A bookshop in Cologne-Ehrenfeld, a rainy day, a notebook. Literary short story. 18+.
It had been raining since morning. The bookshop in Ehrenfeld had hardly any customers by half past six, I had been alone in the salesroom since four, and I had already resolved three times to turn off the light cone at the entrance door, because it attracted the last strollers who only came in to get dry. My black skirt clung to my thighs, the humidity made my neck sweat, and I felt my lace underwear under my blouse growing damp—not from the rain, but from the silence, from the emptiness, from the longing for something I didn’t want to admit to myself.
He came at ten past six. He stood in the doorway for a while first, looked around before entering, the way only people do who want something specific without knowing what it is. He was about mid-forties, dark coat, darker where it was wet, and he carried a green cloth notebook in his hand. His hands were slender, with long fingers, and I immediately imagined how those fingers would glide over my body. My pulse quickened as he came closer, and I felt my nipples under my blouse grow hard, so hard they pressed against the fabric.
“Can you help me?” His voice was deep, rough from the weather, but gentle.
“I’ll try.” I leaned against the counter, let my gaze slowly slide over him. The coat stretched across his broad shoulders, and when he moved, I saw the contours of his body beneath it. My mouth went dry.
“I’m looking for a book of which I only know three lines. I know neither the title nor the author. I read it twenty years ago on a train ride.”
I leaned against the counter. That was one of the better games in an empty bookshop in the rain. I lived off it, but at that moment I lived off something else—off the way he looked at me, how his eyes lingered on my cleavage, which I had deliberately left low.
“Which three lines?”
He opened the green notebook, searched for a specific page, read aloud. His lips formed the words slowly, almost tenderly, and I imagined how those lips would glide along my neck, how they would enclose my nipples, how they would lick me until I scream.
“The city was most beautiful in May, when the linden blossoms began to fall into the cups, and no one had the courage to fish them out, because plucking a blossom from a cup of tea in this city was considered rude.”
I listened to him. He read like someone who had done this often—quietly, precisely, without dramatic tone. But beneath that calm, I felt something burning, something unfulfilled. I thought it over, thought longer than a bookseller should. Then I said, while leaning closer to him, so close that my arm brushed his:
“That’s Joseph Roth. Hotel Savoy. I think. Or Radetzky March. I need to check.”
I went to the shelf. He came along. We stood next to each other, and I smelled the wetness of his coat, a smell I had smelled repeatedly since morning, but now denser, because this coat had been in the rain for two hours. Along with it came his scent—something woody, something masculine, something that shot straight into my lap. I felt my cunt grow wet, felt the moisture soak through my panties, felt how I wanted to open between my legs for him.
I flipped through. I didn’t find the passage. I found a similar one, but not this one, and I was suddenly embarrassed because I had been so sure ten minutes ago. But I didn’t want him to leave. I wanted him to stay, to look at me, to touch me.
“Maybe it’s not Roth,” I said. “Maybe someone who writes like Roth.”
“Maybe.”
He looked at me. I looked at him. We had been standing at the Roth shelf for five minutes, and neither of us moved away. I noticed my breath growing shallower, my breasts rising and falling under my blouse, how he stared at them, how his Adam’s apple moved up and down as he swallowed.
“Do you collect sentences?” I asked.
“Since I was nineteen.”
“How many do you have?”
“About six hundred.”
“Read me another one.”
He looked at me, scrutinizing for a moment, then opened the notebook again. He flipped back. I watched his fingers—those long, slender fingers that now stroked across the paper, that I imagined penetrating me, stretching me, bringing me to climax.
“There are people who enter a room as if it were their home.”
“Who?”
“Eduard von Keyserling. Waves.”
We stayed at the shelf. I asked for another. He read a sentence. I asked for another. It went on like that for half an hour. It became seven. The bookshop closed at half past seven. I could have turned the sign around, but I didn’t. Instead, I stepped a little closer, so close that his coat touched my skirt, and I felt the warmth radiating from his body.
“What’s your name?” I finally asked.
“Adrian.”
“Want a coffee, Adrian?” I let my voice drop deeper, let a promise slip into the question.
“It’s seven in the evening.”
“Then a wine.”
He nodded. I closed up at twenty past seven. We walked along the Venloer Straße to a wine bar where I had been a regular for years, and we got a table in the back without needing to reserve. He ordered a Grüner, I did too. I sat so that my knee almost touched his under the table, and I let my gaze slowly glide over his face, over his lips, over his neck, down to his chest, lower to his crotch, where I saw a slight bulge in his pants that made me even wetter.
We talked for a long time. He was an editor in Munich, in Cologne for a meeting that had disappointed him. He always carried the notebook. He had lost his partner two years ago—cancer, fast—and in the notebook were the sentences that had carried him through those two years. I listened, but my thoughts were elsewhere. I thought about how I would take him home, how I would undress him, how I would take his hard cock in my mouth.
“When’s your train?” I asked.
“Tomorrow at nine.”
“Where are you sleeping?”
“At the Excelsior.”
“Do you want to read me fifteen more sentences before that?” I leaned forward, let my blouse fall a little lower, showed him the upper curve of my breasts.
He looked at me.
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