Heidelberg Effect Page 3

  The phone rang.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey, yourself,” Rowan said.

  “What time is it there?”

  “Three in the afternoon.”

  “Wow. It’s nine here. My day is already over.”

  “How was it?”

  “My German is so bad, Rowan. I found a very cool little grocery store around the corner but that bit about how everyone in Germany speaks English is a lie.”

  “Well, that’s partly why you’re there, isn’t it? To not speak English?”

  “Yeah. It’s just a little uncomfortable in practice. Plus, I didn’t expect to miss you so much.”

  “Wow, thanks a lot,” he said. “Me, I knew it was going to suck.”

  “I think about you all the time,” she said. “When I’m not trying to figure out how to cross the street. They do it differently here.”

  “Well, you know it’ll get easier with time.”

  “The streets or missing you?”

  “Both.”

  “I hope so,” she said. “I hate feeling this way.”

  “What way?”

  “Needy.”

  The next day, she rode the tram to her office in the center of town.

  The office building her work was in was a modern one with wide sweeping staircases blanketed in marble studding an expansive lobby. The building was new and modern, and her office was on the third floor. She got off the elevator to be greeted by a large sign welcoming her by name: Willkommen, Ella Stevens.

  That’s nice, she thought as she walked to the receptionist’s desk. A beautiful woman with long blonde hair looked up and smiled.

  “You must be Ella Stevens,” she said.

  “I am,” Ella said, smiling back at her.

  “I am Heidi, and we are so excited that you are here.” Her accent was strong but her English was excellent and Ella felt herself relaxing. At least work would be a place where she would know what to do.

  “You are settled in your apartment?” Heidi asked. “I heard you were over on Kleinschmidtstrasse?”

  “That’s right. I love it. I took the tram this morning but I think I’ll walk as a rule.”

  “It is a beautiful neighborhood in Heidelberg,” Heidi said. “Very old.”

  Wow, Ella thought. That doesn’t make it different from most other sections of Heidelberg that she could see.

  Heidi led Ella to a large corner office with a view of Bergheimer and Rohrbacher streets below.

  “Oh, this is fabulous,” Ella said, putting her briefcase down in one of the leather visitor’s chairs. She walked over to the window to look out. “I had a cubicle at my last job,” she said.

  “We have been looking forward to your arrival,” Heidi said. “When you are settled, there is a meeting at nine o’clock with the managers. If you like, I would love to go to lunch with you today.”

  “That’d be awesome, Heidi. Thank you,” Ella said.

  After Heidi left her, Ella sat down at her desk and turned on her computer. Her first official email went to Rowan. Since it was two in the morning in Atlanta, she assumed he wouldn’t get it for hours, but it felt nice to have him be the first person to hear about her new office.

  It only took a few hours to nail down the specific duties of her new job. Ella could tell immediately that the job would not be challenging but that was fine with her. Now that she was living in a foreign country, she had all the challenge she could handle just ordering a meal or buying groceries.

  At lunchtime, Heidi showed up in her doorway with a purse on her shoulder and a tall, stunningly handsome man at her side.

  “Are you ready, Ella?” she said. “Do you mind if Hugo comes with us?”

  “Not at all,” she said. “Pleased to meet you, Hugo.” They shook hands and Ella thought he held onto her hand a tad longer than necessary.

  “I love Americans,” he said. “I used to live in America.”

  “Oh, that’s cool,” Ella said as the three moved to the elevator. “Where?”

  “Indiana. It was after college. Very enlightening.”

  Lunch was loud and fun. Ella was surprised to learn that drinking beer at lunch was not frowned upon—or at least that’s what Hugo and Heidi told her. They lunched at a tourist spot in the old part of Heidelberg, off the main market square near the Church of the Holy Spirit. Ella had walked by it several times in her first couple of days of exploring the town.

  Hugo was a large man but trim and lean. He gave off a strong scent of athleticism and Ella had an image of him playing soccer with his pals after work. Whatever was going on with the handshake, she did not mistake the fact that his knee stayed in constant contact with hers under the table throughout lunch.

  On paper, Ella decided, Hugo might add up to look and sound a lot like Rowan. But there were some major differences she couldn’t help but notice. Rowan was more taciturn, that was for sure. Hugo was positively chatty. And while he was witty in at least two languages, for her tastes he was almost too much.

  As they were leaving the restaurant, he leaned over and whispered: “Want to get together tonight?”

  Wow. Come right out with it, Ella thought, slightly amused.

  She glanced at Heidi who was the picture of someone pretending not to listen and Ella realized that Heidi was aiding and abetting Hugo in his attempt to pick her up.

  “Thanks,” she said to Hugo. “But I’ve got a boyfriend back home.”

  Which was weird because she hadn’t known Rowan long enough to consider him her boyfriend by any stretch of the imagination and yet…whatever she felt for him she didn’t completely feel free either. Was she using that as an excuse not to date Hugo? Did she want to date Hugo?

  “The operative words there being back home, yes?” Hugo wiggled his eyebrows at her and she laughed.

  “You’re kind of a little devil, aren’t you, Hugo?”

  Heidi laughed too. “Only, at six foot three, not too little,” she said.

  “Your boyfriend is alone tonight, you think?” Hugo asked in mock seriousness.

  “Okay, Hugo,” Heidi said, wagging a finger at him. “Now you go too far.”

  “Yeah, Hugo,” Ella said. “I’m still in the early stages of imagining him spending his nights bereft and alone. Besides, he’s staying at his parents’ at the moment so I feel confident he is lonely.”

  “Is that because most American women typically do not have their own apartments?”

  “Enough, Hugo,” Heidi said, but she was watching Ella to see if he was upsetting her.

  “I’m fine, Heidi,” Ella said. She turned to Hugo. “Flattered,” she said. “But not interested. Thank you.”

  “You are absolutely welcome,” Hugo said, as the three walked down the street toward their office. “But I wish you would wait until I have done something for which you will thank me.”

  “He never quits, does he?” Ella said to Heidi and the two women laughed and teased poor Hugo the rest of the way back.

  That night after work, Heidi and Hugo talked Ella into going out for drinks to commemorate her first day on the job. During the course of the evening, she let two calls from Rowan go to voicemail because it was too noisy in the restaurant to talk. And by the time she got back to her apartment, she was just too exhausted from her long full day to call him back.

  When she had been gone for two weeks, Rowan began to see the cracks in their plan. For Ella, those two weeks were weeks of exciting, interesting events that chocked her days full and left her tired and often unavailable in the evenings. For him, not so much. He was due to go back to Dothan tomorrow. Truth be told, he had been ready to go back as soon as Ella left but he knew his folks were counting on him staying the full time with them.

  It was Thursday evening. While Ella didn’t seem to need a Friday or Saturday evening to spend the evening clubbing, he knew his chances of catching her at home were greater during the workweek. He opened up Skype on his computer and typed in her number. Their arrangement had been for
him to call the same time every evening but sometimes she didn’t answer, or if she did, she often could only talk for a few minutes. Lately, when he sat down to call her, he started to get a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. And not good queasy either.

  Rowan sighed and drank from a bottle of Lone Star Beer at the desk in his father’s den. He watched the digital clock on the computer and waited. He didn’t usually consider himself the OCD type. It occurred to him that his waiting—after all, what did a few minutes on either side of the allotted time matter?—was just his way of putting off what was inevitably coming. It stood to reason that she would create a new life over there, one that didn’t include him. He understood that. Hell, he’d expected that. It was different with him. His life was his work. There was room in it for her, but without her presence—either physically or emotionally—his work would just fill the vacuum.

  He logged on and listened to the connection ringing.

  “Hey, Rowan.” She picked up straightaway and Rowan felt his heart lift. Not since the first few days over there had she answered so quickly. She must have been waiting for him. Immediately, he tensed. Why had she been waiting?

  “Hey, beautiful,” he said. “You’re letting your hair grow long.”

  “Yeah, it’s the style over here,” she said, patting her long dark hair. He noticed she had it down around her shoulders instead of twisted up in a bun or pinned up somehow. Up meant the office. Down meant she was going out.

  “Looks good. So how you been?” He hated these damn Skype calls. He wasn’t sure where he was supposed to stare. If it were up to him he’d talk to her on a regular phone while he was on the back porch where he could just close his eyes and imagine what she looked like. Naked, would be good.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “The work is pretty dull but I’ve been meeting some great people.”

  Not what he was hoping to hear, he had to admit.

  “Yeah? That’s great. How’s your German coming?”

  “Crappy. Everyone I’m hanging with speaks English so I just speak English.”

  “I can see how that’d be tempting,” he said.

  Was it his imagination or were these calls becoming positively painful?

  “How about you?” she said. “You still in Atlanta?”

  “Going home tomorrow,” he said. “Then it’s doing all the usual Marshal shit. Transporting, guarding, cleaning up the FBI’s messes.”

  She laughed and he thought of how that laugh had felt when she had done it from the snug confines of his arms. It brought back the memory of her scent, all flowers and lemons. Suddenly, the memory of how it used to be with her felt so strong—and the realization of what he’d lost so palpable—that he wanted to just remove himself and be done with it. What was this slow death they both insisted on enduring? What was that? Were they masochists?

  “Hey, listen, Rowan,” she said. “I can’t talk long tonight. I told Heidi I’d meet her at Chism in about an hour and I need to get ready.”

  “Yeah, that’s cool,” he said, taking another long pull off his beer. What is that? A nightclub? A bar?

  “I miss you, Rowan,” she said.

  “I miss you, too, Ella,” he said.

  “Talk to you tomorrow?”

  “Same Bat channel,” he said.

  She laughed. “See ya, Rowan.”

  “Bye, beautiful,” he said.

  He sat there after they’d disconnected just staring at the screen saver on his computer for another ten minutes before he finally moved to the living room where his parents sat watching reruns of Hell on Wheels on the flat screen TV.

  Ella sat in her living room and stared at the blank computer screen. He had sounded almost listless, she thought. Compared to Hugo and some of the other guys who had started to come out with her and Heidi on their nightly sojourns in the Altstadt, he sounded like a sad sack. Ella scolded herself for thinking that. He just spent five weeks living in this parents’ split level in a suburb in Atlanta, for God’s sake. Of course, he sounds a little monotone. Anyone would.

  Sighing, she got up to put the final touches on her makeup. Heidi would be here to pick her up any minute. She dropped a handful of Euros in her purse for the taxi ride home tonight. She knew she would not be buying her own drinks. What a difference from her life in Atlanta! She had been so right to make this move. Everything was so new and different and fresh.

  Just learning the names of the streets that led to her favorite café or the market in Altstadt was a thrill in its own way. When she added her new best girlfriend, Heidi, to the mix, the evenings began to fill up with laughter and the antics of new friends. Heidi knew everyone. She had attended the University of Heidelberg and still had friends and professors there. She brought Ella into her world of intellectuals and musicians, actors and academics.

  As Ella applied her lipstick, she saw that her cellphone was vibrating. Frowning, and thinking it might be Heidi, she snatched it up without looking at the screen first.

  “Hello?”

  “Ella, honey?”

  Oh, crap. It was her father.

  “Oh, Dad,” she said. “I am so sorry I haven’t called in awhile. You have no idea how busy I’ve been.”

  “That’s all right, sweetheart,” her dad said. “I’m glad you’re busy. So everything’s going well with the new job?”

  “Just perfect.”

  “You brought your Taser, right?”

  Give me a break. What is with him?

  “Yes, Dad,” she said, patiently. I’ve got it and I carry it.” She glanced in the direction of her day bag. She wasn’t lying to him. She did carry the Taser—a small handheld wireless model—but she certainly wasn’t going to bring it into nightclubs with her.

  “That’s good, darling. You can never be too careful.”

  Honestly, Dad? I bet you can.

  “Listen, I hate to cut you off, Dad but I’m just on my way out—”

  “Yes, that’s fine,” he said. “Just checking on you. Ah, Ella, I was wondering if you intended to do any, you know, visiting with family while you were there.”

  Ella sat down on the couch. “Visiting?” she said.

  “Well, we never talked about it before you left but you know your mother’s people came from that area of Germany.”

  “Heidelberg?”

  This was news.

  “Or thereabouts.”

  “Is there family left over here? I thought her whole family came over when she was like six or something.”

  “There may be one or two people left.” He cleared his throat and laughed and Ella’s hands froze on the phone. It was an affectation she had heard before when he was nervous or about to lie. Or both.

  “Really.”

  “And if you do,” he said, clearing his throat again. “I’d appreciate it if you kept me in the loop on anything you might, you know, find out.”

  “Find out?”

  “Well, any people you might meet.”

  “As in relatives?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Sure, Dad,” she said.

  “And, on the other hand,” he said. “If you have no intention of looking up your mother’s relatives, well, just forget I said anything.”

  That night Ella and Heidi had dinner in one of their favorite restaurants in the old town facing the pedestrian bridge. It had taken Ella all of one day to officially retire any desire to ever eat sauerbraten or wienerschnitzel again. Fortunately, Heidi was a vegan and so was happy to discover less than traditional dishes when they went out together.

  “We are drinking beer tonight?” Heidi asked, as Ella ordered two pilsners and they looked over their menus.

  “I thought we’d be different,” Ella said.

  Heidi laughed. “Drinking beer in Heidelberg is different?”

  “I know, right?” Ella laughed. “But we always drink wine or Appletinis. I thought tonight we’d go native.”

  “You forget I am already native.”

  “That’s
where the irony comes in, darling.”

  They toasted their pilsners and relaxed into casual office gossip and people watching. Their table was on the outdoor terrace and the autumn air was cold.

  “So,” Heidi said, sipping her beer. “What are we up to tonight? I, for one, am ready to meet some men.”

  Ella laughed. “I forget, Heidi,” she said. “Where did you say you were from?”

  “From Heidelberg, of course,” Heidi said. “Did you know it is the sister city to Cambridge.”

  “Did you ever travel much outside Heidelberg?”

  Heidi looked at her and for a moment Ella thought she saw something uncomfortable flash past her eyes before her happy countenance was back.

  “I have not been to America,” she said. “That, I would really love to do. When I go, should I visit the American South first? Or the Middle West? You are from the South, right?”

  “I’m from everywhere.”

  “That’s right, you travelled around a lot as a child. Lucky you.”

  “But my mother was from Heidelberg.”

  “Really?” Heidi looked shocked, so much so that Ella couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Well, not really Heidelberg,” she said. “But near here. I’m thinking of taking a little field trip over the weekend to see if there’s anybody left I might be related to.”

  “Did you see Hugo?” Heidi said, craning her neck to look down the pedestrian walkway. “I just saw him walk past. He is totally into you, Ella.”

  “No way,” Ella said, forcing a smile. “It’s you he likes.”

  “Then why did he ask me where you live?”

  “I hope you didn’t tell him.”

  “He’s so hot. I can’t believe you don’t like him.”

  “I like him okay but you know I’ve got this thing back home.”

  “The cowboy?”

  “Yeah, him.”

  Heidi giggled. “You know what the songwriters always say…”