Wunderland(48)
“For gas. Or bribes, if we need them.”
If he took the bribes suggestion as a joke, he gave no sign. “Where’d you get it?”
“Ilse’s purse. Where else?” She reached for the Benson and Hedges on the dashboard.
He was thumbing through the bills. “Won’t she notice? There’s close to twenty marks here.”
“I doubt it. I’ve been taking it bit by bit.”
“Impressive. Just call us Bonnie and Clyde.” He tucked the money into his jacket pocket, then absently tightened his collar. He’d dressed for the occasion, Ava noted, wearing her favorite blue striped tie that reminded her of stick candy tucked into one of his father’s woolen V-necked jumpers. “Speaking of which…how’d our other criminal endeavor turn out?”
Rummaging in her purse, Ava tossed him the trifold license she’d spent most of the last night altering to make him appear old enough to drive unsupervised. “I was worried that my ink wasn’t a match. But it looks more convincing now that it’s dried.” Shaking out a B&H, she pressed the dashboard lighter button with her bare foot. “What’s up with the radio?”
“Should be working again. Just came back from the shop.”
Still running the engine, Ulrich flipped the falsified document over to inspect its back. Ava fiddled with the radio’s chrome knobs, skipping over alpenhorn-heavy folk music and a German quartet crooning over Hawaiian ukuleles. “For God’s sake,” she grumbled. “Why can’t anyone play decent music in this town?”
Folding the fake license closed again, he gave a low whistle. “My girlfriend is a bloody genius.”
“You think the border guards will buy it?” she asked, settling on an old-school swing number on the radio.
“If they don’t they’re either blind or stupid. My money’s on the latter.”
“God. I hope you’re right.” As Ulrich eased smoothly into morning traffic she rolled down the window and withdrew the dashboard lighter, pressing its heated tip to the end of her cigarette, studying him beneath her lashes. He’d been driving with his father for only a month now, but he was as naturally competent behind the wheel as he was everywhere else. In fact, with the possible exception of Ilse he was the most competent person Ava had ever known—and certainly the most trustworthy. At some point he’d also become surprisingly handsome, albeit in a gangly Jimmy Stewart kind of way. I’m lucky, she thought. He’s so much better for me than the others.
It would have been a hard point to argue with herself. Before Ulrich, her two forays into romance had been with pompadoured, fast-talking boys whose sole purpose seemed to have been to get into her capris. One stopped calling when Ava declined; the other when she complied. Both abandonments—for that was how she’d felt, abandoned—had left her distraught and mortified for weeks.
Turning her head, she blew smoke at a gaggle of pubescent schoolgirls. It was barely seven in the morning, but the Bremen sidewalk was already bustling with ambling students, hurried dog walkers, and harried-looking commuters. Ava found herself searching warily for her mother’s neat blond head, even though Ilse worked on the other side of town.
And yet, she thought, wouldn’t it be just like Ilse to do that. To have discovered today’s plan and found a way to ruin it, in the same way she ruined everything else in Ava’s life. A few months earlier, for instance: Ava’s Gymnasium drawing teacher told Ava her work was strong enough for a summer course at the University of the Arts, and offered to introduce her to the life study instructor there. It would have cost almost nothing financially, and interfered with nothing academically. Still, Ilse had put her foot down. “I don’t want you staring at naked women in a room filled with boys,” she’d said. “And you waste enough time on that drawing nonsense already.” Similarly, last year when she’d gotten wind (probably by listening in on the downstairs phone line) that after six years of close friendship Ava and Ulrich had become something more, Ilse had immediately tried to put a stop to that development as well, appearing unannounced at the flat Ulrich shared with his widower father to inform a groggy Doktor Bergen that their children had crossed a “dangerous line,” one that required firm parental intervention. She’d stated her intention to “monitor Ava and Ulrich closely” whenever they were at the von Fischer household. “I’d request you do the same whenever Ava is here,” she’d added.
Happily, Ulrich’s father—a night surgeon at Hospital St. Joseph-Stift—had as little time for chaperoning as he did for anything else in his precious daylight hours. After relating the tale to Ulrich, he’d merely told him to “watch his step” with Ava—less because he agreed with Frau von Fischer than because he didn’t want any further dealings with the woman. “Frankly,” he’d confided, “she terrifies me.”
* * *
On Radio Bremen the big band number gave way to a newscast about France withdrawing from the Suez.
“Why aren’t we just driving to Paris again?” Ava asked, twisting the dial further. “I could enroll in the Beaux Arts. You could work at Paris Match.”
“For starters, Magellan, it’s in the entirely opposite direction.” Ulrich checked his rearview mirror. “Also, I have exams tomorrow.”