Chapter 13: Zu Mir Oder Zu Dir?
The cool night air was a shock after the gallery’s climate-controlled stillness. Yvonne inhaled deeply, the city smells of wet pavement and diesel and distant cooking oil washing over her. Beside her, Victoria buttoned her linen jacket with quick, efficient motions.
“Well,” Victoria said, the word releasing a small cloud into the amber glow of a streetlamp. “That was more social interaction than I’d budgeted for this evening. My apologies, again, for Lena. She’s brilliant, but her mouth operates without a filter.”
“It’s fine,” Yvonne said, and found she meant it. The embarrassment had transmuted into a kind of secret warmth tucked under her ribs. “She sees what she wants to see.”
Victoria glanced at her, a searching look. “And what does she want to see?”
“Connection, I suppose.” Yvonne kept her eyes on the cobblestones. “Isn’t that what everyone looks for in empty spaces? The ghost of it?”
Victoria was quiet for a moment. Then she gestured with her chin down the street. “There’s a place nearby. A proper bartender’s bar. No one will mistake us for anything there. We can have one drink. Or not. Your call.”
The offer was casual, but the space after it held weight. Yvonne thought of her apartment, its quiet plants and the memory of Salim’s absence now comfortably settled into the walls. Going back felt like a step backwards. “One drink,” she agreed.
“Zu Mir Oder Zu Dir?” was found down a set of worn stone steps, a faint glow and a bassline thrum emanating from a heavy oak door. The name, “To My Place or Yours?”, hinted at a bravado the exterior didn’t advertise. Victoria pushed it open, and the world changed.
The air was a complex blend: aged wood, citrus peel, the sweet rot of maraschino cherries, and underneath it all, the ghost of a million cigarettes smoked over decades, seeped into the brick. It was dark. Not romantically dark, but purposefully dark, like the inside of a walnut. Faded red tablecloths pooled over small round tables, and mismatched lamps cast puddles of honeyed light that made faces look like Rembrandt portraits. The walls were bare brick, cracked and buttressed by shelves holding bottles that glowed like jewels in the low light.
A long, scarred mahogany bar dominated one wall, its surface a testament to decades of elbows and wiped spills. Behind it, a tall, gaunt man with a magnificent mustache nodded at Victoria, a flicker of recognition in his eyes. No smile, just a nod. It was perfect.
“This is…” Yvonne began, her voice swallowed by the soft jazz and murmur.
“A refuge,” Victoria finished. She led them to a small table in a corner, beneath a sconce that cast more shadow than illumination. They sat, the red cloth brushing their knees. Victoria shrugged off her jacket, revealing the full length of her forearms. The tattoos Yvonne had glimpsed were clearer here: delicate, interlocking geometric lines that wrapped around her wrist, and on the inside of her other arm, a single, elegant line drawing of a cocktail shaker.
A server appeared, a woman with close-cropped silver hair and eyes that missed nothing. “Victoria. The usual?”
“Please, Greta. And for my friend…” Victoria looked at Yvonne.
“A bourbon. Something… not too sweet. With a rock.” Yvonne felt out of her depth but determined to not default to wine.
Greta nodded and melted away.
“You have a usual,” Yvonne observed.
“When I find a place that understands silence, I become loyal,” Victoria said. She ran a fingertip through a water ring on the table. “This was one of the first spots I found when I moved here. It reminded me of places I used to work. It’s honest.”
The drinks arrived. Victoria’s was a short glass of something clear and viscous, with a single thick twist of lemon peel laid across the rim. Yvonne’s bourbon was the color of dark tea, a single large cube of ice slowly dissolving within it. She took a sip. It was warm, spicy, with a finish that felt like smoke and old leather. It was nothing like the sharp, clean flavors of her coffee. It was slow and contemplative.
“So,” Victoria said after tasting her drink. “You saw absence. I saw potential violence. Lena sees melancholy beauty. Three women, one empty bench.”
“We see what we carry,” Yvonne said softly. The bourbon was unlocking something in her chest, a courage bred from warmth and dim light. “I saw a crime scene because my mind is practical. It looks for problems to solve. A stain is a thing to be cleaned. Scuffed gravel is a mess to be raked.”
“And now?” Victoria asked, leaning forward slightly. The light caught the edge of her glasses, turning them into brief, fiery circles. “Do you still see only problems to be solved in empty spaces?”
Yvonne thought of her moved furniture, the monstera straining toward the sun, the lavender experiment. She thought of the quiet café after closing, no longer just an empty business but a space filled with her own potential. “I’m starting to see… possibilities. Blank canvases. It’s unsettling.”
“Unsettling is good,” Victoria said, her voice low. “Unsettling means you’re not asleep anymore.” She toyed with her lemon peel. “When I left bartending, I thought I wanted order. Clear metrics, defined outcomes, clean profit margins. And I do. I’m good at it. But it creates a different kind of emptiness. The photographs tonight… they felt more real to me than any spreadsheet. That bar, that platform. I knew the texture of that silence. I’d lived in it.”
“Why did you leave it?” Yvonne asked. “Bartending.”
Victoria’s smile was thin, not quite reaching her eyes. “Money. Ambition. The slow, sure knowledge that I could outthink most of the people who came in and complained about their board meetings. I wanted a seat at that table, just to see if I could get it.” She took a sip. “I got it. It’s comfortable. It’s also profoundly lonely.”
The admission hung in the smoky air. Yvonne understood loneliness. But hers was a loneliness of routine, of a shared life that had slowly emptied of meaning. Victoria’s seemed born of success, of walls deliberately built high.
Victoria’s seemed born of success, of walls deliberately built high. Yvonne traced the water ring with her own finger, mirroring Victoria’s earlier motion. “My café is never silent like those photos. Even when it’s empty, it’s… humming. The machines cooling down. The fridge. The plants breathing.” She looked up. “It’s a different kind of company.”
“A living silence,” Victoria said. “That sounds preferable.” She signaled Greta for another round with a subtle lift of her nearly empty glass. The second drinks arrived with a quiet efficiency that spoke of Victoria’s standing here. The fresh bourbon was slightly darker, the ice cube a perfect, cloudy diamond.
They drank. The alcohol was a gentle, spreading heat in Yvonne’s stomach, softening the sharp edges of the day, of her thoughts. The low light seemed to thicken, wrapping their corner in a more intimate dusk. Victoria’s precise posture relaxed a fraction, her shoulders softening against the worn velvet of the booth.
“It’s interesting,” Victoria said, her words beginning to flow with a looser, more thoughtful rhythm. “What we choose to build. You built a hub. A community table with excellent coffee.” She swirled her drink, watching the liquid cling to the glass. “I built a reputation. A set of skills that are currency in rooms that smell like carpet cleaner and anxiety.”
“Which is lonelier?” Yvonne asked, the question slipping out, fueled by the bourbon’s courage.
Victoria’s gaze held hers, steady and unguarded. “Mine, by a mile. At least your regulars need you. My clients just need a result. There’s a difference.” She took a long sip. “That’s why I kept coming back to your café. It wasn’t just the coffee, which is objectively superior. It was watching you. Your hands on the grinder. The way you remembered that the old man with the terrier takes his cappuccino with a dusting of cocoa, not cinnamon.”
Yvonne felt a flush creep up her neck. She was used to being seen as a fixture, as part of the service. This felt different.
“You have these incredibly capable hands,” Victoria continued, her voice lower now, almost confidential. She gestured vaguely with her own slender fingers. “I noticed them that first day. Strong. A little scar here, from steam probably. You often have a bit of soil under your nails, from your plants I’d guess.” She paused, her eyes searching Yvonne’s face. “There’s an earthiness to you. A complete lack of pretense. You’re just… solid. You’re a fixed point for everyone who walks in that door.”
The directness of the observation, the intimacy of its detail, left Yvonne breathless. The noise of the bar faded to a distant murmur. She could only stare at Victoria, at the earnest fracture in her usual polished composure.
“I find that profoundly attractive,” Victoria said, the words clear and soft, leaving no room for misinterpretation. She didn’t look away. “Forgive my bluntness. The gin is speaking, but it’s not lying.”
Yvonne’s heart was a frantic drum against her ribs. She looked down at her own hands, curled around the cool glass. They were exactly as Victoria described: scarred, sturdy, a gardener’s hands. She had never thought of them as anything but useful. The idea that they could be an object of desire, a focal point for this sharp, beautiful woman’s gaze, was utterly disorienting.
The silence stretched, but it wasn’t empty. It was electric, full of the words just spoken.
“I…” Yvonne started, then stopped. Her throat was tight. She took a fortifying sip of bourbon, the warmth giving her a place to land. “I feel… something too. When you’re there. A pull.” She forced herself to meet Victoria’s eyes, which were wide and dark and waiting. “But I don’t know what to do with it. How I’m supposed to feel.”
She swallowed, the truth feeling both dangerous and necessary. “I ended things with Salim a week ago. And part of the reason… a big part… was because of a conversation I had with you. You asked me what I wanted. Not the café, not him. Me.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It stirred something up I’d been ignoring for years.”
Victoria remained perfectly still, a listener absorbing a vital confession.
“And now,” Yvonne continued, the confusion rising to the surface, bitter and clean, “I’m sitting here, feeling… attracted. To you. And I’ve never… Women weren’t…” She shook her head, her dreadlocks shifting against her shoulders. “It was never a possibility I even considered. So I don’t know if this is about you, specifically, or about me finally waking up. And that’s terrifying.”
She finally stopped, her admission hanging in the smoky air between them, raw and unfinished. She felt exposed, as if she’d turned over a stone in her own garden to find a strange, new ecosystem writhing underneath.
She felt exposed, as if she’d turned over a stone in her own garden to find a strange, new ecosystem writhing underneath.
Victoria did not reach across the table. She did not smile with pity or triumph. She simply listened, her gaze absorbing the tremor in Yvonne’s hands around the glass. The jazz saxophone wailed softly from a speaker, a mournful counterpoint to the silence at their table.
“Thank you,” Victoria said finally, the words quiet but clear. “For telling me that. It’s… a significant thing to hear.” She paused, choosing her next words with visible care. “And I’m flattered. Deeply. That the attraction, however confusing, is at least somewhat mutual.”
She took a slow sip of her gin, letting the liquid settle. “For me, it was never a mystery. I knew when I was fourteen, staring at my hockey coach, feeling a jolt that had nothing to do with sportsmanship.” A slight, wry shrug lifted her shoulders. “It was just a fact, like having brown eyes. Inconvenient at times, but not a source of internal debate.”
Yvonne watched her, this woman who seemed carved from certainty. “That sounds peaceful.”
“It was what it was.” Victoria traced the line of her tattoo with a blunt fingernail. “But I had a friend. At university. Brilliant, funny woman. She was engaged to a perfectly lovely man for two years before she unravelled. The cognitive dissonance nearly broke her.” Victoria’s eyes grew distant, seeing another time, another struggle. “She’d built a whole life on a foundation she’d never questioned. She thought her admiration for certain women was just… intense appreciation. She thought her lack of passion with her fiancé was normal, a logistical problem.”
The story landed in the space between them, heavy and familiar. Yvonne saw the shadow of that woman’s struggle in her own recent history, in the quiet concessions she’d made for Salim.
“Watching her,” Victoria continued, her voice low, “was like watching someone try to breathe underwater. She wasn’t denying who she was. She genuinely didn’t know. The realization wasn’t a light switching on. It was a slow, terrible dawn.” She looked directly at Yvonne, her expression softening. “Her struggle wasn’t about sexuality, not really. It was about the whole architecture of her self. Everything had to be taken apart, brick by brick, and examined. It was exhausting. It was brave.”
The noise of the bar seemed to respectfully recede. Yvonne felt the truth of it in her bones—the exhausting, brave deconstruction. She hadn’t just ended a relationship. She had begun questioning the builder.
“What happened to her?” Yvonne asked, almost whispering.
“She called off the wedding. She lost some friends, kept the better ones. She’s a landscape architect now.” A genuine smile touched Victoria’s lips. “She says building something true, with her own hands, was the only way to repair it. She specializes in rewilding gardens. Letting native species break through the manicured lawns.”
The metaphor was perfect. It filled Yvonne’s chest with a sudden, aching pressure. Her eyes stung. She looked away, blinking rapidly at the glowing bottles behind the bar.
“I’m not saying that’s you,” Victoria said gently, firmly. “I’m only saying… the confusion isn’t a weakness. It’s a sign of rigor. Of not accepting the pre-planted garden.”
Yvonne nodded, unable to speak for a moment. She finished her bourbon, the ice cube clicking against her teeth. The warmth in her stomach was now a solid, calming heat. “The lavender was native,” she said, the words emerging without filter.
Victoria tilted her head. “What?”
“The lavender. In the latte. It was from Frau Engelmann’s garden. A native strain she’d cultivated. I used it because it was there, and it was… true. It wasn’t from a commercial bottle.” She met Victoria’s eyes again, feeling clearer. “It changed the entire flavor. Made it earthier. Less predictable.”
A slow, understanding smile spread across Victoria’s face. It was the most unguarded expression Yvonne had ever seen on her. “See? You already know.”
Greta appeared, a silent question in her raised eyebrows. Victoria shook her head slightly, placing a few crisp notes on the table. “I think we’re done here.”
They stepped back out into the alleyway, the cold night air a bracing slap after the bar’s humid embrace. The world seemed sharper, clearer. The weight of the confession was gone, leaving behind a fragile, new space.
“Can I walk you home?” Victoria asked, her hands buried in her jacket pockets. “To the café, I mean.”
“Yes,” Yvonne said. “Please.”
They walked without touching, a careful parallel line along the quiet, cobbled streets. The distance between them felt charged now, alive with what had been said and what was still unsaid. They passed a darkened bakery, the scent of yeast lingering in the damp air.
“I don’t have any answers,” Yvonne said as they turned onto her familiar street. The Café Klee sign was dark, just a shape in the night.
“I’m not asking for any,” Victoria replied. “I extended an invitation to a gallery. That’s all. Anything else… unfolds. Or it doesn’t.”
They stopped outside the café door. The stained-glass window was a black void. Yvonne fumbled for her keys, the metal cold in her hand. She turned to face Victoria, who stood under the glow of the streetlamp, her short hair a mess of shadows and light.
“Thank you,” Yvonne said. “For the photos. For the drink. For the story about your friend.”
Victoria nodded. “Thank you for the honesty.” She shifted her weight, a rare gesture of hesitation. “My project in Berlin wraps up in three months. I’ll be here whole summer, then rotating back to London after that. I tell you that not as… pressure. But as transparency. Another fact.”
The information landed, a concrete detail in the fluid uncertainty. Three months was both a lifetime and the blink of an eye. It was a boundary, and strangely, that made the space within it feel safer, more real.
“I understand,” Yvonne said.
Victoria held her gaze for a long moment, then gave a short, definitive nod. “Goodnight, Yvonne.”
“Goodnight, Victoria.”
Yvonne watched her walk away, a slim, straight-backed figure dissolving into the labyrinth of Kreuzberg. She unlocked the door and slipped inside the café’s familiar darkness. She did not turn on the lights. She stood there, smelling the ghost of coffee and cinnamon, feeling the quiet hum of the machines. The emptiness around her no longer felt like absence.
It felt like soil, waiting.