She dug through her little corset purse, withdrawing a knot oflint, her flashlight, fountain pen, and pocket watch. Her face perked up hopefully at sight of the pen. His expression did the same.
Casually, both pretending not to care for fear of being proven wrong, they toyed with the pen, unscrewing it and nonchalantly peering into the chamber. Nothing.
Fernando snatched her wrist before she could hurl the pen across the room. Her pocket watch was last. It’d been stuck at 4:44, Serafina’s lucky number, for years. Sterling flipped it over, and notched the tip of Fernando’s Swiss Army knife into the back seam until it snapped open. She held it to the light, and the glimmer bouncing off the gold lit up her smile.
No wonder the watch was stuck—the back chamber was missing half its cogs. In their place was a small brass key.
They stomped their feet, whisper-screaming, “Aaaaahhhhh!”
Once they’d calmed, she pried the key out and inserted it into the lock of the green box. The handle design matched, and the key fit. This was it. With great ceremony, they joined hands and turned it together.
But it didn’t budge.
“Let me try,” he said, swatting her hand away. He failed.
“Turn it in the other direction?” she suggested, wiggling the handle.
No luck.
This wasn’t the fucking key.
They fell back, staring at the ceiling.
“What’s left?”
“My storage container,” she said, closing her eyes and exhaling in frustration.
“Oh, fun, I can reorganize it!”
“Don’t get too excited. It’s in Floridsdorf.”
And so began their commute to the end of the earth, otherwise known as the last stop on the U6 subway.
Parts of the Twenty-First District were charming, but her storage compartment lurked in a chipped concrete palace on Bäckerstrasse. The gate was unlocked. The security guard’s box was empty, with a Help Wanted sign taped to its plexiglass window. A trio of swaggering drunks blocked the door. Sterling warmed their coffees with pours from her flask, and they let them pass.
They wound through the repetitive maze of white compartments grayed by dust and disrepair. Automatic fluorescents sizzled on as they passed beneath them, then clinked off as they continued, providing them only a narrow bar of light. At last, they reached compartment 212, block B. She opened the padlock chained at the foot of the rolling door. Fernando held his purple handkerchief over his nose and mouth while hoisting it. It rumbled, releasing a dust cloud.
“Ugh, I hate it here,” she said, coughing and fanning the air. She pulled the string for the sole light bulb, which came on but barely dented the darkness. She clicked on the flashlight.
“It’s charming, in a roach-traps-and-urine-stench kind of way,” he said, shivering.
“At least the urine covers the meth-lab fumes,” she said, lowering the door behind her. She’d rented the place to hide her aunt’s things. It was as anonymous as the Hotel, which kept Weiss from discovering it, and was cheap as the dirt coating the entire warehouse.
She handed Fernando a small flashlight and he marched, zombie-like, towards a bookshelf in complete disarray. They worked to the music of her teeth chattering and the grandfather clock ticking in the corner. Sterling dragged the dust cloth off a wingback chair and sat with a box in her lap, pinching the flashlight between her ear and shoulder like a landline phone as she opened it. Photo albums wedged in by a thin copy ofTraumnovelle.
“Did you ever readTraumnovelle?” she asked, fanning through it before setting it aside. She opened a photo album. The glue haddried out, so pictures tumbled off the yellowed pages as she turned. It wouldn’t lead to the key, but she couldn’t resist seeing Serafina.
“Uh-huh, hets fan-sae vin-haj smuh—” muttered Fernando.
She gaped at him. “Are you having a stroke?”
He removed the mini-flashlight he’d been clenching between his teeth. “I was saying, the book’sfancy vintage smut. The main character gets invited to a secret sex party.”
“Sounds like a typical Tuesday at work. No wonder the old boss put it in front of Room 13’s keyhole.” She caught a photo as it slipped out. “Speaking of the old boss,” she said, holding it up.
Fernando came over to see. A picture of Serafina and the gang at the Eden Bar. New Year’s Eve 1990. Serafina would have been around Sterling’s age. Rita was in her fifties but looked the same. Beside her was a handsome young Christoph, back when he still had hair. Herr Kleinmann Senior had his arm around Serafina. She wore a floor-length silver gown and her favorite necklace, a giant collar of fake diamonds.
“She loved that kitschy thing,” said Sterling, her face brightening. “It must be in here.”
