Tomorrow Berlin Read Free Page A

reply, find something new to say. God, this girl wasn’t like the rest; she was definitely right for him. He was afraid. There was also the tall blonde he looked at outside the school smoking her morning Dunhill.
    If only the email girl and the Dunhill blonde could be the same. But surely she couldn’t be, that would be too beautiful, and life’s not beautiful; in this life you stumble and fall, land on your arse.
    In their emails, they talked about meeting. He knew she went to his school and that she was a year older than him, but there were so many girls in the final year.
    Then it was arranged; they’d meet at the crappy party organised by the student committee in a nightclub on the place de la Madeleine. Armand would be DJing and playing his drum machine. She’d come and speak to him; at least she knew who he was.
    Armand was a bit drunk when he arrived at the party. The tall blonde was there, on her phone outside. But it couldn’t be her – there were dozens of girls in their final year. Well, time would tell.
    Armand went into the nightclub. He felt proud of his big bag of records. He focused on this prop to forget his fear of meeting the girl who’d been writing to him.
    He said hello to good friends, then went up to the cabin where they played the records. There was a small spiral staircase up to the little cabin with two turntables and a view of the dance floor. He could see the tops of all his friends’ heads;he’d set the drum machine going and get them dancing.
    He played his favourite records. It seemed to be going well; from up in his little cabin, he could see heads and arms moving mechanically. Two girls came up the spiral staircase; they slipped him a note without him seeing their faces.
    My first rhymes with ‘you’. My second I drink each morning. My third is a dog. The whole thing is attached to the bottom of my face.
    He felt a pang holding this little scrap of paper. At last, he could see her writing, her real writing, letters shaped by her hand, not the impersonal characters on the computer. He didn’t understand the riddle at first; what could she have stuck to the bottom of her face?
    But of course – a beauty spot! Bew – Tea – Spot!
    Did the blonde have a beauty spot on her chin? He didn’t know, he’d only seen her from a distance. He had to stop thinking about the Dunhill blonde. If letter-girl was someone else, he’d take her anyway, he needed a chick.
    When he’d finished playing his records, he went down on to the dance floor. People spoke to him; he even got some compliments. He didn’t hear them; he was smoking and looking for the beauty spot.
    Finally she came up to him, the pretty blonde. They shook hands. They agreed on a café for the following day. Then she left without looking back.
    That evening Armand felt happy as he fell asleep. It was her, and tomorrow they’d have coffee.
     
    In the café they talked about Matthew Barney and anarchy. Armand managed to pronounce the word ‘anthropomorphism’. He was proud of that. Later, Emma told him that had impressed her.
    They smoked a lot, Cravens for him, Dunhills for her; they had three coffees each. They were a bit awkward, but kept the conversation going; there was a sort of urgency to express what they wanted to say.
    For a month they met like this in the café, without getting closer in any other way, the way of love. It was understood though that it would happen, that it was inevitable they’d kiss.
    Armand was afraid. Emma reckoned it wasn’t up to her to make the first move. What would happen after, when they were ready to make love? The whole deal of being a couple scared Armand, yet it was what he wanted most.
    One day, like many times before, they parted in the metro, in the corridors of Montparnassestation; she went towards line 9 and the little apartment in La Muette (a half-forgiven mistake: ‘Do I really look like I live in La Muette?’) where she lived alone on the floor above her grandmother –