Wunderland(52)

“You have my word.” He looked at her sidelong, his glasses glinting in the hazy morning light. “Though if you’re really that worried about it, it’s not too late to turn back. We might even make it back by the end of school.”

I do love him, she thought. I do. For how could she not love a boy who not only stole a car for her, and used a forged document for her, and not only drove her fully across the country, but who halfway there offered to stop and drive all the way back? Ava shut her eyes again, pressing the tip of her pinky lightly against the lighter’s disc. It now felt only pleasantly warm.

“The hell with that,” she said, opening her eyes. “We’ve made it this far.”



* * *





After three more hours of driving, with a brief roadside stop for gas and sandwiches, they reached Helmstedt-Marienborn and the double-sided entry point to the German Democratic Republic. The guard on the West side waved them through with barely a glance at their documents. On the GDR side, though—a dreary line of cement-gray checkpoint stations manned by men in mold-colored uniforms—it was another story. Their guard—who barely looked old enough to drive himself—blinked at Ulrich’s doctored license for a moment or two before tossing it back at him. But he studied Ava’s student card with such a dubious-looking frown that she felt her palms start to sweat.

“No school today?” His face was round and puffy-looking, his nose bulbous and pink. His eyes, however, were an almost startling shade of teal—the eyes of a much more handsome man.

“It’s a family emergency,” she explained. It wasn’t really a lie. And yet her pulse continued thrumming at the base of her throat as though she were covering up a murder. She wiped her palms on her skirt.

“From Bremen, you say?”

“Ja.”

“Destination?”

“Berlin. Reinickendorf. Same as my friend’s.”

“Only friends, eh?” He leered openly at her breasts.

“Yes,” said Ava, wondering why she said it even as she did. Crossing her arms across her chest, she scowled. “Yes,” she repeated. “He’s driving me to see my dad.”

“Who doesn’t live in Bremen, I take it.”

“That’s correct.” Avoiding his eyes, she fixed her gaze instead on the flimsy-looking Trabi that had just pulled into the checkpoint station to their right. The man driving it had a long, glum face that resembled a camel’s, though perhaps the glumness was because the woman next to him was shouting at him. Ava watched as the latter—with a final shot at the driver—stepped from the vehicle’s passenger side and walked slowly around to the car’s rear. She seemed visibly agitated, gesticulating with one hand and dabbing at her face with the other with a handkerchief. Ava couldn’t tell if she was wiping tears or perspiration.

“Divorced?”

“What?” Ava snapped her gaze up again.

“Your parents,” the guard said. His skin was so pale that it almost looked gray in the shade of the checkpoint’s concrete overhang. “Are they divorced?”

“That’s not really…” She’d planned to say any of your business, but before she got the words out she felt Ulrich’s glance, as pointed as a physical dig in the ribs. “Not something I like talking about,” she finished lamely.

The guard shrugged. “Seems to happen a lot with you Wessies. Bourgeois values, I suppose.” Handing the card back, he pointed at the purse in her lap. “Mind if I have a look?”

“Seriously?” Ava looked at her watch. Their appointment in the city was in just under two hours; they were already cutting it close.

But Ulrich was already leaning over and reaching across her lap. “Of course we don’t mind,” he said firmly. Picking the bag up, he pushed it at their interrogator. “Take your time, comrade.”

“Danke.” The guard lifted the bag with his black-leather-gloved hands, fumbling for a moment with the snap. Biting her lip in vexation, Ava returned her gaze to the Trabi. Its trunk was now open and the weepy-or-sweaty female was speaking animatedly while the guard rummaged through its contents. As Ava watched, he pulled out a box of some kind and held it up, a triumphant look on his face.

“So you’re an artist?”

Glancing back at their own guard, Ava saw with dismay that he’d removed the little sketchbook she carried everywhere with her and had opened to a self-portrait she’d done of herself a few nights earlier. It was a full view of her nude torso, neck to navel, etched out minimally with a handful of charcoal lines. There was no way for the guard to connect the image to her personally (she’d left the head out because she hated her hair). But she found herself flushing anyway. “I try.”

He held the book to the light, his head tilted as his gaze flickered back and forth between her face and the page. For a terrifying moment she wondered whether she’d unwittingly broken another law: trafficking in pornography, perhaps. But he simply shrugged.

“Nice tits,” he said crisply, and tossed the sketchbook through the window.

Her face flushing, Ava flipped quickly through pages, checking for the carefully filled-out forms they’d need later and suppressing a sigh of relief when she found them. But the guard wasn’t done yet: after digging a bit more he pulled out the fragrance spritzer Ava carried with her to cover the smell of cigarettes before she went home at night, since (of course) Ilse disapproved of smoking. At the moment, it contained the last of the Guerlain L’Heure Bleue that Ulrich had brought back for her from a recent trip to France.