25. The Morning Walk
The Morning Walk
Nadja woke to the first gray light of dawn. The bedroom was bathed in a blue-gray haze, barely filtering through the curtains. Markus lay beside her on his side, breathing evenly, his face still marked by the exhaustion of the night before.
Nadja lay motionless and stared at him. A suffocating chaos raged inside her chest, leaving behind only a bitter, almost ridiculous aftertaste.
What right did she even have to be angry with him? She wasn’t one damn bit better.
Just yesterday afternoon, she had stripped the sheet from the bed with her own hands to erase every filthy trace of Karl. She had swallowed the old neighbor’s cum on this exact mattress and then stood beneath her own wedding photograph while realizing that the rot in this marriage began with her.
But another voice inside her immediately argued back.
Her first fall had happened out of pure desperation. Because of the crushing rent. Because of the debts that were literally suffocating them. Because there had been no way out. She had had to beg Karl for money, had given up her body to save this marriage from utter ruin.
She hadn’t simply cheated on Markus because of a few glasses of wine and the cheap lust of some young slut.
Blatant double standards. Nadja knew that perfectly well.
And still the thought gnawed relentlessly through her mind and kept feeding the cold anger boiling inside her.
The image of Markus’s shirt collar had burned itself into her brain. Those dark-red, smudged lipstick marks. Not just one. That strange, whorish perfume rising from him when he had leaned down toward her.
And the way he had answered her question about the celebration so smoothly: restaurant, coworkers, talked late, then home. Too clean. Too neat. Like a carefully rehearsed lie.
Exactly like her own filthy lies.
Nadja couldn’t be completely certain that he had really cheated on her. She had no absolute proof. Maybe some drunk coworker really had just leaned against him. Maybe the whole thing was one fucked-up misunderstanding. But that uncertainty was exactly what tore her apart the most.
Her mind automatically summoned the image of Markus standing beside a young, tight-bodied woman.
Yesterday at noon — while Karl’s cock was buried deep inside her and she was on a video call with Markus.
That girl had been younger. Blond. Pretty. With something challenging in her eyes when she had looked Nadja over through the screen.
Her woman’s instinct had scented the danger at once.
And right after that, the darkest, most perverse part of her whispered: Even if he had cheated, she was still many times more depraved and filthy than he was.
Nadja closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She glanced at the glowing numbers on the alarm clock. Six o’clock.
Too early for a fight. Too early for probing questions about another woman’s lipstick. Too early for an answer she wasn’t even sure she had the courage to hear.
Nadja carefully lifted the blanket and slipped out of bed.
Her body immediately reminded her of what had happened: a dull pulling deep inside her pussy, a faint raw burn, and an aching lower back with every step. She hated that her body still remembered Karl’s brutal thrusts so vividly.
She dressed quickly: a long, soft T-shirt and a thin sweater over it. She needed to get out. Walk a few blocks. Pull cold air deep into her lungs. Drive Markus, Karl, the damn lipstick, and her own hypocritical double standards out of her head.
Nadja opened the apartment door and stepped into the hallway.
Dead silent. And then she saw Karl.
He stood awkwardly in front of his own apartment door, stretching and cracking his joints. His gray hair was disheveled, his pajamas crooked, his worn house slippers hanging loosely from his feet.
His whole body radiated the disgusting neglect of a man who had been rotting away alone for far too long.
Nadja stopped for the smallest fraction of a second. Karl saw her too. Something immediately lit up in his dull eyes.
“You’re up early.” His voice was rough, almost cheerful.
Nadja didn’t answer. With an ice-cold expression, she walked straight past him.
Karl stood frozen, staring after her, his mouth slightly open.
He didn’t dare call after her. He remembered only too well how yesterday she had first let him take her body without restraint — and then coldly dismissed him in the kitchen.
He knew this woman was perfectly capable of spinning around and clawing his face open if he said one wrong thing.
Nadja went down the stairs.
Every step on the hard concrete sent a faint ache through her lower body, and that deep pulling sensation dragged the memory of Karl’s cock open again against her will—even though he was exactly what she was trying to escape.
She pushed open the front door and stepped into the morning cold. A cool Sunday morning. The street looked deserted. The neighborhood wasn’t properly awake yet.
Sounds lay thin beneath the early fog: a distant car passing down the road, a few birds, a window opening somewhere. The faint smell of toasted bread and cold coffee lingered in the air.
Her mind jumped between Markus’s stressed face, his peaceful sleep, and the incriminating lipstick marks on his collar. Then Karl’s rough, probing hand forced itself between them. His stinking mouth that tasted of cigarettes. And his filthy words about how sometimes people had to have two faces.
She wondered where the hell her life was actually drifting. If Markus had really lied, what would she do? If he hadn’t lied, what would she do?
And if she herself was really the biggest slut of them all—then what? Would she ever dare confess everything to Markus?
Nadja kept walking. No destination. Just evenly. Slowly. Mechanically.
Suddenly she turned her head over her shoulder.
A few dozen yards behind her, Karl was shuffling along. Not close enough to call it following. Not far enough to lose sight of her.
A greasy old man in a worn jacket pretending he had simply happened to feel like taking a morning walk at exactly the same time.
Nadja stopped and fixed him with a stare.
Karl immediately jerked his head aside, pursed his lips, and started whistling some ridiculous tune. Then he quickly bent down and pretended he needed to adjust the strap of his slipper.
Nadja kept walking. A little later, she looked back again.
Karl was still there. This time his gaze was glued to the window of a closed store. Then a bush. Then a street sign. Anywhere but at her.
Nadja suddenly became so angry she nearly burst into hysterical laughter.
That goddamn horny old goat had taken her like a wild animal on the marital bed yesterday, and now he was already wheezing after a hundred yards and acting stupid like a child caught doing something wrong.
Nadja stopped for good. She didn’t keep walking.
She turned around, stood straight, and drilled her gaze directly into Karl. “Come here.”
Karl flinched. Then his legs immediately started moving.
After a few hurried steps, his chest was already rising and falling heavily. He stopped in front of her, looking excited and foolish at the same time, then cleared his throat in a pathetic attempt to seem casual.
“Something wrong?”
Nadja didn’t answer. She only looked at him. A fixed, empty stare.
Karl felt an icy shiver run down his back.
He didn’t know whether she was angry at him, whether she was taking her anger at Markus out on him, or whether she hated herself from the bottom of her soul.
He couldn’t handle this deathly silence. Yesterday in the kitchen, she had been sad. Soft. Humiliated.
Today she seemed different. Emptier. As though somewhere deep inside, she had already given up without shedding a single tear.
Karl swallowed hard. He dug up his usual greasy arrogance and hid behind it as best he could.
“Are you still mad at me?”
Nadja remained silent.
Karl forced out a slimy grin. “I’ll buy you a new dress to make up for it.”
No reaction. Faced with her dead-silent expression, he hurried on.
“Two… no, ten, if you want.” He grinned broadly and let his dull eyes sweep lustfully over the curves hidden beneath her sweater. “Then I’ll have something to tear again. Tearing your dress yesterday… that was so damn hot.”
The disgusting sentence should have made her slap him across the face. Instead, she stood there with her arms crossed and stared at him.
Karl didn’t know whether to keep laughing or finally shut his filthy mouth. Every piece of bait he threw out fell into her silence and sank without the slightest response.
Nadja opened her mouth. “Back.”
Karl blinked. “What?”
“I said we’re going back.”
Karl made a helpless gesture with one hand. “No, I… I’m just taking my morning walk.”
She didn’t waste another word. She turned abruptly and marched with determination back toward the old apartment building.
Karl stood rooted in place for one second, his face blank with confusion. Then he hurriedly stumbled after her.
A thousand thoughts raced through his head and crashed into one another.
She didn’t look like she was only angry at him. Not like someone who wanted to cut him off forever. But she didn’t look like the sad woman from yesterday’s kitchen either.
Why? Yesterday afternoon had been good, hadn’t it, when he fucked her? Karl understood absolutely nothing anymore.
They walked back in heavy silence. Karl shuffled several yards behind her.
Every now and then, he stole glances at the pale back of her neck, her narrow shoulders, and her slightly stiff gait.
He noticed exactly how she tensed faintly after every step.
The thought that his thick cock was the reason her pussy hurt made him feel proud and, at the same time, caused a strange, difficult-to-grasp ache somewhere inside his chest.
Nadja still said nothing. Her silence pressed down on him so heavily that Karl didn’t dare break it. He only followed her straight back.
Her proud neck. Her slightly forced walk. The woman he had believed he had completely stripped bare and broken yesterday morning was utterly unfamiliar to him again.
They climbed the gray stairs and walked through the familiar dark hallway. Nadja stopped in front of Karl’s apartment door.
Karl slowed beside her, looked in confusion at his own door, then at her.
Nadja crossed her arms over her chest and waited.
Karl raised his head. “What… what is it?”
He saw the hard tension along her jaw.
Nadja clenched her teeth. “Open it.”
Karl jerked. “What?”
“Open the door, you old pig.” Her voice trembled with suppressed, cold fury.
Karl clumsily shoved a hand into his pants pocket and searched for his key ring. His bony fingers trembled slightly. Metal scraped inside the lock.
The old wooden door swung open a crack.
The stale air of his apartment struck her full force: cold smoke embedded in the yellowed curtains, stale beer, damp clothes, and that dull odor of an old man who had lived alone for too long.
A smell Karl knew Nadja hated down to her bones.
But today she simply stepped inside. Without one damn second of hesitation.
Karl stood rooted to the threshold and stared at her back in disbelief.
Nadja was already standing in the middle of his run-down apartment. She turned her head toward him, her arms still tightly crossed, her face ice-cold.
“Inside.”
Karl stepped in immediately. The door slammed shut behind him.