Wait for Me in Vienna

by May, Lana N.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2015 Lana N. May

  Translation copyright © 2015 Terry Laster

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Previously published as Gekommen, um zu gehen by Amazon Publishing in Germany in 2015. Translated from German by Terry Laster.

  First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2015.

  Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle.

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503948754

  ISBN-10: 1503948757

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary-Soudant

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  PROLOGUE

  When a person doesn’t have anything to lose, they might just win it all; well, at least some of it. She had everything in front of her and yet so much behind. Her name was Johanna and her life was exceptionally unexceptional—until everything changed one late-autumn day.

  Some people can walk into a room and magically change nearly everyone in it with their mere presence; they have the ability to charm anyone who’s had the fortune (or misfortune) to enter their world. It doesn’t matter whether they are short, tall, fat, thin, young, or old; few are immune to that special person’s spell. They possess a certain aura to which others are mysteriously attracted. Their slightest movements exude charisma, attracting attention with each bat of their lashes and with every seemingly insignificant twitch of the mouth. Their laugh is infectious, and their hapless victims are prone to getting caught up in these merry gales of laughter. Johanna didn’t belong to this rare breed, especially in these last few years when jokes and laughter were hard to come by. She had about as much magnetism as German chancellor Angela Merkel.

  She was inconspicuous—almost as unobtrusive as a drop of water in a full bathtub—but she did possess a certain indefinable grace, even if it wasn’t always obvious. She was charming in her own way. She often laid in her small studio (which was long overdue for renovation) for days, staring at her crumbling white walls and rearranging countless books and magazines: bestsellers, scrapbooks, library books she hadn’t returned, and every magazine imaginable from 2000 to 2013. She’d open her nearly bare fridge, shut it, then go for a walk until dawn. She’d avoid going outside during the daytime so that she wouldn’t have to talk to anyone or answer questions about how she was doing and what she was up to. She wouldn’t have to hear them say things like, “Long time no see” or answer dumb questions that only fed their morbid curiosity. She couldn’t answer their questions anyway because, well, what did she do all day long? Well, she hung around, unmotivated, cursing the damned day, drinking black coffee because she almost never had milk at home, even though she didn’t like it black. She worked a few hours a day for a call center, invisible to her virtual colleagues. Her only joy was going to visit her grandmother, who loved her dearly, but after a while, she didn’t even want to do that, for reasons that were unknown to her. She didn’t understand herself anymore; how could she love someone when she couldn’t even love herself?

  PART ONE

  1

  The fog hung low and thick over the street. It was the middle of autumn as Johanna set off to visit her grandmother at the nursing home. It wasn’t cold, but the breeze hinted that summer was over. It was time for people to pack up their summer clothes, wean themselves from beloved, frayed flip-flops, forget balmy summer nights, and put away the Aperol they used for spritz cocktails on warm July and August nights. It was time to organize photos of the vacation in Capri, put them in a folder and label them “Last Summer’s Vacation”—or, in time-honored fashion, let them go until the frigid winter days, when the sight of turquoise salt water would be warming and exotic. It was time to savor a roaring fireplace and the wonderful red, yellow, and gold autumn days. It was time to pull out wool sweaters from the deepest recesses of the closet, checking them to see whether they still fit and were still fashionable.

  Johanna made a habit of visiting her grandmother every other day. Grandmother wouldn’t live much longer, and, for Johanna, the visits weren’t just her granddaughterly duty but were almost as important as breathing. She needed her grandmother; before the nursing home, they had lived together, ever since Johanna’s parents had died in a car accident when she was fifteen. When the tragedy struck, Johanna had been stinking drunk with friends on her way to a disco. She’d never liked discos, but other entertainment options in the boonies were practically nonexistent. She’d stopped talking about her parents since their death. She was different now, as if her heart and her mind had exchanged places. Johanna realized that she simply couldn’t escape from the black hole of her grief. The accident was ripping her apart a little more each and every day.

  On this autumn day, she simply sat and stared at her grandmother, whom she rarely touched anymore. Hours elapsed. Sometimes the old lady would snort, distend her belly, and gasp something unintelligible. That’s how she thought of her now—“the old lady”—trying to distance herself from the woman’s imminent death; before, she’d always been “Oma.” Johanna read a few pages from a book, glanced up, and lowered her head again. She recognized the snorting, the muttering, and the labored breathing, and it didn’t bother her. Well, it had at first, but she was used to it now. Before she left, she fluffed the old lady’s pillow, kissed her forehead, and walked out without even saying good-bye. She slowly descended the stairs to the foyer.

  When Johanna entered the large common area, the elderly residents looked up from their books, board games, and gossip rags, putting down their coffee cups, laying down their dessert forks. Some examined Johanna, mouths open, lips sprinkled with cake crumbs; others put on their old horn-rimmed glasses in order to get a better look. They stared until she disappeared through the door. Though the old folks probably would have been delighted to regale her with their life stories, Johanna c
ouldn’t have been less interested. A lot of them would have loved to know more about this regular visitor, but she never revealed anything about herself. She came every other day, hurried up to her grandmother’s room, and sat for a while. Then she disappeared again, never giving anyone the opportunity to speak to her. Ever.

  Back in her building, Johanna unlocked her door. Her sparsely furnished apartment possessed no hint of frivolity. There were no photos to catch the eye, no rugs to warm cold feet, no lovely fragrances to delight the nose. Sober and cool, just like Johanna. She went to the fridge, opened it, and took out a small box of orange juice. Today was lucky—she’d found some juice boxes at the discount supermarket. The boxes weren’t chilled yet. She’d go grocery shopping one of these days, when she was in the mood.

  She got cold a lot. When that happened, she’d lie down on the couch under the thick brown blanket, a relic from her childhood; the cheap couch’s uncomfortable metal springs bored into her butt each time. Sometimes she’d turn on the television. She didn’t own a huge flat-screen, just an ancient small TV. It was 24” × 20” × 18”—fully functional without high-definition, 3-D, or any of that other new garbage. Sometimes she’d leaf through a book or magazine she’d already read. She felt alternately listless, then hyperactive, as if she didn’t know what to do or, more likely, what she wanted to do. She’d never been able to conjure up a purpose in life, but not just for herself. She couldn’t see anyone’s purpose in life: the nosy bus drivers, the salespeople, the mail carriers, her grandmother.

  Thomas was good-looking, very good-looking. He worked for a large company that belonged to his uncle and partly to his mother, though she wasn’t much more than a passive shareholder. At the main entrance, a large sign announced “Lehmann & Partners”; the janitors always kept it well polished. Thomas had studied computer science, and for the last three years he’d been the head of the data-processing department. Internal surveys indicated his management skills were above average. This was also reflected in the appreciation he got from his staff—not too bad for a young man of thirty. He owned a nice condo, a real gem in a great location; and of course, he also owned all the latest high-tech equipment, including a flat-screen HD 3-D TV, which he traded in annually for a newer and larger model. Money was no object. His place was better equipped than many of Vienna’s computer and home-entertainment stores.

  Thomas was definitely the charismatic type, with a shock of dark hair and dark-brown eyes. His complexion suggested that he spent a good deal of time outdoors or, at the very least, sailed on the Mediterranean or off the coast of Croatia during summer vacations. He usually wore jeans and a T-shirt, showing off an athletic build that instantly betrayed his passion for exercise. “Most IT people are such nerds, but you’re different,” his girlfriend, Clarissa, had said when she first met him. They’d been together for more than two years now. She’d recently moved into his place in Vienna’s Fourth District, right near the Naschmarkt, the city’s famous open-air market. He’d decided to buy the condo as an investment, since the economic crisis had lowered interest rates so much that traditional savings models were untenable.

  Clarissa traveled a lot for her work as a model. She had met Thomas at a birthday party thrown by her friend Martin. Thomas had immediately intrigued her. She had been very coy, but less than a month later, they ended up in bed and, from that point on, were inseparable. She was a rarity in this age of bottled blondes: a natural blonde with long, wavy hair—not kinky, just nice, smooth waves. If her hairdresser cut one wave wrong, it took hours to make it right. She’d been a travel agent when a model scout approached her on the street. At the tender age of seventeen she was in the midst of selling vacation packages, when her Gisele Bündchen–fairy-tale career took off.

  Clarissa was anything but a wallflower; she knew how to party, but she also knew mornings came all too soon and that vodka had fewer calories than wine. In the modeling industry, you had to pay attention to things like that.

  Thomas liked to party, too. Lately, though, he’d been somewhat less enthusiastic; he liked feeling rested enough in the morning to get in a good run. Today, he’d run to the city center, where he did a few wind sprints as he thought about Clarissa and his life. Lately, he’d been thinking a lot.

  “Hey, sweetheart, what’s going on?” Clarissa asked when he got home from work, as she slowly put her hands down his pants and lightly nibbled his lips.

  “I’m tired, Clarissa. Today was really hard.”

  “Ooo, we’d better make love then.”

  She knew how to cast a spell over Thomas; resistance was futile. Thomas felt better, even though the postcoital pillow talk wasn’t the most romantic. But it did the trick and eased the internal tension he’d felt for days. Clarissa brushed her hair, put on her black lace bra, and lay down to wriggle back into her gartered silk stockings.

  “Know what? We should go to Julia’s tomorrow. It’ll be fun,” she said as she carefully applied red lipstick.

  Her face was very expressive, and she was even more stunning when she wore red lipstick. She spent a good deal of time in the morning on her makeup routine. Not only did she know the top beauty experts, at least the German and English ones, she knew all their beauty secrets. She was fond of makeup, perfume, and designer clothing—so much so that her closet threatened to burst. She often took clothes as payment for modeling jobs instead of cash.

  “I don’t know. The party at Julia’s isn’t going to be that great,” answered Thomas.

  “But we haven’t gone out in so long.”

  “What about last Saturday? That was only a week ago.”

  “Well, I’m definitely going—with or without you,” she snorted on her way out of the room. “I’m off to meet Katrin. Bye! Think about it! You might change your mind.” She smiled broadly, showing her bleached teeth.

  He collapsed onto the big beige sofa they’d bought a month ago. They also had a new bed, a new flat-screen, a newly renovated kitchen, and a fancy new toilet. When Clarissa had moved in, she’d wanted to change everything. Thomas had held his ground on a few things, but as always, he gave in to most of her requests.

  2

  When her grandmother died, Johanna went to the nursing home one last time. On her way upstairs, she noticed the overwhelming smell of roasted nuts, plums, and vanilla, which seemed to emanate from an old lady struggling behind her walker. She was so engrossed in arriving at her destination that she didn’t even notice Johanna. The sweet old thing had put on way too much perfume, probably forgetting that she’d already sprayed it behind her ears and on her wrists.

  Her grandmother’s body wasn’t in her room, so Johanna sat down in the visitor’s chair and stared at the empty hospital bed. There was a slight outline of her grandmother’s body on the sheets; it was evident the staff had just taken her away. A tear ran down Johanna’s cheek, then a second, then a third. Then the floodgates opened and she wept bitterly. She could hardly wrap her mind around it. Instead of death, the room smelled like eucalyptus spray, which Johanna had brought her grandmother a few weeks earlier. The half-full container had at least three more weeks of spray left. Couldn’t her grandmother have lived three more measly weeks? Johanna felt numb, and at the same time, she thought or hoped her grandmother would walk in the room at any moment and say, “My sweetheart, Johanna . . .” But that wasn’t going to happen again. Johanna stood and opened the large suitcase she’d brought for her grandmother’s things. She felt compelled to clean out the room right away. “Take your time; nobody’s signed up to move into this room right now,” a nursing home staff member had assured her. But Johanna didn’t want to waste any time; she wanted to put this all behind her as quickly as possible. Suddenly, though, she found she couldn’t do it. When she picked up her grandmother’s shoes, she collapsed.

  Despite his misgivings, Thomas finally agreed to go to the party.

  Clarissa sighed. “I wish I’d worn a different dress. I w
ore this one only because you told me to, but it doesn’t fit right. Look, it doesn’t do a thing for me!”

  “You look beautiful, Clarissa. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. You look stunning. You’ll be the center of attention like always, you’ll see.” Thomas tried to calm her down and took her hand. The taxi driver nodded in affirmation and stole glances at her in the rearview mirror.

  When she got out at Julia’s doorstep, Clarissa smiled and said, “Oh, you’re probably right. Would you mind paying the driver, please?”

  Thomas paid the fifteen-euro fare, added a generous tip, and then followed Clarissa into the elevator to the top floor. Julia welcomed the two warmly: Thomas with a nod and Clarissa with breathy kisses on both cheeks.

  “You’re finally here! We’ve been waiting for you. I thought you’d never come,” Julia said with annoyance.

  “As usual, Thomas had to work late. You know how it is.”

  “Well, actually, Clarissa had to . . .” Thomas began to explain, but the women had already disappeared into the kitchen to make vodka tonics.

  “Thomas, the beer is in the fridge,” Julia announced when she reemerged.

  Furnished like a place in a lifestyle magazine, the apartment was a bit too extravagant for Thomas’s taste, but that was Julia: too much makeup, too many shoes, too many purses, too much jewelry, and an apartment that intimidated everyone who entered. The women, mostly Clarissa’s modeling friends, were generally in the majority at Julia’s parties, which didn’t bother the male guests one bit. Later that evening, they would all get cheerfully drunk, dancing barefoot on the tables, tossing back vodka, champagne, or whatever was available. The single men inevitably hit on the girls, or at least tried to, seduced by the short skirts and dresses exposing their fishnet-stockinged legs. The girls feigned disinterest, an effective ploy. Though these parties weren’t 100 percent compulsory for him, Thomas went to pacify Clarissa. He was disappointed to find that his best friend, Martin, wasn’t there this time. His grandmother had died, so he’d had to go back home, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Thomas didn’t know exactly where, though, because Martin was reluctant to talk about his hometown.