Center Of The World

I never even saw most of the men Glass had affairs with. They used to come to Visible late at night, when Dianne and I were fast asleep. Then doors would slam and unknown voices would penetrate our dreams. In the morning we used to find telltale signs of their existence: a warm mug of hastily gulped coffee abandoned on the kitchen table; a toothbrush wrapper in the bathroom, crumpled carelessly and dropped on the floor. Sometimes it was no more than a sleepy aroma hanging in the air like a strange shadow. Once it was the telephones. Dianne and I had spent the weekend with Tereza, and when we got home, there were the phones in our bedrooms, connected to newly laid cables, and the plaster still damp on the walls. Glass had pulled an electrician. "Now each of us has our own phone," she stated smugly, with Dianne on her left arm and me on her right. "Isn't that fantastic? Don't you think it's terribly American?" I'm sprawled on my bed when the telephone rings. The July heat has wiped me out--even at night it crawls through the rooms and passages like a tired animal, looking for a place to bed down. I know who it is--I've been waiting for this call for the past three weeks. Kat (her name is Katja, but apart from her parents and some of the teachers, no one calls her by her full name) is back from holiday. "I'm back again, Phil," she shrieks down the line. "Sounds like it. How was it?" "A nightmare, and stop grinning, I can tell you are! I'm suffering from parental abuse, and that island was the absolute pits, you can't imagine. I want to see you." I look at my watch. "In half an hour on the castle hill?" "I'd have died if you'd said no." "Join the club. I've been bored out of my mind the last three weeks." "Listen, I need a bit, longer--about an hour? I've got to unpack." "No problem." "Can't wait to see you. . . . Phil?" "Mm?" "I missed you." "Didn't miss you." "Thought so. Asshole!" I put down the phone and stay lying on my back, blinking at the blinding white ceiling for the next quarter of an hour. The scent of cypress comes wafting in waves on the summer breeze through the open windows. I roll over and get out of the sweaty bed, grab boxer shorts and T-shirt, and pad along the creaking floorboards in the passage to the shower. I hate the bathroom on this floor of the house. The door frame is so warped, you have to lean against the door with all your weight to get it open. Inside, you're met with broken black and white tiles, cracks in the ceiling, and flaking plaster. The antiquated plumbing takes three minutes before the water finally comes through. In the winter, the rusty boiler connected to it comes to life only after you've given it several hefty kicks. I turn on the tap, hear the familiar wheezing of the system, and once again regret that Glass never got involved with a plumber. "For the sake of the plumbing?" she asked in astonishment when I once suggested how practical such a relationship could be. "What d'you take me for, darling--a hooker?" Visible's architect must have been just as crazy as my aunt Stella, who discovered the house, already then in an advanced state of disrepair, a quarter of a century ago while on a trip to Europe. She fell in love with its southern charm, quite uncharacteristic of this part of the world, and promptly bought it. For peanuts, my little chick, she proudly wrote to Glass in America. I've eveSteinhöfel, Andreas is the author of 'Center Of The World ' with ISBN 9780385729437 and ISBN 038572943X.