The Countess recoils from smoke, shudders at the thought of flesh and plays with her necklace of tiny human skulls. Her family is from Venice. We talk in a strange mixture of Italian, German and English. She lures them here, as she lured me, with a promise of easy sex. Lost in the night again.
The Countess has eaten twelve hash cakes, injected Ketamine for kicks in Goa and has now turned up here to waive away smoke, grimace, and pull faces at an errant cigarette. Two years of travel in India and she fetched up here in Berlin. She rolls her Rrrrrrs. Trouble.
She balances on the edge of her stool and the conversation runs from computers to bulimia, from the question of my familiarity with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder to movies neither of us has seen (Apocolypto, perhaps unsurprisingly, is her favourite).
The Countess orders for us both, how could she not ? Mozzerela salad, an amazing confection which features tiny flowers. The conversation spirals nowhere in particular, although the evils of tobacco feature heavily.
The Countess loosens the leather belt on her dress and in a practised manner bends to disclose some banal intimacy. I feel like I am being interviewed for a job, a job I neither entirely understand nor want. Curriculam Vitae are compared,‘O’ and ‘A’ levels examined and confirmed. A threesome is intimated and no, I’m not Cancer, I’m Sagitarius.
She clicks her fingers and desert is ordered.
No coffee.
No cigarette.
