Rain Girl by Gabi Kreslehner

drinking, not sleeping. He hadn’t known this was possible, and yet he lived—no, thrived! He had excelled in his work, or so he’d thought, but after four weeks they declared him non compos mentis—mentally incompetent—because he kept staring into thin air. The rings around his eyes had become too obvious.
    Felix and Franza had pulled him aside.
    “What’s the matter, boy? Do you have trouble sleeping?” Felix asked.
    “No!” he had wanted to say. “No!” he wanted to shout into Felix’s concerned face. “I don’t have time for sleep! I’m screwing! I’m screwing myself out of my twenty-six-year-old mind! I’m screwing the most insanely hot woman on the planet! I can’t do anything else but screw at the moment! And I know it can’t end well!”
    Of course he hadn’t said anything. Franza looked at him, and he could see in her eyes that she had an inkling, as if she knew what was happening to him, as if she understood. Since then he’d thought very highly of her. “Everything will work out,” she had said. “You’ll see.”
    He had smiled and nodded. She was a woman who knew what she was talking about. But that it would end this way? Bam! And over?
    That had been three weeks ago. Three damned weeks.
    He could see her in front of him as if it were yesterday.
    Karolina. How she had moved to the Konstantin Wecker music. How she’d taken off her clothes and sent them flying through the room piece by piece. And how she’d taken off his clothes and sent them flying, as well. How she’d dripped warm honey on his chest and stomach, how she’d begun to lick it off, her tongue circling on his skin until he was vibrating, inside and out, like the strings of a piano, and how every little hair on his body had stood up, and not only them . . .
    But then . . . his cell phone had rung.
    And he had answered. Not until after the fourth ring, though. He had to. Felix would’ve killed him if he hadn’t.
    But Karolina had jumped off him as if she’d been bitten by a snake. While he was still on the phone, she’d grabbed his shoes and clothes—everything—and chucked them out the door. And she’d made it unmistakably clear that she’d never even dream of being the woman of a shitty policeman, always on call and no boundaries. Then she steered him gently but firmly out of her apartment, handing him a damp cloth through the crack in the door only after he’d exclaimed that he was sticky all over and felt like a licked postage stamp.
    Then, to make matters worse, he couldn’t find his boxer shorts, but Karolina wouldn’t open the door again no matter how many times he rang the bell. While he tried to slip on his jeans and T-shirt as quickly as possible, he turned toward the closed door again. A little muted in consideration of the semipublic location but emphatically, he’d asked Karolina what on earth was wrong with her. Was she out of her mind? He was half naked, standing in a stairway in the center of town in the middle of the night. But she was unfazed.
    Eventually he had driven to the police station, fuming, where his colleagues were waiting for him, impatient to get started with a late-night stakeout.
    When Felix had started sniffing him and asked if he was trying out a new honey-scented aftershave lotion, Arthur had been ready to give up—to quit—but Franza told Felix to leave the boy alone. It was the prerogative of youth to try everything. She stressed everything with that ironic tone she pulled off so well.
    Just in time, Felix had planted his hand firmly on Arthur’s shoulder. “Don’t even think about quitting, boy,” he’d said. “You’re in the right place here. Believe me, there are women who can handle our unsettled lifestyle. And they’re not the worst.”
    Shit, Arthur thought, shaking his head. There I was standing in front of the corpse of this girl, and what do I do? Wallow in self-pity! At least I’m still alive!
    He kicked a stone across the road, and it rolled until it