Merry-Go-Round (Sequel to 'Carousel')

Chapter 1 - A Time of its Own

"Wear them to the party tonight," he said.
"Of course!" The little golden horses dangled from their hooks.
"Wear just them tonight!"
I glanced over at him. He was more lying on the arm chair than he was sitting on it.
"That would attract some attention, I'm sure! If I'm wearing just these, what will you be wearing?"
He looked at me with a gentle smile that left me totally unprepared for what he said next.

"A boner."

***

Los Angeles was flamboyant with Christmas decoration. There seemed to be no window that wasn't dusted with artificial snow crystals, no front door that wasn't adorned with a wreath and no tree or bush that wasn't lit with electric lights. Young men walked around the streets with red Santa hats, and girls wore Christmas ornaments in places of earrings.

But Neverland seemed to have a time of its own. Or maybe it didn't have a time at all. Far away from the glamour of L.A. in the hills of California it seemed to lay low, waiting for the storm to pass, hoping to be forgotten. Michael, who had been raised as a Jehovah's Witness, had broken with his church only a few years prior, and especially around the holidays he was still nursing the strict, unforgiving ways of his upbringing. Torn between what he had been taught and what was an omnipresent reality washing up on the shores of his lonely island, he seemed unhappy whichever way he turned.

I had no such sentiment. Christmas was the biggest holiday in my country despite the church, both protestant and catholic, claiming otherwise – but being unable to agree on one. In my upbringing Christmas was rather of cultural importance than of a religious one, and I would have wholeheartedly and respectfully participated in any celebration of any religious belief I would have been invited to. It was the fact that Michael didn't celebrate anything at all, that needed getting used to.

It had been a year and a half since I had left L. A. for Tokyo, and I hadn't seen Michael since. Accordingly, I was excited about being with him again, but at the same time I felt nervous, even more so the bigger the distance between L. A. and the car grew, and palm trees were replaced by bushland and the vegetation of the California hills. It had been a long time. Things looked different, too, although I knew it was due to the season. What hadn't been watered, had been dry and burnt in the summer. Now everything around was lush and green. I sat on the backseat and watched the landscape fly by.

We had talked on the phone. Contrary to our first encounter, Michael loved the telephone, and he engaged in long conversations for hours on end – overseas calls that must have cost him a fortune, yet he didn't seem to mind. Still, it wasn't the same. Being with someone from morning to evening meant to be with them, too, when you had nothing to say. Also, I had never lived on Neverland. I had only been there on weekends back when, as a junior lawyer, I had worked at what had been the West-German Consulate General, and not every weekend, either. (Meanwhile, the world order had rearranged itself at a dizzying speed, and what had seemed utterly impossible, when I had last left the United States, had overnight become reality: Since a little more than two months, now, West-Germany was history, and the entire world wasn't sure, if it felt drunken or seasick.) The car took a right turn into Figueroa Mountain Road. I was a damn long way from home for things not working out. I exhaled slowly. My breath fogged the window, and I resisted the childish urge to draw something into it. A heart with letters in it, maybe? M & A. Merger and Acquisition. Only a lawyer could make that connection. The thought made me laugh.

And then there were the nights, too. In general, they didn't worry me. But the closer Neverland came, the less I felt sure about what our relationship really was. Due to the time difference, I had spent many nights in bed with him on the phone, sometimes being hardly able to hear him through the statics of an intercontinental call. He had always been sweet, he had told me personal things, he had said that he missed me, he had said good-bye and I love you. But how much did that mean? He had never talked dirty. Once I had struggled with the receiver and apologetically told him, that I was undressing. He had said, he wished he were there. That was all. "I wish I were there!" If he'd got any other pleasure out of it, he had kept it to himself. Would things go on the way they had ended, one year and a half ago? Nights of sweet-talking, teasing and making love? What if there was someone else in his life, now? A year and a half was a long time to be apart. My fingertips felt cold although the car was warm, and I squeezed them to get some feeling back into them.