He stood and lifted Micha up to carry her to her bed. She looked almost dead, lying in his arms like that. As if someone had cut out her heart with a rapier and left only her body. But her heart was still there … still there dreaming, Anna thought, dreaming of rainbows.

Anna swept up the pieces of broken dishes in the kitchen while Abel undressed the sleeping Micha and got her into her pajamas. She heard him struggle with a sleeve and curse, the way a father curses a frustrating chore—lovingly and without anger in his voice. She shook her head. None of the pieces fit together.

“And now we’ll do something about that wound,” she said when Abel closed the door to Micha’s room. “Do you have tweezers? Disinfectant?”

“Wait for me in the living room,” Abel said. But she followed him and stood at the doorway of the tiny bathroom, watching him pull a cardboard box from the top of a cupboard and search around inside it.

“We could use alcohol,” she began, and Abel gave a start.

“Didn’t I say to wait in the living room?” He hadn’t realized that she’d followed him. Suddenly, he sounded angry, and she didn’t understand why.

She took a step back, out of the bathroom and into the hall. “In case you don’t want me to see my phone number on the mirror,” she said with a smile. “I know it’s there; Micha told me. She couldn’t have called me otherwise.”

He gently pushed her toward the living room and followed, closing the bathroom door behind him.

“Yeah, that,” he said. “That’s a little embarrassing. It’s just that the apartment is such a horrible mess at the moment. Here.” He gave her a pair of tweezers and a small bottle of old disinfectant. “What will you do?”

“I thought I’d drink the disinfectant and stuff the tweezers up my nose,” Anna said. “What do you think I am going to do? Sit down. Those splinters can’t stay in the wound.” She could hear that she sounded like Magnus when he was talking to his patients, who usually replied, “Yes, Doctor Leemann.” And, “Do what you think is right, Doctor Leemann.”

Abel took the tweezers and said, “I can do that myself. We do own a mirror, though that might surprise you. You should go now. Sorry about the number on the mirror … she shouldn’t have called you.”

“Abel.” Anna tried to toughen the Magnus part inside her. “Sit down. There, on the sofa.”

“It’s late, Anna … they’ll be waiting for you at home … in that house where the air is always blue … they’ll be worried.”

“It’s not late. I’ll call them later. Sit down on the sofa.”

Helplessly, he held up his hands and sat down. Anna sat next to him, adjusted a floor lamp that had miraculously survived the fight, and looked at the wound on Abel’s temple. She didn’t understand how cups and plates could break into so many tiny pieces. Maybe if you were pushed into them. Maybe if you were pushed into them again and again. She fished the splinters, one by one, out of his skin and flesh, her mind with thoughts about the past, with the history of the apartment, with Abel and Micha’s story. He was gritting his teeth, swearing under his breath. “Hold still,” Anna said. “You know how lucky you are that nothing happened to that eye?”

“I know somebody else who was damn lucky,” Abel said. “Rainer Lierski. He was damn lucky to walk out of here on his own two feet.”

Then he fell silent. As Anna retrieved splinters, a seemingly never-ending task, like working on an assembly line, she suddenly noticed how close she was to Abel. Unbelievably close, daringly close.

She smiled. “Why do you have a buzz cut?” she asked, just to ask something matter-of-factly.

“The trimmer only does buzz cuts,” Abel replied. “It’s old. I don’t want to waste money on a barber.”

“That’s the only reason?”

“That’s all. Plus, people here leave you alone if you have a buzz cut. And if you’re wearing a Böhse Onkelz sweatshirt. I don’t want any trouble.”

“But … politically … you’re not … you’re not like skinheads?”

“A Nazi?” Abel asked and started to laugh. “I’m not dumb.”

“And … the white cats … the fabric of the white cats … the rainbows …”

“Today is question day,” Abel said. “But with Anna Leemann, it’s always question day, isn’t it? You want to know everything.”

“Yes,” she said. “Everything. About the world.” She sounded like a child again. So what.

“It’s just that it’s not always answering day,” Abel murmured. And, after a while, “The white fabric is exactly what you think, of course. But that’s not what you want to know. You want to know why I’m selling.” He turned his head, and she pulled away the tweezers, which had almost touched his eye. “I don’t take the stuff I sell, Anna.”

“And I’m the queen of Sheba.” Anna laughed.

Abel didn’t laugh. “It’s true. I’m dealing it, that’s all. It brings in cash. Michelle has … I got my contacts through her, a long time ago. It’s always good to have contacts. I can’t afford to take anything. I need a clear head. Because of Micha. You understand? And because of school. I want to pass. It’s hard enough, when I miss so many classes …”

“And when you sleep so much,” Anna said. He picked up their hot chocolate glasses and carried them to the kitchen. When he came back, the glasses were clean and he was carrying a bottle of vodka. He put the glasses on the table in silence and poured. Then he sat down again, taking one of the glasses in both hands, the way Micha had held her hot chocolate. He was sitting farther away from her than he had before. Not that much, though. He didn’t say anything more about a clear head.

“Why do you think I sleep at school? What do you think I do at night that I’m so tired?” he asked seriously. “Tell me what you think. I’m sure everybody thinks something.”

“Well, I … I don’t know,” Anna said, picking up the other glass. “Maybe you’re selling white cat’s fur in the clubs?”

He laughed. “Yeah,” he said, relieved. She didn’t understand his relief. “Well, yeah. But I have legal work, too. If you have contacts … I’m helping out in two bars out here. Sometimes in town, too.”

“You asked Knaake for a job. Our lighthouse keeper.”

Abel nodded. “The lighthouse keeper. Yes. Sometimes it gets to me, and I think I should do something totally different to earn money. Something that doesn’t have anything to do with bars and clubs and … something that’s got to do with thinking. Thinking is something you can do at home, too. I dunno … like maybe I could be a research assistant for someone at the university … that kind of thing … Micha shouldn’t be by herself so much. She doesn’t realize because she’s sleeping, but after what happened today … I don’t know if Lierski’ll come back.” He downed the rest of the vodka in one swig and set the glass back onto the table with a thud. “If he touches Micha, I’ll kill him.”

Anna emptied her glass. She didn’t like vodka. “Could I have another one?” she asked.

While pouring, Abel moved closer, and she wondered whether it happened accidentally. Probably. He seemed too lost in his own thoughts to even notice. “Back then … back then, I couldn’t defend myself against Lierski,” he said. “But now I can. I’m as strong as he is. I …”

Anna reached over to take his right hand, and he pulled it away. “Defend. Yeah, I understand,” she said. “You hurt your wrist. Maybe it’s broken.”

“Oh, come on,” Abel said. “It just got too close to a chair’s leg.”

“Can you move it?”

“The chair’s leg?” Abel tried to laugh. He tried to move the hand. “Sure, I can. Shit. No.”

“You should see a doctor,” Anna said.

“Crap.”

Anna took his hand to gauge the swelling. “Let’s at least put something cold around it. Frozen peas work pretty well.”

“Do I have to eat them?”

“No, you just have to inject them into a vein,” Anna said. How good it felt to laugh! How good it felt to sit on the sofa, to be close to each other, just for a little while, and to laugh. He hadn’t pulled his hand away, not this time. The moment stretched into an eternity, a moment in which nothing happened; their laughs died down, dried out. They just sat there, and that was enough; nobody had to do or say anything …