Outside my bedroom window the flakes are falling thick and fast. The roof is quilted white. The first snow to stick since I moved to Berlin.
It is 2 p.m. on January 1 and I am tucked beneath my down comforter, laptop humming on my thighs. Beside me perches a red paper cup. Already drained. Bayreuth Boy braved five flights of stairs and a sky full of flurries to purchase my inaugural caffeine (Americano) of 2008, and his (latte macchiato). Now he sits beside me, Power Book clapped open. Watching YouTube videos on how-to-hack your iPhone. And SKYPing with floppy-limbed Christoph.
This is today's romance, my friends. Amped up. Plugged in. On line. Side by side.
Floppy-limbed C. wants to know: What are we doing for breakfast today? Do we want to meet up? A rather late breakfast, indeed. Then again, we were celebrating till 5 a.m. And I am jet-lagged. Which makes waking by noon positively heroic.
Somewhere near midnight, I stood on Torstrasse with the Boy and his posse. No Times Square ball-drop. No Dick Clarke countdown. Nevertheless. We leapt into hugs. "Alles gute!" we cried. And Berlin exploded all around.
For three short days each year, the purchase of fireworks is legal in Germany. For one short night, the lighting of said fireworks is legal, too. The streets are Fourth of July on crack. Actually, Fourth of July on crack before they outlawed all the fun stuff. Fire-spirals spin along gutters. Roman candles blaze rainbows over pavement. Bottle rockets bang skyward, or whiz horizontally, often aimed at cars. Chinese cracker-chains pop like machine gun volley. Clouds of slate-gray sulfur rise. Clogging the throat, burning the eyes. Ambulances howl past. Tending to the already injured.
Twenty minutes of this was exciting. More would have been too much. After all, I did not come to Berlin to choke on street corners. I came here to... Breathe. Of myself. Again.
Or so it seemed as I stepped into Tegel Airport on the evening of December 30th. Frye boots hit Berlin soil and my chest opened up. My lungs filled. Oxygen flowed like it hadn't stateside. Wow, I thought. This must really be where I'm supposed to be.
Relief was short-lived.
Passengers jostled around the baggage carousel. Welcome parties waved
from behind a glass partition. I craned my
neck. I did not dare hope. And yet. Beyond all those smiley faces, leaning cooly against a
wall: dark overcoat, slender face, bluish scarf. Too blue to be his. I
edged closer. It was gray! Our eyes met. His lit. I gasped. He kissed his fingertips, flew his arms open. I bit my lower lip. Covered my mouth with my hands.
He had not known my flight number. Nor even my exact arrival time.
I positioned myself at the carousel. The silver track circled again and again. Passengers slowly dispersed. I tried not to worry. The "Final Bag" sign rolled into sight. The carousel ground to a stop. I trembled. I cursed. I paced the room, hoping against hope I had overlooked a monstrous black suitcase with one blue, one red ribbon, which was, frankly, impossible to overlook. All the serenity I tapped into the first time this happened? Poof!
I stamped out
the doors and fluttered my hands briefly, helplessly at the faraway Boy, then turned on the nearest security guard. He spilled over the edges of his stool. "My bag is not here!" I announced in German. "Oh, well--" he began. "No! You don't understand! On December 22, I flew into San Francisco. I had to wait three whole
days for my suitcase to arrive. And now again!" My voice cracked. "This is utterly unacceptable."
The security guard looked about to laugh. "Too bad I have nothing to do with Lufthansa baggage claim." The Boy was approaching. "Well, where do I go?!" I sputtered, my pitch careening upward. The Boy reached us. "Leelz!" he said happily. I swiveled toward him. "I can't believe you're here," I managed. "How did you know?" And I fell against him. His hands found my face. He kissed my mouth my cheeks my chin. I wanted to be awash with joy, with the romance of it all. But: "My suitcase didn't come!" And I began to cry. I dug my forehead into his chest. He kissed my head my hair my tears. "Meine arme kleine Lilan," he murmured.
I let him take my backpack. I let him ask the security guard where to go. I let him lead me through the airport. I let him ask another security guard where to go when we couldn't find it the first time. I let him tell me it was going to be okay. I even let him make me laugh about it.
There was a line outside the Lost Luggage office. An official wearing a ribbon that read "It's All My Fault" informed me the suitcase was stranded in Munich (not America) and would be delivered the very next morning. Which gave me my breath back. Almost.
.
I let the Boy pay for the cab ride home. I let him carry my backpack up the stairs. I let him empty his own backpack in my kitchen. He handed me: organic buttermilch, unsweetened soy milk, two pears, one pomegranate ("Can you get me some fruit and yogurt?" I'd emailed in advance of my Sunday arrival, when all German stores are closed).
Then I emptied the contents of my backpack. A Sony Vaio, toothbrush and toothpaste, a nearly knitted Alpaca shawl, two iPhones. One for him. Three hundred dollars cheaper than it would be if purchased in Europe.
The Boy peeled away the shrink-wrap. He delicately removed each component from its boxed-in compartment. ("Look how beautifully they pack it!" he marveled.) He stroked the phone's smooth screen. He tapped its flat keypad. He praised all things Mac. And then, exercising restraint unthinkable for an Apple zealot of his magnitude, he lay aside the sparkly new toy and devoted the rest of the evening to weary rumpled me.
At 9:30 the next morning, the buzzer jerked me from sleep. A short fat delivery man trundled across the courtyard, then hoisted the beast [suitcase] heavenward. He stood wheezing outside my door. "Quite a lot of stairs," I offered, my breath full and deep. He glowered: "The men usually carry it up."
I smiled coldly. "It's Lufthansa who screwed up." Then: "Happy New Year." And I yanked the bag over the threshold, slammed the door behind me, jetted across sub-zero floors, and pounced back into bed. Where my man lay, hot and slumbery, beneath the covers. Exactly where he deserved to be. If you ask me.
"Suitcase here?" he mumbled.
"Yup."
Lufthansa be damned.
Recent Comments