Wunderland(51)
Rolling the window back up, Ava rested her cheek against the glass and watched the bark-bare trees flashing past. Nikolaus Hellewege, she thought again. What had her mother called him? Klaus, perhaps? Or simply Gunn—perhaps he’d preferred his middle name to his first? Could he have had any part in choosing her name? Had he even known she was going to exist? Ava Lara Hellewege. She whispered it under her breath, exploring it like an exotic sweet on her tongue. What would this other, two-parented Ava have been like? Perhaps, simply, a better Ava: an Ava as understood and beloved by her father as she was misunderstood and overlooked by her mother. An Ava who sketched and painted without shame or blame, dated freely, took university classes when she liked…
“Are you awake over there?”
“What?” Blinking, Ava turned toward her driver.
“You look like you’re in another world.” Glancing in the side mirror, Ulrich switched lanes in order to pass a tomato-red VW pickup truck. “Also, you’re about to start a fire.”
Glancing down, Ava saw that the cigarette in the hand she’d left resting on the atlas had burned itself down to the filter. “Damn it.” Flipping open the ashtray below the lighter, she stubbed the smoldering filter fully out. “Sorry. I barely slept last night.”
“The license?”
“Just nerves, I think.”
“Like I said, don’t worry about it. First off, it’s almost perfect. Secondly, those GDR yahoos can barely read. Just make sure you don’t give anyone any lip.” Another quick, pointed look.
“Of course I won’t give them any lip,” Ava said indignantly.
“And maybe put a hat on.” Reaching out, he ruffled her botched hair. “If anything raises questions, it’ll be that haircut.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t that bad.” Ava checked her reflection in the side-view mirror again, futilely pulling a few strands toward her ears on both sides, as though she could physically force them to grow faster. (Another reason to love him: he still somehow thought she was pretty.)
“What I said,” he said, deadpan, “was that it could have been worse.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?” Rummaging in her purse, she found her lipstick and carefully applied it to her top and bottom lip, then blotted it against her handkerchief.
“Not at all.” He checked the speedometer, then tapped the brake lightly. “You could have shaved yourself bald. Or stabbed yourself in the eye with the scissors. You could have…”
“All right!” Reaching over, she shoved him in the shoulder. “Does makeup help, at least?”
He darted a quick, assessing glance. “Decidedly. Is that new?”
“Max Factor.” She pursed her lips, Monroe-style. “I got it at the Galleria.” She didn’t mention that she hadn’t paid for it but rather slipped it into her purse while the saleswoman was helping another woman pick out cold cream. Though in her own defense Ava hadn’t really had a choice: she couldn’t borrow lipstick from Ilse because Ilse never wore makeup. And she certainly wouldn’t give Ava money to buy it. (“Only tramps paint their faces at your age,” she had said; she used the same disparaging measure for high heels.)
“I was a little worried it was too bright,” Ava said now.
“No, the color is good.” He looked at her again carefully. “It distracts from the disaster up top.”
“You’re a jackass.” But she felt her lips twisting into a smile despite herself. Recapping the tube, Ava tossed it back into her purse, then leaned forward to give the radio another try. This time she was in luck: after an advertisement for Hamburg’s “most popular dance hall,” Fats Domino broke through the static, the rich voice like a honeyed sunshaft through a cloud. Pleased with herself, Ava leaned her head back and closed her eyes, humming along with the lyrics she knew by heart even if she didn’t fully understand them:
You made me cry when you said good-bye
She felt Ulrich’s strong, long-fingered hand on her knee, and heard his voice joining in as well, his American accent impeccable as always, his melody perfectly in tune:
Ain’t that a shame
They sang together until they lost the station and Ava switched the radio off again. She lit him a cigarette, then another one for herself as well, and they drove on a few kilometers in smoky companionable silence, his hands gripping the wheel and hers her cigarette and the lighter. Watching the latter’s round eye turn from molten orange to deep red to ash gray, she briefly fantasized about pressing it against the pale soft flesh on the inside of her arm. For some reason the idea of it—the searing pain, the singed skin—seemed less frightening than clarifying. Even bracing.
“If I ask you something,” she said suddenly, “will you be honest with me?”
“Am I ever anything but?”
Still, she hesitated. “If it turns out he was one of the bad ones—the truly bad ones…”
He shook his head. “Wouldn’t change anything between us.”
“Even if he was, say, the one who locked your mother in the chamber? You won’t hate me?”
He didn’t even blink. “Not a whit.”
She hadn’t expected another answer, but relief washed over her anyway, so unexpectedly comforting she swayed a little in her seat. “You’re sure?”