Alone.
It’s half-price Tuesday in the cinemas, the evening screenings will be over in half an hour, and this place’ll fill up. You get ready and pull the drinks to the front of the fridge until they’re lined up neatly, you cut vegetables and mix salad. Music whispers out of the radio, you turn it up, and no one tells you to turn it down. No one wants anything from you. Apart from the customers, but that’s okay, they’re supposed to want something from you.
While your uncle generally rolls the pizza bases out in advance, you prefer to make them fresh. The customer should see that you’re doing something for him. Tomato sauce, a bit of cheese, then the topping, then a bit more cheese. You love the sound when the baking tray slides into the oven. A glance at the customer, asking if he wants anything else. Always a smile, always content. You.
Yes, me.
“Me?”
“Yes, you, what are you staring at?”
It’s two o’clock in the morning, the wave of cinemagoers ebbed away at midnight, and after that you could count the customers on one hand. You’ve stopped counting the drunks a long time ago, because they’re not real customers, they’re alkies, gabbling away at you and loading up on one last drink before they roll onto some park bench and tick off another day in their lives.
“I … I’m not staring.”
You are wondering how long you’ve been staring at her. Her green eyes gleam like distant fires, her hair is such a dark red that it’s almost black. You can’t concentrate on her mouth at the moment, because it moves and says, “Where’s the guy who makes the pizza?”
“I’m the guy who makes the pizza.”
“You’re at best twelve years old.”
You don’t react, you turn sixteen in the spring but you keep it to yourself because you’re worried that she might be older. She must be older, arrogant and loud as she is. You can’t know that she’s playing with you. She knows who you are and that you hang out with Darian, she sees you at school every day and knows you’ve noticed her too. If you’d known all that at that very moment, everything would have been a lot easier for you. As it is you’re just startled and look nervously past her. She’s alone, it’s the first time you’ve seen her alone. Normally she hangs with a group of girls who buzz around her as if she were a source of light. You particularly like the little scar on her chin, it makes her look like she is truly fragile.
She snaps her fingers around in front of your face.
“Well?”
You don’t know what she means.
“How old are you now?”
“Fifteen.”
“Never.”
You shrug and wish the moment would stay like this. Hours, make it days. You wouldn’t even have to speak. You’d make her one pizza after another, give her free drinks and look at her the whole time. Nothing more than that.
It would be nice if she would laugh and say she was sorry that she thought you were twelve, you don’t look twelve at all. That would be really nice. Only now do you notice that her eyes are glassy. She’s either stoned or drunk.
“Your name’s Mirko and you live on Seelingstrasse, right?”
“Above the falafel shop,” you say and feel as if she’s paid you a compliment. But how does she know all this? you wonder, as she says, “I’ve seen you coming out of your house a few times.”
“Ah.”
“Yes, ah.”
You look at each other, and as nothing better comes to your mind you show her your hand.
“I was in a fight today. I defended myself with a bicycle chain.”
She looks at your sore palm, looks at you, she doesn’t seem impressed. But she goes on talking to you. She says she urgently needs a phone. Her forefinger goes up in the air.
“Just one call, I swear.”
You don’t point to the phone booth behind her, you don’t ask what’s wrong with her phone. Girls always have a cell phone. Just don’t ask. Go to the back, reach into your backpack, and come back with your phone.
“Sure.”
You go to the back, reach into your rucksack, and come back with the phone. She doesn’t thank you, she takes two steps backward and taps away. You turn down the radio to hear her better.
“… no, I’m stuck here … Don’t … But I … I’ll give you ten euros, I promise. What? Please, Paul, come and fetch me … What? The what? You know what time it is? There are no buses around here. And I hate them anyway, you know that. What? Aunt Sissi can go and fuck herself.”
Suddenly she looks up, phone still to her ear, looks at you, caught you red-handed, you duck a bit but hold her gaze.
“Fuck this shit!” she says, and you are not sure if she’s talking to you.
She snaps the phone shut. You ask if there’s a problem.
“What do you know about problems?”
“I … I could take you home.”
“How are you going to take me home?”
“I can if I want.”
“But I’m not giving you ten euros.”
“That’s okay.”
You laugh, you really don’t know what you’re doing. Uncle Runa will strangle you if you shut the place for as much as a minute. But you’re making things even worse, because after Uncle Runa has strangled you he’ll cut you into pieces as soon as he finds out you’ve borrowed his old Vespa.
“On that thing?”
She has walked around the pizza stand. You pulled the tarpaulin off the bike like somebody performing a magic trick. She stands there as if she wants to buy the Vespa, then she kicks the back tire so that the bike nearly tips over. You flinch but don’t say anything. Uncle Runa drives around the block once a week to charge the battery. He got the Vespa from scrap and rebuilt it himself. He calls it Dragica.
“But I’m not wearing a helmet, just so we’re clear on that.”
She points to her piled-up hair. You nod: if she doesn’t want a helmet then she doesn’t want one. You untie the string of your apron and for a moment you smell her breath. Definitely drunk. The key to the Vespa hangs on a nail above the radio. You take it as if you do this every day. Perhaps you’ll drive along Seelingstrasse afterward and beep two times. Perhaps Uncle Runa will recognize the rattle of his Dragica and come running after you.
Once you’ve shut up shop you put on your uncle’s helmet. It’s too big, but it doesn’t matter. She stands there and holds out her hand.
“What is it?”
“Did you think I’d let you drive me?”
“But—”
“Come on, make a choice.”
You hand her the key and imagine what it’ll feel like sitting behind her. Her warmth, her presence. You’ll lean into the bends together and be like a single person. Not just you, not her—both of you. And just as you feel your excitement growing into an erection you quickly think of your mother gutting a chicken and at the same time the Vespa springs to life with a cough and bumps over the curbstone and zigzags along the street. A taxi beeps, then the lights of the Vespa come on and