First Betrayal
Dieter Schwarz
I warned Wulfram to never
leave her alone with anyone,
even me.
Dieter was sitting on the couch with Flicka and watching television one chilly London evening. He had finished his reading for his M.B.A. classes for the next day and his first beer.
He popped the cap on the second one. The bottle was cool in his hand but not cold because they were in England. The Kensington Palace staff probably would have had a proper English tizzy if they’d found beer in the apartment’s small refrigerator.
The BBC sports broadcast was recapping the truly brilliant match that Manchester United had played against Liverpool. He sipped his beer while watching it and rubbing Flicka’s feet that lay in his lap.
Earlier, Flicka had been wearing headphones and silently practicing on an electronic piano, first scales and then some complicated piece that had required much grunting and weaving back and forth from one end of the keyboard to the other.
Her back had been toward Dieter, and sometimes he got caught up in watching the theatrics, her slender form shaking and hunching with emotion and effort as she pounded on the eerily silent electric piano.
It got funny, but he didn’t dare laugh at her.
He’d made that mistake once.
Once.
She’d been sixteen or so, staying with him and Wulfram for her summer break, and he’d cracked up at her completely silent performance of something very emotional and deep that was obviously requiring a lot of effort and concentration and dramatic hand flourishes. She’d been throwing her arms into the air and then hunching over the keyboard, pounding on the keys that barely pattered when she played.
Dieter and Wulfram had laughed so loudly that she’d heard them through her big, round earphones.
Wulf hadn’t laughed quite as loudly, and he’d shut off his chuckle as Flicka had whipped around and ripped off the headphones to see what was so damn funny.
Wulf, already perfectly composed, had shrugged and pointed at Dieter, selling him out.
Flicka had leaped across the room and battered Dieter with a priceless, embroidered pillow while he laughed harder at her. She shrieked at him the whole time about how music wasimportantto her and was theonlything in the world that meant anything, and if heunderstoodher at all, he wouldrespectthat.
Dieter was still cracking up under her onslaught, yelling,“Jesus,Wulf! Get her off me!”
She yelled, “I have beenworkingon thatmusicforhourseverydayof mylife—”
He curled into the fetal position to protect his nuts and covered his head with his arms.“It’s beautiful! It’s beautiful!Durchlauchtig,I swear that I was not laughing at you.Ouch.I was laughingwithyou.Ouch!”
She climbed on top of him to whack him harder, her bony knees and elbows poking him in the ribs and gut.
A particularly well-aimed blow caught the back of his skull.“Ouch!I’m sorry!I’m sorry!I won’t— IswearI won’t—” Of course, he couldn’t stop laughing at her, which infuriated the little whelp further. “Wulf,help me!”
Wulf eventually pulled her off of him, her skinny arms and legs flailing.
Dieter was still laughing his ass off at her attack. She screamed at him like an enraged hamster going for his jugular.
But he didn’t laugh at her after that.
He grinned when she wasn’t looking.
Like he was grinning now.
The Kensington Palace apartment had been quieter since Wulfram had moved to Chicago. Flicka pounded on her electronic piano and studied sheet music while Dieter read and worked on his thesis. They both went out with friends, of course. Dieter went out singly, and he tagged along with Flicka at a respectable distance when she went out, making sure she was safe.
London was safer for her than many cities. Wulf had been smart when he had picked it out, as usual. If nothing else, the British royal family was a more valuable target than their deposed German cousins, though as Dieter got to know Wulf’s cousins, he hated that reasoning more and more. They were nice people.
