Ch. 3

The lass had TV dinners stacked on top of each other with nuked-to-rubber meatloaf drenched in brown gravy that slopped about the tray and onto her thumb, which she sucked clean till it glistened with saliva and a string of it ran to her thin lips and then she placed the thumb back into the sauce. She slid the first tray under the bars for Nickel. I got the contaminated gravy.

Nickel made for the food and when she pushed some plastic utensils, he grabbed her wrist. She whipped back her hand and he let go without complaint.

“She pregnant yet?” I asked.

She tossed the spork at me but the bars were too crowded and her aim was too poor. “It’s nothing to comment on!” she yelled. She held her belly, turning sideways to appear more slender like girls in sorority photos. There wasn't much pudge, and what was there maybe her breasts look proportional and real. It wasn't what I meant anyway.

“The milka hasn't even happened yet,” Nickel told me. He was already done with his corn, but to be fair, there had only been about eight kernels and one tree of broccoli. Tiny green balls sat in the corners of his lips. He only wiped one side. “Not pregnant,” he clarified for me.

“I could get some water, but you’ll not get any milk,” the lass said. She was still sour from the pregnant comment and doubly so from hearing it twice. She exited for the cups.

Nickel was already on my food, gulping down the dry bits and hydrating with gravy. He was a lanky guy, twenty centimeters taller and three kilos lighter than me and not much of an athlete. But boy, could he eat. “I've got a plan.” I let him have my food. When he asked for my unused spork, I let him have it too.

“You’re going to spork her? Is that when the big spoon forks her from behind?” I joked. But I knew he only went for skinny girls, usually Asian as few Brits could even survive his preferred gauntness.

He clapped his hands around the spork.

“Turning it into a saw? No, that’ll take too long. Try a power saw. Make it battery powered. Or dynamite!”

When the sparks died from between his hands, it was just a key. He awkwardly rammed it in my cuffs’ keyhole then I slid it into his and we didn't make eye contact after.

When the girl came down with water, she didn't notice our hands as she was trying to shove the plastic cups through the bars but they were just a bit too wide and had to bend at the top to fit and the water sloshed onto her cardigan. Her hands reached through different slots.

Nickel slammed the chained irons on her.

I covered her mouth and she mumbled protests and licked my palm which was gross from the dirty dungeon floors and my general poor hygiene after using the toilet. Her butt was pressed up against me and though it lacked firmness, it was pleasant just the same. “Could you stop grinding on me so I can explain I’m not here to rape you? And quiet down. Please. We’re the good guys,” I whispered into her mess of golden curls.

When she had settled and accepted her fate, I let my hand off her. It was slimy with drool. Her name was Bonnie. I told her mine. “That geezer is your relative, right?”

“Uncle,” Bonnie said.

“Why are uncles always jackasses?” I muttered.

“Mine’s great,” Nickel said. He had bought Nickel his first beer, which was not a Foster’s despite all their American and British adverts claiming supreme reign over the Australian beer-market.

“He’s been decent to me,” Bonnie said. She was peeking over her shoulder at me, still a bit cautious of my intent, but also looking at the door. Nickel had disappeared it and it was just another wall with no stairs leading up to it. “Could say thank you a bit more.”

“Soon he’ll get you pregnant,” I told her. Her trunk was still against my junk.  “But none of that noble keeping-the-blood-pure crap you Brits love. He’ll put a demon inside you.”

“Stop with the hoaky magic routine. It’s not a demon,” Nickel said. Like most practitioners, he was adamant that alchemy was science, not magic. “It’s a homunculus.”

“No one knows what that is,” I scoffed. We had this discussion around every girl used for demons and magic and housework.

“It’s a little person. Not like a midget though.” Australians weren't politically correct, especially Nickel. “But a man-made doll with a soul attached to it by a blood seal so it can do alchemy.”

The girl’s knees had dropped unexpectedly and I collapsed onto her as though I had mounted her. She was sprawled beneath me with her arms still chained about the lead bar. Apparently she was one of the many vessels who hadn't been told of her future and found our talk “crazy,” her word.

“Did you think we were in this cell for vandalizing the place? They don’t break out the Gothic shackles for the average drunk, only for magic drunks like this bastard,” I said pointing to Nickel. He had gathered the water into the cup and with a few flicks transformed it to a single-malt. But that was a discrete display so he changed his plastic cup into a goblet bestowed with costume jewels. She was speechless so I kept going. “We go around to these crazy alchemy cults’ and bust out girls. I hate to make it sound like they’re damsels or princesses, but dudes don’t get pregnant so we haven’t run into any.”

“No, no, no, no,” she moaned. She rolled over so her arms were crossed at the elbows over her eyes. I sat on her stomach instead of her butt. She just kept saying no and shaking her head and I knew we’d be waiting a while for her to accept it till the bricks of the wall where the door had been crumbled and burst through dust to land near our feet and one hit me but Nickel was safe behind the bars.

While the lung-clogging veil cleared, Bonnie’s uncle spoke. “Really, boys, we’re prepared to blast a wall or two. Our alchemy isn't quite so dull as that.” And he sent the bobbies through the opening.

But when Nickel had done away with the door, he disappeared the stairs too. And the men landed ten feet down on busted ankles and each other till the brave rookie at the bottom gasped for air and aspirin.

~

The train cost about a hundred pounds round-trip but each weekend I returned to Germany, even if it meant skipping cultural Welsh field trips like the Mappa Mundi organized by the study abroad director, but I only had classes on Tuesdays (evening) and Wednesdays (morning) and I’d rather be poor and with her. Sometimes she insisted on paying and sometimes on making the trip to Wales and always she insisted we stop, but it was too enjoyable.

After the first few weekends of her showing me the sights of Berlin, we met at cafes, always different from the week before as she didn't want to be known as a regular and Berlin was full of crowded cafes and we never got recognized by people she knew. She didn't know many as she had only been there half a year. She was worried just the same.

It had gotten to fall, when it was chilly, and she was from Beloutchistan and unused to the cold, especially in November. Fewer people sat outside. I always offered her my fleece. She always said, “That’s okay.” It would've been a boring scene, repetitive and dull, if we weren't so in love. I hadn't admitted it to her.  She didn't know. Maybe it was never considered. She never said it either. But we were in love still. Everyone could see it in our smiles that went on while we spoke and we had long silences but they were the comfortable sort, usually, and she’d sip coffee during them though it made her heart race more than me and I’d order more desserts and she’d tell me one day I’d get fat and I always mentioned that I was a boxer because I thought it might impress her. It surprised her, the first time, as I was unassuming with round cheeks and a gentle voice that was sometimes too quiet with the cashier and they’d have to look to my finger to see which dessert I had selected. It was always a chocolate one.

“You don’t have good chocolate in America. They take out the oils. They sell them in beauty products.”

“And Hershey’s is made of plastic,” I said. Today I had a hot chocolate that I was okay with sharing because she left lipstick marks on the mug and she only took little sips. They were cute.

It was easy to forget she was an alchemist because she wasn't really, only in name, and I didn't care about it and neither did she. But occasionally it came up. Always it was because of her family. “I do everything for them, really. Cook, clean, even book travel plans though this is my first real trip anywhere. Can you believe that? No one ever says thank you. My uncle’s the worst about it. He’ll tell me he’s leaving tomorrow—tomorrow, can you believe that?—and he expects to have a flight available at the hour he wants it. If it’s too early he’ll blame me and if it’s too late he’ll blame me and it’s like, why don’t you try it? Or give me a bit of notice! Really.” Her family came up and she’d explain that alchemists were just like that, usually, all the ones she knew. Most were her family, blood or marriage, of about 64. She estimated as she had lost count. “He’s always traveling for the family, making connections and deals. I've gotten quite good at finding bargain travel, if you ever need my skills. I won’t even charge you. Maybe just say thank you after.”

“I would,” I said. I tried to listen till the end, though when I thought of something to say I’d open my mouth and hope she’d notice and pause so I could comment. Sometimes she’d pause but it’d be for a breath and I’d accidentally talk over her and apologize. She didn't say anything more. “Maybe with a kiss.”

During the moment of silence that followed, which wasn't a long one, I was rather embarrassed. It felt like an eternity.

“Where would you like to go?”