Marianne, a Friend from Germany Ch. 02

He downed his in the American fashion. He treated it like a shot. The gesture dismayed the assembled Germans.

Returned to night, Abercrombie still felt restless. He wasn't ready for that stroll past St. Michael's towards his hotel. And stroll it would've been because the subway stopped running hours ago while the night bus schedule was a tossup.

One of the Reeperbahn's gaudier cash traps caught his eye. Damned if after so many years he could remember what its neon yelled out. "Belligerent American" must have been stamped across his forehead. The doorman let him slide inside without forking over cover.

This club was just as morose as his previous stop. Except shadows blanketed modern furniture, American honky-tonk the music. The 19-year-old he came to know as Marianne stalked the stage.

Abercrombie seated himself in a black pleather banquette. A fraulein hustled around. He ordered a Cuba Libre. Until he clarified it the exotic name for rum & coke stumped her.

Drink before him, Abercrombie watched Marianne perform her minimal dance. She finished to the collective thought of applause. Another just as nude entertainer took her place. Neither did she trouble to pick up the beat.

Moments later, cloth strips concealing her excitable parts, he saw Marianne circulate around the room. No. Abercrombie misjudged. She meandered towards him. Filling space beside him confirmed that.

Abercrombie's German responses to Marianne's rote questions revealed his accent. She switched to stilted grammatically correct English.

"I need the practice," she said. "I hope it's not a bother."

Abercrombie assured Marianne her English wasn't bothersome at all. Now he really looked at her. He gathered she was more than some dead-ender lurking there to earn subsistence, or get enough to feed her monkey, or keep some man from honest labor.

Beneath shimmering black hair a face seeking opportunity measured him as he did her. She exuded steady confidence. A jaded kind of confidence. The sort which might've scared an American man who preferred his women mousy and compliant.

She'd be the kind of woman who'd give that guy "angst." And not sweetly, either. That she could be mistaken as a threat pleased Abercrombie.

Without the prodding of commission sales, he bought her a Cuba Libre. This unasked purchase ramped up the intelligence behind her eyes.

Marianne didn't know "newspaperman" but understood the completely pretentious "journalist." The general reporting rubric confused her. Perhaps she even started finding him disappointing until he cherry-picked examples of his more muckraking articles.

"Ah," she said, "so you are an investigative journalist."

Abercrombie skipped correcting her. Every reporter investigated. A few simply got more prominent column inches than others.

Marianne noticed he was unwed. His left hand's bare ring finger, bereft of discoloration, told all.

"Are you here in Hamburg writing a story?" she asked.

The same question by any other woman in a regular bar would've had Abercrombie fabricating in any direction which landed him in bed with his inquisitor. He knew the truth wouldn't rile or embarrass Marianne.

"I'm here for the Reeperbahn itself. Its amusements."

She appeared incredulous that he'd ventured across thousands of kilometers for mere licentiousness.

"Even I know you have entertainment for adults in America," she said.

Abercrombie avoided explaining America's sexual schizophrenia. Such heavy duty chat this time of night in this sort of place with her kind of woman struck his incongruity gong. He kept it facile. And laid it on thick.

"The Reeperbahn is world famous," he said. "Its delights excite men throughout the world. Since I'm curious -- and as you've noticed, single -- now was the time to see and learn whether its fame is deserved. No civilized place lacks for available diversions. But those of the Reeperbahn are particularly noted for their sensual skills."

A smile slowly developed on Marianne's face. She answered after a moment.

"I'm a businesswoman, sir. I'm not a prostitute. I wish I were then I'd have greater appreciation of your flattery. How much of that was bullshit?"

Abercrombie laughed at being so easily exposed. She joined him.

Their merriment subsiding, Marianne asked about his evening's previous stops. He didn't trouble himself nor insult her by asking how she'd known. What adult didn't know women possessed intuitive powers far exceeding those of men? Either that or he reeked of sex.

Abercrombie recapitulated his night. He would've done the same had an American woman insisted. Marianne's cool conduct lifted his opinion of her. She let him unwind his sexual frankness far beyond where Stateside women might've permitted. They would've drowned him in recrimination and added guilt-inducing tears for good measure.

Marianne, though, quizzed him about the other women's techniques.

Grilled and drained, Abercrombie made signs of leaving. He either had a long wait or a long walk ahead of him. Marianne inquired about his lodging. He stayed at one of the budget hotels lining the main train terminal's southside. She tried hiding her disdain.

Her disguise failed.

Plenty of possible responses flitted through his head. He held off a testy remark. Instead, Abercrombie reached into his wallet and handed her his card. If she ultimately doubted him because of a dubious temporary address, the thick corporate gray embossed card heralding Yankee omnipotence dispelled her uncertainty.

Her treasuring his card reminded him of an aboriginal grabbing hold then gulping from his or her first cola bottle.

Abercrombie's card also prompted the evening's most obscure question. Marianne asked the distance between his home in Greater New York and Boston.

First, he answered in miles. Realizing English measurement probably confused her, he roughed out the distance in kilometers.

She became pensive. So much so Abercrombie almost believed he heard her thought process.

Finally, Marianne said, "You go back to your hotel. Rest. Tomorrow see Hamburg. The Alster. Everything. Tomorrow night you come back here, yes? First, please. Herr Ian, you and I, we must discuss ..."

-15-