The Day Before You Came: "Bad choices make good stories"

The evil eyes

Most of the events happened exactly as described in this book. Most of the characters appearing in this work are not fictitious. I hope they will never get to a copy of this book. If they do, I hope they won't read it or will forgive me and will enjoy being a part of this story. Some names were changed in order to protect their privacy.

I waited for her outside an apartment building at Judengasse Square in Vienna's historic Old Town, one of the global, posh places with overpriced properties. It was ten in the morning. I enjoyed the fresh air and walked from the SüdBahnhof train station. Last time we saw each other, we agreed to make a trip to our capital. She had never been there, though it's less than an hour's ride by train. Maybe the borderline made the distance mentally larger. Despite the relatively low temperature, spring could be smelled in the air. It was the first Saturday of February 2002. I looked around the square full of beautiful eighteenth-century buildings. A Holocaust monument was located in the middle, a statue bookshelf with names of the victims from the direct neighborhood.

Moments later, she appeared at the large, dark portal of her apartment building. She pulled on the hood of her winter coat and covered her dark blond hair. A tall and skinny silhouette dressed in light blue, slim-fit jeans with sneakers on its feet headed directly toward me. My heart jumped once and I could feel its pace quicken.

"Haloo, mein Liebe!" she said with an overplayed Austrian accent. She used to do so on purpose. She was aware of my poor knowledge of German. She laughed and gave me a soft kiss. I asked for another one, as I found the first one to be too short.

"Aber, aber!" She again used her funny accent and laughed. She looked in my eyes, touched my winter jacket with both hands, and pulled me toward her. She gave me one hell of a kiss. Wet, sweet, and long. I felt satisfied. She put her hand in the pocket of my jacket, and we walked to the underground station. Sunshine slowly changed the remains of the melting snow into water.

"Should I be afraid?" she asked and cheered again. She looked like an innocent little girl who was about to visit the zoo for the first time in her life.

"Well, if I didn't terrify you enough yet, I think you'll be all right." I pressed her hand in my jacket. She smiled and pressed it back as some secret signal. I pressed her hand twice. She repeated the secret signal and pretended to watch something in the distance.

I looked at her. She was an absolute beauty. I couldn't resist her smile. It made her even prettier. I had only known her for two months, though she had already changed my life. She was the first light I saw after I came out of the darkness. I was closer to a junkie still than to a regular, healthy man. I used to take cocaine at least five times a week before that Christmas. It wasn't her who helped me out; I did that by myself—I barely knew her when I stopped drinking and quit the cocaine. I did that because I found my life collapsed in a dead-end street. I tried to reassemble the ruins of myself and let one part of me die. The part I let die was the one that always for some reason wanted to die—the part that pulled me down to the bottom and tried to hold me there until I would run out of air. I don't blame drugs for anything I did. I regret a thousand things I did, though. It may be easier to blame the cocaine, or to claim it wasn't me once I had gotten completely drugged. But that would be a terrible lie. It was me; it was me all that time, just the part hidden in the deep valley of my own soul being awaken by my actions. The dark me took control and steered my life down the hill through a shortcut directly to hell. I am sure that drugs only unveiled my true face and let me watch myself play the main character in a horror movie. I sat in the first row of this terrible play. If I didn't decide to let that part of me die that Christmas, I—all of me—would be dead by now, that's for sure.