A waiter approaches—bow tie, white shirt, vest. “Dresden,” the waiter says, and I wake up.
We’re pulling into the Dresden station, and a few people shuffle off and on. Newcomers scan across each compartment, looking for someone quiet or chatty or nice or worth hitting on. I scowl and spread out, trying to look as hostile and unappealing as possible, and mostly it works. A thin guy with brown hair pulled into a greasy ponytail pauses in the doorway, studying my face before moving on. He seems to be looking for someone specific, and I’m not her.
The train chuffs and begins moving again, the homes and graffiti-covered buildings of Dresden’s bad part of town slipping by. I heard it had been a gorgeous place before World War II—like Florence, Italy, except in Germany. Beautiful, medieval, irreplaceable. But a few months before the war ended, the Yanks and Brits firebombed the whole thing, burned it to the ground, boiling tens of thousands of soldiers and workers and mothers and children alive in their own skins. I read about it once in a book by Kurt Vonnegut.
I pull out my phone and send a text to Terrance: On a train and fell asleep. Had a dream about you.
A reply comes back exactly twenty-seven seconds later. O rly? What about?
Miles Davis was playing, I write back. We were at Waldorf. The bar.
A longer wait for a reply this time. It’s afternoon in New York. I picture him sitting in class, thumbing his response under the desk. I think abt u a lot.
I smile, blink a few times. I think abt u too.
Anything u need. Im here.
Strangely, I believe it. It’s an absolute in my mind, an axiom, that though I hardly know the guy, he means what he says. Then, as if reading my thoughts, a follow-up:
I can come and b with u. Help u. I’ll get on a plane. B there tomorrow.
Even though I’m alone in the compartment, I spread my hand across my face so no one can see the expression on it, which is mine and mine alone, torture and gratitude all at once.
Thank u. Maybe soon. Not now.
The truth is, I want him here desperately, but I know better. I know that what’s coming next will be infinitely harder than what’s come before and a soft Upper East Side kid won’t last a second. The help he could provide—his skills, his resources, his kindness—would all be squandered here.
I start to type something back, but it’s too long and too sincere. It’s the kind of thing that should only be said face-to-face. So I delete it. Damn my luck, having to go off to war when all I want to do is run away with that beautiful boy and live off wild berries and love.
*
The train moves past the outskirts of Dresden, picking up speed, the buildings becoming a blur. Close to the border now. We’ll be in Prague in an hour. The conductor comes through again, and I can hear the clicking of his ticket puncher as he works his way through the new passengers who just got on.
I grab my backpack and head to the restroom, where I wash my face, cleaning off the dried Berlin sweat.
A knock on the bathroom door: polite, inquiring.
“Einen Moment,” I say.
Another knock, more insistent.
“Einen Moment!”
And one more knock, just to piss me off.
I yank the door open to find the guy with the ponytail who got on at Dresden. There’s maybe three or four days’ worth of stubble on his face and a small pistol in his hand.
“Step back,” he says in English.
I try to slam the door shut, but he shoulders it open again.
“Get the fuck against the wall,” he seethes, one hand gripping me by my jacket lapel, the other leveling the pistol at my face. He squeezes himself into the tiny bathroom and kicks the door closed behind him.
The man’s English isn’t native, and his accent isn’t German. Still, I have to assume this is a gift from Paulus, which means Paulus has somehow gotten free. It wasn’t all that hard to figure out where I’d be headed, so one phone call later a friend meets the train in Dresden. I should have burned the fucker alive.
“Here’s what will happen,” the guy says. “We will soon cross the border into Czech. At the first stop, you and I will get off the train. We will do this quietly, and without making trouble. Clear?” His left hand paws over my body and through each pocket in a quick frisk for weapons. The knife I took from Paulus—where is it? The backpack. Sitting next to the sink.
The lights above the mirror flicker with the motion of the train, which is slowing down. I feel myself tilting toward the back of the car and suppose we’re climbing a hill. My new friend with the gun shifts his weight to brace himself.
“How much is Paulus paying you?” I ask.
“What?”
“How much is Paulus paying you? Maybe I can top it.”
“Who’s Paulus?”
I make a calm assessment of the situation and try to think of what Yael would advise. As I was so many times in training, I seem to be in a position of absolute disadvantage. He has a gun; I have nothing.
I eye my backpack and nod in its direction. “Do you mind if I get something out of there?”
“No.”
“No you don’t mind, or no I can’t get something out of there?”
His eyes narrow with confusion. “No—you cannot.”
“I need a tampon,” I say in English, then with the German pronunciation, “Tahm-pohn.”
He gets the gist of it and grimaces. “You wait.”
“Not the way it works. I need it quick. Right now. Otherwise it’s going to be very gross for both of us.”
He hoists the backpack and starts rifling through it.
“Make sure it’s not one of the used ones.”
He blinks at me in confusion, shuffling through whatever notecards he has in his mind on the topic of women and tampons. Then he shoves the backpack at me and brings the muzzle of the gun close to my face. “You get it,” he says. “But do not try anything.”
I take up the backpack—heavy with clothes, toiletries, everything I own—and give him a submissive, reassuring smile. We never break eye contact, my new friend and I, as I dig through it and find what I’m looking for, Paulus’s knife. “Thanks,” I say.
As he starts reaching for the bag, I thrust it hard at his face. His gun hand swings toward me, but I grab the pistol and twist it away, snapping his trigger finger all the way back. The shout of pain is nearly deafening.
Somehow he finds space to swing his left fist, and it lands on the side of my head as I reach for the door. The pistol tumbles from my hand and into the space beside the toilet. I lash out with the knife, but he dodges it easily and sends his knee into my stomach.