The Wall Crossers

November - Friday - Mon - Anja's Perspective

Friday

It is Friday at six pm in early November. I am with Jelena at Werner's club. Well, it is a member-only club for business executives in Steglitz district, which is close to Jelena's work and a 20-minute bus-ride away from mine. Jelena can get us in as she has a guest pass from Werner!

We are here for dinner together. My intent is to tell Jelena about Horst. We will just be catching up on our lives since our last time together, at her party in October.

Livie is at a loose end tonight. I told her I will be late with Jelena, but please come to my flat tomorrow, Saturday, and we will spend the day together! Plus I want to cook dinner and celebrate—Horst? But I did not yet mention the news of Horst... that is a surprise!

We are already seated and chatting.

Jelena is so pretty and professional this evening! She has her long black hair up in a tight bun with a long diamond-tipped pin holding it together. Her refined, classically beautiful face is touched just enough with makeup to have her face stand out as vibrant. Red lipstick and nails. Diamond studs in her ears. Mascara and light eye shadow. A gorgeous, expensive Cartier watch on a thin gold band on her left arm.

She is wearing a Rosewe khaki cape shoulder-sheath two-piece business dress with slits along the outside thighs, knee Length and half sleeve—very elegant, with a double row of buttons down the cape and mid-way down the skirt! She has on white suede pumps. She has a diamond pendant and a diamond ring on her right hand. Did Werner give her this? Probably not.

Jelena's Father is an executive at Siemens and helped her secure a position right out of school and already she is a Supervisor! She met Werner, her boyfriend, at work.

Jelena's steel gray with a trace of blue eyes are striking, today as always! She is a force and beauty to behold.

Since I came directly from work for our meeting, I am wearing my standard work wear—today the charcoal dress with coral blouse under that. And the black low block-heel slingback pumps, and pantyhose. I have my cinnamon lip gloss, and Livie's coral ring. I have only very light makeup on today, it being Friday, and sort of dress-down on those days. No eye makeup and no nail polish.

Jelena and I have already ordered our dinners, and have been talking about work, and she has been lamenting the travails of managing young girls in her typing pool.

Jelena says, "These girls—they are so lazy! They have such poor attendance! Of my twelve girls, almost every day, there is at least one or two who call requesting to stay home from work!" She is shaking her head, expression pained.

I say, "No! I cannot believe it! Why?"

"Oh, they are sick with a stomach ailment. Or they are having their period. Or they are breaking up with their boyfriends!" Jelena reaches into her bag as it hangs on the chair back and pulls out a pack of cigarettes and lighter, offers me one, I shake my head No, and she lights one up, taking a deep drag, and then raising her head and blowing smoke in frustration toward the high ceiling of the club.

I clasp my hands together intertwining my fingers and put them under my chin, thinking, and after a moment say, "You know, Jelena, in our department at work, we almost never have an absentee."

She has been watching other people arrive in the front door, raising her head to look beyond me in that direction, almost as if expecting someone. She taps ashes into a glass tray, looks back at me with her penetrating eyes. "I cannot believe that!"

"Yes. It is true."

"How many girls are in your bay at work, Anja?"

Without hesitation I reply, "Fifteen."