Chapter Two Thousand Two Hundred Fourteen
17th April 1973
Charlottenburg, Berlin
After having Sophie and Gabi in her apartment, Zella was happy for the quiet. There was a bit of inadvertent comedy in her trying to send Sophie home early and getting a second teenaged girl in her apartment for her troubles. It had worked out in the end though. The two girls were fun once you got past the obnoxious tendency of teenagers to make everything a large production with way too much drama. Zella’s original notion that they were sisters was confirmed by them, it seemed that they shared the same sperm donor, or at least that was how Kat had termed it after Sophie had witnessed a portion of one of Kat’s little talks which she had been having with the man. It seemed that Kat’s elevation had changed nothing about the manner in which she operated when it came to people who she felt needed to get what they deserved. Not that Zella objected too much. There was also the role that Jana had played.
The breakfast that Gabi’s mother had provided had turned out to not be entirely alien to her. She’d had similar meals in Poland, just this was Polish food that had been Americanized before those who had made it had come back to Berlin during the height of the “Kraut Scare.” That strange incident had seen the Americans chase a substantial number of their own citizens out of professions deemed too important to have someone with foreign connections occupy it. Many of those had been forced entirely out of the country just into survive. What was painfully obvious to Zella, and she was sure that it was to others as well, was that those who had been chased out first happened to be Jewish or Homosexual. Others followed who had direct connections to Germany, able to take advantage of the program that allowed those of German descent to return. There had been certain fields that had benefited mightily from that program, but there had been a lot of problems that had sprung up as a result. Zella herself had heard the term Crazy Americans thrown about to describe the behavior of those who couldn’t seem to figure out that they were no longer in the land of Big Cars, Cowboys, Gridiron Football, and Monkey Trials. It certainly made for an odd dynamic in parts of the cities where they had landed.
In the case of the shop that Jana had gone to, they made what they dubbed authentic New York bagels in a dozen different varieties. The family that owned to shop had run a similar establishment in the Lower East Side of Manhattan before they figured that it was better to jump rather than be pushed as a result of rising tensions within New York. While Zella had no way to know if it was truly authentic or not, one of their bagels with smoked salmon, cream cheese, a slice of fresh tomato that they had somehow found this time of year, and onion was something to behold.
Getting out of bed, Zella looked across the roof of the department store at the predawn skyline of the city. It was going to be a cold rainy day today and unlike yesterday, there was no way that she would be able to avoid her Supervisor. ARD was prepared to be quite generous with her, but that was dependent upon her producing material that they could air. Just playing the role of a News Reader alone wasn’t going to cut it, so Zella needed to produce something that she could pitch to her Supervisor who could then tell the Board of Directors what she was up to. The trouble was that Zella didn’t have anything just yet. This summer, Kiki was planning on going through with her long-delayed trip to Russia and Zella only needed to ask for a berth aboard the Epione. She would need a couple more projects to work on in the meantime and that was where the trouble started.
Pulling on an oversized sweatshirt, Zella padded on bare feet to the bathroom. Looking at herself, only half awake, Zella was happy to open the medicine cabinet so as not to see herself. There were three pills she was required to take daily. The first two were dietary supplements; iron and calcium which she had been advised to take. The third was an oral contraceptive pill that was packaged in thirty-one-day increments. As Zella swallowed the pills with a double handful of water from the sink, she thought about how Kiki had recently told her about Sigi, Kiki’s aunt who was oddly close to her in age and her little accident. Funny how that accident had worked out quite well for Sigi herself. If one were suspicious minded, they might think that particular accident wasn’t an accident at all. Kiki had replied that it was mean to suggest that Sigi might have done such a thing. Zella made sure that she was religious about taking this pill though. The only way that Zella was having an accident like that was over her dead body.
Still lacking for ideas, Zella went back to her bedroom knowing that she had a couple hours left before she would need to go into work. Opening a drawer on the nightstand, Zella removed a pack labeled goldener Drache Zigaretten followed by some Vietnamese script and a lighter. She had acquired these from a specialty shop that sold Vietnamese exports. They contained no tobacco which Zella found disgusting. Rather, they were made of the finest cannabis produced in South-East Asia.
A few minutes later, laying back on her bed, Zella allowed her mind to drift a little as she heard Yuri wake up. “Getting an early start aren’t you, Zee?” Yuri asked, having smelled what she was up to.
“It’s going to be one of those days” Zella replied.
“Anything I can do to improve it?”
“I don’t know” Zella said, aware of where he had just placed his hand, which she didn’t mind, not after last night when they had made the most of having the place to themselves. She had her boundaries, but Yuri was someone she trusted within them. “ARD wants to know what I am doing for my latest documentary.”
“What are you going to tell them?” Yuri asked.