You. Zoran Drvenkar

      “Oh, come on.”

      You hammer your lighter on the palm of your hand. The flint crunches, there’s no spark. Great. Now what? You can’t just go back in there and ask for a light, they’ll lynch you. Go to the counter, they’re bound to have a light.

      You’re half the way there when this guy comes from the bottom of the stairs. He was probably in the john, hasn’t missed anything anyway.

      “Got a light?”

      He takes out this enormous golden flamethrower.

      “It’s my dad’s,” he tells you, as if he’d inherited it, as if he had to explain it, as if you’d asked. He probably swiped the lighter when his dad was looking the other way, wanna bet? Guy as tall as a basketball player, much older than you. Mid-twenties. Gives you a light and smiles. Nice.

      “Thanks.”

      “You don’t like the movie?”

      “Boring.”

      “That’s the word.”

      That smile again; you smile back. It’s better than standing around on your own anyway.

      “How about an ice cream?”

      You tell him you’re waiting for your friends. You’re not that easy. He looks around, probably checking that he’s not dreaming and he really has met you. Hot mama that you are. Then he winks at you. He really winks. Maybe he’s gay or something.

      “We could wait outside and eat our ice cream. My treat. But only if you want to,” he adds, with a big fat question mark at the end. He’s actually really friendly, but let him twitch for a minute or two. Friendly’s only half the battle. You’re not naïve. Don’t trust strangers who offer you candy, Aunt Sissi drummed into you, and if you’ve grown up without parents you listen to your aunt.

      “Hm,” you say and pull in your stomach and check the guy out—black T-shirt, jeans, Doc Martens, leather bracelet, ponytail. No, he’s not gay, you’ve never seen a long-haired gay; and if your nose doesn’t deceive you he’s got just as much perfume behind his ears as you do. Smells good. When he glances at his watch, you see gold again. You could bet that when he laughs the sun comes out.

      “Why are you laughing?” he asks, and you just grin and he says, “We’ve got an hour, what do you think?” Questions about questions. Come on, Stink, behave yourself, he’s not going to go straight for your shorts, and if he does, you’ve put up with worse. So just be cool, go with it.

      “Ice cream sounds great,” you tell him and your heart starts to flutter loudly.

      Before you leave the foyer, you buy ice cream from the guy behind the counter. Of course you choose the most expensive one, you want to do this in style. The guy says Go for it and you laugh, and he laughs too, then you’re standing outside nibbling at your ice creams and glancing at each other. These are really flirty looks, they fall like a veil over your eyes and make your vision a little blurry. Leaving the cinema wasn’t such a bad idea after all. From a certain angle the guy looks like Alberto. Alberto wasn’t an Italian, you just wished he was. Alberto came from the East and his real name was Albert, but what sort of a name is that? Alberto sounded miles better. That guy, oh hell, he could really turn you on. He was wild about you. Wanna eatsch you up, he said. Stupid lisp, but at least it made you laugh. And you didn’t want to talk to him anyway. He made out with you wherever you were and nibbled away at your lips as if they were pink chewing gum. And once at the bus stop he shoved his hands down the back of your jeans and grabbed you by the ass. Alberto, what’re you doing? you asked him and he pressed himself closer to you so that you could feel his erection, massaging your ass as if it were an overripe peach and breathing heavily. I’m an ath fetishist, he muttered in your ear, almost blowing your head off. And you weren’t cool at all by then and murmured back: Whatever that is. You had no idea what an ass fetishist was and you didn’t have much time to think about it, because Alberto was pressing and kneading your cheeks till you thought: Help, he’s going to tear me in two! It didn’t come to that, though, because Alberto suddenly went quiet and rigid and stopped breathing at all while having an orgasm pressed against your belly, and that happened all at the bus stop on a lovely day in May.

      “… never seen it. I went to Berlin a lot as a child. My father lives in Friedrichshain, my half brother in Zehlendorf. But my mother lives in Hamburg, that’s where I grew up …”

      The guy talks and talks and smiles at you and you think: How long’s he been talking? You smile back and lick a bit of ice cream from your wrist and wonder if he’s an ass fetishist as well.

      “So you’re just visiting?” you say, picking up the end of his last sentence.

      “Right.”

      “Cool.”

      “What about you? Still at school?”

      You show him your wrist. There’s a little tattoo at the spot where they take your pulse. The writing’s tiny, one word, not more.

      “Gone?”

      “Right, gone.”

      “School?”

      You nod.

      “High school graduation?”

      “Nah.”

      You roll your eyes and laugh. Be honest, you don’t look like graduation. You look like a wildcat in a petting zoo. But don’t tell him that. And watch out, here comes the next question.

      “And what are your plans?”

      “We’ll see. Maybe I’ll open a beauty salon. Something like that. You?”

      “I don’t know where I want to go.”

      Funny answer, you think, and pretend to study the movie posters. Let the guy look at you in peace. Maybe he hasn’t got a girlfriend, you could be with him for a while. But guys like him always have girlfriends. One of those smoothies who never have to go to the bathroom and in the morning they smell like flowers. That’s the kind of girl he would have. He’s much too nice for this world—he speaks nice, he smells nice and seems to have money. Maybe he’ll lend you ten euros, then you’d have to see each other again so that you could give him the money back.

      You feel him looking at you. His eye wanders up from your platforms up to your worn bell-bottomed cord jeans, the belt pulled tight, narrow waist, blouse under your velvet jacket, long pause on your breasts—of course he lingers there, he paid for the ice cream, he can linger. Perhaps he’s noticed that your red hair makes you look a bit like the actress Kristen Bell, but he’s probably never even seen Veronica Mars or Heroes.

      “How old are you?” he asks and his eyes are on your mouth.

      “Seventeen,” you lie, adding a year. “You?”

      “Too old.”

      “Come on.”

      “How about twenty-seven?”

      “Definitely too old,” you say and laugh.

      He laughs too, takes a breath and tells you his name.

      “Nice to meet you, Neil. I’m Stink.”

      “Funny name.”

      You wave dismissively.

      “It’s because of the perfume.”

      “You named yourself after a book?”

      “What book?”

      “You know, the novel.”

      “No, it’s because I always smell so nice. Here.”

      He bends forward and sniffs your wrist.

      “Smells good.”

      You look at each other. He knows there is more to this name.

      “And