What I Know About July

The stalker was literally the only one of Simon’s fans he never thought about sleeping with. No, not literally. His little sister Franzi was always getting on his case about that. You’re not literally dying. Like she’d know. But anyway. Obviously, some of his fans were ugly, some were men, some were too young— pedophile-bait rather than jailbait—and there were the girls who spent his whole show making out with their greasy boyfriends without ever looking up. But not the stalker. She wasn’t even bad looking. Not that his standards were very high, which worried him since his therapist acted like he was some sex addict with zero ability to commit. The stalker never even glanced at her phone while he was playing. He didn’t mean to look, but there was something magnetic about the intensity of her gaze. As bad as he felt when a woman didn’t show interest, this was worse. His drummer Micha had been the first to call the short brunette with awful taste in lipstick and an endless array of band shirts “the stalker,” even though only Simon felt threatened by her.

She hung around before and after shows. Venue managers made nudge-nudge references like she was some exotic pet Simon kept, and that was probably what she wanted, having her name linked to his as often as possible. As if they even used her name. It was something ordinary like Julia, but she always acted like Simon should know who she was. And he did, some little warning light flashing when he saw her maneuvering through the crowd toward him: Watch out, stalker!

It was this maneuvering and positioning of herself that put him off, even more than her postcards piling up in the mail room of Poor Dog Records. He didn’t know her, or if he did, it was only because she’d forced her acquaintance on him. He assumed she lived in Berlin since she’d made every show in town since their first album came out. She sometimes turned up in nearby cities and had once even accosted him in Munich with a story about visiting relatives. It creeped him out to think of her traveling all that way for him. With someone else, that amount of devotion would’ve stroked his volatile ego enough for a positive response, but seeing her stupid knowing smile in the front row that night had almost cost him his rhythm. What gave her the right?

Micha laughed himself silly at the slightest hint that Simon was afraid of her, and now Tanja had gotten wind of it. She played bass, and teased Simon and anyone she could get her hands on with the mercilessness of an older sibling. Micha had pointed out that, in addition to her obvious talent, Tanja offered certain demographic benefits. Tom, their first bassist, had quit before they recorded anything after a coke-fueled fight over his girlfriend, and Simon had gone on to have a crushing relationship and even more crushing breakup with the willowy blonde who’d replaced him. Nadine had left the band when they’d been just popular enough for people to notice. Since Tanja wasn’t into men, Simon couldn’t start anything with her. She smoked like a chimney but didn’t touch drugs. She was a godsend.

The other advantage was her ruthless careerism. Despite the tough, sarcastic impression she made, or perhaps because of it, she’d soon coerced and charmed the band onto a bigger label.

“I don’t plan on dying young,” she’d said. “I need something in the bank for when I’m an old hag.” She worked at a temping agency doing everything from data entry to dishes, but had only the usual Berlin savings account, a shoebox full of change.

“When you’re an old hag?” Micha had asked. They’d gotten close enough to be mean to each other almost right away.

Simon liked Tanja, which Dr. Froheifer said was a healthy development in his relationship to women. Of course, he didn’t buy into everything she said. It had taken him a few sessions to notice she had a doctorate in literature, not psychology, but that was what you got for picking your therapist based solely on proximity to your apartment. Between touring, recording and making overpriced lattes at his day job, he didn’t see her that often. He should’ve had the stalker analyze him. She got more face time.

Mostly, though, he went back and forth between worrying that what Dr. F said was true and he’d never be cured, and coming up with reasons why it couldn’t be. Like the sex thing. He didn’t actually have sex that often. In fact, he never did except after a show. That averaged out to less than with Nadine, though they’d had their ups and downs, and not just in bed. Right now, he happened to be single, which meant he had to divide a perfectly normal amount of sex among different women. He also happened to be incapable of picking up anyone outside of a concert venue.

That was another of Dr. F’s suggestions: meeting someone “the normal way.” He’d tried saying it was normal to meet potential partners at work, but she’d made it into this whole power thing. In actual fact, it was just easier. On his days offstage, he made good coffee and bad small talk if he had a shift at Café Astral, read or listened to music in Volkspark Friedrichshain if he didn’t. A beer with Micha and Tanja was a big night out for him. And when he was himself, Simon Kemper without a guitar or mic, surprise, surprise, women didn’t throw themselves at him.

Sure, he got occasional darting glances. But they always seemed to be asking how far gone he was, whether the downcast eyes and five o’clockyesterday shadow were intriguing or signs of unemployment, addiction, a life of crime.

Now that Hare vs. Hedgehog was playing bigger venues, people sometimes came up to ask if it was really him. But instead of leading to new love interests, his minor celebrity status only created more distance. He felt slow and clumsy in the harsh light of day, and never managed to say anything clever. They probably thought he wanted to be left alone. He did and didn’t. They never even asked for autographs, just identified him and drifted away to tell their many loved ones about the slightly famous misanthrope they’d run into. The anecdote would be more interesting than the actual encounter.

It was different at a show. Beforehand, they’d sidle up with breathy compliments and talk of great parties later. He didn’t party much anymore, or at all, really, but admitting that made him feel old. The beauty of these pre-show invitations was the idea that there was some cachet in being seen with him. He loved to play the person they saw him as.

Afterward, he’d scribble signatures on tote bags, t-shirts and skin, and get photographed with countless devices and overheated fans whose heartrate tripled when he put an arm around them. It was easier when you knew you were wanted.

He specialized in the very bold and very timid. When he was exhausted, and he almost always was, he liked athletic girls with taut ponytails, fierce smiles and more self-assurance than he’d had on the best days of his life. When he had the energy, though, he chatted up the skittish ones who stammered in search of replies and gulped when he touched their arms. It felt like charity, bestowing his favor upon those too meek to demand it. But in his heart of losery hearts, he knew he had more in common with these helpless wallflowers who’d never know they were attractive, not even when they were in bed together, not even when they did nervous, breath-holding imitations of sleep as he whispered, “You’re beautiful,” as hopefully and hopelessly as if he were talking to himself.

The stalker was neither of these types. She put a steady arm around his waist when she demanded a picture, and acted like she’d known him before he was famous—if you wanted to call it that. In a way, she had, since she’d been at their first show after their first album came out, but that wasn’t the same. She only knew concert-him, which—even if he liked this persona better than his actual personality—wasn’t the real him. And what was she to him? Her face had the impersonal familiarity of a pop-art celebrity, Mao Zedong or Marilyn Monroe. He didn’t feel like he’d always known her, but like he’d always known what she was: a standard feature of his surroundings, like the sticky bars and foul, graffitied bathrooms of clubs—unpleasant, but expected.

It remained unclear whether she was trying to flirt, or so deluded she thought they were friends. Once she hung around so long a bartender told her how talented her “boyfriend” was. Simon said, “I don’t even know her,” but she laughed like it was an inside joke. Being rude to her might backfire since she posted on their website several times a day and was probably all over whatever social network could most effectively spread the word that he was an asshole. The only thing he could think to do was leave with the nearest fan. If the stalker was disappointed, she never let on.

~~~

The fall before their second album, they had a local show he knew the stalker would be at, not only because she hadn’t missed one in the two years since their self-titled, but also because he’d spotted her in nearby Potsdam the night before.

She touched his arm as he carried in his guitar. “Hey, it’s been a while.”

He kept walking. He’d managed to avoid her in Potsdam by going home with a saner fan named Ilse. Before that, they’d toured Austria, which seemed to be out of her range.

“Siiimon, it’s me! It’s the new haircut, right?”

He couldn’t remember what her old one had been. She had a nothing hairstyle, brown and to her shoulders. He’d never had a reason to look closer. Or maybe he’d never had the chance. It was hard to contemplate someone so busy demanding a reaction from you. “Hey, Julia.”

“No, silly, it’s ‘July,’ remember? A lot on your mind, huh? Need a hand?”

“No, thanks.” He headed for the concert hall, which wasn’t open to the public yet, and tried to tell the bouncer with his eyes that she was part of that public and not with him. Behind them, he heard Micha snickering and then, miraculously, Tanja saying doors weren’t open yet. He didn’t stay to hear the stalker’s reply.

It’s my fault, he told himself while he unpacked his guitar. If I told her to fuck off . . . But more than his fear of confirming to himself and the world what a jerk he was, he was afraid nothing would happen. That he’d realize how helpless he was, caught in one of those dreams where you scream and scream but nobody can hear you; you can’t even hear yourself.

He told himself he wasn’t upset. She was a minor annoyance like the smoker’s cough he was only now getting rid of after months without cigarettes. His voice, his career and so on. Having to smoke on the sly at rehab had forced him to cut back until quitting became a possibility. Plus, the facility was in the middle of nowhere, so he’d been unable to restock. But like that annoying cough, which had convinced him every now and again that he was on the fast track to death, the stalker sometimes got under his skin, and he hated her for it. Dr. F would’ve said what he really hated was himself for letting her get to him. It was so obvious he didn’t need to hear it. And yet she did get to him and he did hate her for it.

He wrote down the set list. He’d long since memorized it, but rewriting it relaxed him, helped him feel ready. Then tuning, the kind of precise concentration that was the only real albeit temporary cure for anxiety. Other than drinking, drugs, sometimes sex, and those moments of innocent happiness so rare he dismissed them as hearsay.

Tanja finished tuning her first string before she said, “She’s still there.”

“Who?” You could always hope. There must’ve been somebody who’d sound like good news. Nail-biting, fidgety Ilse had said this morning that she couldn’t make it, which he’d taken as: didn’t want to.

He’d only gone home with her to escape July. She’d spent half the night apologizing for things he didn’t care about—she’d only recently gained this weight; her place wasn’t usually this messy; the neighbors weren’t usually this loud—but by morning she’d become purposeful and confident, rushing him out so she could lock up, no mention of phone numbers. A dead end.

Who else, then? Nadine would be even worse news than the stalker. His mom had always been supportive, especially since he’d gotten help for his supposed habits, but she had yet to come to a show. Franzi was busy saving the world or studying. There weren’t many people in his life, let alone shes.

“The stalker, obviously. I’ll set up the mics if you wanna talk to her.”

“I don’t. Where’s Micha?”

“Getting takeout. Why not put her out of her misery?”

“Because I don’t want to.” He hated sounding like a bratty kid stomping his foot and insisting he didn’t want to go to bed, but he didn’t, not with July. It wouldn’t be like with other fans; it would mean something. She’d make sure it did. But she couldn’t make him like her.

Tanja laughed, coughed and hacked onto the floor.

“Maybe lay off the cigarettes?” The smirk he managed to keep off his face was all over his voice.

She spat again. “Didn’t I tell you? I’m down to a pack a day. Birthday resolution. Anyway, she’s your problem.” He sighed. What wasn’t?

~~~

“Listen,” he said, even though she was fixated on him the second he came out. It was like when you got stuck talking to a boring party guest and couldn’t find anyone else to say hi to. “We need to get warmed up, so . . .”

“So?” She put a hand on her hip. Like many of her poses, it seemed staged. It was strange how fake you could find someone without having any idea what their real looked like.

“We don’t have time for anything else. Sorry.” He hated himself for always acting like he owed everyone an apology.

“No problem, see you later.” She didn’t seem disappointed, but it was all part of her just-stopping-by-to-see-a-friend act that made him crazy.

He hurried backstage. She should’ve felt insecure, rejected. Starstruck, at least. He didn’t consider himself a star, but she must, or why bother stalking him? Nadine’s nasty stoned voicemails about how gray and toxic he was weren’t the only reason he’d changed his number. The stalker’s perky “Hey, Siiimon!” had been equally draining. The kind of energy-suck he didn’t need tonight. That bigtime music critic was supposed to come, meaning they were likely to play a shitty show. He saw Tanja’s leather jacket on a music stand and thought about looking for the flask she kept in an inner pocket “for an emergency.” Which this definitely wasn’t. He needed to calm down. Breathe. He put two fingers under his chin to feel his pulse. Duh-duh, duh-duh. Still alive. He needed air, not alcohol. He had trouble eating before a show. His nerves upset his stomach, and that limited the amount he could drink. A cigarette would’ve been just the thing, but he wasn’t going to let her throw him off track.

Tanja came back huffing and puffing, and he thought she really should quit before they had to find yet another bassist, but who was he to talk? He’d written their first album in rehab. Not the kind for famous people, but rural, public-health-insurance rehab for back-country addicts and losers like himself. The most shameful part was that he hadn’t even had a problem with drugs. He’d had a problem with reality. There was a reason he’d been the only patient without withdrawal symptoms. But now he was healthy, never taking anything, not smoking, drinking less, just a tad anxious. It was a chicken-egg situation, drinking or smoking or swallowing something to kill the panic, the panic bigger when it came back. The cure worse than the disease. The disease worse after every cure. Sometimes he thought about giving up even alcohol, going vegan. Yoga, religion, the whole shebang. But he knew he’d feel insincere, like he always did.

“She gone?”

“Hope so. Should we get warmed up?”

“When Micha’s here. Chill.” She ran a hand over the top of her stiff, oily mass of hair. He could never tell whether that coiffure was the result of a cosmetic product or complete lack of them. She didn’t smell like anything but smoke, so he liked to think she bathed.

“I’m chill,” he said in his least convincing, most Woody-Allenneurotic voice, then cleared his throat. “I’m still getting used to not smoking. I feel jittery.”

“Yeah, I quit once, and it sucked. But don’t fuck up your voice. The singer’s not replaceable.”

“Evening, Ladies.” Micha came in with a bag of takeout he and Tanja would wolf down like those kids who grew up in the wilderness, and Simon would pick at, while they philosophized about random shit like they weren’t about to go onstage. He hadn’t heard the door open. It made him nervous to think someone could sneak up like that, but he knew that was only his anxiety seeking an outlet. Dr. F had said so last month when he admitted to being terrified to sleep alone after watching a movie where a monster comes out of the kid’s closet. There was always something. Right now, it was the stalker, but if it weren’t her it would be the monster or terminal illness or dying alone and being eaten by cats. Which was a stretch since he didn’t even have a cat.

“I saw the stalker,” Micha said. “She’s one of your nicer weirdos. Although serial killers’ neighbors always say later on how nice and quiet they were.”

“I wish she’d be quieter.” Simon took the döner kebab Micha handed him, but no matter how much he chewed, the bread and meat stuck in his throat.

Tanja snorted, and beer came out of her nose. That had taken Simon a while to get used to, and he still wondered whether her nasal passages were hooked up wrong. But he shouldn’t have said anything. Now wasn’t the time to talk about something stressful, not with them.

That was one thing he missed about Nadine. She’d been a good listener and had a calming effect on him when they were getting along. He could admit now that he hadn’t quite been in love with her— whatever that was—but she’d had such an aura of gentleness before he got to know her better. Then she’d kissed him while Micha was off setting up the merch stand, and even though a lot of him thought, oh, cool, there was one part that already thought, no, not her.

It was never going to work, of course: seeing each other every day; writing songs, practicing and touring together. It had gone well at first because everything stayed the same except they were sleeping together, which saved time he’d otherwise have spent picking up fans or worrying about STDs dodging around condoms, and was more intimate than anything else he’d experienced.

Micha would’ve told them to break it off if he’d noticed in time, but he was a little slow on the uptake. They’d had a few great weeks and a few good months before things got worse. Then he’d woken up breathless in the middle of the night in a shitty motel room the three of them were sharing and realized he couldn’t do it. He and Nadine had been bickering at a constant low flame ever since they got serious, but it wasn’t that. He couldn’t do anything right. Her voice would freeze over, flat and cold as she asked how he could be so thoughtless, whether he’d introduced her wrong at a show, forgotten to pick up something at the store or misunderstood what she said. There was no way he could live up to her expectations. What would happen when the glow wore off and she figured out how he really was? In what Dr. F would later call the defining characteristic of his romantic encounters, he’d felt sure that everything Nadine liked about him was fake, put on for her benefit. It was an exhausting charade, and he was cracking under the pressure.

According to Dr. F, that was only his insecurity making him think no one could love him for who he was. But the feeling had been pretty convincing at the time. When he tried to avoid Nadine after that tour, her iciness had burst into flames of unexpected rage. They’d broken up and gotten back together a few times, the layer of affection over their resentment stretched a little thinner each time. Rehab should’ve been a clean break, but he’d come out lonely with nowhere to go, and found her nostalgic and welcoming. By the time their album came out, this last brief honeymoon phase was already a memory.

He was the opposite of Micha, who went with the flow, saw a woman as long as she was interested, then forgot her. His motto was “We’ll see.” But Simon couldn’t wait and see. He lived in the eye of a perpetual storm.

One false move could wipe out what little stability he had.

“My advice?” Tanja was saying. “Just say yes.”

“Huh?”

“She loves the chase. If she doesn’t have to stalk you, what’s the point?” “Whoa, who invited Freud?” Micha asked.

“Yeah,” Simon said, “it could work like that, or the exact opposite. Like if I encourage her at all, she’ll stalk me even more. What if she finds out where I live?”

“You don’t have to invite her over; just hang with her.”

“You really think it’ll help?”

She finished chewing, crumpled up the paper and rubbed the crumbs off her hands. “Can’t hurt.”

~~~

He’d been too nice the first time they talked. But it had been Hare vs. Hedgehog’s first chance to present their debut album—opening for a band a smidge less obscure than they were—and he’d been so nervous he would’ve made small talk with Hitler to get his mind off things. The album had only been out a few days, and he’d only been out of Springtime Healthy Living a few months. The stalker approached him before the show and said she’d loved seeing him solo and was so excited to finally see the band live. Which left him wondering which of the minuscule sets he’d played before the band could’ve left such a lasting impression. Was she a friend of a friend, someone he should know? No, he had so few friends. If she seemed a little familiar, it was probably because the audiences at his solo shows had been small enough for him to make out each individual face in the crowd. If you could call it a crowd. At least they were only the opener tonight and wouldn’t be to blame if no one showed up.

“So how’s it feel to be out?” she was asking.

“Out of where?”

She laughed in a put-on, coquettish way, and he felt the first twinge of the discomfort he would come to associate with her. “Of rehab. Don’t tell me you’re high again already?”

“No.” Stay friendly. She’d bought a ticket and wanted to make conversation. It wasn’t real to her. “I actually really don’t like to talk about that.”

“Oh, right.” Her hand on his arm was unwelcome, but less so than further discussion of the topic. “I feel you. Let’s forget I ever brought it up, and just keep looking ahead.”

“Yeah, cool.” He backed out from under her touch. As she talked about listening to the new album online, he wondered why she hadn’t been to any other H vs. H shows, if she liked his solo work so much. They’d been playing concerts long before the album came out—before he ruined things and then ducked out to rehab, forcing everyone to pity instead of blame him. Maybe she thought pretending she liked his early work would give her more cred. He knew the kind. At times he was the kind. Either way, her reference to rehab was a dead giveaway that she’d been hanging out on their site. Their last post before announcing the album and show had been a sappy picture of Micha hugging him, captioned “Welcome Back, Simon!” He was dying to go back and delete his cringey comments about feeling grateful and pure after rehab, but that would only call attention to their having existed in the first place.

He thanked her again, trying not to seem surprised that someone liked him that much. At the time, that seemed desirable, flattering, not a source of recurring panic.

What else had she said? Something random like, “Have I put on too much weight?” even though she wasn’t heavy.

He said, “No, you look good,” which must’ve been the compliment she was fishing for. More than anything about her appearance, he realized, it was her way of speaking that made her seem familiar—not because he recognized her voice or mannerisms, but because, from the beginning, she’d talked like they knew each other. Many fans imagined that kind of personal connection to members of their favorite bands, but July was the first he’d interacted with, and no amount of interaction seemed to convince her that they were strangers.

“Thanks. You look better without the beard.”

“Thanks.” Another reference to that “Welcome Back” picture—he’d shaved right after. Sort of a weird thing for a fan to say, but the goodness of having a fan still outweighed the weirdness of said fan.

He didn’t say anything to get her hopes up. Just that he hoped she’d enjoy the show. To be honest, he might also have said he’d love to hear what she thought. But that was all.

Of course, she turned up at their little folding table afterward, and since they’d spoken before, there was this whole recognition vibe. But all she said was “Great show.” Other strangers said that, too. There was no reason for her to feel special.

~~~

Once he agreed to Tanja’s stupid idea, he felt his pulse even out and the blood come back into his icy hands. Having a plan meant his brain could check the whole thing off until the next danger signal. He was used to tricking himself this way, and even though he saw through it, it almost always worked. For a while.

Sometimes he thought about joining one of those cults where they brainwash you into an unnatural calm in exchange for all your material assets—but what if it didn’t work? Like he’d be sitting there chanting his secret mantra in a paper hat, and not be taken in. Besides, he hadn’t even seen Franzi or his therapist, let alone his parents, in ages. Who had time to get brainwashed? He asked Micha to get him a drink so he wouldn’t risk seeing July, tried picking at his food again, tried breathing the rancid air in the courtyard, and then settled in to half-hear the opener from backstage.

He felt vague through the first couple songs of his set, like when he slept late and woke up heavy to a slower world. But it was a gentle feeling, better than that hard, painful beat of his heart when he couldn’t tell whether he was still breathing.

This was one of the ways in which concerts could be good: the clarity of his role, the knowledge that the audience wanted him to play, had come especially for that purpose. It was one of the few situations involving other people where he knew what he was supposed to do. Sometimes when he’d gone off to play outdoors at rehab, other patients would sneak up to listen, and who could blame them because Springtime Healthy Living was one of the most boring places he’d ever been. What bothered him hadn’t been their presence, but the sense that the actual entertainment value was in laughing at him, a crybaby singing to himself about his pathetic feelings. There were a couple prematurely aged fortysomethings who made a real sport of interrupting him with sarcastic clapping and jeers—fat Tammy and her roommate with the constant nosebleeds—and he couldn’t help feeling like they were just saying what everyone else was thinking. Even the youngest patient, a teenager with a bloodied face and a gaze like the Mona Lisa, always just shy of looking at you, seemed to be smirking whenever he caught her listening. Most of the others who turned up had only watched quietly, but you never knew. Except here, tonight, in times and places like this, he did.

He must’ve left the blah-blah with the audience too long, because Micha took it upon himself to ask how they’d liked the opener, how they were feeling. Clapping, whoos and the rest. Was it loud enough? It was the biggest crowd yet for a show they were headlining. Of course, a crowd always looked bigger in a venue the size of an apartment. Not his, obviously. Someone’s apartment who had a steady paycheck.

He kept his eyes on the unlit back of the crowd, where all the faces were facets of one big shadow. It was a habit he’d developed in school when struggling to make eye contact during presentations. Plus, the stalker would never stand back there, so there was no risk of their eyes meeting.

His stomach flipped at the thought, like he’d forgotten something important. Early on, when playing in front of people meant an automatic panic attack, he’d showed up at a competition without his guitar. They would’ve lost their slot if it weren’t for this saint from the last band in the lineup who let Simon use his. Hare vs. Hedgehog had come in second to the saint’s band. Seeing one of the few non-assholes on the planet win had helped with Simon’s nauseating sense of failure.

A joke. Now would be the time for a joke. Nothing occurred to him. But experience had taught him that the right audience would laugh at anything.

“That’s how you are,” he said once the applause died down. “How do you think I’m feeling?”

Stray laughs, a general uncomfortable chuckle. “Like shit?” some guy in the back yelled. Simon laughed into the mic even though he hated people like that: people with ready answers and few enough inhibitions to shout whatever popped into their heads. People who didn’t need a mic to get others listening.

He let them wait another few beats. “Exactly.”

Now the real laughter came, relief, the audience thinking misery was just a joke: his misery, theirs, all the misery in the world.

“I love you, Simon!” yelled a voice he chose to believe sounded nothing like the stalker’s.

“I love me, too.” He was already playing the next song.

Time sped up, but that was okay once you got started. There was always that immense hurdle you had to fling yourself over or bust through, but then you could play without thinking about it, a record spinning along until someone hit stop, stretching that last distorted note to the breaking point before you fell silent. They played two encores and the audience kept clapping and stomping even after the venue put the lights up. Backstage, he closed his eyes and allowed himself to know things were good.

“You’re weird,” Tanja said.

“What?” He opened his eyes and tried to remember what he’d said. Pretty standard fare. But her last band had been hardcore. They must not do the same quirky angst bit indie fans went in for.

Micha tossed Simon a bottle of water that hit him in the gut. “Hope you’ve got some better conversational gambits for later,” Tanja added.

“Conversational what?” Micha asked.

“Shit.” Simon hadn’t forgotten but wished everyone else had. There was still a narrow sliver of hope, though. The stalker could get lost in the crowd. Tired. Something could come up. She could, for whatever reason, not be waiting for him.

As the saying goes, “Hope dies last.” His outlived chugging water, stepping back out into that crisp autumn air tinged with dumpster, and arriving at the merch table to smile for the smartphones and scribble on the records their hipster fans always surprised him by buying. His hope survived any number of compliments and cute fans he hoped might stick around in case he was free after all.

As the crowd thinned, he even dared to laugh when Tanja joked about him getting stood up, though he was pouring sweat and close to tears. It was the strain of being in front of people so long: all those eyes like so many magnifying glasses between him and the sun, their scorching focus frying him. On top of everything else, he was starving. Ravenous. Ready to kill and eat one of his fans. Forget cute girls: His big fantasy was grabbing some takeout and a cab, falling asleep in front of the TV.

All of a sudden, he felt that palpable, magnetic dread that makes horror-movie heroines look behind the curtains. There she was, a drink in each hand, parting the crowd like somebody who didn’t have to wait in line. He wasn’t a deer in headlights, but there was nowhere to run.

He felt the chill of the glass, the warmth of her hand in unnecessary contact as she handed him a drink. “Caipirinha’s your favorite, right?”

He didn’t have a favorite, but often drank a caipi to cool down after a show, and her knowing even such a small thing bothered him. He muttered something about not drinking on an empty stomach, but he was back in that dream where nobody could hear him. The stalker was already talking to Tanja about their new t-shirt. Somehow, she knew a friend of Tanja’s had designed it. Maybe there was nothing weird about that. Tanja might’ve put it on their website to help her friend. But it was the way the stalker said it. Possessive, entitled, like it was only natural for her to know that and any number of other things.

“I know a great tapas bar near here,” she was saying as he tried to unfreeze his face from the grotesque grin it was stuck in. Of course she didn’t have to think about where to go. She had been the whole time. “Simon, you’re hungry, right?”

“Yeah.” The whole conversation was far away until Peter or Paul or whatever his name was, the singer of their opener, came over to thank him, making Simon feel grounded, a bastion of success.

“You guys were great,” he told the singer.

“Oh, you caught it? We weren’t sure.”

“We were back at the bar,” Simon lied. “Amazing stuff.” Peter or Paul had written some great songs, but he’d been too tired or discouraged to come out from behind the curtain, or maybe afraid of hearing something better than his own music. He sometimes wondered whether it would ever be enough. Fame, critical acclaim, wealth, what have you. Love. Whether he’d ever be sure enough of himself to have something left over for others.

“Mind if we take a picture for our blog?”

“I’ll take it,” the stalker offered before Simon could say anything. He didn’t mind about the picture, but it was none of her business. He put one arm around the singer’s shoulder and the other around Tanja’s. Tanja pulled Micha in, and they all smiled for a couple shots on PeterPaul’s phone and a couple on the stalker’s.

“What’re you guys up to now?” Peter-Paul asked, and the stalker butted in again to invite his band to the bar. Simon tried to roll his eyes at Tanja or Micha, but they were backing up the stalker with that we’reall-friends-here bullshit that always turned his stomach, but only because he could never pull off such hale and hearty sociability himself.

“I’ll get my stuff.” But the Neanderthal watching the backstage area didn’t want to let him past even though he’d seen him play. Simon forced himself to stay calm. He only ended up looking like an ass when he tried to stand up for himself.

“Forget something?” The stalker handed him the pass he’d left on the table. She and Tanja laughed like they’d just been talking about silly old Simon. Let them. He’d only stay long enough to eat. He had to eat either way, so who cared where he did it? Then he’d say he had food poisoning and leave. No, bad idea. With his luck, the stalker would call an ambulance and ride to the hospital with him. He’d say he wasn’t feeling well.

~~~

The bar was as nearby as she’d claimed, with an inconspicuous exterior he’d never have noticed. The kind of hidden gem everybody but him always knew about. The interior had that slight aftertaste of smoke that comes more from overfilled ashtrays than anyone lighting up, and he took rare pleasure in being a nonsmoker. A melancholy copla was playing, its every other word corazón.

The stalker spoke to the waiter in Spanish that sounded good to Simon, although he only knew what his coworker Soledad taught him, and usually forgot it by the end of each shift. The waiter put his arm around the stalker and said something that made them both laugh. Was that supposed to make him jealous? But like Dr. F always said, it wasn’t all about him. He’d heard that chorus repeated one or ten too many times.

Another waiter came and helped push together several tables under the stalker’s supervision. Simon took the opportunity to engage PeterPaul and the three other members of his band—painfully earnest young men with shaggy hair and t-shirts from bands as obscure as their own— in a conversation about their influences so he’d be surrounded when the crucial seating moment came.

“Perfect, thanks,” the stalker said when the tables were arranged.

Simon sat between Peter-Paul and the one with a full beard who might’ve been the drummer.

“You’d be surprised how much Beethoven I listen to,” Peter-Paul was saying.  “I can see that,” the stalker butted in from across the table. “The intense rhythms.”

“Really?” he asked with that coy modesty Simon knew so well, questioning every bit of praise in the hopes that another scrap will be thrown.

Simon picked up a menu and tried to tune out the stalker. He was getting to the point where the hunger would turn into exhaustion and he’d have no appetite, just weakness and inability to control his facial expression.

“Do you listen to much classical music, Simon?” the stalker asked. No, call her July. His nightmare was that all his nasty thoughts would one day escape.

“Not as much as I should.” He felt like a fraud among these more knowledgeable but less successful musicians. But then he felt like that most places.

“The last time I heard Beethoven was in A Clockwork Orange,” Tanja

said.  Simon admired that, the way she owned everything about herself. The others laughed and started talking about Kubrick. Simon must’ve missed that lesson everyone else had had about turning a conversation to your advantage. But his areas of expertise were harder to own. If he started talking about Thomas Mann, they’d think he was a pompous ass. Or, as Dr. F would say, he’d think he was a pompous ass. Or it was all some meta-projection, projecting onto his therapist what he thought he was projecting onto other people. The thought made his head hurt like those pictures of mirrors facing each other.

“What?” He could tell from the silence that someone had asked him something.

“Your favorite movie,” the beard repeated, but the waiter arrived so he had a moment to think while he ordered tapas at random and a couple liters of wine for the table. To show how sociable he was. Having the time of his life. Stick around for a drink, everybody.

“I really like Nosferatu.” He felt the ebb and flow of shame. He did, but only said so to look cool and artsy, like someone who appreciated silent films. The fact that he did appreciate silent films didn’t make trying to score points with them any less insincere. Still, it seemed to work.

“Yeah, rad,” Tanja said. “That actor’s so fucking creepy—he was made for the part. What’s his name again?”

“Schreck,” said know-it-all July. “Perfect name for such a frightful person.”

They all laughed like she’d said something original, and then the confusion of distributing glasses, carafes of wine and water, and the array of small plates bridged any gap in subject matter. Micha started talking about the time he’d hitched to Spain, which was one of those helpful stories that could shrink or expand to fill any conversational space and never failed to remind listeners of their own adventures. Relieved not to have to entertain anyone, Simon emptied and refilled his glass of water, sipped his red wine and began systematically working through his tapas before anyone could suggest sharing.

“See, they thought we were out to turn tricks, and they didn’t understand a word of English, let alone German, so at the stoplight . . .” Micha was saying. Simon had heard it all before but didn’t mind. He was surprised to catch himself in a moment of goodness. The food was great, the wine was great for the price, and all he had to do was sit here, surrounded by people who liked him. July wasn’t doing anything weird. It was like she didn’t send postcards filled with minute lunatic handwriting to their label or post on their site more than they did. She was just someone at the table, like the beard. In this rare calm, he was able to look back and realize that, not only had nothing gone wrong, but they’d played well. Sure, he needed to work on his stage presence, but he felt confident that they’d get a good write-up. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so relaxed without outside assistance, and was surprised to find himself thinking:

what a great night. Maybe this was how normal people with lots of friends felt.

Far from faking sick, he suggested more wine, espresso and dessert. He still felt a faint background hum of anxiety that July would trap him in endless conversation or hit him over the head and stuff him in a sack, but the longer the evening wore on without anything like that happening, the less the feeling mattered. Micha was telling everyone how they’d come up with the band’s name working at the video store where a cartoon of The Hare and the Hedgehog was playing and Simon, not quite sober, had tearily insisted that it wasn’t FAIR and he hated that hedgehog for cheating in the race. It was a stupid name but too late to change it, a stupid story but everyone laughed. Simon even felt a twinge of regret when the musician opposite the beard said, “Shit, it’s after three; my girlfriend’ll be so pissed.”

“They couldn’t find a sitter,” the beard explained. “And you know what two-year-olds are like.”

“Sure.” He felt as fake as he had during the discussion of Beethoven. These earnest young men had not only sound knowledge of classical music, but also partners and children.

A couple bottles of wine went on the house, and Simon paid for the rest after some token resistance from the group. Peter-Paul said something about this new band he’d love Simon’s opinion on in a lastditch excuse to get his number, which Simon went along with, knowing Peter-Paul would either chicken out and never contact him, or spam him about shows. But he was flattered that someone considered him a useful contact. He dreaded the moment when July would take advantage of the situation to suggest they exchange numbers, too, then felt an unnerving gap in the evening when she didn’t.

Peter-Paul’s band split a cab, and Simon and July stood outside, waiting for Micha and Tanja to come back from the bathroom. His awareness of being less drunk than everyone else, not only in his group but the whole street, the whole city, was like heavy winter clothing, muffling his words and making his movements stiff and awkward. There was no in-between with July; her eyes were either riveted on his face or blank like they were now, turned toward the street without seeming to see it.

“You smoke?” he asked.

“No, and you shouldn’t, either.”

“I quit.” Like she had any say in the matter.

“I know. I’m proud of you.”

For an instant, the glow of those words outshone the absurdity of this imperfect stranger feeling anything at all on his behalf. Someone was proud of him! He felt warm all over, like the time he’d shocked himself and his family by slugging an older boy for picking on Franzi. His dad, never as heavy on the praise as his mom, had said, “Don’t do it again, but it was the right thing to do.” There were so few moments like that, when you believed in what you were and what you’d done. He almost started to tell that story, but something personal like that would only have been one more thing about him to own, like she was trying to own him quitting smoking.

“Kicked all your bad habits, didn’t you?”

“Sure.” Let her think she owned that knowledge, too. He’d never been a real addict, and all she knew was a couple vague references in his lyrics, things he’d detached from his inner self and put out for public consumption. Rehab had been a kind of plea bargain, with his concerned family as much as the justice system. The only thing he’d needed help quitting was his overwhelming dread of facing either the future or dayto-day life. A couple bowls of meth had only been a side dish to whatever emotionally debilitating substances his own brain had been pumping out.

“Good for you.” She reached to pat his arm but stopped, her hand hanging in midair like it had come up against a physical barrier rather than the pained look he gave her. “It isn’t easy, is it?”

This was getting to be a bit much. He weighed his words, careful not to provide any new facts for her to post online or treasure within the depths of her freakish heart. “I never was that bad off. You should’ve seen this one girl at rehab with me, totally messed up from crack and whatever bad guys she was hanging around.”

Gaunt and quiet, she’d arrived with burnt and bloodied lips, bruises on her face and throat. He’d been the youngest patient until then, and it had hurt to think about what the rest of her life would look like if it was already that messed up. He couldn’t remember her name or what she looked like, other than damaged, but over time he’d made her into a symbol of what he didn’t want to be. Then again, he was more likely to end up like the old man who’d sat around in his underwear in the cramped room they’d shared, cursing or punching the wall when he was awake, whimpering in his sleep. Simon tried not to think about where his fellow patients were now. If they hadn’t died in the meantime, they’d probably bounced back into another facility. He hoped there were exceptions like him who’d managed to get well and lead normal enough lives. But then he’d never really been unwell. Not the way they had.

He didn’t expect July to understand, because she hadn’t been there, hadn’t seen the hollow eyes and rotting grins around the table, the fingers twitching on the placemats or crawling up the arms to tear open bloody scabs. He didn’t expect her to understand how he’d felt, trapped between guilt about being there on a false premise to get the same treatment as those people, and fear of becoming like them. But least of all did he expect her to react the way she did: by bursting out laughing.

She gave him a dig in the ribs. When he didn’t join in, she caught her breath and said, “Poor girl,” but he could hear the residue of laughter on her voice. It was like he’d always thought; she had no empathy for anyone outside her immediate field of interest, and maybe not even there. He didn’t get the impression that she spent a lot of time trying to put herself in his shoes. If she did, she wasn’t very good at it, since she seemed to be sensing a lot of interest in her that wasn’t and never would be there.

“Sorry,” she said at last. “You sing about it sometimes, but I thought you didn’t like to talk about rehab.”

“I don’t.”

“Me, neither.” She laughed again, a high-pitched whinny like she’d said something hysterical. Of course she didn’t, because that part of his life was before she started inserting herself at every opportunity. He chuckled to keep her company until he realized she might think they were flirting.

A silence set in that he found totally unacceptable between people who weren’t smoking or looking at their phones, but she didn’t seem to mind. If that had been flirting for her, was this intimacy? It was so quiet he noticed the slight hiss of drizzle right away, that dry beginning of rain that could be wind scuttling dead leaves across the pavement or something sizzling on a hot stove.

“It’s raining,” they said at the same time, which meant they had to laugh even though nothing was funny.

“What’s the closest station?” He knew but didn’t want that silence back.

“Eberwalder’s down there. But I live nearby. You could crash if you wanted.”

Her casualness was staged. Why ask only him? A shiver of anxiety stirred under his drowsiness. It almost sounded nice. Nicer than getting soaked on the way to the tram and waiting twenty minutes in the unheated shelter. But things that seemed like good ideas at the time rarely turned out to be, and things you knew were bad ideas never did.

“No thanks. I’ve got a lot to do tomorrow.”

“Like what?” Tanja, lighting a cigarette, arrived in a cloud of sulfur. Simon had no idea when she’d come out or how long Micha had been hovering in the doorway.

“Family stuff.” He hoped against hope that July would

misunderstand, think he had a wife and kids and a dog, the whole whitepicket-fence menagerie. But a stranger who knew he’d quit smoking and didn’t like to talk about rehab was a stranger who knew what his marital status was. Or wasn’t.

“Cool,” July said. “See you around.”

~~~

At home, he found her number on a napkin in his coat pocket and threw it away. At least that was a normal fangirl thing to do.

The critic had raved about their show, so they talked about that instead of July. When they toured down to Basel, she didn’t show up. Afterward, they stayed in Berlin to earn money at their day jobs and record their new album, which Simon called Georg’s Friend in St. Petersburg as a Kafka reference he hoped to be admired for but not interviewed about, since he hadn’t read “The Judgment” in years. He was feeling less anxious, maybe because he’d been a drug-free nonsmoker for a while, maybe because July was down to one postcard a month—he asked the mail room to throw them away—or because they were getting more good press.

Well, not literally press. But they were all over indie blogs. A couple dozen people bought their first album each month even when they weren’t touring, and there was a steady trickle of legal downloads. It wasn’t enough to live off, but it was something, and it was growing. Even if he didn’t want to admit it, he believed Tanja when she said they were nearing a tipping point.

“Yeah, man,” Micha said every time they had a beer in front of the club that let them practice during the day. “It’s the second album where bands get successful.”

Simon wasn’t sure about that but couldn’t think of any counterexamples and didn’t want to. He felt good. It was early spring, unrealistically warm for Berlin, and he had a beer in his hand, two great bandmates and most of an album. Their big album, the magic one that would change everything.

~~~

The amazing, crazy, impossible thing was, they were right. By the end of May, Georg’s Friend had gotten great write-ups in two local papers and thousands of legal, paid-for downloads. A lot of people bought both albums at once, hurrying to pretend they’d liked the band from the beginning. Reviewers praised Simon’s “insightful” and “wounded” lyrics.

Since his esoteric boss Barbara had been savvy or lazy enough not to redecorate the business she’d inherited to match its new name, Café Astral’s ceiling-high windows, cacti and exposed brick still drew a trendy crowd. Once while he and Soledad were descaling the espresso machine, he heard two lanky hipsters raving about the new album, although they “loved the rawness of his earlier work.” Then a third hipster laughed and said, in that blasé drawl Simon couldn’t stand but sometimes found himself imitating, “You guys know the singer liiike . . . made your flat whites?”

Ignoring Soledad’s laughing fit, Simon fled to the storeroom to get fresh milk and bask in the warmth of his success. The last time he’d felt this popular was when Barbara liked his zodiac sign enough to offer him a job on the spot.

And this was something he actually cared about.

~~~

Meanwhile, Micha had a new girlfriend he was smitten with and wrote terrible poems for, one of which Tanja found. For a few weeks, she referred to Mina as “my tall goldilocks” and “sunflower of loveliness” whenever she was alone with Simon. Mina might’ve been unattainable for chunky, balding Micha the year before, but maybe that was just Simon’s cynicism. Or jealousy. He didn’t feel like laughing about the poems when Mina showed up after every rehearsal and embraced Micha like they’d been parted for months, or when he saw Micha’s face go soft as he read some cutesy message from her. And least of all when Micha announced that they were moving in together after the tour.

“Mazel tov,” said Tanja. They were having a beer in the park and going over their set list for the next night. Or the others were having a beer and Simon was having a rhubarb spritzer because he was saving his drinking for when he needed it. Was that any healthier?

“How long have you known her?” He could tell from Tanja’s loud intake of breath that he’d said the wrong thing. It sounded critical, like he was saying it was too soon. What was he supposed to say? Moving in with a woman you were committed to was such alien territory, he had no idea. Living with Nadine had been like camping out, knowing you’d fold up your tent and get in the car as soon as a storm broke.

“A couple months,” Micha said. “But we spend every night together.”

“Cool.”

“We can shop for your wedding gown in Paris.” Tanja was always saying much dickier things than Simon without sounding like a dick. Her tone was so consistent that no one took it seriously. She never talked about her own love life except in a boasting, juvenile way, and Simon wondered whether she was jealous, too. But it was probably just him.

Other people knew how to be happy for each other.

~~~

“It’s been a while,” Dr. Froheifer said.

“I’ve been busy getting ready for the tour.” Simon tried not to sound defensive, not rise to that dentisty accusation of putting off his checkup. His therapist was never going to admit to being passive-aggressive. It would only end up being his relationship to authority figures or something. But he’d come a long way, and knew he owed at least some of it to her.

“Wonderful. How are you feeling about everything?” She always put this special emphasis on feeling, like he had a different way of doing it from every other human on the planet.

“Fine.” To save her the guesswork, he jumped right to his latest issues. “Micha has this new girlfriend.” Then it was his discomfort with other people’s good fortune, not because he didn’t wish them well, but because they’d think he didn’t. Because he couldn’t meet anyone, and if he did, he’d ruin it. They were still digesting Nadine.

“When was the last time you saw a woman socially, not in a”—she cleared her throat, indicating that she was referring to sex, which made him blush because she was about his mom’s age—“‘romantic’ way?”

“I hang out with Tanja after we rehearse, and Soledad and I talk all day at work.” Soledad worked as many shifts at Café Astral as she could fit in while finishing her master’s in film. When they weren’t making fun of Barbara, she told him about movies she’d seen, dates she’d been on and random facts like that squirrels could swim or primeval humans had used laughter to say the coast was clear. Even though she had dark, dramatic curls and the cupid’s-bow lips of a silent-film star, he’d never made a pass at her.

“Good, good, but what about outside of work?”

The longer he thought, the worse it looked, and the more he panicked and couldn’t think of anyone. He’d seen Franzi’s friends sometimes when she was still living with their mom, but she was at college in Hamburg now. He didn’t have any friends outside the band and work, not ones he saw regularly. He wanted to bring that up, but made the mistake of saying what popped into his head: “We hung out with the stalker last fall.”

It was the first time he’d explicitly mentioned her instead of dispersing her over various incidents as if she were as many different people. Talking about awful possibilities had a way of making them more real. As he’d feared, they spent the rest of the session on her.

“Name your demon. Why do you feel so anxious around her?” Name your demons and they lose their power; Dr. F loved to say that. She wanted to know if July presented a real threat, and if so, why he didn’t he contact the authorities.

Or was it simply the threat of someone getting close?

“I guess I feel like, if I encourage her, I’ll never get rid of her.”

“What gives you that impression?”

“She always acts like we know each other.”

“Don’t you?”

“Barely. But she’s acted like I’m this old buddy of hers since day one. She’s not like that with Tanja and Micha, just me.” He hated the whiny note his voice faded out on.

“That’s normal, isn’t it? For fans to focus on the singer? You’re the face of the band.”

“Yeah . . .” He didn’t know how to explain why this was different, didn’t even know why it was.

“Do you feel like you don’t deserve admiration? Like there must be something ‘wrong’ with someone who admires you?” Dr. F didn’t just emphasize words with her voice; her fingers in their bulky turquoise rings were always tracing quotation marks in the air.

“I like it, or at least I don’t mind when it’s not her.” Never admit to needing it. Then he’d get diagnosed a little lower on the patheticness scale. “I feel like I can’t stop her. It’s very invasive.” He was tempted to put ‘invasive’ in quotes, draw her attention to its importance.

“Would you say you feel ‘helpless’?”

He took a deep breath and nodded. He knew what was coming. They wouldn’t stop at the stalker, but continue on to his helplessness in just about any situation. The worst part was knowing she was right.

~~~

Afterward, he felt a blend of relief and regret. Relief that they’d discussed the stalker, regret that it had kept them from covering other issues before the tour and would now forever be one of what Dr. F called the “construction sites” in his life. As he saw it, they were sometimes abandoned due to lack of funding, and sometimes unqualified workers caused near-fatal collapses. Very little ever got built.

The good thing was that she’d told him what to do: “If you have a legitimate reason for feeling uncomfortable, ask her to stop. If she won’t, involve the police.”

He felt both empowered by her advice and ashamed of needing it. Somehow, he’d lost control of the situation. Maybe it was enough to know he could have it back.

~~~

He showered because he always felt dirty after therapy, aware of the clammy hands that had touched the doorknobs, the crinkled magazines in the waiting room and the metal arms of the chairs. Then a soothing Smiths album, pasta with sauce from the jar for dinner, the not-quiterancid dregs from a carton of orange juice. He pulled the beat-up duffle bag out from under his bed, pleased to see he still had travel cosmetics, complete with ample hand sanitizer, packed from the last tour. He called Franzi on speakerphone while picking out t-shirts that wouldn’t look like he was trying too hard.

“That you, Simon? Hold on.”

The noise in the background could’ve been a crowded street or a TV. Whether she stepped in somewhere or muted the set, he could suddenly hear the vast space of silence that always seemed to fill his phone calls, flow through the cables and radio waves, and stream out of the receiver, flooding his apartment like a vapor he’d need days to get rid of. “Is it a good time?”

“Always. How are you?” It sounded like she was brushing her teeth, hopefully a sign she was at home.

“Good. A little nervous, you know, tour starts tomorrow. How is everything?” He heard her spit and mumble something. “That’s good. Listen, do you wanna come to my show in Hamburg? It’s—” The faucet ran and then went off. “I know when it is, Simple Simon. Think I’d miss seeing my famous big brother?”

He laughed. The first time she’d discovered that nursery rhyme in English class, he’d hated it, wanted to burn every copy. But now it was one of those endearing bits of nostalgia that helped hold their patchy relationship as adult siblings together. Sometimes, he wished he were Simple Simon. Wasn’t ignorance bliss? At the same time, overthinking things was part of who he was. He might not like his stupid face or untoned body, but it would scare the shit out of him to see anyone else in the mirror.

“How many tickets should I put on the list? Like if you wanted to bring . . . friends.” She hadn’t confided in him about her love life since he’d said Dirk was wrong for her. She’d agreed in in the end, but he could see how patronizing that had been, coming from someone who made so many bad choices himself. It was a shame, though. One more thing he couldn’t talk about with one more person.

“One’s fine.”

“I’ll put down two. I mean, it’s free.”

“You sound like Mom.” He always liked the incongruous wickedness of her throaty laugh, like some alluring villainess. After their parents’ divorce, their mom’s thrift had taken on such astronomical proportions that it’s cheaper or it’s free could be used to justify anything.

“I heard that when a man gets to a certain age, he turns into his mother. What’s new?”

“Same old, same old.” Like he knew what that meant. “Wouldn’t you rather catch up in person? Unless you don’t have time.”

“Of course I do.” He felt bad that his only visit to Hamburg this year was for a show. It was only a couple hours away. But Franzi hadn’t come to Berlin, either.

“Anyway, my life’s not as exciting as yours.”

“Nobody’s is as boring as mine.” Not that it was a competition, even if they were siblings. He just didn’t want her to get the wrong idea.

“I look forward to hearing about your heinously boring life as an indie star touring Europe. But I gotta run. Places to go, people to see; namely, a romantic rendezvous. Don’t snitch.”

“I won’t. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”

They dragged out the laugh, then mumbled something and hung up, but not before the silence could slip out and flood his bedroom, flow from there into the kitchen and bathroom. But that was okay. She’d confided in him. And she was right; his life wasn’t as drab as it felt. He might not have many friends or a partner, didn’t party with celebrities.

He played in a pretty good band, though, and was about to see more of the world than he ever had before.

It would be nice to catch up with her. Interacting with his parents was an intricate escape act that required all his skills as a contortionist to make it through dangerous topics unscathed. But he and Franzi could talk, and it would be like old times. Not old times the way they’d actually been, but the way you remembered them, a collage of bright little scenes pasted together without context.

He turned off the music, made himself a cup of chamomile tea, which was supposed to make you sleepy but never did, and put his guitar and bag by the door. As always, he was convinced he’d forgotten to pack something important, but told himself there was nothing he couldn’t buy on tour. He slept in a thin half-dream state and woke to the nervous excitement he’d always felt before a new school year.

~~~

He wished they were leaving right away. That wasn’t even stalker-related. Her posts were as adoring as ever, so hopefully she wasn’t mad that he hadn’t called. He had no idea whether she was still writing to him because he’d told Poor Dog Records he didn’t need to hear about fan mail. No one else sent any. Maybe she’d finally given up on getting a reply. He was never quite sure what she wanted from him—was it actual interaction, or only to keep him aware of her and maintain whatever link she saw between them? The obvious explanation was that she was obsessed with the band and in love with him, but he felt like there was something else going on, something too silly to say aloud, even at therapy. Like she wanted to own him, maybe even consume and absorb him into herself.

But, for the moment, he felt equipped to handle her and any number of things, even a little adventure. Why didn’t he ever go anywhere? Money was only an excuse. If he really wanted to travel, he’d manage.

Short of leaving the country, the only thing to do with his newfound energy was empty his overflowing recycling bins and schlep his deposit bottles to the store. He hadn’t showered, and everyone looked at him like this was his alcohol consumption from today instead of the past few months. Like they weren’t all boxed-wine drinkers themselves. But he bought groceries and no beer, so at least the cashier knew he wasn’t a drunk.

At home, he put eggs on to boil, then got the broom from its cobwebby corner and swept out his bedroom, bathroom and the small living room that turned into a kitchen almost right away. The trashcan looked like a sandbox by the time he was done, and he wondered why he hadn’t noticed the furry layers of dust and tumbleweeds of hair before. What if he had a date? The worst part was, he had had dates here. If you wanted to call them that.

He wiped down the bathroom, enjoying the pungent lavender smell of cleaning spray. The bottle was full even though he’d bought it ages ago, and he had to press the trigger a few times before anything came out. Afterward, he washed his hands twice, remembered he was starving, and ran to the kitchen, where the water had boiled over. He made coffee in the pot that had succeeded a nicer one he’d smashed when high, toasted some bread, took out a package of questionable butter and sat down. But the thought wouldn’t unthink itself.

What if he had a date? became: Why didn’t he ever? He hadn’t hooked up with anyone since their tour last year, and not even the last night of it, since they’d been with the stalker. Before that had been Ilse and scattered one-night stands, no one he’d cleaned up for. If he was brutally honest, the height of his romantic success was before rehab, before Nadine.

Relationships had never been his forte. The few girls he dated in college faded out within weeks, which he learned to do himself in the process. After graduating, he met Susi at one of his small no-cover shows. She was into his music at first, but later changed her tune to “get a real job.” Rather than ask what was wrong with working at the grocery store, he handled things in his cowardly way, becoming less and less available until she ended what had never really started. Which gave him that much more time to meet old friends who already had great jobs or at least internships, keep drinking after they left, avoid his horde of roommates.

When he met a moderately successful musician at an open mic, he was sure it was his big break. He started playing second guitar in Andreas’s sprawling, folksy band and smoking pot because everyone in the band did, and everyone in the audience, too. His inexperience had embarrassed him, but being stoned made him even more paranoid than usual that everyone hated him. Only a few weeks in, he picked the wrong side in an argument, with the result that he and a violinist he didn’t even like got kicked out together. But he’d never really liked loudmouthed Andreas, either, with his gray ponytail, Celtic pendants and penchant for younger women.

He’d begun his brief career in a slowly failing video store and made friends with the other wannabe working there, a balding drummer named Micha. Still playing every gig he could get, he kept telling himself that music had never been a realistic plan, that he needed to grow up and figure something out. The problem was, he couldn’t figure anything out. He’d been talented compared to other children, other students, but clearly had no talent for real life. He got tired of his successful friends, tired before he could develop feelings for a woman. Maudlin, he told himself Susi was right. Was he supposed to impress someone by barely holding down a job at Video World? That was the only thing getting him out of bed in the morning. Then his roommates had a meeting behind his back about how he never cleaned, cooked or hung out with them. Once they’d taken a vote, they told him to his face.

He’d asked Micha if he could crash at his place “for a couple days,” mumbling some lie about relationship trouble because that sounded less pathetic than not being allowed to exist in the same space as five other grubby young people.

“Dude,” Micha had said. “Don’t you have any other friends?” But he let him stay.

As a cheap leisure activity, they started playing together and realized they weren’t just losers calling themselves musicians to look cool. They were losers who were musicians. They hung up ads for bassists, found an emaciated cokehead named Tom, came up with a name and website and enough songs for a sampler. They weren’t playing any real venues, but there was an endless supply of bars who’d let bands like them pass around a hat. They were musicians; really they were. Desperate to keep this little spark of optimism from going out, Simon had spent the money he saved on rent buying coke off of Tom, who was happy to share for a price. That didn’t apply to Tom’s girlfriend Rosa, caught at some unfortunate point between burlesque and goth but still sexy. Simon was high when she came onto him, but knew he shouldn’t. He hadn’t gotten hurt when Tom pushed him off stage in the middle of a show, but he hadn’t felt like playing anymore, either, and anyway Tom had left.

Micha had said they could keep playing together but Simon had to move out, so Simon had exhausted all his friends from college, moving from couch to floor to airbed with a backpack full of dirty laundry, his guitars and amp on a dolly stolen from Ikea. Coke was too expensive to make a habit of, but he hadn’t known how else to feel happy. The Rastacapped dealers in Görlitzer Park only had skunky pot or meth in his price range, and he’d wanted something that wouldn’t make him more antisocial. He’d told himself it was a rough patch, couldn’t last long. He’d never bought much—couldn’t afford to—but without any shows coming up, that easy, bright flash of energy was something to look forward to, at least until it triggered a gut-wrenching panic attack about his heart stopping.

He’d forgotten what it was like to have a room of his own. The feeling of being observed, of encroaching on someone else’s well-earned space, was making him crazy, but he never passed the castings to get a room in another shared apartment. They always asked stupid questions like “If you were an animal, what would it be?” and he’d sit there thinking, a wounded one, does that count? and wanting more than anything to crawl into some dark place where he could lick his wounds or die.

He lost his job at Video World because business was bad and he was the worst employee. As he was nearing an even lower low point, they’d auditioned bassists and he’d insisted on Nadine, crystal clear in his certainty that she’d take them places with her glowing aura, until he came down and realized she was pretty and a good workman, not a creative composer.

There she was, though, his new friend and his luck. He found a shortterm sublet and a job in another store, started feeling hopeful. But nothing was how he’d pictured it, least of all Nadine, whose gentle vagueness was half down to being stoned. Only after they were together had he discovered how terrifying her temper could be—but he preferred her shouting to the icy silence that could numb him for days. As their fighting edged toward a hideous crescendo, his last bowl of meth gave him heart palpitations, and he called Franzi to say he was dying. She told their parents he was a wreck, and the whole family rushed to Berlin—the first thing they’d done together in years. Franzi insisted he admit what he was addicted to.

“Crystal meth?” he’d said, uncertain like a kid in the back of class who missed the teacher’s question. He hadn’t smoked it more than five times, tops.

“Meth, Simon?! Have you completely lost it?”

He wondered what she’d expected, or what she would’ve preferred. Everybody had cried and scolded until he agreed to see a doctor. He wasn’t on anything when Franzi said she was cutting off all contact until he got clean. He was only miserable, but no one had wanted to believe that. They thought they’d be enabling him if they did. As soon as he gave in and admitted to an addiction he didn’t have, everyone had been kind, from Nadine to his snide stepmom Cindi. They were all so proud he could admit he had a problem. Like he’d ever denied that.

He’d continued his false confessions, and the DA dropped the possession charge in exchange for rehab and therapy. He spent six months in the middle of nowhere without so much as a glass of wine to soften things. His hosts said grace three times a day, his fellow inmates wailed and gnashed their teeth, and he fluctuated between exhaustion, restlessness, despair and apathy until he found something on the outskirts of peace and finished writing their first album.

Micha had been dubious when he got out. Nadine had believed in him, but she also believed in chem trails and aliens building the pyramids. Franzi was his sister again. His parents resumed not speaking to each other. The shitty studio where H vs. H recorded their first album gave it charming low-fi touches their only two reviews praised. An electronics chain trying to develop a more badass image hired Simon thanks to the beard he’d grown in rehab, which he shaved off a week later. Clubs started booking them as an opening act. Then he remembered it was his job to ruin things for himself. As if the gutting loss of Nadine weren’t bad enough, Micha was pissed about having to replace her and having Simon crash at his place again. Tanja was ten times the musician Nadine was, but that wasn’t the point. At least he had his own apartment now, even if it was kind of a dump.

Forget about a date, what if Franzi came to visit? Was she supposed to sleep on the floor? He ordered an air mattress and extra bedding online, finished his coffee and decided to go catch some of the golden light pouring through his windows because he’d never gotten around to installing curtains, and it was just a matter of time before anything you taped up came crashing down. Was that a metaphor? He got the first few letters of “curtains” onto his wrist before his only pen ran out of ink. Step one: Buy pens and paper. He didn’t need to write anything this soon after releasing an album, but why waste an idea? Besides, a destination would make it easier to drag himself outside.

~~~

The light was pale and bright, with a clarity that felt like putting on 3D glasses. Too real to be real. But there was plenty of it, skipping over the surface of the duck pond like a tossed stone, catching on the spokes of passing baby carriages. He sensed resentment on all sides. His was the only bench not occupied by a young upwardly mobile family, except the one where two shriveled old people were sitting, canes between their knees. It was hard to resent old people. He, on the other hand, looked, if not healthy, at least mobile enough to make it to a less family-oriented part of the park. He hated himself for forgetting his headphones, which would’ve at least provided a buffer.

It’s not about you, he reminded himself. They’re just looking for somewhere to sit. One of the high-end moms, one hand on her SUVsized stroller and the other holding a toddler’s, asked, “Do you mind?” and he almost fled, but decided to stand his ground.

“Not at all.”

She parked her carriage at one end and her toddler even closer to Simon than was necessary to make him cringe, then gave the kid a bag of cheerios and herself an iPad in a pink leather case. Or maybe it was faux, to be PC.

He bent the spine of his new notebook and scribbled with his new pen until the ink ran smooth. He tried to pretend they were somewhere else, or he was. On the hill behind him, a family was having a picnic. And a fight, but they weren’t letting on about that. Officially, the parents were lavishing all their attention on the twins in matching overalls searching the blanket for things to put in their sticky mouths. But what were toddlers supposed to say to: “Max, Philip, look at that racing bike. I had one like that when I was in good shape and we still lived in Stuttgart.”

“To be honest, your mommy never rode that expensive bike much.”

“Your daddy may not remember because he wasn’t around much . . .”

Simon wrote: “We traded in our racing bikes / for a four-wheel drive

/ We haven’t really talked in years / Just ask the kids to hold our hate.” Was hate too much? He needed the rhythm of the single syllable but would’ve preferred a slant rhyme. He enclosed it in brackets. How could he fit talking about yourself in the third person into the next line? Soggy bits of cheerio disintegrated onto his notebook. He looked up and shook his head at the kid proffering the baggy. Manners weren’t dead after all. He checked the mom for approval or dismay, but she was fixated on her tablet. Was she trying to keep up with work and unable to find a daycare? Or was she desperately bored and just wanted to read a little clickbait while her son rested his head on Simon’s shoulder, undisturbed by the movement of his arm as he wrote? The wind carried over another shred of the taut conversation behind him.

“That was when your mommy had her own business and didn’t spend all day—”

“Actually, that was only your mommy’s hobby that never turned a profit or—”

“Your daddy never gave it a chance to turn a profit and your mommy should’ve gotten a loan from the Employment Agency instead—”

He could picture the very kind of shop, just like the ones north of here in the organic handmade heart of Prenzlauer Berg. Opening hours compatible with daycare. All the products nice, so nice the owner would’ve, and in fact already had, bought them for her own children. The heartbreaking effort to sell to customers of her own social standing, to pretend she didn’t need to while needing more than anything to contribute something other than homemaking because she was educated and ambitious and could’ve run a real business if she hadn’t married an engineer, if the tax system hadn’t encouraged arrangements with only one breadwinner, if her husband hadn’t earned so much and it hadn’t made so much more sense for him to go back to work first after they had the kids, if, if, if . . .

He finished the song and exhaled, more or less satisfied. He’d tweak the wording, but it was all there, his sense of exclusion, the imagined tension of that marriage and the guilt of wanting something, anything for yourself. The only thing missing was how much more real the people around him sometimes seemed, the way there was so much yearning and arguing and struggling and daydreaming and loving and resenting going on here, and none of it was his, maybe never would be. Or was that just him feeling alone again? Another song for another day. This one was already long enough. It would run toward seven minutes, but they could afford that now. On a first album, if you wanted to make it past gloating about your street cred to an audience of ten, you had to write radiolength songs with hooks to sink into the listeners. Even live, you couldn’t afford to go over five minutes. But now he could write what felt true. You had to sell out to afford integrity.

He wanted another coffee, but the baby started screeching somewhere inside the massive carriage, and he didn’t want to look like he was leaving because of the eardrum-rupturing sound. The mom didn’t look up, but rolled the carriage back and forth, used to it. The toddler didn’t seem fazed, either. I could just take this kid and leave, Simon thought. Not like he wanted to. Was that a normal thing to think? What would he even do with a kid, not being a pervert or murderer or even in a cult? The police would scoop them up at the edge of the park. Anybody could see he wasn’t a father. Why? What made him so sure the people strolling past didn’t think he was part of this family? He didn’t look successful enough. He wasn’t poor anymore, but still thought of himself that way. Still dressed that way. Like we even know what real poverty is, in this country, Franzi would’ve said. But it was getting harder and harder to tell the difference between beggars and hipsters with their eccentric hairstyles and ragged clothing. What if he were a banker going for that look on a day off?

It was too hard to imagine. Instead, he got in line at the coffee stand. He couldn’t be bothered to leave the park, not even to walk to Café Astral, where he could get a coffee on the house and see Soledad. It wasn’t worth the risk of running into Barbara. She might be mad about him quitting again and tell him the stars were unfavorable for his tour. And today was a success so far. Was he happy? No, but blank.

And definitely not jealous of some absent businessman whose (not very polite) wife was still on that bench. It had more to do with being the only one alone in the park. The only one who was always alone. He knew as he thought that that it wasn’t really true, but knew as he thought that that it was true in every way that counted. He carried loneliness within him like a child, careful of it, hampered by the extra weight. But instead of coming to term, it shrank and swelled as the opportunity arose, not a new life but a drain on his, a homegrown parasite.

Clichés like “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life alone” were just another thing to hide behind. Words you’d heard so often you no longer processed their meaning, but stacked them in front of your feelings like sandbags, hoping they’d hold in the flood. He didn’t need to be with someone; he just needed to know he could. But the mood would pass. That was one of the blessings of therapy, learning to dilute the urgency of his crises. The thoughts were true until proven otherwise, but he didn’t have to think them all the time.

His mom kept suggesting he try the dating site where she’d met her boyfriend Reinhardt. He’d once filled out half a profile before giving up, disgusted with himself and anyone desperate enough to contact him. What did he have to offer, if he didn’t even have enough wit to fill a few textboxes? And wouldn’t it reflect poorly on the band that he couldn’t find a girlfriend in real life? Stretching out this imagined shame the way he always did, he came up with excuses: the whole thing a comment on our times, inspiration for lyrics. But he was engulfed by an ennui he couldn’t swim to the top of whenever he thought of filling out the form, grinning roguishly in a stupid selfie for the profile picture. Or worse still, having Micha take it and ask what it was for.

The line wasn’t moving. At the head of it, he could hear the hard and soft sounds of Berlin dialect in a trivial argument—g’s exchanged for j’s, soft s’s transformed into hard, clipped t’s—and wished he had someone to roll his eyes at. Berlin was so famous for its “lip” they printed t-shirts about it, but he wished the tough old lady behind the counter would take her issues out somewhere else.

He left the line for a patio table at the restaurant next door, paging through his notebook so people would know he was busy and not alone for lack of a better offer. A lost cat poster stared at him from a tree trunk. “Where’s Mei?” He was too far away to make out the rest. He could get a pet. Someone who wouldn’t know any better than to love him.

Although it looked like even a cat could leave you.

“Simon!”

Funny how much like dogs people are, pricking up their ears when they hear their names. He was the only person he knew who literally never ran into acquaintances. Maybe actually literally this time. For one thing, he didn’t get out much. For another, he didn’t know anyone. He swiped through his phone like anyone might want to get in touch with him. A shadow fell over his table, and he tried to decide whether to order a milchkaffee, latte or cappuccino, which suddenly seemed important, even though they were all coffee with milk. “Siiimon,” the voice insisted, and now he did turn, an obedient dog.

The I-know-her lights flashed on and then went dark again as true recognition set in. Why hadn’t he stayed home? And why had he smiled like he was happy to see her?

“July, I didn’t see you.”

“Mind if I join you?”

Even if the waitress hadn’t come right then, even if July hadn’t sat down without waiting for an answer, it would’ve been impossible to say no. Less because of how she would’ve felt than because of how he would’ve felt about himself.

She ordered a milchkaffee and he copied her out of laziness, but regretted it. She probably couldn’t wait to add it to her list of reasons they were soulmates. She already knew what he ordered at bars and was now noting his favorite coffee. Not that it was his favorite. Not that that was the point.

“How are you?” It was a safe thing to say. If they talked for a few minutes, she might be pleased enough with her chance encounter to leave him alone. If it was chance.

“Great! Looking forward to your show. You must be excited.”

“I guess. Business as usual.”

The waitress deposited napkins, spoons and two fat mugs of milky coffee.

“Not exactly,” July said. “Taking your new album on the road for the first time, your biggest tour yet . . . ”

“I guess.”

“I guess this, I guess that.” She laughed as she poured so much sugar into her coffee he could taste it in his. “Aren’t you ever sure of anything?”

“Are you?” he asked before he could stop himself. This was the last thing he needed, getting roped into some philosophical discussion or amateur psychoanalysis.

“I’m sure of all kinds of things. I know what I like and what I don’t, what’s important to me and what isn’t. Most importantly, I know what I want.”

He kept his eyes on his coffee, afraid she was looking at what she knew she wanted. “It’s simpler before you graduate.” He remembered school as chaotic, but there were grades to let you know where you stood, deadlines for papers, dates for exams. The future coming up like an exit on the autobahn.

She laughed, stirred her coffee and drank, leaving a purplish smear of lipstick on her cup. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Trying not to look for faint lines around her eyes or protruding veins in her hands, he felt the situation slipping out of control. Mistake one: He’d said something that could be construed as a compliment. Mistake two: He’d set himself up to ask more questions.

“What do you do then?” The whole thing was creepier now. It would be less creepy if she were in high school, flooded with enough hormones to excuse her silly behavior and too young to actually believe they’d get together. If she were in college, you could chalk it up to vestigial silliness, trying to be a little wild before real life started. But she was a full-fledged adult who spent her free time posting about his band, going to almost all their shows and trying—unfortunately with some success—to hang out with him. There was nothing too weird about any of these things. Plenty of people had crushes on musicians. But it wasn’t the same, not to him or to her.

“I’m a copywriter now.” He must’ve looked puzzled because she added, “I write all those texts on toothpaste tubes and banner ads no one reads.” That sounded just like her: something you had no interest in looking at, plastered over your line of vision, demanding your attention. “I’ve thought of translating, but I’ve gotten out of practice with Dutch. I know a little of a lot of languages, though.

Sometimes I think about getting good enough to move to another country.” “How come?” he said instead of please do.

“There are things I’d like to leave behind, you know?”

“Sure.” What could she possibly have to leave behind? As she continued talking, something crystalized for him: It wasn’t that she did all those stalkery things; it was that she seemed to only do those things. To only be interested in his band. Not once in almost three years could he remember her bringing anyone to a show or talking about her life before she started listening to Hare vs. Hedgehog. The band—or he— was all she had. He had the urge to run as fast as he could, but she’d only turn up at his show. Besides, he didn’t feel comfortable leaving her with the check. Were those excuses? Dr. F was right: It was in his power to get rid of July. It had to be.

“. . . ultimately the flexibility. Who wants to be tied to a desk all day, am I right?”

“Yeah.” He managed to squeeze out a laugh like the last toothpaste in the tube: flat, dry, not quite enough. He wasn’t warm but could feel himself sweating. Or was he coming down with something, right in the middle of everything? As she continued talking, he nodded at intervals and pictured himself losing consciousness, helpless to free his hand from her grip. There was a movie like that, where the woman has a crush on some stranger, and then he’s in a coma and she tells everyone he’s her fiancé. But the sticky layer of sweat was only anxiety. He pretended to massage his wrists so he could feel the steady reality of his pulse.  Out of nowhere, or at least nowhere he’d been listening to, she broke through his fog of angst by asking, “Have you ever hated—I mean really hated—the person you are?”

Yes. Always. Or at least on a regular basis.

But before he could give away what might be the only thing they did have in common, she added, “That was a rhetorical question, of course. I mean, why would you? You’re amazing.”

He didn’t know whether to feel flattered or offended that she considered him incapable of self-hatred. It almost made him question who he was.

“You didn’t even let rehab get in the way of who you are.”

“Oh, uh, thanks.” He swallowed the “I guess” he nearly added, not wanting her to think they shared an inside joke.

“I wish I could be more like you.”

He nodded but couldn’t help asking himself whether she was right. Rehab hadn’t gotten in the way of who he was, unless the miserable life he’d been leading right before was his true self. But it had changed him. Not so much physically, because there was no drug he’d tried more than five times, and yes, that was still trying in his book—not habitual use— and probably in Springtime’s book, too, if they’d believed him. But being there had done a lot for him. From a practical standpoint, it had given him time to finish writing the album and a place to stay without imposing on anyone.

More than that, it was one of the few times in his life he’d been alone with himself. Not literally alone, because he’d had that paunchy roommate who wet the bed Simon’s first night, all the “family” meals and the group therapy sessions where some people talked about wanting euphoria, others—like Simon—about just wanting to not feel bad, and the crack waif mumbled about needing to get “out, out, out,” a sentiment they could all nod along with. But he hadn’t been one of them, hadn’t had to take notice of them or try to win their admiration or affection.

They were a grim backdrop, people to pity rather than empathize with. Since he’d never needed treatment for withdrawal and the only entertainment was a box of VHS tapes someone had probably left by the curb, he’d had all the time in the world to take walks by himself, play his acoustic guitar where he hoped no one would hear, and think. Life no longer loomed like a wave about to break over him; it had ceased to move at all, a still body of water at once placid and stagnant. There was nothing to worry about because there was, for a time, nothing.

July paused, so he gave a small nod that could’ve been construed as glancing at his coffee in case she hadn’t said anything he could nod at. A few keywords he’d half-heard indicated she was talking about men, maybe trying to give him the impression that she was sought-after, a prize he’d be lucky to win.

“When I say he was crazy about me, I mean really, actually crazy.” That reminded Simon of someone he knew.

“I wasn’t even that attracted to him, but it was flattering to have someone be that into me, you know?”

He nodded again, then regretted it. He knew and didn’t want to. He felt his breathing stop and maybe his heart. He wasn’t flattered; he was trapped. Not just now but indefinitely, until the unlikely event that she moved away or found someone else to stalk and ditched him as abruptly as she’d latched on.

He unlocked his phone, trying to think of some urgent summons he could pretend to receive, but nothing came to mind. “Be right back.” He had to clear his constricted throat and repeat himself before she understood. All he needed was a minute alone.

In the bathroom, he regretted not taking his phone with him. He could’ve run away after all. Washing his overheated face, he reminded himself that all he had to do was finish his coffee. He breathed in as far as the air would go and told himself nothing bad would happen. In an hour or—hopefully—less, he’d be home alone, the irrational dread of this moment fading.

“Are you from Berlin originally?” he asked when he got back. Trying to make normal small talk was like stringing together sentences in a language he barely knew. But going to the bathroom had interrupted her monologue, and the last thing he wanted was a silence she might read as intimate. Every moment he didn’t fill with innocuous small talk was an opportunity for her to say something inappropriate, something that grasped at his time and attention, at a stifling, ever-closer relationship and ownership of who he was.

“No, but I’ve been here a while.”

“Yeah, me, too,” he coughed up. He felt something like gratitude toward her for not noticing he was inches away from melting into a gibbering mess.

“You’re from Hannover, right?”

“Yeah.” Then the spring snapped back in the other direction, and he could barely contain his laughter. What a farce. Pretending to get to know each other when she already knew everything about him. What would he have to say to surprise her? “My girlfriend’s a real Berliner, though.”

“You don’t have one,” she said flatly. Her cheeks went red.

He watched the color spread to the rest of her face. “What?”

“Sorry. I misspoke. I meant, you have a girlfriend? I, um, that is . . .”

So she did have a weak spot. Couldn’t he enjoy throwing her for a loop for once? But now that they were playing by his rules, he could afford to feel sorry for her. After all, wasn’t he alone, too? He didn’t even have anyone to stalk.

It didn’t take her long to recover. “How come she never comes to your shows?”

He stalled by drinking his lukewarm coffee. “She does sometimes, but it’s not very interesting for her because she’s deaf.” “Deaf?” July shouted as if he were.

“You know, hearing-impaired. Can’t hear the music.”

It took him a second to realize she wasn’t making random gestures with her hands. “I don’t speak sign language.” He searched for a name, but his mind was a dangerous blank. Then he spotted the blurry lost cat. “Mei can read lips.” The poster wasn’t in July’s line of vision. “Her mom’s Japanese,” he added, in case the name seemed unrealistic.

“Do you speak that?” She’d gone from suspicious to accusing. Taking his girlfriend’s side, resenting him for not speaking any of her languages, forcing her to communicate in his. Even in imaginary relationships, he was a bad partner.

“I wanna learn, but since she’s from here, it’s more natural for us to speak German. Speaking of Mei, gotta go.” He waved to the waitress, paid and was on his feet before July could thank him.

He headed out of the park to keep from running into her again. But he wasn’t stupid enough to go straight home. He’d take a detour through empty side streets to make sure she wasn’t following him. He crossed three lanes but got stuck at a red light for the tram tracks. Too late, he remembered Dr. F’s advice. But Mei had been more effective than anything else he could’ve said, and there was no reason to involve the police. July had only been in the park by chance. Hopefully.

“Siiimon! Wait!”

You don’t hear her. She’s not close enough to see whether you have headphones on. But he had a gruesome vision of her getting run over while chasing him, so he turned to look. She was waving and pointing. It took him a moment to recognize his notebook. Shame and hot discomfort surged through him. She’d read it. He knew she had. How could he have been so stupid? He wanted to knock her over and tear it out of her hand, but he was helpless, trapped on this island between trams, cars, bikes and buses.

When the lights changed, she crossed in slow triumph. He couldn’t pretend not to see her now. She had him by the guts like Scorpion from Mortal Kombat, who’d always harpooned Simon’s character and wrenched him across the arena because Franzi had memorized the combo for that move: Get over here! He should’ve known he wouldn’t be able to dislodge July so painlessly.

“You shouldn’t rush off like that,” she smirked. “You might lose something important.” She held onto the notebook as they crossed the other half of the street. “I love the new lyrics. I didn’t realize you write by hand. That’s so charming and old-fashioned.”

“Thanks.” The word got caught on the tumbleweed rolling up and down his arid throat. Was he imagining it, or was she being sadistic? It was obvious that she’d snooped, but she didn’t have to say so. His stupid mistake had been just the opportunity she was waiting for. He couldn’t tell whether reading her favorite lines aloud over his desperate shushing was her way of punishing him for having a girlfriend, or for inventing one. She can’t know, he reminded himself. She isn’t the Stasi with a network of informants and a tap on my phone. There’s no way she can be sure.

“Thanks. Bye!” The cover of the notebook tore when he snatched it, but that didn’t matter. He did what he should’ve all along: run. As fast as he could, around corners and across streets, the bells of angry bicyclists and horns of angrier drivers making the soundtrack to this chase scene. He only stopped when he thought he’d puke. The street was empty except for an old man shuffling along with an ancient dachshund. Simon gave him a hard look to make sure he wouldn’t tear off a false beard to reveal July, then walked home, looked over his shoulder again and ran upstairs. The thought of seeing her again in a few hours was too unbearable to think. He felt free, a hunted rabbit that’s escaped the predator one more time, lived to sleep another night before the terror of circling hawks and lurking foxes begins again. He wrote down that image before taping over the torn cover.

~~~

The evening was shot. And restricting this feeling to the evening and not the entire tour, eternity and the universe represented a certain level of damage control. Nobody was allowed to read his lyrics before they were ready. Not his parents or Franzi, not even Tanja or Micha who had a legitimate interest.

But she had. She’d gotten him so spooked he’d left them within her evil clutches. No, calm down. It wasn’t that bad. Had she thought to take a picture? If not, they were only stored in her flighty little head, which was so full of creepiness there was no room for poetry. Although the lyrics didn’t feel all that poetic anymore. Somehow, she’d done that, too.

He put on some music, but it coasted by him like the dull conversations of passing strangers, leaving him raw and alone in bed, his throat closing in the grip of invisible hands. He was letting this be too important. He put his knuckles under his chin to feel the steady heartbeats. All he had to do was breathe. In through the mouth, as much as his lungs could hold, then back out through the nose. Nothing had happened. In. Hold. Well, something had. Out. But—inhale, deeper—it wasn’t as bad as he was making out. He’d run into someone he didn’t like—out, emptying himself of this poison—and been sucked into wasting half an hour. That was all.

He sat up and gripped the bedframe. The breathing exercises were making him dizzy instead of relaxed, but the metal bar felt cool and reassuring. A stable thing, unaffected by panic. People less antisocial than he was had this happen all the time. You made small talk, and then an excuse.

Time to name his demons. She’d read his lyrics. Was that it? No, the second demon was him feeling trapped. He hadn’t stayed out of politeness; he hadn’t had a choice. Anyone else in there? Yes, the one so obvious you almost forgot it: She’d be at the show. Not to mention other shows. She was a parasite. Just thinking about her sapped his energy.

He heard the muffled vibration of his phone, already packed with the charger he always forgot and had to replace on tour. Probably Micha asking about dinner. He wasn’t hungry, but there was something reassuring about the thought of a sane, normal question from a sane, normal person. He’d feel better once he told the others. He wouldn’t mind their teasing as long as he managed to laugh with them.

Two messages: “Hey, Simon! I see you got a new number. Hehe.” Some emojis that were supposed to look sassy. Was there no corner of his life she couldn’t seep into? The next message read, “Hope you’re not mad. Just figured you lost mine. Can’t wait to see you play.” This one had a heart and a picture of a guitar.

He had to stay calm. There were things you could do. You got someone’s number blocked or changed yours. Like before. Or you ignored the messages until even the most desperate person in the world would be forced to admit defeat. Since he didn’t want any trouble meeting Franzi in Hamburg or finding his bandmates in a foreign city, he decided to go with the last option. For now. The important thing was knowing he had options.

He messaged Micha: “Can you give me a ride?” He’d usually have taken the tram since the heavy equipment was already in the van, but what if July had located him within a couple blocks? Walking to the stop would give him away.

He wrote to Franzi, who was probably too busy to care. “I have a stalker, but she hasn’t done anything illegal yet.” For good measure, he asked Tanja to get him some of whatever she was drinking.

Micha said, “No prob, see you in half an hour.” Franzi said, “Shit. Discuss in Hamburg?” and Tanja didn’t reply but was hopefully getting him something strong. Alcohol’s a drug, too, said that nag at the back of his mind. Don’t jump out of the frying pan and into the fire. Don’t prove everyone right for refusing to believe you weren’t an addict. But he had more pressing worries. Anyway, he’d never had the real junky experience. He’d lost his job, apartment and most of his friends, but that hadn’t been because of drugs. Other people were scratching themselves bloody and gibbering in the lobbies of banks.

He felt fake for writing about addiction, but that was his low selfesteem talking. Even his failures weren’t good enough. Franzi had once said, “Johnny Cash never shot a man in Reno.” It was one of those concise phrases you could summon up whenever you needed it, but it wasn’t what he needed now.

With Micha’s arrival imminent enough to keep it short, he called his mom. He could use some of her scattered, non-specific encouragement. As long as they skipped the worries. Busy signal. He tried his dad. Voicemail. Cindi answered halfway through, but he wasn’t that desperate.

He checked again to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, then read his emails: only notifications about posts on their site, which he deleted without seeing how many were from @JulyAllYear.

His phone vibrated again. “Busy, huh?” Hadn’t she ever heard of not coming on too strong? Even if he were interested, this many texts without a reply was a bit much. He turned off his phone, picked up his guitar case and bag, and went downstairs. At least she didn’t have his address. If she did, she’d be outside.

~~~

An eternity later, after a dozen neighbors had walked by and seemed to consider calling the police on the lurking vagrant until they saw his guitar, Micha pulled up. Simon put his hood on, ran out and got in as Micha picked up his phone.

“Whoa!” Micha dropped it in his lap. “You scared the shit out of me.”

Simon locked the door and hunched down in his seat. “July’s freaking me out.”

“Don’t let a few posts bother you. Everyone’s weird online.”

He tried to keep his voice level, be ready to laugh if that was the normal, healthy thing to do. “I’m not talking about online. I’m talking about her real, physical presence in the park. Appearing at my table. Snooping through my lyrics. Stealing my phone number.”

“Shit.” Micha waited for a break in traffic, then turned onto Danziger Strasse. “Think she knew you’d be there?”

“I don’t know.” Much as the teasing usually bothered him, much as he’d wanted someone to take him seriously, that wasn’t what he wanted now. He wanted Micha’s belly laugh, a stupid jibe, something to make it not count. “I was in Volkspark. A lot of people go there.”

“During the week, it’s mostly people who live nearby, which she doesn’t, unless she was lying when she invited you over that time.” “You heard that?”

“She wasn’t exactly whispering. What I’m saying is, people taking a walk go to the closest park. Why go all the way to your park on a random weekday, unless you’re meeting people? Which she clearly wasn’t.”

“She, um, freelances?” He didn’t like how convincing Micha sounded, since he was trying not to fall into the usual trap of thinking everything was about him. He’d struggled to admit to that weakness, because thinking the world revolved around you sounded like a problem for arrogant jerks, not cringing bundles of insecurity like himself. But, like Micha, he was thinking of it as his park, July a trespasser with no business there.

“The whole thing’s starting to scare me.” The last half of his sentence was drowned out by Micha honking when someone cut him off.

“To what?”

“Worry me.”

“I see what you mean. It’s too much.”

“I can’t tell if she hasn’t noticed the obvious signs I’m not interested, or . . .”

“Or?”

“Or she’s somehow . . . disturbed.”

“Yeah. But you could take her. At least it’s not some big, muscular type. At the end of the day, what’s she gonna do?”

Simon didn’t answer. At the end of the day, that was exactly what scared him.