the moment. First that coffee. A good four minutes later, the girl finally appeared at your table in person. She asked what you would like. You looked up and squinted. She was standing with her back to the sun, you couldn’t see her face very clearly. How old might she be? Nineteen? Twenty, tops. The generation that has no idea anymore who you are. You could tell that from her body language.
A pain in the neck,
that body said.
A troublesome old man who shows up at eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning, for God’s sake, to order a cup of coffee. We’ve only been open for an hour, what’s wrong with this guy?
She didn’t quite pull out a memo pad to jot down your order, but almost. Then she disappeared inside, only to come out again three minutes later. Empty-handed, of course: three minutes is not nearly enough time to pour something into a cup. She gestured, she pointed, she shrugged—and you looked up at her, your hand shielding your eyes from the sun. From my balcony I couldn’t make out a word, but I had the feeling I could tell what was going on. I’d experienced it myself once, when I went there for a cup of coffee shortly after the opening. The milk. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, but there was no milk left. I saw the girl point in the direction of the local shops. She would be pleased to go get some milk, but she was alone. She couldn’t leave the café unmanned: this old fussbudget could understand that, surely?
Is it at such moments that you miss your wife? I don’t know whether you thought about her that Saturday morning. I did, in any case. I lowered my eyelids and tried to imagine her on the sun-drenched gravel beach. She was sitting, her arms wrapped around her knees, on a towel she’d spread out on the gravel. Your daughter was just coming out of the water with a bucket and a little shovel. I thought these things because I was still assuming that she had gone somewhere far away, to one of the Canary Islands, or at the very least to some resort on the Mediterranean.
I still have a copy of the women’s magazine from a few months ago with the portrait of her in the section called “Partner Of,” where the wives of famous men are interviewed. About how wonderful and intelligent those men are. About that first meeting at the public reading or film festival, when lightning struck.
You have women who wait in the soccer stadium, beside the underground passage that links the stadium to the training field. They shout things at the players. They ask for an autograph, for the hundredth time. They want to have their picture taken with the player. They have a dream. They have their sights set on a soccer player, and it doesn’t really matter which one. Any player who can make that dream come true is eligible.
The women who cruise the literary evenings, film festivals, and theater cafés are different. Yet their dream is essentially the same as that of the soccer women. A husband with a famous face. To the outside world, they maintain that they’re primarily interested in the substance. In his talent. Still, a writer with a flashier car always has a prettier—younger—wife than the writer with only a public transport pass. The playwright dependent on public grants has to make do with factory seconds from the outlet store. The sculptor sloshed by eleven each morning has to make do with a woman with red-rimmed eyes who, just like him, reeks of wet ashtrays and soured wine.
How did your wife put it again in “Partner Of”?
“I had done a book report on
Payback
[…] It was my senior year at high school. A girlfriend and I mustered up all our courage and called the writer for an interview in the school paper. I still remember how long I spent in front of the mirror that day. I couldn’t decide between my miniskirt with high heels or just a plain old pair of jeans. At the last moment, the other girl couldn’t make it, and I showed up in the skirt […] at first sight, that spark […] never
A pain in the neck,
that body said.
A troublesome old man who shows up at eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning, for God’s sake, to order a cup of coffee. We’ve only been open for an hour, what’s wrong with this guy?
She didn’t quite pull out a memo pad to jot down your order, but almost. Then she disappeared inside, only to come out again three minutes later. Empty-handed, of course: three minutes is not nearly enough time to pour something into a cup. She gestured, she pointed, she shrugged—and you looked up at her, your hand shielding your eyes from the sun. From my balcony I couldn’t make out a word, but I had the feeling I could tell what was going on. I’d experienced it myself once, when I went there for a cup of coffee shortly after the opening. The milk. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, but there was no milk left. I saw the girl point in the direction of the local shops. She would be pleased to go get some milk, but she was alone. She couldn’t leave the café unmanned: this old fussbudget could understand that, surely?
Is it at such moments that you miss your wife? I don’t know whether you thought about her that Saturday morning. I did, in any case. I lowered my eyelids and tried to imagine her on the sun-drenched gravel beach. She was sitting, her arms wrapped around her knees, on a towel she’d spread out on the gravel. Your daughter was just coming out of the water with a bucket and a little shovel. I thought these things because I was still assuming that she had gone somewhere far away, to one of the Canary Islands, or at the very least to some resort on the Mediterranean.
I still have a copy of the women’s magazine from a few months ago with the portrait of her in the section called “Partner Of,” where the wives of famous men are interviewed. About how wonderful and intelligent those men are. About that first meeting at the public reading or film festival, when lightning struck.
You have women who wait in the soccer stadium, beside the underground passage that links the stadium to the training field. They shout things at the players. They ask for an autograph, for the hundredth time. They want to have their picture taken with the player. They have a dream. They have their sights set on a soccer player, and it doesn’t really matter which one. Any player who can make that dream come true is eligible.
The women who cruise the literary evenings, film festivals, and theater cafés are different. Yet their dream is essentially the same as that of the soccer women. A husband with a famous face. To the outside world, they maintain that they’re primarily interested in the substance. In his talent. Still, a writer with a flashier car always has a prettier—younger—wife than the writer with only a public transport pass. The playwright dependent on public grants has to make do with factory seconds from the outlet store. The sculptor sloshed by eleven each morning has to make do with a woman with red-rimmed eyes who, just like him, reeks of wet ashtrays and soured wine.
How did your wife put it again in “Partner Of”?
“I had done a book report on
Payback
[…] It was my senior year at high school. A girlfriend and I mustered up all our courage and called the writer for an interview in the school paper. I still remember how long I spent in front of the mirror that day. I couldn’t decide between my miniskirt with high heels or just a plain old pair of jeans. At the last moment, the other girl couldn’t make it, and I showed up in the skirt […] at first sight, that spark […] never
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