Whiskey Latte

October, 2016

October, 2016

Ingrid's phone rang early on a Sunday morning. It startled Dale awake, but Ingrid only groaned and, reaching out for it, managed to knock it off the nightstand.

"Fuck," she grunted.

Soon, it stopped. She stretched to pick it up and peered at the screen.

"Fuck," she mumbled again.

With great, lethargic difficulty, Ingrid crawled out of bed, slipped her nightgown on and, pulling up her hair, trudged into the bathroom. She came out looking a little livelier but still scowled down at her phone. She turned to leave as she called back the number that had ruined her morning.

Dale dozed off, but the sun had long risen and he was now too sensitive to the light to fall back asleep. He sat up, yawning and wondering what had happened. Ingrid was arguing so loudly with her interlocutor that he could hear her from the kitchen. It made him curious. She never raised her voice like that.

Dale tiptoed into the hallway and stood by the kitchen door, eavesdropping. He could catch some of the words, even though she was talking in Romanian. His interest in her had prompted him to fill his smartphone with language-learning apps in an attempt to decipher Romanian. He could pick up, albeit barely, the words 'mother' and 'money.' Something about...euros, the past and a month or maybe the moon.

Ingrid was mad, pacing around the kitchen.

He snuck back to the bedroom and took a casual stroll across the hall and into the kitchen, under the pretence he just needed a glass of water. Ingrid lowered her voice when he walked in, turning away from him. She obviously hurried to end the conversation. Dale propped himself on the countertop, with a glass of water in his hand. He stared at her back and she seemed to shudder with sobs.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

Ingrid heaved a long, heavy sigh.

"I'm fine." She faced him. "I'm sorry you had to witness that. It's that time of the month when my mum's running low on cash and calling me to beg for some."

He frowned. "Is something wrong with your mother?"

Ingrid rolled her eyes and threw her arms in the air.

"Where to even fucking begin!"

Dale realised he'd better drop the subject and switched to a harmless topic. Or so he hoped.

"You know, I've always wondered, ever since that evening in the park...when Oskar mentioned all the languages you could speak, in the end you said just 'English and German, please.' How come? I thought you couldn't remember Romanian well but clearly, that's not the case."

She cast him an irritated sideways glance.

"Yeah, well, I wish I couldn't remember it at all. It's a fugly language."

Dale didn't press it, although his curiosity was aroused now more than ever. Thankfully, Ingrid went on of her own accord.

"You know, most of the things I say are just my own...perceptions and personal opinions."

"Of course."

"Yes, of course, that does not necessarily mean that it's true or that you should take it seriously. By all accounts, objectively speaking, Romanian is a beautiful language. Very interesting, right? A little Latin oasis in the midst of a Slavonic region, but to me it's the language of...abuse and neglect. It's ugly as fuck. Whereas English...well, English was my saving grace and German..."

She paused, thoughtful, choosing her words.

"German was my lighthouse."

She laughed and shook her head at her own analogy.

"It sounds ridiculous, I know, but it was literally the light that kept me from getting lost...or wrecked. I excelled at German in school. My middle-school teacher lived next door to me. Her son, Filip, was just one year older than me. We'd go to school together. Do our homework together. He was my best friend since...forever and Frau Ionescu—my German teacher, that is, Filip's mother—she always made sure we were good pupils."

Nostalgia appeared to wash over her, wave after wave.

"Then when I went to high-school, English was already lingua franca but German...now that was a rare bird, which very few mastered."

Dale raised his eyebrows. "Lingua franca? Fuck, you're clever."

Ingrid made a bashful expression, unusual for her stern features. "I like to read," she said, as if she had to excuse her cleverness.

"What a coincidence," he declared, "so do I."

"I would have felt sorry for you if you didn't, because those damn Russians just couldn't stop writing!"

Her act was merry but gloomy clouds had settled in her eyes. Dale approached her, touching her arm, and stooped to kiss her forehead. He then combed his fingers through her hair, gently, lovingly, caressing her scalp with his fingertips. Ingrid rested her head on his chest and brought her hands up to his waist to clutch onto his T-shirt.

"My first Christmas abroad, I spent it with a friend at her parents' cottage in Norfolk. The word idyllic was invented to describe that place. It was a small house on a wooded estate. Of course, the manor was pretty much a museum-slash-public library, although the Lord and Lady in charge still lived in it."

Ingrid straightened up and went to sit down, like an exhausted elderly woman whose whole body ached under the weight of the life she had lived.

"They threw a Christmas party for the village. Or rather, they helped the community organise it, as the manor still had plenty of functional facilities especially meant for hosting big parties. Anyway."

She made a movement with her hand as if to disperse the mist from her memory.

"It was a really small village, you know? The sort of place where everybody knows everybody. And for me, it was...Heaven on Earth. A place so pure..." Her brows knitted together in her struggle to evoke that unique sensation. "Maybe it was all that snow and...and the Christmas decorations. You know, fairy lights and everything. The holy music, the hearty food, I...I don't know why, but I was never cold in that village."

She looked up, to search his gaze for a bare minimum of understanding.

"Warmth is all I recall."

Dale smiled, immersed in the picture she painted with her words.

"I remember thinking, why would anyone ever want to leave this place? And I asked my friend that, she said..." A chuckle. "She said exactly what every single individual who has ever escaped to the big city from a small village says: there's nothing to do and besides that, everybody knows everybody."

She rubbed her growling stomach.

"So like I said, maybe Christmas had just made everyone a little kinder. Maybe the rest of the year they were all mean and nasty. I'll never know. But I'll always remember that massive tree in their yard, the choir of pensioners singing carols, the little kiddies lining up for hot chocolate. I grew up in a small village, too, you see."

Her voice suddenly darkened.

"A hillside village, with dirt roads and no running water for most of my childhood. A lot of Romanian villages are medieval like that. You know, shithouses in the backyard, that sort of thing. Some don't even have electricity, let alone internet. So naturally, a lot of the people are medieval. They spend money they don't have on stupid things like...church and witches. At the same time. Can you believe that?"

He quirked an eyebrow in surprise. "Witches?"

"Oh, yeah," Ingrid nodded, "witches. We've got some fearsome witches, you know. So fearsome, our members of parliament were too afraid to pass laws that would regulate their incomes. As a result, they don't pay taxes. They don't answer to anybody. And their families are basically gangsters. Rudimentary, but gangsters nonetheless. If I don't send my mother money, they might just have her killed."

She gulped to soothe her dry throat.

"So I keep sending her money."

Standing up, she headed for the fridge and scanned its insides for some breakfast-suitable foods.

"Even though I could probably kill her myself if I ever saw her again."