Kiki Faber – Fleur’s niece – has a big dream: to work as a singer. Until then, she was working as a waitress. You find relationships complicated: do love and lust go together?
Tuesday
Since I no longer have to work in the evenings, I occasionally watch The Crown at Heleen’s. Then we both sit on the sofa under a blanket, with Ghost sleeping between us, sometimes letting out a disgusting grunt. I don’t like the royal family very much, but Helen loves all the gloss, rules and hysteria and I enjoy watching with her. “Midas was here today,” she says, without taking her eyes off the screen.
The drum rolls in my chest, but I say carelessly, ‘Oh yeah? How was it?’
‘Not very well.’ He looked tired, smelled of herbs. He said he misses you.
He sent me that too. Plus a very long story about what art is and I don’t understand it etc. It made me so angry that I didn’t answer.
She rubs Ghost’s belly and says, “He loves you.” I cross my arms and stare intently at Elizabeth and George as they drive around Australia in an open carriage. Midas and love? He is only interested in himself. “Why don’t you give him another chance?”
I don’t answer, but wake up. “Do you still fancy some tea?”
She looks at me worried. “I think it’s a shame that something so stupid happened between the two of you.”
Otherwise, it’s something two meters by three metres. And I don’t want to talk about it any more.
Well, I won’t say anything else. She pretends to shut her mouth and hand the key to Jost. I have to laugh about it again.
Friday
Finn and his smart, beautiful, and emotional friend Arzu have put together a game of Santa Claus dice that asks everyone to buy three gifts. I put it on the heap and then she shoves me down a big cup of chocolate with rum in my hand. Where do you sit? I hardly know anyone here. “Hello cake!” Alexandru, my ex-boyfriend says. ‘How are you?’
fit or say how is it really? I choose the latter and tell them that I sometimes sing in the studio, but I mainly work in a coffee shop. “And in love it sucks.”
He thinks this is funny. But Sarah makes sure that he is too and then we sit and talk until the game starts. If you roll a certain number, you can take a gift, it moves by another number or you have to give it up. There’s a scented candle I’d like to have, but I’ve won a jar of slime, a fluorescent pink toothbrush, condoms, and a plush keyring. Not long after, I bike home on my own through the rain. I’m wearing a jacket that absorbs water like a sponge and my hands are sore from the cold. Suddenly I felt so worthless that I had to cry so hard.
