You. Zoran Drvenkar

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Of course you choose the most expensive one, you want to do this in style. The guy says Go for it and you laugh, and he laughs too, then you’re standing outside nibbling at your ice creams and glancing at each other. These are really flirty looks, they fall like a veil over your eyes and make your vision a little blurry. Leaving the cinema wasn’t such a bad idea after all. From a certain angle the guy looks like Alberto. Alberto wasn’t an Italian, you just wished he was. Alberto came from the East and his real name was Albert, but what sort of a name is that? Alberto sounded miles better. That guy, oh hell, he could really turn you on. He was wild about you. Wanna eatsch you up, he said. Stupid lisp, but at least it made you laugh. And you didn’t want to talk to him anyway. He made out with you wherever you were and nibbled away at your lips as if they were pink chewing gum. And once at the bus stop he shoved his hands down the back of your jeans and grabbed you by the ass. Alberto, what’re you doing? you asked him and he pressed himself closer to you so that you could feel his erection, massaging your ass as if it were an overripe peach and breathing heavily. I’m an ath fetishist, he muttered in your ear, almost blowing your head off. And you weren’t cool at all by then and murmured back: Whatever that is. You had no idea what an ass fetishist was and you didn’t have much time to think about it, because Alberto was pressing and kneading your cheeks till you thought: Help, he’s going to tear me in two! It didn’t come to that, though, because Alberto suddenly went quiet and rigid and stopped breathing at all while having an orgasm pressed against your belly, and that happened all at the bus stop on a lovely day in May.

      “… never seen it. I went to Berlin a lot as a child. My father lives in Friedrichshain, my half brother in Zehlendorf. But my mother lives in Hamburg, that’s where I grew up …”

      The guy talks and talks and smiles at you and you think: How long’s he been talking? You smile back and lick a bit of ice cream from your wrist and wonder if he’s an ass fetishist as well.

      “So you’re just visiting?” you say, picking up the end of his last sentence.

      “Right.”

      “Cool.”

      “What about you? Still at school?”

      You show him your wrist. There’s a little tattoo at the spot where they take your pulse. The writing’s tiny, one word, not more.

      “Gone?”

      “Right, gone.”

      “School?”

      You nod.

      “High school graduation?”

      “Nah.”

      You roll your eyes and laugh. Be honest, you don’t look like graduation. You look like a wildcat in a petting zoo. But don’t tell him that. And watch out, here comes the next question.

      “And what are your plans?”

      “We’ll see. Maybe I’ll open a beauty salon. Something like that. You?”

      “I don’t know where I want to go.”

      Funny answer, you think, and pretend to study the movie posters. Let the guy look at you in peace. Maybe he hasn’t got a girlfriend, you could be with him for a while. But guys like him always have girlfriends. One of those smoothies who never have to go to the bathroom and in the morning they smell like flowers. That’s the kind of girl he would have. He’s much too nice for this world—he speaks nice, he smells nice and seems to have money. Maybe he’ll lend you ten euros, then you’d have to see each other again so that you could give him the money back.

      You feel him looking at you. His eye wanders up from your platforms up to your worn bell-bottomed cord jeans, the belt pulled tight, narrow waist, blouse under your velvet jacket, long pause on your breasts—of course he lingers there, he paid for the ice cream, he can linger. Perhaps he’s noticed that your red hair makes you look a bit like the actress Kristen Bell, but he’s probably never even seen Veronica Mars or Heroes.

      “How old are you?” he asks and his eyes are on your mouth.

      “Seventeen,” you lie, adding a year. “You?”

      “Too old.”

      “Come on.”

      “How about twenty-seven?”

      “Definitely too old,” you say and laugh.

      He laughs too, takes a breath and tells you his name.

      “Nice to meet you, Neil. I’m Stink.”

      “Funny name.”

      You wave dismissively.

      “It’s because of the perfume.”

      “You named yourself after a book?”

      “What book?”

      “You know, the novel.”

      “No, it’s because I always smell so nice. Here.”

      He bends forward and sniffs your wrist.

      “Smells good.”

      You look at each other. He knows there is more to this name.

      “And because I’m mostly in a bad mood,” you admit. “Mostly always.”

      “A real stinker, then.”

      “Better believe it.”

      He thinks for a moment, he looks to his left, he looks to his right.

      “I have an idea,” he tells you. “Will you come with me?”

      “Now?”

      “Now.”

      Now it is your turn to look around. Your girls will be gone for more than an hour. You could die of boredom or you could go on an adventure.

      “You lead, I will follow,” you say to Neil.

      So he leads you down the street and stops next to a Jaguar, smart and red and with Hamburg plates.

      “Wow, where’d you get that?”

      “Swiped it off my mother,” says Neil and opens the door for you.

       RUTH

      Once upon a time there were five girls and I was one of them. The fairy tale could start like that. One of them. That’s exactly how you feel, lying on your back, above you the moss-green ceiling that you painted one afternoon with your girls because the pink was getting on your nerves and you needed a change. You’re living with your parents in an old stylish apartment block they bought when you were born. Your top bunk is six feet up. Every morning it’s like waking up in a forest. Now the green reminds you of the sea that you saw while traveling around the Bahamas with your parents. Of course you had to dive, and it nearly happened there in the water. You lost yourself for СКАЧАТЬ