White Niggers
Chapter 12
Thursday, August 8th, 2019, 19:00
Lisa's apartment complex, Vorgartenstraße 204, 2nd district of Vienna
Timur and Lisa walk towards the entrance of the apartment complex she lives in.
Now the friendzone hammer will fall, Timur thinks.
It was a lovely evening, but Lisa didn't exactly throw herself at him. It was more about spite for Zoe than affection for Timur.
"Thanks for a nice evening, Timur," Lisa says. "See you soon, hopefully."
She waves at him and walks through the glass door.
Does she want to see him? Timur thinks. Or was it just politeness? It couldn't it be that easy, could it? He hasn't even started conquering her.
Timur decides to walk home by foot to clear his head. He strolls down the Vorgartenstraße on autopilot, her last phrase ringing in his ears and obliterating the load-bearing pillar of his Weltanschauung. That is, classy women don't fall in love with pizza delivery boys.
He snaps out of hyperfocus only when he is standing in front of the door to his apartment in Vorgartenstraße 177.
You gotta make hay while the sun shines, Timur thinks. He takes a beer bottle from the fridge and sits down on the couch.
That's a universal rule – when fortune is good to you, you need to tell her you appreciate the gift, Timur thinks. And the best word is action.
He takes a sip from the bottle. He looks around and grabs an issue of Auto Motor und Sport from the coffee table, an illustrated journal about cars. He begins to look at the pictures.
I don't know if she is into me, Timur thinks. Right now she is even-steven about me. I can speculate all I want whether or not she likes me. Or I can tip the scale in my favor. Forge the future instead of trying to predict it.
He continues to flip through the magazine. She believes that pizza delivery boys can become millionaires, Timur thinks. That's what she said.
He sees a Mercedes-Benz E-Class Cabriolet in the magazine. A car like this would prove to her he is cut of the same wood as millionaires who started as busboys, Timur thinks. Apart from that, I always wanted to have a car.
He goes to his desk and starts researching car ads. A new convertible, fancy or otherwise, is outside his budget. He moves to used cars. Here his options are greater, provided he is willing to churn credit cards.
Lisa won't approve if I go bankrupt trying to impress her, Timur thinks.
He takes out a napkin and starts to calculate how much he could realistically spend on a car. Then, he looks at the ads once again, and after a few phone calls, arranges a meeting with a potential seller.