart handle and slid it back and forth. The cart released the chain binding to the others.

  I watched her disappear into the store before I fished around my change purse for a one-euro coil. It fit right in the slot. I slid it back and the chain fell free. One small victory for me! I suddenly realized that living in a foreign country would be a lot harder than I’d thought. Geeze! I couldn’t even grab a grocery cart without a lesson!

  I entered the small Rewe store and wandered around until I found an aisle stocked with bottles of stuff that looked inedible. I smiled at a young woman who was shopping with a baby and showed her my list. She stepped back and glared at me as if I’d held out a handful of feces for her to eat. What was left of my confidence fell into shattered bits onto the floor. I ducked my head in shame and spent the next half an hour shifting my eyes timidly back and forth from my list to the containers, trying to match the words with the items on the shelves.

  Having grown up around country people myself, I thought I would fit right in here in The Pfalz. After all, I had all the right skills. I was independent, good-humored, smart and hard-working. But having never lived abroad, I hadn’t counted on the whole culture and language barrier thing. From the reactions of the people I’d encountered so far, I’d arrived in Germany with the social skills of a newborn goat.

  ***

  When Friedrich had first mentioned The Pfalz to me on Sunday, to my American ear it had sounded like The Faults. Given the rudeness of my first two encounters, I now secretly found that amusing. The Germans I’d encountered on my shopping adventure had left me with the impression that they would rather be rude than wrong. It made sense. Friedrich had warned me that most Germans, even though they learned English in school, would refuse to speak it with strangers for fear of making a fehler – a mistake. I wondered why they didn’t see their own rudeness as a mistake.

  ***

  By the time Friedrich arrived home carrying a bag of groceries, I was wiped out both mentally and physically. The kitchen was gleaming, and the delinquent bathroom had survived its first come-to-Jesus meeting with a Southern woman with OCD – obsessive cleaning disorder.

  “Very impressive,” said Friedrich. “I give you the greatest compliment in Germany. Du bist fleissig. You are a hard worker, ya?”

  “Danke,” I said. “Now you take me to dinner.”

  Friedrich nodded that charming, quick nod of his. He carried the groceries into the kitchen and started laughing like a hyena. I realized it was the first time I’d ever heard him really, truly laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” I called from the living room.

  “Come in here.”

  I walked to the kitchen. He held up a jug.

  “Is this what you cleaned with?”

  “Yes.”

  Friedrich burst out laughing again.

  "What?!"

  I was tired, cranky, and in no mood to be laughed at. The look I shot him needed no translation. Friedrich’s laughter stuttered to a halt.

  “Let’s go. I explain you on the way.”

  Over schnitzel and beer, Friedrich told me that I’d cleaned the windows with fabric softener, scrubbed the bathroom with flea powder and washed the kitchen down with an industrial-size, vinegar douche. At least that explained the Rewe cashier’s weird expression when I’d picked up my bag of supplies, said the word putzen, and pointed a thumb at myself.

  It was obvious I was going to have to learn to speak German and to find way around Landau. I’d been in town one single day, and already the only grocery I knew how to get to was now a place I could never show my face again.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Over the weekend, I met Friedrich’s mother and made my first German friend. It wasn’t her. We went to visit Frau Fremden on Sunday after she got home from church. Besides the fact that she would turn eighty in December, Friedrich had told me almost nothing about his mother. As we approached her front door, it opened and a short, plump woman as black as ebony stood smiling at us. She hugged Friedrich and turned to face me.

  “Friedrich
! This must be your Val! Come in, my child!”

  “Val, this is Tamela Pango.”

  “So nice to meet you, Miss Pango.”

  The woman eyed me kindly, but warily. “Call me Tamela. I take care of Mrs. Fremden. I’m originally from Tonga.”

  Tamela ushered us into a dimly lit parlor. Every wall was lined with tall, heavy-looking curio cabinets and bookshelves overburdened with a bizarre assortment of mementos. They appeared to document a life that had survived two world wars, three children and two grandkids.

  My eyes fell on a nicely framed, black-and-white photograph of a young man and woman posing by a car parked in front of a bombed-out building. A bright-yellow plastic Spongebob figurine rode the antique frame like a rodeo cowboy.

  “Friedrich!”

  Startled, I turned toward the voice. In a dark corner sat an old woman. She glared at me through watery, blue eyes. The skin on her face looked both leathery and paper thin, ghostly pale save for a smattering of age spots. Her lower jaw protruded unnaturally to the left, and when she spoke again, she revealed a mouthful of yellow, neglected teeth.

  “Frau Jolly, ya?”

  “Ya,” I answered. “Freut mich.”

  I used the new phrase I’d practiced nervously on the way over. Basically, it meant “Happy to meet you.” But I wasn’t. Just the opposite. She scared me, and I began our relationship with a lie.

  The old woman turned her attention back to Friedrich, dismissing me as if I were of no further interest. She began speaking angrily to Friedrich in German. Every syllable that came out of her mouth sounded like a cussword to me. Friedrich’s voice in German sounded no better. I shot an uneasy glance at Tamela. She pursed her lips and shrugged. I guess this was their version of normal.

  Frau Fremden’s body was as contorted as her voice. She sat, twisted, in an ugly, floral-patterned armchair circa 1970s. Each of her gnarled, liver-spotted hands kept a tight grip on the knobby wooden ends of the chair’s arms. Despite her attempt to sit up straight, her spine was noticeably curved to the right. I could also tell that underneath her light-blue polyester pants she wore an adult diaper. I felt trapped in the nursing home that time forgot.