Read Love Virtually for Free Online Page A

think?
    Shouldn’t we just call it a day? asks Emmi.
    Five minutes later
    Re:
    One other thing: shame about your friends. You’re right:
    Rome would probably have been hellish.
    Two minutes later
    Re:
    So what are your new pajamas like?
    The next day
    Subject: Meeting up
    Dear Emmi,
    Can’t we at least play our “recognition game”? Maybe after that we’ll find it a little easier to break off our “affair that cannot happen.” Even if I stop writing to you and waiting for your emails, Emmi, it doesn’t mean I won’t be thinking of you. That would be so shabby and calculating. Let’s still do our experiment! What do you think?
    All the best,
    Leo
    P.S. I can’t describe my new pajamas; you’d have to see them and feel them.
    An hour and a half later
    Re: Meeting up
    Next Sunday between 3 and 5 p.m. at Café Huber?
    Best wishes,
    Emmi
    P.S. Leo, Leo, what you said about the pajamas, “you’d have to see them and feel them,” that’s what I call a come-on. If it hadn’t been you writing, I might even have said it was a particularly blatant come-on!
    Fifty minutes later
    Re: Meeting up
    That sounds good! But we can’t turn up exactly at three and leave the café at five on the dot. And we mustn’t look for each other too obviously. Most important of all, don’t do anything so conspicuous that it might give the game away. If you do identify me, you mustn’t get carried away and then rush up to me and say, “You’re Leo Leike, aren’t you?” We really should give ourselves the opportunity to not recognize each other. Don’t you agree?
    Eight minutes later
    Re: Meeting up
    Yes, yes, yes, have no fear, Mr. Language Professor, I won’t come too near. And to avoid further confusion, I suggest we have an email embargo until Sunday. We can write to each other again afterward, O.K.?
    Forty seconds later
    Re: Meeting up
    O.K.
    Thirty seconds later
    Re: Meeting up
    Which doesn’t mean that you should stay out late every night between now and then, boozing in some plush bar.
    Twenty-five seconds later
    Re: Meeting up
    Of course I won’t! Anyway, it’s only fun if Emmi Rothner takes me to task on an hourly basis for the very possibility that I might be.
    Twenty seconds later
    Re: Meeting up
    O.K., you’ve reassured me. Till Sunday then!
    Thirty seconds later
    Re: Meeting up
    Until Sunday!
    Forty seconds later
    Re: Meeting up
    Don’t forget to brush your teeth.
    Twenty-five seconds later
    Re: Meeting up
    You always have to have the last word, don’t you, Emmi?
    Thirty-five seconds later
    Re: Meeting up
    Generally, yes. But if you answer again now, I’ll let you have it.
    Forty minutes later
    Re: Meeting up
    A footnote to my pajamas. I wrote, “You’d have to see them and feel them.” You replied that this would be a blatant come-on had anybody else written it. I wish to object. I demand that in future you credit my blatant come-ons as just that, as blatant as the next man’s. Allow me to be as blatant as I am. Back to the point: you really have to feel my pajamas, they’re sensational. Give me your address and I’ll send a sample. (Is that blatant too?) Good night!
    Two days later
    Subject: Discipline
    I take my hat off to you, Emmi, you’ve really got discipline!
    See you the day after tomorrow, Café Huber.
    Yours,
    Leo
    Three days later
    Subject: (no subject)
    Hi Leo, were you there?
    Five minutes later
    Re:
    Of course I was!
    Fifty minutes later
    Re:
    Shit! I was afraid of that.
    Thirty seconds later
    Re:
    What were you afraid of, Emmi?
    Two minutes later
    Re:
    Every man who could conceivably have been Leo Leike was a total no-no. To look at, I mean. I’m sorry, that might sound a little harsh, but I’m telling it like it is. Seriously Leo, were you really at Café Huber between three and five yesterday? And I don’t mean hidden away in the bathroom or