grayspike

Marianne surprised me Thursday. She blocked my office door as I was grinding through paperwork.

Actually she wasnt that big a surprise. Shed alerted me weeks ago about visiting New York to attend the tennis.

Marianne lives in Hamburg. Although her English contains passable enough slang, she holds fast to the German need for placing definite articles before proper nouns.

Bright blue eyes search out from underneath coal-black bangs. When properly prompted, her tight mouth expands into a surprisingly warm and wide smile.

Now that my personal hell month (you may call it August) is done, out of town friends are starting to arrive. Each and every one of them comes in seeking an only in New York adventure. One which will both thrill and caution those scaredy cats back home who lack nerve to face down the big citys challenges.

Yes. That was condescending. But I have friends whose eyes still havent fully popped back in their heads from previous trips here.

Thanks to Sex & the City many people around the country drink Cosmopolitans, yet not everyone can be cosmopolitan.

Marianne looks good. Tan. Robust. I guess Sylt because its typical for someone of her station. She corrects me. Mallorca. While money allows her to wear Jil Sander, Marianne remains a kiez girl at heart.

She extends an appropriate amount of condolence. Its enough to be genuine, though it stops short of making us both feel awkward.

Marianne and I share an unusual connection. Weve been intimate but were not very close. Weve known each other since just before the Berlin Wall fell. We dont have any mutual acquaintances. Except for her husband and daughter. Them knowing me is unavoidable.

Marianne smiling at my door is a perfect reason to play hooky. We leave for one of the local restaurants specializing in parilla. Fortunately Labor Day is within sniffing range. Many who would crowd the room have bled out early for their long weekends.

We get seated quick and start catching up. It doesnt take long until conversation reaches Aziza. Marianne more than liked Aziza. She found the Albanian to be kindred. Given the opportunity, she wouldve brought Aziza to Germany.

I understand. Marianne saw a lot of her early self in Aziza. Both followed the same basic trajectory. However, Marianne parlayed her street smarts into a jackpot. Aziza flamed out. Probably out of despair.

To see Marianne now strangers wouldnt realize the distance shes traveled. Personally, not physically.

By comparison Aziza didnt last beyond a few subway stops.

Marianne was stark naked when I first saw her. Tall, content with pert breasts, toned and tight from active living. The raven-haired 19-year-old danced in a Hamburg club. Well, maybe not dance. More like stand around, survey the clientele from the stage, hoping someone appreciated what she displayed, then later with her at his side buy himself numerous rounds before suggesting some lucrative consensual business.

Back when we werent as close and I less clever, she admonished me. She wasnt a whore. She was a businesswoman.

At the time I dismissed her semantics. It only took Marianne a relatively short time to validate her claim. In icy spades.

Long before marriage and child, Marianne worked the Reeperbahn, Hamburgs red-light district. World famous red-light district. Right up there with Amsterdams.

So famous it lured me from summertime London.

Thatcherite England was on the wane. I was only there because Drake, a friend from college, wangled a film school stipend. A flat in Earls Court included. He suggested I visit towards the end of his dubious studies. Movies he knew. Writing a presentable thesis he didnt.

Sure. Id already done the same for others throughout our undergraduate years. And none of them ever offered free lodging in return.

Weekdays while he gained knowledge Id regurgitate in entertaining and brilliant fashion, I ferried across the Channel and saw Europe. Northern Europe. It was something I shouldve immediately done upon graduation. Instead I waited years into my career. Making the pilgrimage before wage slavery wouldve left deeper imprints. Waiting later also decreased my carousing. The delay, though, made those explorations more rewarding and deserving.

It was on one of those short trips that I arrived in Hamburg. Sooner rather than later I washed up on the Reeperbahn.

Mariannes establishment wasnt my first call. Nor was it my last. I sampled heavily. Maybe excessively. But if one cant go overboard when one perceives himself as a man of steel, when can one?

Prior to entering Mariannes club I moored myself in one which screamed bad news! and whose girls all needed abandon hope all ye who enter inked above their pubes. Sober and older I may not have gone in without disinfectant, a whip and chair. Hindsight is now clearer than my vision on those nights.

I wasnt gong to let murkiness, shady women and dodgy customers deter me.

Inside, the dcor looked as if it hadnt been remodeled since the Kaiser last dropped trou. The Wall still up, all the girls were German

After one drink I made the acquaintance of, ah, I forgot her name. But she was an older bottle blonde, toothy, petite and expert at the sort of charades which quickly relieved us of our clothes.

The above state did not occur in the clubs main area. In alcoves, guests and girls could repair behind heavy velour canvases. These flaps quartered cramped fully furnished joy nests. Within which couples, or as it became, threesomes, could indulge in delightful misbehavior.

Somewhere around Sekt and foreplay, we were joined by a second woman. She was younger, tall and voluptuous. Between those walls she became a crowd by herself.

Most notable was her tan. She was dark enough to have been mistaken for an Arab. She was Schwabian, a distinction the little blonde transformed into a big deal. Splashed across one ponderous breasts, a big wine stain. First Gorbachevs forehead, then her boob.

The ober made several Sekt deliveries. The only moment I bothered wondering how he saw our merrymaking happened while the girls frolicked in search of the others pearl. While watching, a radio mast soared between my legs. He looked startled. Accustomed to seeing such as he undoubtedly had to have been, his gesture flattered me.

Hoch Deutsch, platt Deutsch, English, lousy English aside, we three sweat and ground along well. I learned no new tricks. I did learn how to dress up the old ones differently.

Expended, I intended wandering back to my hotel. Somehow Mariannes club, no more garish than the rest, caught my eye and detoured me.

Seated, I ordered a Cuba libre. (That the waitress knew. Rum & coke confounded her.) Midweek limited the crowd to tourists and pervs.

Mariannes tableau completed, she bound herself in several strips of cloth then joined the new meat. Keeping it simple for everybody, I bought her a Cuba libre.

She settled beside me looking for commerce. We spoke in rote sentences. Mention of my hotel mustve given her nightmares of shallow pockets. Ignorant of Hamburg, I grabbed a cheap hotel room close to the railway station.

Mariannes interest perked when I gave my profession. My card confirming it began thawing her more. Boring chitchat she mightve used with mid-level managers from the West German boons in Hamburg for business and big city diversion got chucked. Marianne grilled me thoroughly.

Satisfied I had much more to offer than marks, she asked the distance between New York and Boston. Not quite a question I expected. I hoped some virulent strain of cross-culture contamination hadnt infected her with Red Sox rooting.

Not in the least. She knew baseball like I knew curling.

Marianne revealed no affinity for the Hub. Not then anyway. The short trip, calculated in rough kilometers, satisfied her. So much so she dropped much of her earlier attitude.

She didnt become cuddly, though suspicion left our table. The night concluded early that morning. She took me to her apartment. Which was good because Hamburgs subway doesnt run 24 hours. Also, I was in no condition to decipher the night bus schedule.

Next afternoon I woke up mired in a mushy mattress, clouds of fluffy pillows and still fresh linen. Her bedroom wasnt girly but feminine. Either Id been straighter than I remembered or the German mania for order took hold because my clothes waited neatly piled on a chair. Even my shoes were aligned under the chair.

Once I checked pockets for wallet and passport I didnt bother dressing. Hearing the unmistakable rattle of pots and pans, I naturally assumed Marianne was in the kitchen slapping together some eats. Since wed obviously performed the Mystery Dance, I saw no need for conventional modesty.

Correct about the first assumption. Wrong about the second.

At least skinnies wouldve maintained a level of decorum. Flimsy decorum.

Marianne was in the kitchen. Food was being prepared. Her mother, with whom she shared the apartment, sat at the table polishing off a cup of coffee. She was a harder version of Marianne.

Somehow whoops! just wouldnt have sufficed. The mother remained unperturbed. She looked me up and down then remarked how Marianne sure liked em hairy and circumcised. Coffee finished, the mother stood, collected her purse, passed kisses with daughter and was gone.

Marianne clarified her mothers statement. At the same age the older woman knew only certain kinds of people endured circumcision. Then the practice had been ritual, today it was common.

Oh. That explained everything.

Fed, and later in the afternoon clothed, we took our leave. Marianne asked me to come by the club again that night. She wanted to know more. She faked friendliness. Such an effort made me curious.

Our second night everything was better. Rested, sober and now aware, I could be attentive. As well as much more involved in our fucking. Moreover, the next afternoon I remembered her mother mayve been lurking about.

No need for my strolling around as nature intended to dredge up more of the past.

Hamburg passed by too fast. In London, Id fretted about what Id see and do there. The Reeperbahn, and by extension Mariannes bedroom, mollified me and compressed time.

Marianne made certain she had my addresses correct. Frankly I didnt think our carrying on had been all that devotional. Regardless of how she described herself, I knew what she was all about.

Addresses exchanged we said good-byes. Mine cordial, hers approaching lukewarm. Back in the States if I thought about Marianne it only concerned the pleasure our bodies had extracted. Id pretty much relegated her to opportunity enjoyed and gradually forgotten. Her first letter ended that.

I got those pages at work.

Worldly and knowledgeable as we were to have been, my co-workers turned simple over the foreign return address. They begged to know what my fraulein had written. Had she enclosed pictures?

I worried whether Mariannes letter informed its yours! and that any accompanying photograph might be too candid. Thankfully she was a circumspect German.

Although we started a frequent exchange, we never became that close. Or so I mistakenly believed. And believed until one afternoon I found myself at JFK anxiously waiting for her Lufthansa flight to land.

Mariannes first trip had developed across the subsequent fall and winter. America lured her. While neither encouraging nor discouraging her, I did kind of offer a bed convenient to Midtown New York.

Even amid New Yorks splendors, well, the splendors I could afford, Marianne remained fixed on Boston. She wheedled. I relented quick.

If she noticed Amtrak had little in common with Deutsches Bahn, Marianne left it unmentioned. Since the Red Sox werent hosting the Yankees, I easily reserved a room in what those years served as my usual Boston hotel, the Comm Ave. HoJo. It was near Fenway, the Rat and Daisy Buchanans.

Baseball, loud dive bar nor meat market hangout interested her. Neither did the MFA or Gardiner Museum.

Marianne held her intentions tight until the last possible moment. This occurred in the office of an Eastern New England noteworthy. Although ancient, his position emeritus, he still reaped widespread and deep respect. Certainly his decades of charitable donations expanded such benevolence.

Nor did it hurt any that he was white-haired and his eyes twinkled when he smiled. As the company propaganda sobbed, hed come to the States penniless from a d.p. camp after World War II. Owing to Alger-like hard work and pluck, he amassed a fortune.

The story glowed so brightly readers couldnt squint between the lines. His was a result we Americans enjoy. Though all too often how gets ignored. Marianne knew the how.

Exploiting my association, my profession then, she got us a meeting. One his daughter attended.

Hed married late in life. The daughter was maybe six years Mariannes senior. It was obvious daddys little girl was being groomed for a fine place at the corporate trough.

I could only imagine how often she demanded her ass kissed. If she didnt have him and his money behind her, she wouldve been ugly. That family name, that bank account, beautified.

Worst thing was she knew it. She tried compensating insecurity with superior attitude. Which made her uglier rather than assertive.

Marianne started on the old fellow. Their German was rapid, pointed, threatening and ultimately defensive. I understood little. He came from what had been Prussia, now someplace swallowed by Poland. That perhaps his public image had little to do with his actual ascension.

Phrased as I hoped I heard incorrectly, Mariannes bits and pieces sounded like extortion.

Fortunately, the daughter lacked any ability in daddys native language. She knew something was up. But she didnt know what. Good because she was the type who wouldve gotten all kinds of righteously indignant. Which only wouldve hindered business.

Marianne had played him right. He valued his sterling reputation. The truth, whatever he and Marianne concealed, wouldve blackened it. Him. His family.

She has yet to reveal the coercion to me. I doubt she ever will.

They didnt waste much effort haggling over terms. Among the morsels Marianne let drop: the arrangement continued in perpetuity.

The plenty she told on the train back to New York were empty calories. Much was left unexplained.

I asked whether shed ever worried the old man mightve been cantankerous enough to damn us both as well as himself.

Marianne said a strange thing. Hed been a peasant. The suit, his position, his outward bearing did nothing to improve his core. Once she exposed him, she had the upper hand.

Like the old man, I knew absolutely shed have pressed her advantage.

Marianne wears Jil Sander today. Chain mail should be beneath it.