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phone, but there’s no getting past the fact that there’s a lot of history between the two of them, and sometimes Wolf doesn’t want to see Frauke. The past can be like a millstone hung around your neck at the most inappropriate moment.
    At moments like these.
    Men don’t like to let their defeats simply happen, they experience them like a bad film, over and over again from the start, and enjoy the bitterness of loss as if it were something precious. When Wolf thinks back to his time with Frauke, he isn’t really thinking about Frauke. He is thinking about the woman who extinguished the memory of Frauke. That’s exactly where sand gets into the works, and the machinery of his thoughts begins to falter.
    Her name was Erin. For two weeks, every hour, every minute, she and Wolf stuck together.
That’s what love must feel like
, Wolf had thought then, because everything seemed in focus and super-sharp. His senses were overstimulated, his belly constantly hungry. When Wolf went to the bathroom, he left the door open to go on listening to Erin. And listening was required, because that woman could talk. It was incredible. Wolf found everything she said right and good. Of course a lot of nonsense came out of her mouth as well, but during that brief period it didn’t bother Wolf for a second. His head transformed even that nonsense into razor-sharp philosophy. Wolf belonged to her completely.
    • • •
    It was Erin who had sought out Wolf. It happened on the night bus. Wolf was on his way home from a concert. Erin came and stood next to him, said
Hi
, and then said her name.
Erin
. It sounded like a question.
Wolf
, said Wolf, and made it sound like an answer. She took him by the hand, the bus stopped, they got out, and in a deserted playground a few yards from the bus stop they had sex together for the first time. It was very quick. Wordless. Wolf came right away.
    “At last,” Erin said afterwards.
    “At last,” Wolf said too, knowing that she would disappear almost immediately and he would lose her forever. He saw himself spending the rest of his life walking around the place with a broken heart. From the beginning Wolf had had that premonition.
    They didn’t part for a minute. Time existed for them alone. Wolf lost ten pounds because he more or less forgot about eating. His new life consisted of vodka, television, dope, Pizza Express, sex, cigarettes, Vaseline, music, sweets, baths, talking and talking some more, of sunrises, sunsets, laughing, the best deep sleep of his life and of course one hundred percent of Erin.
    On the fourteenth day her cell phone rang. Up until that point Wolf didn’t even know she had one. It was three in the morning, and Wolf said:
    “Don’t answer it.”
    Erin took the call, listened briefly, and hung up. Wolf wanted to know who was calling at that time of night, but before he could ask, Erin turned onto her belly and stuck her bottom in the air.
    “Come on, fuck me again.”
    Wolf didn’t take the trouble to pull down her panties. He pushed them aside to reveal her cunt. He couldn’t understand how this woman could always, but really always, be moist and ready for him.
    It would be the last time.
    Afterwards Erin was in the shower, and Wolf was sitting cross-legged on the lid of the toilet, rolling a joint and listening to her.
    “As far as I’m concerned this could go on forever,” he said during a pause.
    “What do you mean?”
    Erin opened the shower curtain. The water sprayed Wolf and slowlycovered the floor. Wolf laughed and didn’t reply. She didn’t have to know everything, after all. Erin turned the water off and reached for a towel. She said she was hungry now. She said the word
hungry
so many times that it lost its meaning. Then she got dressed, took Wolf by the hand, and they went to have breakfast.
    Berlin is the only city in Germany where you still feel alive at night. It was summer two years ago, they cycled from west to east and sat down in a café at the