Always Us by Lizzie Morton
One
Abby
“What’s German for vomit?” I ask. Looking around hopelessly, I pray someone will answer, but all I get in return are vacant stares.
I’ll give you a clue. Déjà. Fucking. Vu. It’s unbelievable that at the age of twenty-six, we’re still here reliving similar scenarios, just in different locations and with a different audience.
I mutter under my breath, “We’re not even in our home country and they still can’t behave like normal humans.”
“Got it!” shouts Sooz excitedly from behind. Her eyes are glued to the screen of her cell as she frantically scours Google Translate. “Erbrechen! It’s erbrechen.”
“Are you sure?”
The last time we were in a situation like this, we failed, big time. We’re lucky we didn’t get arrested we messed up that bad. Life lesson: don’t always believe what you read on the internet.
“Would you like to check yourself?” she snipes back, pissed that I still doubt her after all this time.
“Nah, I trust you,” I reply calmly.
Turning back to the bouncer, I rub my hands up and down my dress nervously. I’m sweating an obscene amount and it has nothing to do with the summer heat. It’s known universally that all bouncers are intimidating giants, but German ones, they take it to the next level. This guy is huge, and his face is cold as ice as he looks down at me with one eyebrow raised. Swallowing, I finally find my voice, even if it does come out a squeak.
“Erbrechen?” I flinch and await the repercussions of what I’ve said. God, I hope I didn’t say dick. Whatever it was, all he does in response is stand and stare blankly. Just in case he hadn’t heard me thanks to the noise of the club behind him, I repeat myself louder this time. “Erbrechen.”
He shakes his head looking thoroughly annoyed. I don’t blame him. Sooz and I have been standing for ten minutes wasting his time, trying to explain why we need to get into one of the most exclusive clubs in Berlin.
Finally, he replies, “Ich verstehen nicht.”
We may have figured out how to say a single word to him, but now we have the new challenge of figuring out what the hell he’s saying back.
I don’t know how I end up in these ridiculous positions. I thought handling them in America, on home soil was bad enough, but nothing beats being in a foreign country, chasing after my waster friends and not speaking a word of the language.
I turn back to my South African friend and only ally. “Damnit. Sooz, have you still got that translator app on your cell?”
“Yes! Thank God. Why didn’t I think of that? It isn’t the most reliable thing in the world, but it should give us a better idea of what’s being said than the nothing we’ve come up with so far …”
“At this point, what have we got to lose?”
Taking her cell in a shaky hand, I hold it up toward the bouncer. He looks bewildered, but then somehow seems to understand what I’m trying to do and repeats, “Ich verstehen nicht.”
The translator repeats back robotically, “I don’t understand.”
“That makes two of us,” I sigh. Looking to Sooz, I resign myself to the fact this whole thing is a lost cause. “I think it’s time we give up.”
Her eyes widen and she replies, “We can’t just leave them in there. If we’ve struggled to find them, how on earth are they going to find their way back to the hotel?”
I throw my arms up in the air in sheer frustration. “I don’t know. This isn’t like it is normally. We don’t speak a word of the language and even with your translator thing we’re not going to get anywhere fast. They could be gone by the time we get in there. That’s if we even get in there.”
We continue bickering between ourselves and as we do a cab pulls up at the entrance. Three girls spill out of the back and they’re tall, blonde and more glamorous than I could ever imagine being. My spidey senses crank into full force, when I hear one of them speaking with an English accent to the others, as they confidently make their way to the bouncer, greeting him in German and kissing him on both cheeks.
The asshole looks like a pig in shit, blatantly watching their asses sway from side to side as they begin walking into the club. It suddenly dawns on me that my golden ticket has just slipped by.
Without thinking, I quickly shout, “Yo, blondie! Over here!”
The blonde at the rear turns back around abruptly, eyes narrowed. It’s not surprising, as I’ve literally hollered at her. Desperate times and all that. Her stance is defensive as she looks me up and down suspiciously.
“Excuse me? Do I know you?” she asks.
I hold my hands up in a peace offering and attempt to explain.
“Sorry, that was rude of me, but we need your help.” Still annoyed by how I gained her attention, she shakes her head and turns to follow her friends into the club. Seeing my moment slip away, I shriek at the top of my voice, “Please!”
Turning back, she hesitates before replying, “Make it quick.”
“My friends have somehow managed to get into the club, but they’re wasted, and we have no way of getting in touch with them. They have no idea where they are, and none of us speak a word of German.” My shoulders slump in defeat after what has turned into a wild goose chase around the capital of Germany.
Thankfully, I Sooz have to back me up. “We just need you to help us get in, so we can find them and get them home.”
It feels like forever, as we stand waiting for the blonde to make a choice. Without warning, she turns to the bouncer and speaks something garbled that I’m past the point of attempting to understand. The bouncer appears to be listening intently to whatever it is she’s saying, although I suspect what I’m actually seeing is him staring at her breasts in the low-cut dress she’s wearing. Pervert.
The blonde finishes talking, and he faces us. He removes the rope barrier before saying abruptly, “Komm rein.”
Sooz and I just stare. He’s obviously not grasped that there’s no clear wave of communication between any of us.
Fortunately, the blonde intervenes and says, “He’s letting you in. I’d be quick before he changes his mind.”
With that, she waltzes into the club, leaving me and Sooz to stumble behind. We follow her down a long, dark passage that seems to go on forever. Besides being creepy and giving off some serious horror movie vibes, it smells musty, and the floor is sticky and gross. It’s a bit of a dive considering it’s meant to be an ‘exclusive’ club, if you ask me.
When we get to the end of the passage there’s a large metal door. As it’s opened slowly by another two bouncers, my jaw hits the floor. If I thought we’d overcome our biggest hurdle of the night by getting into the club, I was wrong. Sooz and I stand, mouths wide open, gawping at what looks to be the biggest club either of us has ever seen.
“Oh, sweet mother of God,” says Sooz.
“Shit. How are we supposed to find them in here it’s huge?”
I want to scream, stomp my feet, smash a glass. Anything to let out the anger that has been building throughout the day. I’m in the wrong career, I should be filming a fly on the wall documentary of the crap my two best friends get up to instead.
Tonight, has been our own, real life version of The Hangover. Since around 2pm, Sooz and I have spent our time piecing together Zoe and Sophie’s antics. All we did was leave them for an hour while we finished up a job in the center of Berlin. I repeat, an hour. One. Singular. True to form, neither of them updated their payment plans to international on their cells, so we’ve been chasing from location to location, following them wherever they could get Wi-Fi and post on Instagram, in the hope of catching them. Things went downhill when they checked in at an absinthe shop and the posts have been minimal since. Of course, they have no idea where our hotel is, having relied on me and Sooz to get around the whole time they’ve been in Germany with us.
Just when we were at the point of giving up, we got lucky, and a stranger tagged them in this club around thirty minutes ago. It was our only glimmer of hope and I’ve been praying they’re still here, that we could get to them before they decided to move on to somewhere else. That was until exactly a minute ago when we entered the club. It’s an old, abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Berlin. But looks can be deceiving. Inside, this place looks bigger than a football stadium. We don’t stand a chance of finding them any time soon.
“Yes! They’ve put up a post!” shouts Sooz, waving her cell around frantically.
“Let me see.”
I quickly grab it off her, but when my eyes make contact with the image on the screen, I throw it back abruptly. “Oh my God, my eyes. Why did I have to see that? Sooz, don’t look.” If I could erase what I’d just seen I would.
“That bad?” she shouts over the music.
“Worse. We’re looking for a trapeze with a naked, fire-breathing man and two wasted girls hanging off him.”
Braver than I am, Sooz looks at the image and then back at me, barely able to contain her laughter. “Wow. So why are these your friends?”
“I ask myself the same thing sometimes. And they’ve claimed themselves as your friends too, making them equally your responsibility.”
Trying not to look at the picture again, we show the screen to the first person within reach, and they point us to the center of the club. We make our way through the crowds and I frantically pushpast men of every shape and size, dressed in every color imaginable. It’s like a rainbow vomited everywhere.
Something begins to niggle away at me as Sooz slows down and says, “I think I’m in love with this place. I’ve never been somewhere with so many hot guys, it’s like an all you can eat man buffet.” She flutters her eye lashes at a group of guys, watching as they dance against each other.
It’s then that it clicks what feels off about this place. “Sooz, that’s because we’re in a gay club.” I let out a sigh at all the potential on offer that will never be ours.
“Damnit. It’s always the good ones,” she says, voicing the opinion of most of the women in the club.
“I know what you mean, but less drooling. We need to find the girls and get out of here before they do something inappropriate.”
Racing to the middle of the club, it’s a sight to behold when we get there. There must be at least twenty naked men floating above us and breathing fire. And there in the middle, swaying backwards and forwards with their new friend, are Sophie and Zoe.
“Give me your concealer, Sooz,” I demand.
She looks horrified. “What? Why?”
“It needs to be sacrificed. It’s for a good cause.”
Looking up to where the girls are hanging above us, I begin to calculate the angle of my throw.
“But it’s MAC!” she shrieks at a pitch that could deafen cats.
“I’ll replace it, I promise.”
Reluctantly, she hands it over, only to watch in horror as I launch it up, as hard as possible, in the direction of Sophie. The trapeze moves just at the wrong moment and where my aim was to hit her in the side of the head, instead I nail her straight in the eye, hard.
“Damn,” I say.
Even from down below, with the loud electro music booming around us, I can hear her drunken howls clearly. At least she’ll have a memento of the night, besides their drunken Instagram photos.
When she eventually stops howling and looks down for the culprit, her eyes settle on mine. She swallows nervously as I signal abruptly for them to come down. Hell hath no fury like an Abby that has raced around Berlin, chasing their sorry asses. Over the years I’ve come to accept my mother role, but today has pushed me to my limit.
“They look scared,” says Sooz, wiping away tears of laughter for the second time in ten minutes.
“Good.”
They’re lowered down slowly, finally waving goodbye, albeit sheepishly, to their naked friend.
I’m blunt when I say, “Do not say a word. We’re leaving now, and you will come without causing any more problems. I’ve had enough of your crap today to last a lifetime.”
Making our way hastily out of the club, Sophie and Zoe scuttle behind like two scorned toddlers. Sooz lingers at the back, taking her fill of the clubs’ occupants one last time. When we’re outside, we make our way to what appears is a cab-rank. I spend a few minutes doing a version of Pictionary with one of the drivers, in an attempt to explain where the hotel is. Eventually he seems to understand, and I turn around to find Zoe and Sophie chatting with a group of seedy looking women. It baffles me that in less than five minutes they’ve managed to find the only English-speaking people around, yet it took Sooz and I over half an hour, and a big dose of luck.
“Guys. In. Now.”
Holding open the back-passenger door, I signal for them to get in fast. When we’re settled, the driver pulls away, making a hasty journey through the streets of Berlin.
“They were nice,” Zoe slurs, completely unaware of who she was talking too.
“They were hookers. They’d be nice to anyone they thought they could get money from.”
Sooz snickers at my reply from the front, while pointing the driver in the direction of the TV Tower and hopefully towards our hotel.
Zoe is oblivious as always. “Oh. Really?”
“Yes. If you spent less time getting wasted, you’d maybe see the things around you clearer. I thought we were past all this?”
“And I thought we were past you acting so bitchy all the time …” she grumbles under her breath.
I narrow my eyes. “I heard that.”
“You were meant to.”
The cab driver swerves, taking an abrupt left. Even in the back of the cab, in the darkness, there’s no mistaking the shade of green Zoe’s face changes to.
“Zo …”
I thought we’d gotten away lightly and there might not be a puking incident, but clearly, I was wrong. The streets prove too much for Zoe’s absinthe-lined stomach to handle, but before we have time to tell the driver to pull over, she pukes all over my lap.
In case the day hadn’t been long and tiring enough, the last part is spent cleaning up Zoe and the cab while trying not to vomit myself, and then there was the fine. When we finally collapse in bed with the girls safely laying on their sides and a bucket next to them, all I can think is get me the hell out of Berlin.
***
After a night of Zoe and Sophie’s escapades, normally we would spend the following morning lounging in bed and laughing off the night before. This isn’t one of those mornings. I’m too annoyed. That, and the fact Sooz and I have landed a couple of last-minute appointments to finish up business in Berlin before we head back to Cape Town. I could have let the girls wallow in their misery, but I force their sorry looking assess onto the U-Bahn bright and early, dragging them around the city with us. I’m not ashamed to admit that I enjoy each sway of the train, watching as their faces turn green.
Later, sitting in a small café near our hotel, Sooz and I are consumed with work, which is piling up at an alarming rate, while the girls nurse what is left of their hangovers. We were originally sold the idea of Berlin by our boss, and it was described as ‘just’ a few pre-fashion week photoshoots. It was also supposed to be a ‘quick and easy’ trip. Really, it’s been anything but, as we’ve chased from one appointment to the next for a week solid. I have hundreds of images to work with and edit, and not a clue where to begin. With my stress levels so high, I’m extra snappy and Zoe and Sophie’s antics couldn’t have come at a worse time.
Zoning out from my workload, I watch as Sophie attempts yet again to cover her black eye from the night before, ironically with concealer.
She looks up and catches me watching then asks hesitantly, “Coffee?” It’s an obvious peace offering, and I take it. I have too much going on to have the energy to hold a major grudge. Plus, the monstrous hangover I’ve watched them both endure was suffering enough.
“Please,” I respond with a small smile, letting her know my anger from the day before is finally lessening.
It’s not often they get themselves in such states anymore, especially after I had my drink spiked at a festival in Brooklyn a couple of years ago. It scared the shit out of them, and they felt hugely responsible and guilty. It seemed to tame their wild ways, but occasionally, they still like to let their hair down for old times’ sake. Unfortunately for me and Sooz, it happened to be in the one country where none of us speak an ounce of the language.
A few minutes later, Sophie returns with a tray of steaming coffees, and we all sigh with satisfaction. The main thing that unites us is our love of caffeine. Sophie and Zoe wouldn’t be able to function through their hangovers without it and Sooz and I wouldn’t be able to function, period.
“How are you getting on?” asks Zoe.
“Nowhere fast. I feel like I’m going around in circles. I’m gonna call it a day.” I close my laptop and pack it away, opting to give my coffee my undivided attention instead.
“What’s the plan for the rest of the day then? Drinks?” asks Zoe, with a hopeful tone that can’t be missed.
“You’re an animal, I swear. There’s not a chance I’m letting you two near alcohol while we’re still in Berlin. We have early flights tomorrow and I’m not missing mine because I’m trying to hunt the two of you down,” I say.
“Party pooper.”
I leave Sophie and Zoe in their own little world, watching as they speak quietly, trying to piece together yesterday’s events. I don’t miss the fact that Sophie is beginning to look green in the face again. Instead, I focus my attention on Sooz, whose brows are furrowed as she stares intently at her laptop.
She really is beautiful with the South African beach babe vibes she has going for her. It’s no wonder guys fall at her feet, although she’s far too career-driven to notice. When I accepted the job in Cape Town a couple of years ago, I warmed to her instantly. She was the exact sort of person I needed in my life. Someone with the same drive and dedication, who didn’t care about guys or romance. Perfect considering I was mending a broken heart. We clicked, and when Sophie and Zoe met her, they got along great. It sealed the deal that we had another friend for life. So, we went from being a trio, to a crew.
It takes me a few minutes of watching to realize that she isn’t doing anything, just sitting, staring. I wave my hand in front of her face to catch her attention, before saying, “Earth to Sooz. Everything ok?”
She takes a few moments to gather herself together, before looking up and clearing her throat awkwardly. “Don’t hate me for what I’m about to ask.”
You know that feeling you get sometimes, when something bad is about to happen, or your life is about to take a whole new direction? That feeling where your skin prickles, your senses heighten and dread washes over you.
I have that feeling as I say reluctantly, “Go on …”
“What was the name of Jake’s band? You know, Jake … The Jake-”
I don’t mean to interrupt, but I’m getting impatient and want to know what’s going on. “I get it, Sooz. You don’t need to say his name again. The band’s name is S.C.A.R.A.B. Why?”
Another few minutespass and I’m still no clearer as to what is going on. Sooz continues staring at her laptop. This time, it’s not only me who watches as she sits frowning. At the mention of Jake’s name, Sophie and Zoe join the conversation.I don’t speak about Jake much with Sooz, but she knows our history, knows that I left everything behind, including him, when I moved to South Africa. She also knows to proceed with caution. There’s radio silence, and I’m beginning to get agitated, wondering what awful news she’s about to deliver.
It’s Zoe who attempts to break the silence next. “Is everything ok?” she asks.
After what feels like an eternity, Sooz finally replies, “The thing is … yesterday I got a really important email from Ange …”
“Right?” I urge her to continue.
“… Yeah. So, we spent most of yesterday chasing these two loons around and I never got a chance to check them. Let’s just say the email was urgent and required an immediate response.”
With absolutely no idea where she’s going with this, I feel completely bewildered. But nothing could prepare me for what comes out of her mouth next.
She speaks rapidly, as if by doing so, it will make things better and change my reaction. “I missed an email asking whether we were free for a huge project. The sort of opportunity that would give the company global exposure. Rather than missing out simply because I hadn’t responded, Ange checked our diaries, saw they were clear and said yes. There’s no easy way to say this …”
Dread seeps into every part of my body making me feel sick. Whatever she’s about to say, it involves him. Everything stops and my mind goes blank, as I hear what comes out of her mouth next without really hearing it.
“… we’re going on S.C.A.R.A.B’s European tour. We’re going on tour with Jake. Your Jake.”
