Veil (from the Munich Tales)

VEIL
By Michael Kroetch

She wore a fireman´s raincoat. She liked the way it felt, that was all. And that was all it took. Soon everyone was wearing them. Now everywhere you go, that´s what women wear. She was like that with things. When she first moved in above the torpedo factory, only rats, bats, and opossums lived there. Next thing you knew, all the young darlings with perfect hair, neon white teeth, and triple platinum credit cards were her neighbors up there. And it happened like that. Almost overnight. Others liked taking the spotlight for her discoveries and often got their faces in the newspaper for this reason. But their fame didn´t last. It couldn´t. She knew this. It´s why she never got upset about such things and just kept moving on to whatever next captured her fancy. Today it was George. He worked the late shift at the coffee place behind the rodeo bar. He´d been awake for two days straight when she walked in wearing her fireman´s raincoat. She knew she liked him straight away, even before he spoke. It was something about his face, the way his eyes moved. There was a lot more going on inside him than most people. She was sure of this. Before he even had a chance to ask what she wanted to order, she asked why he wasn´t sleeping. He was taken aback, but not too much. Not more or less than she´d expected. He was good at the game, just as she´d hoped. He kept his nonchalance. In fact, instead of answering or asking what she wanted, he told her. And he was right all the way down to the sprinkles on top of the frozen half mocha with a raw egg inside. She wasn´t used to people playing at her level and so graced him with a brief, coy smile, and said simply “Yes.” Not much on the surface of that word, but within it were also the keys to her flat and a thousand unexpected longings of finally finding someone who did not in some way want to be who she already was. She sat in the back in the shadows where her face would not be seen. There was a bit too much of a following of her in this area of town. Lately she´d almost considered adding the accoutrement of a veil to her look. Just to get some distance. But she knew this, too, would backfire, drawing even more attention—at least at first, until it caught on and everyone and their dog were also wearing veils. But with him she didn´t want a veil. She wanted open access. Something raw and new and brave. It had been too long since she´d let herself feel the deep slices of intimacy you could only get when you had something big to lose. She watched him walking through the tables toward her. She liked it how he wasn´t and wouldn´t look at her. He´d understood her “yes” and was giving it back to her with his well crafted indifference. She would be his completely if he set her tray down and walked away without a word. How could he know her so well when nobody else did? She wasn´t even sure she knew herself as well as he seemed to and yet they´d not even met. The tray with her drink was placed on the table. He bowed his head ever so slightly, turned and departed. Her heart stopped.