GARNET 2012 55
T HOM A S BROW NE The Layover The air tasted sweeter than usual. There was a fog dimming the lights along the street, casting bluish shadows throughout the room. It was night. We had been sitting in the apartment for about fifteen minutes, and the tension between us could be cut with a knife. I was in Sofie’s room for the first time since she moved to Berlin. I hadn’t seen her in two and a half years. I was worried that she had changed but she still had that deep dark brown hair and those eyes that could petrify a man. She still had that same air about her, as if nothing in the world mattered. We had just spent the past hour jumping from one bus to another on our way back from the airport. I had changed my ticket so that I could stop in Berlin before returning to America. I had known Sofie for about a year before she moved back to Berlin. I had the opportunity to study for a semester in Scotland, and figured I could schedule a layover in Germany and see Sofie once again. We had been roaming the streets with my two bags of luggage struggling against the freezing wind. Her house was a fifteen-minute walk from the bus stop and it seemed like we would never get there. I tried to start some kind of conversation, but it seemed like things were a bit awkward between us. I wasn’t sure what to say, should I ask her how she’s been? How are you supposed to answer that after a period of two years? I decided that it was best to take in the feel of the new city and to just smile at her when she looked at me. We finally made it into the cold of her home – we lit the old kitchen furnace for warmth. I laughed as I followed her into the side room, the walls were painted a pale yellow, and the shadows that danced on them seemed to have a life of their own. “What do you want to do?” she asked me, biting her lower lip. She had curled up on her twin bed, looking back at me, smiling. “I don’t know – I’m getting kind of hungry.” “We could go for some Italian, my friend and I just found this place a few bus stops away,” she said. I really did not want to leave the apartment. Sure I was hungry, but I hadn’t seen her in two years, I hadn’t touched her in two years. I had missed her. And now we had to play to formalities, a dinner, catching up out in some loud bar as if it were the first time we’d met. We had always led different lives; she didn’t care about a thing in the world. That was part of her charm. We decided to smoke a cigarette and have a glass of tea before leaving. I took a second to distribute my leaf evenly through the paper, rolled it between my thumb and forefinger so as to clump the tobacco together, and then sealed it with one lick. A perfectly rolled cigarette. I laughed, as I looked over at hers – fat, bulging in the middle, far too much tobacco thrown into too small a paper. The sides ripped and bits were dropping into the teacup below her. It looked like a misshapen sweet potato. After licking and lighting her cigarette she began to pour the tea. She poured the tea carelessly. It seemed deliberate that she spill half the pot onto the pile of papers beside her, then carelessly sweep the wet papers onto the floor. Deliberately. Laughing, she asked if I wanted sugar, and then proceeded to let me know that she didn’t take sugar in her tea, so she didn’t have any to give. She stirred it anyway, excessively, so that tea spilled all down the sides of the cup,