Sorry by Zoran Drvenkar Read Free Book Online Page B

stretches out his right hand, palm upwards, like an offering.
    “They can’t apologize,” he says. “And that’s exactly what we’re going to offer them. Apologies galore, at a damned good price.”
FRAUKE
    K RIS TALKS ABOUT HIS morning at the Urbanhafen and how he apologized to the woman. He said he knew exactly what was going on with her.
    “And she believed me. She accepted my apology without hesitation. No doubt, nothing.”
    “You couldn’t have done that with me,” says Frauke.
    “With me you could,” says Tamara.
    They talk for a while, and one idea chases the next. They anticipate each other’s sentences, they are moving on a single wavelength, so that Frauke can’t shake the feeling of floating above the ground.
    It’s the dope
, she thinks,
we’re just a bit high, it’s nothing more than that
.
    But it isn’t the dope or the wine. It’s a particular string of circumstances that brings particular people together at particular times. And anyone who finds that puzzling has never been influenced by such a concatenation.
    At three in the morning Wolf gets up and announces that he’s going to butter some rolls.
    “I’m incredibly hungry, aren’t you?”
    They watch him go, then Tamara explodes with laughter and says, “He’s not really going to do rolls, is he?”
    “Of course I’m doing rolls!” come the words from the kitchen.
    They laugh, tears run down their faces, they gasp for air. The last time they got so hysterical was at the end of school. All the senior grades went to the Teufelsberg to celebrate their goodbyes. Kris wore a suit, Frauke and Tamara came in dresses. Black and white. They all felt inviolable, and Frauke can still remember what she whispered in Tamara’s ear:
I’m immortal, what about you?
Tamara had grinned and said she was with them.
Of course I’m with you, do you think I’d leave you in the lurch?
    They thought the whole world was at their feet. First university, then the big job, then masses of cash. They particularly agreed on the last point. They planned to meet up again in a few years and celebrate their successes appropriately. Even today Frauke can’t get her head round how naïve they were back then. They talked about going abroad, as if abroad were right on their doorstep waiting for them. England, Spain, Australia, China. They wanted to go everywhere.
We thought no one could touch us. We thought we could get everything that could be—
    “Frauke, are you still there?”
    Tamara snaps her fingers in front of her face.
    “Where else would I be?” Frauke asks back.
    She has no idea how long she was thinking about the party on the Teufelsberg. No one is laughing now. Kris rolls the next joint, Wolf goes on busying himself in the kitchen, and Tamara sits with a ballpoint in her hand, bent over a notepad.
    “One minute,” she says.
    Frauke is amazed at what it is that has brought her and Tamara together and held them together for so long. There was one falling-out during their school days. Tamara had met a new clique of girls, and Frauke didn’t fit in with them at all. It was a bad month, and then all of a sudden Tamara sat next to Frauke during break and said it had been a really bad idea. Frauke never told her that she could almost have cried with relief. She felt incomplete without her best friend. She knows exactly what her life would be without Tamara. Like an endless winter’s day. Like no sun ever again.
    “I’ve got it.”
    Tamara holds the notepad out to Frauke. Frauke reads, and the grin vanishes from her face.
    “What’s up?”
    Kris crouches down and joins them. He and Frauke freeze. Wolf comes out of the kitchen with the rolls.
    “What’s wrong with you guys?”
    Tamara blushes.
    “Nothing in particular. It’s just what Kris said,” she explains, and is about to set the notepad aside when Kris grabs it.
    “You’ve
just
written this?” he asks. Tamara shrugs.
    “I could try and do it a different way, if you …”
    She gets no