Chapter 3: Anchor Bar Encore
Two weeks passed like a fever dream.
Jordan stopped counting the days somewhere around the ninth. They bled into each other—morning coffee with Fritz, afternoon walks through neighborhoods he couldn't name, evening meals cobbled together from whatever the hostel fridge offered. He wrote in his journal less. Not because there was nothing to say, but because the words felt inadequate.
He thought about Lena constantly. The curve of her spine. The way she laughed with her whole body. The sound she made when she came.
He didn't know where she was staying. He could have asked Fritz—the old man seemed to know everything about everyone—but something stopped him. Pride, maybe. Or fear. The fear that she'd already forgotten him, that the alley had been nothing more than a convenient fuck for her, and he was just another traveler passing through.
So when he found himself standing outside the bar in Kreuzberg two weeks later, he told himself it was for the beer. The music. The atmosphere.
He didn't believe himself for a second.
The neon sign was still flickering behind the cracked window, casting weak red light onto the wet street. Jordan pushed open the door and stepped inside.
The bar was nearly empty. A couple sat in the corner, heads bent together over something on the table—a map, maybe, or a phone. The bartender was polishing glasses behind the counter, his movements slow and methodical, the same man from before with the same weary eyes. The jukebox in the corner played something low and mournful, a woman's voice singing about lost love in a language Jordan didn't recognize.
And behind the bar, counting a stack of bills, was Lena.
She didn't look up when he entered. Her hair was tied back, her sleeves rolled to the elbows, and there was a pencil tucked behind her ear. She wore a black apron over a faded t-shirt, and she looked so natural behind the counter that for a moment Jordan thought he'd imagined the woman from the alley. The one who'd pressed him against brick and whispered filth in his ear.
Then she looked up.
Their eyes met. She didn't smile. She didn't frown. She just looked at him, the bills still in her hands, her expression unreadable.
"You," she said.
"Me."
A pause. The bartender glanced between them, then shrugged and disappeared through a door at the back.
Lena set the money down and leaned on the counter, her arms crossed. "What are you doing here?"
"Having a drink."
"You don't drink."
"I do now." He walked to the bar and sat on a stool, the leather cracked and peeling beneath him. "When did you start working here?"
"About a week after we met." She picked the pencil out from behind her ear and tapped it against her palm. "Fritz knows the owner. Put in a word."
"Fritz knows everyone."
"Yes." She looked at him for a long moment. "He said you were asking about me."
Jordan felt heat climb up his neck. "He told you that?"
"No. But I saw it in the way he looked at me when he mentioned your name." She set the pencil down. "You're not very subtle."
"I'm not trying to be subtle."
"Then what are you trying to be?"
He didn't have an answer.
Lena stared at him. The jukebox clicked over to a new song—the same melody, he realized. The same broken-hearted love song, playing on repeat. She must have set it that way.
"Wait here," she said.
She disappeared through the back door. Jordan sat alone with the music and the flickering lights and the couple in the corner who hadn't looked up once. The air smelled like stale beer and cigarette smoke, thick enough to taste.
When Lena came back, she was wiping her hands on a towel. She walked to the front door, flipped the sign to closed, and turned the deadbolt with a click that echoed through the empty room.
The couple in the corner looked up. Lena jerked her thumb toward the door.
"Out," she said. "Both of you."
They didn't argue. They gathered their things and shuffled past Jordan without a word, and then the door clicked shut behind them, and it was just the two of them, alone in the dim red light.
Jordan's heart was pounding.
Lena walked back to the bar and stopped in front of him. She stood there, close enough that he could smell the sweat on her skin, the faint trace of something floral—soap, maybe, or shampoo.
"I've been thinking about the alley," she said.
"So have I."
"Not the same way." She reached out and traced a finger along his jaw. "You've been thinking about me. I've been thinking about what I should have done differently."
"What should you have done?"
"Stopped it." Her finger drifted down his neck, his collarbone, the hollow at the base of his throat. "Because now I can't stop. I've tried. I've had other men since then—two, three, I lost count. And all I could think about was you."
"Lena—"
"Shut up." She grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him to his feet. "You're going to fuck me. Right here. On the floor. And then I'm going to leave, and you're going to let me."
Jordan's mouth was dry. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you should know what you're getting." She kissed him—hard, fast, biting. "You should know it doesn't matter."
She pushed him backward. He stumbled over a chair, caught himself, and then she was on him again, her hands working at his belt, his jeans, pulling them down with short, sharp movements.
The floor was sticky. He could feel it through the thin fabric of his shirt as she pressed him down—old beer, dried soda, the ghost of spills long past. The jukebox played the same song, the same verse, the same ache.
Lena straddled him, her skirt hiked up, her underwear already soaked through. She pulled them aside and positioned herself above his cock, and she looked down at him with eyes that were dark and feverish and utterly unreadable.
"You ready?" she asked.
"Yes."
She sank onto him in one motion.
Jordan groaned, his hands flying to her hips. She was tight and hot and wet, and she didn't pause—just started moving, riding him hard and fast, her hands braced on his chest, her breath coming in short, harsh gasps.
"Fuck," she said. "Fuck, you feel good."
"Lena—"
"Don't talk. Just—" She ground down on him, and he felt her shudder. "Just fuck me."
He grabbed her ass and thrust up into her, matching her rhythm. The floor was cold beneath him, but her body was heat, pure and burning, and he couldn't think about anything else. Just the slide of skin on skin, the wet sounds their bodies made, her fingernails digging into his chest through his shirt.
She rode him like she was punishing him. Or punishing herself. Her teeth were clenched, her eyes squeezed shut, and she moved faster and harder, grinding down on him with each thrust, chasing something only she could see.
Jordan reached between them and found her clit with his thumb. He pressed, circled, and she gasped—a sharp, broken sound that seemed to surprise her as much as it did him.
"Don't stop," she said. "Don't you dare stop."
He didn't stop. He worked her clit in tight circles while she rode him, and he watched her face, the way her mouth fell open, the way her brow furrowed like she was concentrating on something just out of reach.
When she came, it was quiet. No scream, no shout. Just a shudder that rippled through her body, and a breath that caught in her throat and didn't release for a long, long moment.
Then she kept going. She didn't stop, didn't slow. She leaned forward, her hands on either side of his head, her hair falling around them like a curtain, and she fucked him with a desperate, methodical rhythm that was somehow more intimate than anything they'd done in the alley.
"Come inside me," she said. "I want to feel it."
"Are you—"
"I'm on the pill. Just do it."
He was close, so close it hurt. He grabbed her hips and drove up into her, hard and deep and fast, and she met him thrust for thrust, her eyes locked on his, her lips parted, her breath hot against his face.
"Come," she said. "Now. Come for me."
He did.
It ripped through him like a current, starting at the base of his spine and flooding outward—his legs, his chest, his throat. He came inside her with a groan that felt like it was pulled from somewhere deeper than his lungs, and she watched him the whole time, watched his face as he fell apart beneath her.
When it was over, she didn't move. She stayed there, still straddling him, her hands on either side of his head, her breath gradually slowing.
Then she leaned down and kissed his forehead.
The tenderness was so unexpected that Jordan almost cried. He didn't, but it was close.
"You're leaving," he said. It wasn't a question.
Lena lifted herself off him and stood up. She pulled her underwear back into place, smoothed her skirt, and walked to the bar. She picked up her stack of bills and started counting again, her back to him.
"Tomorrow morning," she said. "There's a train to Copenhagen. I have a friend there who has a couch."
Jordan pulled up his jeans. He sat on the sticky floor, his back against a table leg, and watched her work. She moved with the same efficiency she had in Fritz's kitchen, her hands quick and sure.
"Did you know I was going to come here tonight?" he asked.
"No."
"Then why were you thinking about me?"
She paused. The pencil stopped tapping.
"Because I can't help it," she said. "That's the problem."
She turned to face him. In the dim light, she looked older than twenty-something—tired in a way that went beyond sleep. She looked like someone who'd been running so long she'd forgotten what she was running from.
"I don't want to leave you," she said. "That's the honest truth. I don't want to get on that train tomorrow and know you're still here, in this city, living your life without me."
"Then don't go."
"I have to." She shook her head. "I can't stay. I don't know how to be in one place long enough for it to matter. I've tried, and I always—" She stopped. Took a breath. "I always find a reason to leave."
Jordan got to his feet. His body ached in ways he didn't want to name. He walked to the bar and stood a few feet from her, close enough to touch, far enough to give her space.
"I'm not asking you to stay," he said.
"I know."
"I'm not asking you to come with me."
"I know."
"Then what are we doing?"
She looked at him. The jukebox clicked. The same song, the same verse, the same ache.
"We're saying goodbye," she said. "Before it hurts too much to say it."
Jordan nodded. His throat was tight, and his eyes were burning, but he wasn't going to cry. Not here. Not in front of her.
"Okay," he said.
She reached out and took his hand. She held it for a moment, her fingers laced through his, and then she let go.
"Go home, Jordan," she said. "Go back to the hostel. Maybe Fritz is still awake. He'll probably make you tea, and you'll talk about philosophy, and in the morning, this will be a story you tell your friends back home."
"And you?"
"I'll be on a train." She smiled—the last smile, the real one. "Thinking about you."
Jordan walked to the door. He paused with his hand on the lock, looked back at her one last time.
The neon sign flickered behind the window. The red light caught the side of her face, illuminating the curve of her jaw, the softness of her lips, the tear that slipped down her cheek.
She wiped it away before he could be sure.
"Goodbye, Lena," he said.
"Goodbye, Jordan."
He opened the door and stepped out into the night.
The air was cool and clean, the city quiet for the first time since he'd arrived. He stood on the sidewalk for a long moment, breathing, letting his heart slow down. The bar behind him had gone still. No music. No muffled voices. Just silence.
He started walking. He didn't know where. Not the hostel, not yet. He wasn't ready to see Fritz, wasn't ready for the questions he couldn't answer.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. A message from an unknown number.
I meant what I said. You should know that.
He stopped walking. Stared at the screen.
Then he typed back a single word.
I know.
He didn't get a response. He wasn't expecting one.
He turned and kept walking, his footsteps echoing off the buildings, the city spread out before him like a map with no destination. A single phrase ran through his mind, over and over, like a song on repeat.
The only way to learn anything worth learning.
Maybe this was it. Maybe this was the lesson.
He walked until his legs ached, until the sky started to lighten, until the first birds began to sing. By the time he climbed the stairs back to the hostel, the sun was rising over Berlin, and the city was waking up around him.
Fritz was on the roof again. Jordan could hear the piano through the thin walls—the same melancholy melody he'd been playing for weeks, but softer now. Almost tender.
Jordan opened his journal and wrote nothing. He sat on the edge of his bed, listening to the music, and he waited for the morning to come.
The hostel settled into its morning rhythm around him—pipes groaning, floorboards creaking, the distant clatter of pots from the kitchen below. Jordan hadn't slept. He'd sat through the blue hour and the gray hour and the pale gold hour, watching the light shift across the wall, listening to Fritz's piano finally fall silent.
His phone sat on the nightstand. No new messages.
He picked it up, typed a number into the train website, and stared at the screen. Berlin to Rome. Departure 14:47. Arrival 08:22. Fourteen hours and thirty-five minutes. A night on a train, alone, hurtling south through countries he couldn't name on a map.
He booked it before he could think.
The confirmation email arrived three seconds later. He read it twice, then set the phone face-down and pressed his palms against his eyes until he saw stars.
When he finally went downstairs, Fritz was in the kitchen, nursing a cup of coffee that had probably been cold for an hour. He wore the same wrinkled shirt from two weeks ago—or maybe a different one that had achieved the same level of decay. Wolfgang sat on the table beside him, licking his own ass with profound concentration.
"You look like shit," Fritz said.
"Thanks."
"There is coffee in the pot. It is also shit, but it is hot." Fritz pushed a chipped mug across the table without looking up. "Sit."
Jordan sat. He poured coffee. He took a sip and grimaced—it tasted like burnt toast and regret. Wolfgang finished his grooming and fixed Jordan with a single, unimpressed eye.
"I booked a train," Jordan said.
Fritz didn't react. He just took another sip of his own coffee, his eyes fixed on something out the window—a pigeon on the ledge, maybe, or a memory.
"To where?"
"Rome."
"Ah." Fritz nodded slowly. "The eternal city. Very dramatic."
"I leave this afternoon."
Fritz set down his cup. The ceramic clinked against the table, and Wolfgang flicked his tail but didn't move.
"You know," Fritz said, "I have had many guests in this hostel. Hundreds. Thousands, maybe. They come, they stay, they leave. Some of them I remember. Most of them I do not." He leaned back in his chair, the wood creaking beneath him. "You I will remember."
Jordan didn't know what to say. He stared into his coffee, watching the dark surface tremble with each beat of his heart.
"I don't know why I'm leaving," he admitted. "I don't know if it's the right thing. I don't know if there's even a right thing to do."
"There is not."
"Then what am I supposed to do?"
Fritz reached across the table and tapped Jordan's forehead with one thick finger. "You are supposed to stop asking that question."
"That's not helpful."
"It is not supposed to be helpful. It is supposed to be true." Fritz stood up and walked to the window, his slippers scuffing against the floor. Outside, the street was waking up—a woman with a stroller, a man walking three dogs, a delivery truck idling at the corner. "You think you need to know where you are going. You think the destination will tell you who you are. But it will not. It cannot."
"Then what will?"
"Nothing." Fritz turned around. "You will tell yourself. Over and over, in a thousand small moments, until one day you look in the mirror and recognize the person staring back."
Jordan finished his coffee. It was terrible, but it was warm, and warmth was something.
"She left," he said. "Lena. This morning."
"I know."
"You know?"
"She came by last night. After the bar closed." Fritz shrugged. "She wanted to say goodbye. I told her she was a fool, and she agreed, and then she cried for twenty minutes, and then she left."
Jordan's throat tightened. "She cried?"
"People cry when they are leaving something they want to keep." Fritz walked back to the table and sat down again. Wolfgang immediately climbed into his lap, circled twice, and settled into a purring ball. "You should eat something. You have a long journey."
"I'm not hungry."
"You will be. Eat anyway."
Jordan ate. Fritz made eggs—not omelets, just scrambled, with too much pepper and a slice of bread that was more crust than crumb. They ate in silence, and the silence was comfortable, and Jordan realized he would miss this. The kitchen. The cat. The way Fritz said exactly what he meant and nothing more.
"I wrote something," Jordan said. "In my journal. Last night."
"Did you."
"It was blank. I opened it and I couldn't write anything."
Fritz nodded. "Good."
"How is that good?"
"Because words are not always the answer. Sometimes they are just noise. Sometimes the only thing to do is sit in the silence and let it teach you what it needs to teach." Fritz scratched Wolfgang behind the ears. "You have been using words to avoid feeling things your whole life. I can see it in the way you talk. The way you write. The way you pause before you answer even the simplest question."
Jordan wanted to argue. He also wanted to cry. He did neither.
"I don't know how to stop," he said.
"You do not stop. You just notice. And then you notice again. And one day you realize you have been feeling things all along, and the words were just the map, not the territory." Fritz stood up and carried his plate to the sink. "Come. Help me with the dishes."
They did the dishes together. Jordan washed. Fritz dried. Wolfgang supervised from his perch on the windowsill, tail flicking whenever a bird flew past.
When they finished, Fritz handed Jordan a small package wrapped in brown paper. It was heavy for its size, rectangular, tied with kitchen twine.
"What's this?"
"A book. One of mine. I want you to have it."
Jordan started to unwrap it, but Fritz put a hand on his wrist.
"Not now. On the train. When you are somewhere between here and there." He smiled. "When you need it most."
Jordan tucked the package into his backpack. He didn't know what to say, so he said nothing, and Fritz nodded like that was the right answer.
He left the hostel at noon. The sky was overcast, the air thick with the promise of rain. Fritz stood in the doorway and watched him go, Wolfgang tucked under one arm like a furry, indifferent infant.
"You will come back," Fritz said. It wasn't a question.
"I don't know."
"You will." Fritz raised one hand in a wave. "Not because you have to. Because you will want to."
Jordan walked to the U-Bahn. He rode to Hauptbahnhof. He found his platform, his train, his seat. The carriage was half-empty—a woman with too much luggage, a man in a suit who was already asleep, a teenager with headphones so loud Jordan could hear the tinny buzz of music from three rows away.
He sat by the window. The train pulled out of the station at 14:47 exactly.
Berlin scrolled past—graffiti, rooftops, the TV tower like a needle stitching the sky. Then the city gave way to suburbs, to fields, to a landscape that blurred into green and gray and the occasional flash of a river.
Jordan opened his backpack and took out the package. He untied the twine and peeled back the paper.
The book was old. Leather-bound. The spine cracked when he opened it, and the scent of dust and time rose from the pages like something alive.
It was a book of piano compositions by Franz Schubert. On the title page, in faded ink, someone had written a name. Fritz Baumgartner.
Below the name, in smaller letters: Berlin, 1997.
Jordan turned the pages slowly. They were covered in annotations—fingerings, tempo markings, notes scrawled in the margins in German. Some pages had coffee stains. Some had tears.
He closed the book and held it against his chest.
Outside the window, the sun was breaking through the clouds. Fields of yellow flowers stretched to the horizon, impossibly bright, impossibly alive.
He didn't know what was waiting for him in Rome. He didn't know if Lena would ever call. He didn't know if he would come back to Berlin or if this was the last time he'd ever see Fritz, ever hear that piano, ever sit in that kitchen and drink coffee that tasted like burnt toast and regret.
But he knew this: he was on a train. He was moving. And somewhere in the space between who he was and who he was becoming, there was a version of himself he hadn't met yet.
He opened his journal. The page was still blank.
He put pen to paper.
The train rolled south. The sun dipped toward the horizon. And Jordan began, finally, to write.