House of a Thousand Eyes by Katia Lief

Author:Katia Lief [Lief, Katia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780988746244
Publisher: Blue Table Books

Nineteen

Thirst

Berlin, May 25, 2013

* * *

Emmy led Con along the memory-laced early-morning streets of her Berlin. Coffee-pungent cafes threw open their doors to spring, yeasty bakeries raised their windows, yelping dogs had their morning walks. Somewhere nearby, a mother cried, “Hurry or you’ll be late.” It felt surprisingly good to be home.

Trudging along these familiar streets in her new bomber jacket, she wondered why she had thought America and specifically New York would be a radical upgrade when in contrast these streets were perfectly nice. How was it that she’d held so tightly to her memories of a bygone place that time and capitalism had mostly expunged? Berlin was undoubtedly fancy now; she knew that: she’d lived here all her life, watched and absorbed the city’s transmutation from broken to thriving. Even so, that wasted place shimmered through the renovations; for her, it would always be there, a menacing illusion.

She had come to hate herself for the seeds of her childhood, hate her mother for nurturing those seeds, and hate (now) Con for escaping all of it, as if in his infancy he had deliberately left her alone to suffer the national pride of relentless thrift that had defined her upbringing. But it struck her that the thrift had been more than material: it was an emotional thrift, specific to the way Mutti had raised her.

And she knew something else: Her posh jacket was lovely, substantial, the leather pliable and soft—but she hadn’t earned it yet. She still had to face her mother, and her own hunger for the money being dangled in front of her, and her yearning to be transported out of her past into an idea of an alternate future she wanted to deserve. Nothing was simple. She had been sent to New York to kill a stranger and found another one instead. No, she had found two: Con, and herself. Walking the old streets with her newly discovered brother, Emmy felt skinless, naked, exposed.

Mutti had told her that if she did this one thing—accepted the assignment, got the job done—an easy life would be hers. Well, her mother was wrong about that: it would never be easy.

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