observing, drinking, making
comments. When we finally left, an exhausted doorman led us to the stage door, the only door that hadn’t already been bolted. Feeling cheerful, we stepped into the chilly June night. Behind
us, a famous talk-show host pulled the door closed.
‘Let’s listen to the nightingales,’ I say.
‘Nightingales?’ Monika asks. ‘Are there still nightingales in Holland?’
So I tell her how to drive to the Amsterdamse Bos, where to park the car (in the car park at the start of the old rowing course), and how to walk from there to the nightingales. In the bushes
along the shores of the Nieuwe Meer, when we hear the first clear warbles, Monika kisses me solemnly on the forehead. ‘Where,’ she says, ‘do you find a man these days who can lead
you straight to a place where the nightingales sing? I’m never going to let you go.’
We sit down on a wet bench that draws the cold right up through the seat of your trousers. I snuggle up close and put my arm around her. My hand lands on her breast.
‘We don’t do it enough lately,’ she says.
‘You’re right,’ I say. ‘But we’re going to work on that.’
‘Hmm, but not here on this bench.’
‘No, not on this bench.’
She kisses me. Her lips are dry, but her mouth is warm and moist. She bites my lower lip. The nightingale sings. She puts her hand on my crotch.
‘Very good,’ she mumbles through the kissing.
My hand slides under her jacket, pulls out her shirt-tails. I kiss her neck, nibble softly on her ear while my hand crawls around her back and slides beneath the edge of her panties. Her
buttocks are cold as ice.
‘Come on,’ I say, helping her to her feet.
‘You’re horny,’ she says. ‘I can tell from the way you’re breathing.’
‘Yes,’ I say. I pull her up close and kiss her. ‘And so are you.’
‘Yes.’
At the car she says: ‘Get in. Turn on the heater. And the lights.’
The motor starts with a cough. Monika is standing in the headlights, her face pale, her eyes black. She takes off her clothes. Jacket, shirt, yellow shoes, trousers, panties (she’s wearing
black underwear; she always wears black underwear when she feels like having sex) – one by one they land on the bonnet. When she’s completely naked, she spreads her legs and closes her
eyes. She has a pee. The golden stream sparkles in the lights.
‘You’re crazy,’ I say to the inside of the windscreen. ‘And glorious. And unbelievably exciting.’
‘Turn off the lights,’ Monika says, and I obey. In the dark I see the rapid movements of her white body. In the wink of an eye she’s beside the car and opening the door.
‘Keep the motor running and turn up the heater. My God, it’s so cold. And it’s almost July! Kiss me, Armin, kiss me!’
She climbs on top of me, pushes her cold breasts in my face. With my left hand, I pull the lever and drop the seat back.
‘Take it off,’ she says, and slides away from me to put down the back of the passenger seat as well. ‘Off, off, off!’
I struggle out of my clothes.
‘Sit here.’ I slide beneath her onto the passenger seat. My dick is standing crooked as an old tree. Monika grabs my hand and folds it around the trunk. ‘Watch,’ she
pants, ‘watch.’
She’s crawled onto the driver’s seat, her hands glide along her legs, to the dark triangle in her crotch. ‘Watch.’
My hand slides frantically up and down.
‘Yes!’ Monika says. ‘That’s good. You like that?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah.’
She leans over, kisses the head of my dick. ‘Oh, oh, wait.’ She climbs on top of me, and with a hard shove she brings me into her. ‘Yes!’
I look at the white of her breasts, I look at the white of her eyes. And suddenly it’s as though her whole body is emitting light, Monika has become an angel.
‘Shit!’ she shrieks. As fast as she climbed on to me, that’s how fast she’s off me now.
‘Shit!’
It feels like something snaps at the base of the stiff