Sorry by Zoran Drvenkar Read Free Book Online Page A

laugh. It’s as if they have no ballast.
    We’re approaching the start. You are now ready for the present and know who’s going to be crossing your path. Over the next few days you will learn more about Frauke, Tamara, and Wolf. Kris, on the other hand, will remain a mystery to you. He’ll get close to you, but he’ll still stay out of reach. All your efforts to uncover his motivation and his background will trickle into the sand. You won’t be able to bridge the distance between you and him until the finale. But you don’t need to worry about that now.
    In a few minutes it will all begin.
    It’s midnight.
    Four people are sitting in an apartment. They’ve talked a lot, they’veeaten and drunk and they’re glad they’ve met up again. The singing of Thomas Dybdahl comes out of the speakers, the wail of an ambulance siren rises up from the street, then it’s quiet again and Berlin goes on breathing. Calm and resolute.
    Four friends are sitting in an apartment. They have more defeats than victories to show for themselves. They live on their overdrafts, hope for the love of their lives, and shop at Aldi, even though they hate Aldi. Up until now not one of the four has the slightest idea where they’re headed. If chance had willed it, Tamara wouldn’t have picked up the phone and would still be lying on her bed reading. A frustrated Frauke would have ended up staying over with one of her three lovers, and Wolf would have spent the day outside the university and gone to the cinema with Kris in the evening. If chance had willed it, none of any of this would have happened.
    But today chance doesn’t come into it.
    “I have to piss,” says Kris, and goes off to the bathroom.
    Wolf passes the joint to Tamara. She shakes her head and says her eyes are too dry, she can’t smoke any more, then she creeps on all fours to the stereo to change the CD. Wolf tries to slap her on the bum, and misses by a foot and a half. Frauke nestles her head on his thigh. Tamara puts on Elbow. Guy Garvey sings,
I haven’t been myself lately, I haven’t slept for several days
. Wolf thinks the guy knows what he’s talking about. Tamara says the last time she had an orgasm she smelled flowers. She doesn’t say that when she was having her last orgasm she was by herself in the shower thinking about a film star. Wolf doesn’t want to know the details, either. He feels Frauke’s breath on his thigh and tries to suppress an erection. There’s a sound of flushing. Kris comes out of the bathroom and stops in the doorway. He looks at his friends as if he hasn’t seen them for days. Then he says:
    “Do you know what people out there lack?”
    “I know what you lack,” says Tamara.
    “No, seriously. What do people lack?”
    “Which people?”
    “Business types, for example. What are they short of?”
    “Good taste?” Wolf suggests.
    “Dammit, take me seriously here, people. Just for a minute, OK?”
    “OK, then, tell us,” says Frauke. “What do people lack?”
    Frauke can do that. She can switch from one moment to the next, while Wolf takes a bit longer. Tamara, on the other hand, doesn’t reactat all. She tosses around in her head the memory of the flowers that she smelled when she had her last orgasm, and suddenly bursts out laughing. Frauke nudges her. Tamara stops laughing. Kris raises his index finger, every inch the teacher.
    “There’s one thing,” he says, “that bosses and action men lack, and which they can’t get by without. There’s one thing that hangs over their lives like a dark shadow and pisses in their macchiato every day. No wealth protects them against it, it doesn’t even help if they make donations to charity or take out
Greenpeace
magazine subscriptions for their employees. This one little thing makes their lives so incredibly difficult that you can see it in their faces.”
    Kris looks at them one by one. It’s plain that none of them has the faintest idea what he’s talking about. So Kris