Good night.
Three minutes later
Re:
Good night.
Two minutes later
Re:
Good night.
One minute later
Re:
Good night.
Fifty seconds later
Re:
Good night.
Forty seconds later
Re:
Good night.
Twenty seconds later
Re:
Good night.
Two minutes later
Re:
It’s three o’clock in the morning. Is the north wind blowing?
Good night.
Fifteen minutes later
Re:
3:17. It’s the west wind, leaves me cold. Good night.
The following morning
Subject: Good morning
Morning, Leo.
Three minutes later
Re: Good morning
Good morning, Emmi.
Twenty minutes later
Re: Good morning
This evening I’m off to Portugal for two weeks. A beach vacation with the children. Will you still be there when I get back, Leo? I need to know. When I say “there” I mean . . . well, what do I mean? I mean, just there. Of course you understand what I mean. I’m afraid of losing you. Put on the brakes by all means. Come to a stop, why not? I don’t even mind empty words. But empty words WITH you, not without you!
Eighteen minutes later
Re: Good morning
Yes, my dear Emmi. I’m not going to wait around for you.
But I will be here when you get back. I’m always here for you, even when we’ve come to a stop. Let’s see how we feel after this two-week “break.” It might do us good. I think the last few days have shown that we could do with one.
Love,
Leo
Two hours later
Re: Good morning
Just one thing before I leave. And please be honest, Leo! Have you lost interest in me?
Five minutes later
Re: Good morning
Do you really want me to be honest?
Eight minutes later
Re: Good morning
Yes, I really do. Be honest, and be quick! I have to take Jonas to get his cast removed.
Fifty seconds later
Re: Good morning
When an email from you comes in, my heart begins to pound. I feel the same today as I did yesterday and seven months ago.
Forty seconds later
Re: Good morning
Despite all the empty words? That’s so lovely!!! Holiday salvaged! Adieu.
Forty-five seconds later
Re: Good morning
Adieu.
Eight days later
Subject: (no subject)
Hi Leo,
I’m at an Internet café in Porto. Just a quick note so that your heart doesn’t stop pounding altogether from a lack of emails. We’re all fine: the little one’s had diarrhea since the day we got here, the big one’s fallen in love with a Portuguese surfing instructor. Only six days to go! Looking forward!
(P.S. Don’t start anything with Marlene!)
Six days later
Subject: Hi
Dear Leo,
I’m back. How was your “break”? What’s new? I missed you! You didn’t write. Why not? I’m really nervous about getting your first email. But I’m even more worried that you’re going to keep me waiting for it. Question: where do we go from here?
Fifteen minutes later
Re: Hi
Emmi, You shouldn’t be nervous about my first email. Here it is—it’s quite harmless.
1) What’s new?—nothing.
2) The break was—long.
3) I didn’t write because—we were having a break.
4) I missed you—too! (Probably more than you missed me. At least you had a sixteen-year-old daughter to protect from a Portuguese surfing instructor. How did the story end?)
5) Where do we go from here? There are three possibilities: carry on as before, stop, meet up.
Two minutes later
Re: Hi
Re: 4) Fiona’s going to emigrate to Portugal to marry the surfing instructor. She only came back to pack her stuff. Or so she thinks.
Re: 5) I’ll go for—meeting up!
Three minutes later
Re: Hi
Last night I had a vivid dream about you, Emmi.
Two minutes later
Re: Hi
Really? That’s happened to me too. I mean, I’ve had vivid dreams about you. But what exactly do you mean by “vivid”?
Was your dream just generally vivid, or was it erotic too?
Thirty-five seconds later
Re: Hi
Yes, extremely erotic!
Forty-five seconds later
Re: Hi
Are you serious? But that doesn’t sound like you at all.
One minute later
Re: Hi
I know, I was surprised too.
Thirty seconds later
Re: Hi
And??? I want details! What did we do? What did I look like?
What was my face like?
One minute later
Re: Hi
I didn’t really register your face.
A minute and a half later
Re: Hi
Oh Leo, what are you like! I bet I was the inscrutable blonde from the café, the one with the large breasts.
Fifty seconds later
Re: Hi
What is it with you and large breasts? Do you have a problem with large breasts?
Two minutes later
Re: Hi
You really amaze me, Leo. You’re not interested in the size of my breasts, you just want to know whether or not I have a problem with large breasts. That’s not what men are like! It almost makes me think you’ve got a full-blown large-breast problem.
Three minutes later
Re: Hi
Call me asexual if you want, Emmi, but no matter whether they’re large, small, thick, thin, broad, flat, round, oval, angular, or square, I’m not interested in breasts when I don’t know the face they come with. At any rate I lack the talent to be able to focus on the size of a woman’s breasts in isolation.
One minute later
Re: Hi
Ha! Now you’re contradicting yourself! Three emails ago you told me about your extremely erotic dream, in which you were obviously able to see every little bit of me. Everything apart from my face, that is. Don’t tell me you missed my breasts too.
Fifty-five seconds later
Re: Hi
I didn’t see a face or breasts, or any other part of your body. I just felt it all.
A minute and a half later
Re: Hi
If you didn’t see anything of me, how can you know that I was the woman you were blindly groping?
One minute later
Re: Hi
Because there’s only one woman who expresses herself like you do, and that’s you!
Two and a half minutes later
Re: Hi
So did we talk while you were groping me?
Fifty seconds later
Re: Hi
I didn’t grope you, I felt you—there’s a huge difference. And (among other things) we talked.
Thirty-five seconds later
Re: Hi
Extremely erotic!
A minute and a half later
Re: Hi
What do you know about it, Emmi? I can see that you approach these things far too much like one of “your” men.
Two minutes later
Re: Hi
So on one side there are “my men,” and on the other, “the one and only” Leo, the man who’s too sublime for breasts. And for today let’s end on this noble distinction. I have to stop now—there’s some stuff I’ve got to sort out. I’ll be in touch again tomorrow. Till then,
Emmi
&nbs
p; The following day
Subject: Meeting up
Well, are we going to meet up then? I’ve got all the time in the world. Bernhard’s taken the children on a week’s hiking trip. I’m on my own.
Five and a half hours later
Re: Meeting up
Hey, Leo, cat got your tongue?
Five minutes later
Re: Meeting up
No, Emmi. I’m just thinking.
Ten minutes later
Re: Meeting up
That doesn’t bode well. I know exactly what you’re thinking about. Please, Leo, let’s meet up! Let’s not miss what might be our last real opportunity to do so. What are you risking?
What have you got to lose?
Two minutes later
Re: Meeting up
1) You
2) Me
3) Us
Seventeen minutes later
Re: Meeting up
The thought of contact seems to fill you with panic, Leo. We will see each other, and we’ll like each other, and we’ll talk to each other just as we always have, but this time with our mouths. We’ll feel comfortable with each other from the outset, and after an hour we’ll no longer be able to conceive of what it would have been like had we never set eyes on each other. We’ll sit opposite each other at a small table in an Italian restaurant, and you can watch me eat spaghetti al pesto. (Do you mind if it’s vongole?) I’ll turn my head to one side and you’ll be able to feel the gust of air that this produces, dear Leo. A real, physical, liberating, non-virtual gust of air!!!
An hour and a half later
Re: Meeting up
You’re not Mia, Emmi. Mia and I didn’t have any expectations about each other. We set out as two people normally do when they meet. With us it’s different, Emmi. We’re starting off at the finish line and there’s only one way to go: backward. We’re heading for massive disillusionment. We can’t live the things we write. We can’t replace all those images we’ve painted of each other. It’ll be a disappointment if you hide behind the Emmi I know. And that’s what you’ll do! You’ll be depressed if I hide behind the Leo you know. And that’s what I’ll do! We’ll come away from our first and only meeting feeling deflated, sluggish, as if we’d had a heavy meal that doesn’t taste very good, a meal we’d been greedily looking forward to for a whole year, a dish we’d allowed to simmer and bubble away for months. And then what? Finished. All over. Eaten up. Would we try to behave as if nothing had ever happened? In our minds we’d always have the demythologized, uncovered, disenchanted, disappointed, raw reflection of the other person. We’d no longer know what to write to each other. And at some point in the future we’d bump into each other in a café or on the bus. We’d try to ignore each other, or pretend not to recognize each other; we’d swiftly turn our backs on each other. We’d be embarrassed by what had become of our “us,” what remained of it. Nothing. Two strangers with a shared pseudo-history, which shamelessly they’d allowed themselves to be deceived by for so long.
Three minutes later
Re: Meeting up
And one hundred animal species become extinct every day.
One minute later
Re: Meeting up
What’s that supposed to mean?
Fifty-five seconds later
Re: Meeting up
You just whine, whine, whine, whine, whine. Paint things black, paint things black, paint things black, paint things black.
Twenty-five seconds later
Re: Meeting up
Paint things black.
Forty seconds later
Re: Meeting up
???
A minute and a half later
Re: Meeting up
Paint things black. (You forgot one—five “whines,” five “paint things black.” Or four “whines,” four “paint things black”—you’ve got one too many “whines.”)
Two minutes later
Re: Meeting up
Good catch, nicely worked out. Typical Leo, a tiny bit OCD, but nonetheless decent and so sweetly attentive. But I want to see your eyes, your real eyes! Good night. Dream of me! And perhaps take a look at me while you’re at it!
Three minutes later
Re: Meeting up
Good night, Emmi. I’m sorry I am how I am, how I am, how I am.
Two days later
Subject: Meeting “lite”
Good afternoon, Emmi. Are you (still) insulted, or do you want to have a few glasses of wine together tonight?
In hope, yours,
Leo
An hour and a half later
Re: Meeting “lite”
Hi Leo,
I’m meeting Mia in the flesh this evening. We’ve decided to hit the town like we did in the good old days and keep on going until we lose it completely, or the last bar closes. Which means it might end up being five in the morning.
Sixteen minutes later
Re: Meeting “lite”
I understand. You need to make the most of it while the family’s away. Send my regards to Mia. And have a good evening.
Eight minutes later
Re: Meeting “lite”
When you write emails like that one, and there aren’t many of them, I’d rather not know what you look like. (And by the way, you seem to have a pretty conventional idea of family life—or at least of my family life. I don’t have to wait until my family’s away to stay out until five in the morning. I can do that whenever I want.)
Three minutes later
Re: Meeting “lite”
And could you also meet up with me whenever you wanted? Irrespective of whether Bernhard was off in the mountains with the children for a week, or at home in the room next door (and could pop into your room anytime)?
Twenty minutes later
Re: Meeting “lite”
FINALLY, THE TRUTH IS OUT!!! You could have spared us that gloomy sermon a couple of days ago about our devastating first meeting and our shattered images of each other. That’s not your problem at all, is it? Your problem is Bernhard. You think you’re far too important to be playing second fiddle to him. You don’t want to meet me because in reality there’s no way you can get together with me, whether you actually want to or not. In email you can have me all to yourself—in the virtual world we get along just splendidly, and you can switch from intimate to distant as you please. Am I right?
Forty-five minutes later
Re: Meeting “lite”
You haven’t answered my question, Emmi. Would you (want to) meet me if your husband were sitting in the room next door? And (supplementary question) what would you tell him? Maybe, “Hey hon, I’m meeting up with this guy tonight—we’ve been emailing each other for a year, usually several times a day from ‘good morning’ to ‘good night.’ He’s often the first person to hear from me when I wake up. He’s often the last person I speak to before I go to bed. And at night, when I can’t sleep, when the north wind blows, I don’t come to you, hon. No, I write this man an email. And he writes back. You see, in my head this guy is damn good protection against the north wind. What do we write about?
Oh, you know, personal stuff, just about us, about where the two of us would be if I didn’t have you, hon, you and the kids. So, as I said, I’m meeting up with him tonight . . .”
Five minutes later
Re: Meeting “lite”
I never call my husband “hon.”
Fifty seconds later
Re: Meeting “lite”
Oh, I’m sorry, Emmi. Of course, you say “Bernhard.” That sounds much more respectful.
Four minutes later
Re: Meeting “lite”
Don’t be angry with me for saying this, Leo, but you have a woeful perception of a smoothly functioning marriage. Do you know what I’d say to Bernhard if I met up with you one evening? I’d say: “Bernhard, I’m going out tonight. I’m meeting a friend. I might be home late.” And do you know what Bernhard would say? “Have fun, enjoy yourselves!” And do you k
now why he’d say that?
One minute later
Re: Meeting “lite”
Because he doesn’t care what you do?
Forty seconds later
Re: Meeting “lite”
Because he trusts me!
One minute later
Re: Meeting “lite”
Trusts you in what way?
Fifty seconds later
Re: Meeting “lite”
He trusts me not to do anything that might jeopardize our relationship, now or in the future.
Nine minutes later
Re: Meeting “lite”
Oh yes, of course. You only expose yourself in your “other world,” which has minimal impact on your family. The real world remains untouched. Let’s say you fell in love with me, Emmi, and I with you; let’s say we had a romance, an affair, passion . . . call it what you want. Does that still mean you’re doing nothing that might jeopardize your relationship with Bernhard now or in the future?
Twelve minutes later
Re: Meeting “lite”
You’re making the wrong assumptions, Leo: I’m not going to fall in love with you!!! It’s not going to develop into some romance, affair, or passion, whatever you want to call it! We’re just going to meet up. Like you might meet up with an old friend you haven’t seen for a long time. The only tiny difference being that it’s not that you haven’t seen the friend for a long time, but that you haven’t set eyes on him at all. Instead of saying, “Leo, you look just the same,” I’d say, “So that’s what you look like, Leo!” That’s how it would be.
Eight minutes later
Re: Meeting “lite”
So you mean you’d be quite happy if it were just ME who fell in love with YOU, a one-sided thing. Then I’d spend my life sending you red-hot, infatuated, heartbroken emails. Followed by poems, songs, maybe even musicals and operas, all full of unrequited passion. Then you could tell yourself, Bernhard, or both of you, “You see, it was a good thing I met up with him that time.”
Forty seconds later
Re: Meeting “lite”
I think Marlene’s got a lot to answer for!
Four and a half minutes later
Re: Meeting “lite”
Don’t be so evasive, Emmi. Just for once this has absolutely nothing to do with Marlene. It’s about the two of us, or the three of us, let’s say—you can deny it all you like, but your husband is indirectly involved in some kind of way. And I simply don’t believe it’s coincidental that you want to meet up just now, when you’ve got your husband at a safe distance in the mountains.
Two minutes later
Re: Meeting “lite”
You’re right, it’s not a coincidence. I’ve got more time to myself this week. Time I’d like to spend with people I’m fond of. Time with friends, or with people who might become friends. Speaking of time, it’s just after eight and I’ve got to go. Mia will be waiting. Have a nice evening.