Heidelberg

They sat at the end of the longest table she had ever seen, in the hall of a villa too large to be inhabited. Her table neighbor, who had been introduced as Dr. Bauer, introduced himself as Anton after only ten minutes and smiled incredulously when she said “Cäcilie.” She laughed: “Cäci.” That was their first unlikely commonality: the Pleiades. Anton had written his doctoral thesis in astronomy on the star cluster; Cäci had written her degree in Greek studies on the nymphs of Greek mythology. The high room became covered with a starry, mythological-physical infinity, populated by Neptune, Uranus, and Cassiopeia.  

There was something to eat, a speech, an appearance by a celebrity, and another speech that inconspicuously but emphatically reminded everyone of the host of the fundraising dinner. Meanwhile, they spoke about the long tables of their childhoods. Anton had grown up in a shared flat in wild Kreuzberg when Berlin was still known as the Wall City; Ceci in the Eifel as part of the Blankart lineage. It was as if they had lived at the North and South Poles.  

Yet both their daily lives included large dinners to which the most astonishing guests were invited. For example: “Werner.” “The one with dreadlocks down to his backside?” “Exactly.” “He was at your place too?” The second unlikely commonality led to shared constellations of human relationships and finally to the Plöck, where both regularly bought sweets and sours without ever having met.  

At this point, dessert was still to come, but they only wanted light—specifically, lights that find each other like stars in space or children of the gods—and so they disappeared half an hour later into the darkness at the edge of the Schlangenweg during firefly season. And because it was a very unlikely evening, they met Werner there.