“That’s rude, you know, staring at people while they eat,” she says around a mouthful of green beans.
“It’s also rude to talk with your mouth full. Yet here we are.” He waits a moment as though deciding whether to concede, and then adds, “I came to collect you. I thought it would be polite to let you finish dinner.”
She growls softly and attacks her meal with renewed energy. Emilie is neither delicate nor discreet about the way she dispatches the rest of her meal. She’s hungry, damn it, and she doesn’t care if Max is horrified. Perhaps this will run him off. She can feel the taut thread of exhaustion in her spine begin to fray, ready to snap. With a job like this, each day brings a definite and complete end to her coping skills. She stabs at a loose green bean with the tines of her fork and watches it skitter off the edge of the plate and onto the table. She pinches it with two fingers and eats it anyway. Of course someone would need her the moment she finally has a chance to sit down and eat. Emilie catalogues the passengers she is responsible for on this flight, trying to guess which one might have paged her. It’s a game she plays on every trip, and she’s almost always correct. She once had a passenger on board the Columbus who insisted that Emilie clean beneath her toenails with a letter opener every night before bed. Emilie had the woman pegged as trouble the moment she walked up the gangway pinching her nostrils and complaining about the harbor stench.
“Was it good?” Max asks when she finally sets her fork down.
“I don’t know. I didn’t get the chance to taste it.” She’s immediately sorry for snapping at him. She softens her tone. “Haven’t you eaten?”
“I’m still on duty.” He shrugs. “The mail.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
Max waves the apology away and motions her toward the door. They step into the dim, empty corridor. She straightens her uniform, then takes a deep breath to gird herself for whatever distasteful task awaits. “Which one of the passengers paged me?”
“I never said a passenger needed you.”
“You said you came to—”
“Collect you.”
“For what?”
Max extends his hand, palm up, as though pleading. “There’s something I’d like to show you.”
A memory, sudden and Technicolor, rises to the surface: Hamburg, Germany, twenty years ago, a blue door, a red dress, and fingers fumbling at a zipper. Emilie leans against the corridor wall to steady herself as a sudden, unexpected burst of laughter erupts. Two minutes ago she wanted to stab Max with her fork, and now she can barely stand because she’s laughing so hard.
“What’s so funny?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t help it. The last time a boy said those words to me, I was fifteen years old, and Frank Becker took me to the back of my father’s shop and tried to show me his Schwanz.”
Max is dark. Black hair. Olive skin. Eyes like flint. But the color still begins to show in his face, and this makes her laugh even harder. She’s doubled over now, arms wrapped around her ribs, leaning hard against the wall so she won’t tip over.
“That’s not what I…I don’t…well, I mean I do, but…Schei?e! I’ll shut up.”
Her breath comes in gasps. “Oh no, do keep going.”
Max clears his throat. Tries to regain his dignity. To match her bawdiness. “Did he succeed, then, Frank Becker?”
“Almost. I left him there, balled up on the floor grabbing his crotch.”
“Duly noted.”
“Oh, I was curious.” Emilie hiccups. “But I felt that I had to kick him on principle.”
“No uninvited Schwanz flashing?”
“It simply won’t do.” She gives a curt shake of her head, making her curls bounce against her shoulders. “Besides, I was a good girl. And my father would have castrated Frank if he’d found out. A bloody mess that would have been, given that he worked with Frank’s father.”
“Pun intended?”
“Most definitely.”
“And what did your father do for a living?”
“He was a butcher.”
Now it’s Max’s turn to laugh. It occurs to Emilie that she likes the sound very much and that she doesn’t hear it often enough.
“I am curious about something, Herr Zabel.”
“Yes?”
“Why is it that I can’t spend ten minutes in your company without laughing?”
There’s something about the look on his face, like he’s pleased with the whole world, like this is a private triumph. She wants to know what’s behind that look, but she is also aware that Max has revealed a lot about his feelings for her, and that she has given him little in the way of reciprocation. So she isn’t surprised when he brushes the question aside.
“If you’re going to make a joke about my face, I’d like the chance to beg your mercy. My Schwanz has already shrunk an inch thanks to your last story. I’m not sure how much more of your honesty I can take.”