The Dortmund Hbf, Central Station, was twenty minutes train ride away. The area around the Hbf felt decidedly criminal. It was the same everywhere in Germany. In the year that she did live in this country, she realized that the Central Station was always like a destinated homeless depot cum drug peddlers and addicts' haven. The German police seemed to turn a blind eye to any 'minor' illegal activity that could not be seen out in the open where Vanessa came from, and hence the station and the area surrounding it were littered with used needles and broken glasses, and it smelt constantly of piss.
Vanessa was unemployed at the moment, although her LinkedIn said that she was the Founder and CEO of her art gallery. The gallery sold all but three paintings since its inception last summer, and they were her mom, her cousin, and Jennifer.
Her hotel was clean, and conveniently located inside the Dortmund Hbf, operated by Deutsche Bahn, the railway company itself. It was a conscious and easy choice, given how affordable and reasonably clean the room was, despite it would have horrified anyone who knew her back in America. Vanessa had a reputation for being extravagant and picky. A 'princess', a 'flower grown in a greenhouse' that could not withstand any bit of discomfort and hardship.
True, it was possible that this very bed Vanessa was going to sleep on tonight had only been recently occupied by a backpacker, a starving traveling artist, a cheapskate door-to-door salesman, or, on a more exciting note, a hire-to-kill assassin who worked for a crumbling practice near bankruptcy. But Vanessa did not care. She chose to ignore the blood stains on the carpet, or the possible mites on her bedsheets. She ignored the rust on the handle of the faucet and the grime near the sink. She had lived fifteen years away from Daniel, experienced a great deal in her life, and had by now built up a casual disengagement and disinterest in everything that was happening to her and her surroundings. She did not become tougher per se, for she would have taken a hostel instead in a mixed male-and-female 20-bed dormitory that cost a quarter of what she paid for here if she was truly so brave and indifferent, but no, she still paid for a hotel, because she needed her own personal space. She needed privacy, the little bit of vacuum where she could become sad, melancholic, hysterical, or completely unemotional alone.
That was something that Daniel could not stand about her.
Daniel was a social animal, compared to her. Adding to the fact that every German youth needed to go through the rite of passage manifested in form of months-long backpacking trips with almost no money in an exotic place. Daniel was thoroughly disappointed in what happened when they went on what he would consider to be a relatively luxurious backpacking trip in New York City many years ago.
Lying on the bed with all her travel clothes on, Vanessa stared vacantly at the ceiling as scenes of that horrible trip with his younger sister and their best friend came to her consciousness.
Her sudden disappearance from their Brooklyn Hostel had not only shocked Daniel but also herself, that her younger self, headstrong — full of rebellious ideas — while at the same time weak — unable to speak her mind and stand her ground — she asked Jennifer to buy a ticket for her in secret and snuck off early to the airport with only her passport and nothing else, leaving Daniel with all of her belongings, including a plush bunny she carried with her everywhere.
She distinctively remembered, almost as if she was the star of a Hollywood romantic comedy, carefully climbing down the top bunk of the double-decker bed, placed the bunny next to Daniel, whispered a goodbye, and left the shared dormitory, just like that.
Vanessa wondered how on earth she pulled that off, with three other people who could have noticed and stopped her at any given moment when she pretended to go to the shared bathroom to brush her teeth.
And yet, none of them noticed, none of them stopped her. She hadn't even had a fight with Daniel over the phone. He was obviously worried about her for a few hours, but once he found out where she had really gone — back to the student apartment in Pittsburgh — he was quickly overcome with excitement of being able to do whatever he wanted during that backpacking trip with his sister and best friend without Vanessa's constant whining and complaining, about how she needed food, how she wanted to rest, about the blisters on her feet, about the weights of their backpacks, about the dryness of the cheap pizzas they ate or the lines at the fast food joint which she only barely and reluctantly got convinced to sit down in as Daniel went to grab her some sustenance.
Vanessa had never gone backpacking with anyone since then, not even with her ex-husband, although her ex-husband wouldn't dare to ask her given the chance. Vanessa's intolerance of small discomfort was her hallmark. The first serious question Vanessa asked her ex-husband on their first date was whether he enjoyed hiking, backpacking, or camping. The man said not particularly, and that was only then he passed onto the probation stage as potential boyfriend material.
Daniel loved backpacking. After they separated, she saw a group picture with him on it from a friend of a friend of his on Facebook which was taken in Brazil. His sun-tanned skin looked as radiant as ever, the smile on his face genuine. On his left, and on his right were his sister and the same friend who went on the backpacking trip to New York with them, but there were also others, other people of not easily identifiable ethnicity. Backpackers from other countries they met in hostels probably, maybe even one or two local women. Brazilian women were beautiful.
She wondered if he found something there that he did not find when he was with Vanessa.
She wondered if he slept with any of the girls.
She hated wondering about something she had already wondered about once so many years ago which made her depressed.
Vanessa fell asleep.
