Wait for Me in Vienna

by May, Lana N.

  Thomas rang the doorbell repeatedly. After a while, he sat down on the steps, alternately waiting and abusing the doorbell. This went on for a few hours. Thomas decided he wouldn’t leave until she opened the door. However, for every minute he waited, he became increasingly upset, sad, and hopeless. He wrote her a text message, then a second and a third; and then he took his notebook out of his briefcase, ripped out a page, and began to write. He needed to explain that he had absolutely nothing to do with the advertising campaign. It was true that Clarissa had visited him, but he didn’t care about her and had kept his distance.

  Thomas wrote two full pages. On the second page, he wrote in great detail about how much he loved Johanna, how he had never felt anything like this before, and that he wouldn’t fly back to New York until he’d gotten a chance to talk to her and clarify everything. “I’ll sit here until winter or even until next spring if that’s what it takes,” he wrote. He shoved the piece of paper under the door and went back to his spot on the stairs.

  It was about eight o’clock. Thomas was asleep on the steps, his head propped up against the dirty wall, his right hand loose on his lap, his left dangling. Johanna opened the door, and, eyes swollen from weeping, she gazed at Thomas as he slept. She was happy. Happy that he was there, that he was always there, happy that he’d kept vigil outside her front door for hours. She nudged him with one of her crutches. Thomas’s eyes opened wide with shock as he woke up and gazed at Johanna. Then his face became more relaxed.

  “Please let me explain,” he said as he stood up.

  Johanna waved him into the apartment without saying a word.

  “Sit down,” she ordered.

  Thomas obeyed her command and took a place on the couch.

  “How did you not know, as one of the bosses at Lehmann & Partners, that Clarissa had gotten a modeling job with your company? Or why didn’t you at least try to prevent it from happening?” she asked angrily, but at the same time remained quite aloof.

  Thomas told her the entire story. He didn’t leave out any details. It sounded plausible.

  “And you actually expect me to believe that?” she asked.

  But in fact she did believe him. There was sincerity in his eyes. She knew that look; he was being honest.

  Flooded with relief, she cried out, “I thought I’d lost you! I thought you had gone back to her again!”

  Thomas sprang off the couch, and before she knew it, she found herself in his arms. He kissed her forehead as she sobbed all over both of their shirts. He cupped her face with his hands, lifted it, and looked deep into her eyes.

  “I’ll always be here for you. I’m staying in your life forever. I promise,” he assured her.

  That night was the most intimate they’d ever had together, despite her cast and her tears. They both knew they would remember it for the rest of their lives.

  “I made you some breakfast, sweetheart,” Thomas said proudly, and brought her a tray of whole-grain toast, butter, and honey.

  “How resourceful of you, sweetheart,” Johanna said in praise of his limited culinary skills. She took a bite of the bread. “Sorry there’s so little to work with. When I can’t go shopping, the fridge stays empty.”

  “But they took good care of you for me, didn’t they?”

  “Yes, of course. Paolo, Martin, and Linda have been wonderful. You don’t have to worry. Anyway, you’re the dearest of them all. You work hard all day long and then you fly all the way across the ocean to take extraspecial care of your jealous, crippled girlfriend,” she said, ashamed of all the trouble she’d caused; she had already asked Thomas for forgiveness.

  Later, as they were brushing their teeth, Johanna asked, “So, since when did we start referring to each other as ‘sweetheart’?”

  “Don’t know,” Thomas said, shrugging. Then he rinsed out his mouth. “Do you object?”

  “No,” she said. “Not at all. People say that only when they’re in love, right?”

  Thomas nodded. “Yes, deeply in love,” he said, then dried his face with a hand towel.

  “When are you flying out today?” Johanna asked.

  She began to gargle with some mouthwash, then handed Thomas the bottle. She hadn’t wanted to ask the night before. The night had been too special. The reality of separating again would have been unthinkable.

  Thomas looked at her sentimentally. “Ten o’clock tonight,” he replied. “But until then, I’m yours completely.” He pressed a minty-fresh kiss on her mouth.

  “Yes, you’re all mine,” she said, and smeared a little toothpaste on his nose.

  “Hey, stop that,” he said as he tickled her.

  “Nooo, stop, stop! Remember, I’m disabled—you can’t do that!”

  “True.” He picked her up and carried her to the couch. “And you have to rest a little more if you want to finish recovering,” he said as he playfully pointed a threatening finger at her, then stroked her cast.

  “Well, that’s not going to work,” he said when he noticed the crossed-out heart with their names in it.

  Without missing a beat and without saying a word, he managed to turn the plain crossed-out heart into a fanciful heart, with the words “You and I” in it. To judge by his artistic lettering, he could have been a descendant of Monet. Johanna was touched.

  “Now it looks beautiful again,” she said as she leaned against him.

  “I would like to draw a love lock attached to a bridge, but I’m afraid that’s a little bit more than I can do.”

  Johanna looked into his eyes and thought about how there was nothing he couldn’t do.

  “We could fly to Cyprus or the Amalfi coast; it should be especially beautiful in autumn!”

  “Mmm . . . ,” Johanna said, “or we could go to Scandinavia, I’ve never been.”

  “Also a good idea.”

  “We could go to Tuscany . . .” She looked at him and said nothing.

  “You have any other ideas?”

  “Sure, but not right now. There are so many beautiful places to see on this wonderful planet. How can I decide right now?”

  Thomas smiled and got out of the shower. “You don’t have to decide right now. Think about it and let me know where you’d like to go.”

  Johanna handed him the towel. “Okay, don’t worry. I will.”

  The hours sped by and Thomas grabbed his suitcase.

  “I’ll be back in just four weeks,” he said as he headed for the door.

  “I really like Sicily, too,” Johanna said with a smile.

  “That little head of yours is working around the clock, isn’t it? Sicily sounds quite tempting . . . Yes, the whole world is our oyster! We don’t have to fly. We can also drive. You could drive.”

  “Yes, right. I’ll drive,” she said with a laugh, “You’re a real comedian, aren’t you?” she teased. “You have to go now. Not that I would mind very much if you missed your flight . . .”

  “See you soon, Johanna. And please, no more of this nonsense. And keep away from Facebook; this doesn’t do a bit of good for our relationship!”

  She nodded impishly.

  He left. Johanna closed the door behind him and tried not to cry this time. Good-byes were hard because she always thought they were forever. She had said farewell to her parents with a distracted “Bye.” They didn’t come back. Had she known she’d never see them alive again, she would have told them how much she loved them and how sorry she was that when she was thirteen she hadn’t wanted to go on vacation with them because, as her mother and father, they were much too uncool. She would have apologized for smashing a vase because they didn’t want to raise her allowance and for threatening to run away at fourteen. Yes, she would have made everything right; she would have shared how much they meant to her; she would have turned back time if she could. But she never got the chance; so many things were left unsaid, so mu
ch time was wasted.

  Johanna opened the apartment door. She’d planned to yell down the stairs, “Thomas, I love you,” but he was still standing there. He hadn’t taken one step. He stood there with a little smile on his face, his dimples indescribably sweet. They looked at each other and they kissed. He let her go, then disappeared down the stairs.

  And disappeared forever from Johanna’s life.

  59

  Thomas was love drunk. He had hardly slept on the plane, consumed by an idea that excited him so much that he could barely sit still. He reclined his seat, then shifted it back up, then did it all over again, repeatedly, much to the chagrin of those seated near him.

  “I’m getting engaged, you know,” Thomas boasted to the person seated next to him.

  He marveled at this unsolicited confession; he wasn’t a particularly outgoing person, not with strangers anyway, but he was just so happy that everything was back as it should be, that he had seen Johanna again and that last night had opened his eyes.

  Shortly after his arrival at JFK Airport, he hopped into a taxi and made his way to a shopping mall. He wanted to get a special gift for Johanna, a piece of jewelry that expressed how he felt about her. A special ring, the ring with which he could demonstrate his long-overdue commitment to her. It should be as elegant, understated, and extraordinary as Johanna herself.

  As he wandered through the mall, looking for a jeweler, he contemplated his proposal. He’d have to think about how to give it her. Maybe he would enlist Paolo’s help. Maybe not. He wasn’t sure. But he wanted it to be memorable for both of them. Maybe Paolo could hide the ring in one of his great culinary creations. Then, at dinner, Johanna could find it; hopefully, she wouldn’t ruin her beautiful teeth by biting down on it too hard. Or maybe he could give her the ring during a romantic helicopter flight over Vienna, or while dining at the Danube Tower Restaurant. He could even rent the whole restaurant, or, or . . . Thomas never finished his thought because, at that very moment, a bullet tore through his heart.

  “There was a shooting spree at a New York shopping center,” said the female CNN reporter, visibly upset. “Police are on the ground; the exact number of victims is not known, but we’re told there are several confirmed fatalities.”

  The sheet of ice gave way and swallowed Johanna up. Everything around her collapsed. She felt the freezing pain of a thousand icy needles. She couldn’t see; everything was black. She sank deeper and deeper until she hit the bottom of a black hole. Infinite emptiness, hopelessness, and loneliness crashed down upon her. Paolo, Martin, and Linda’s hands reached out to her, but Johanna didn’t want to be saved. Not for a long time.

  60

  Johanna, Martin, Linda, and Paolo pulled into the long driveway. They’d been invited to celebrate Thomas’s short life with a memorial dinner at his parents’ house.

  “Ritzy area,” Paolo said as he gazed out of the window, then squeezed Johanna’s hand. “Are you going to be okay, sweetheart?” he asked. She nodded silently.

  Martin parked behind two other cars in the driveway. While Linda, Martin, and Paolo climbed out of the car, Johanna remained sitting, as if rooted to the backseat.

  “I can’t do this,” she whispered.

  “You don’t have to, we can go back,” Martin said calmly to his sister as he sat down next to her.

  “The last time I was here was with Thomas.” Tears streaming down her face, she leaned her head on Martin’s shoulder as he stroked her arm reassuringly.

  “You want to go back?” Martin asked again as the front door opened.

  Henriette and Karl stepped outside onto the front door stoop. Johanna saw the look of hope on Thomas’s mother’s face.

  “No, we can’t go back. Let’s go inside; they’re waiting for us.” She wiped away her tears. Then, with Martin’s help, she got out of the car and walked with him to the front door.

  She reached out as Henriette stepped forward to embrace her.

  “Oh, Johanna, we miss him so much, too!”

  Karl nodded bravely, and as Henriette let go of her, he stepped in and hugged Johanna, too.

  “Come on in!” Henriette said, waving the others in, too.

  Johanna noted tearfully that Thomas’s mother was doing her best to be cheerful under the tragic circumstances.

  Martin and Linda stepped through the door and greeted their hosts warmly. Once Paolo stepped inside, Karl scrutinized his carefully made-up face, complete with mascara, then smiled, greeting him warmly.

  Thomas’s uncle, his wife, and other people Johanna didn’t know sat at the large dining table. She shook hands and politely greeted everyone. When Gabriele entered the room to serve an aperitif, she saw Johanna and immediately put the tray down.

  “Johanna, so nice to see you!” said Gabriele, unexpectedly embracing Johanna.

  “Thomas always said you were like a second mother to him. Did you know that?” Johanna asked.

  Gabriele nodded, then immediately burst into tears. She pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket, wiped away her tears, blew her nose loudly, then picked up the aperitif tray, smiling bravely as she served the guests.

  Henriette sat Johanna next to her. They reminisced about the last time they had dined here when Thomas was still alive.

  The appetizer was served. Johanna had eaten only a bite when she started feeling sick to her stomach.

  “Excuse me,” she stammered, and sprang up from her chair, running as fast as she could to the bathroom. Martin, Paolo, and Michael, Karl’s doctor friend, followed close behind as Johanna slammed the door shut.

  “Johanna! How are you doing?” Martin asked through the closed door.

  “I’m just feeling a little sick,” called Johanna.

  “I thought the appetizer was pretty good!” Paolo cracked.

  “Go away, Paolo!” cried Johanna as she hung her head over the toilet.

  “Can you let me speak to her alone?” asked the doctor as he tapped lightly on the bathroom door. “May I come in, Johanna?”

  Johanna wiped her mouth off with a towel, opened the door, and let the doctor in.

  “How are you feeling?” asked the doctor.

  “A little better now, I guess,” Johanna said as she sat forlornly on the toilet seat.

  “Hmm . . . Have you been throwing up a lot lately?”

  “Yes, but it’s just because of everything that’s happened . . . it’s been really hard on me.”

  “I can certainly understand that,” the doctor said as he held Johanna’s wrist and took her pulse, then felt her forehead. “Hmm . . . You don’t seem to have a fever.”

  Johanna gazed at him thoughtfully, and another wave of nausea suddenly overcame her.

  Weeks after the memorial dinner, Johanna found a note in Thomas’s apartment. It was a list.

  All the things I would do for you, dear Johanna:

  Hike up Mount Everest without an oxygen tank. (I would climb it if I could)

  Shave my legs

  Sing lullabies until you can’t bear to hear them anymore

  Accompany you for hours on end when you go shopping (luckily, you’re not the shopping type, but I would do it for you if you were)

  Give you a massage until I got tendinitis

  Dye my hair blonde or pink or any color you want

  Pick you up anywhere and take you anywhere you want to go

  Never let you out of my sight

  Be sad when you’re sad and happy when you’re happy

  Go bungee jumping

  Watch Sex and the City, Twilight, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer with you

  Warm your feet when we go skiing

  Bring you flowers I picked myself, just because I’m thinking of you

  Take you to every Travis concert, no matter where it is in the world

  Eat organ meats

&nbs
p; Play Romeo on stage, but only if you were my Juliet

  Swim across the Atlantic and Pacific to see you

  Move to Rome, Venice, Istanbul, Dubai, or to your hometown in the country—wherever you wanted

  Fill your closet with wedding dresses so that you always feel like my bride

  Take you to every wonderful restaurant in Vienna

  Avert my eyes from every ad with a model in it forever

  Take you salsa dancing every night until our feet fall off

  Go back to that vineyard and install railings on all their stairs

  Get Paolo to teach me how to cook, too, so that we could spend the rest of our lives feeding each other amazing food

  Travel back in time to take care of you after your parents died

  EPILOGUE

  A few years later

  “We’re all so proud of you,” said Martin, gazing at Johanna’s Viennese Culinary Institute diploma as the group sat outside around a large table at Thomas’s parents’ house, sipping wine. They were having an informal celebration in honor of Johanna’s graduating from culinary school.

  “I’ll get this framed for you right away,” said Henriette as she delicately plucked the diploma from Martin’s hand and handed it to Gabriele, who took it inside for safekeeping.

  “When do you start your new job?” asked Linda.

  “And not just any old job, mind you!” Paolo added excitedly. “Johanna got recruited by one of the best Italian restaurants in Vienna: the Cantinette Antinori!”

  “Well, I’ll just be working as a sous-chef at first,” Johanna said modestly.

  “She’ll be head chef over there before you know it! Her pasta is to die for!” Paolo exclaimed proudly. He paused for a second, leaned toward Johanna, then asked slyly, “And how’s the new love interest?”

  “Andreas?” said Johanna cautiously. “He’s fine. We’re taking it slowly. He’s a really great guy and—”