ON DEMAND

The house party in the kitchen is in full swing, but Sonya is feeling bored. She presses her forehead against the window in the corridor of the student flat and looks down. From here, she has a panoramic view of the ring road lined with bushes, the area behind the metro station and the car park shrouded in semi-darkness. Parts of the city that usually remain unseen.
Directly opposite she sees the white Mercedes delivery van. It has no windows in the back, and has been parked there for weeks, in exactly the same place. It’s probably used by men to sleep in, probably homeless people. The other day she came across one who wore jeans that were torn at the knee. He immediately walked off in another direction when their eyes met.
Sonya ignores the shouts of her housemates, who are drinking beer in the shared kitchen at the other end of the corridor.
‘Let’s order another crate from the Beer Courier,’ one of them yells.
‘And cheese balls!’
Losers. They are weak and immature; spineless braggarts. She feels strangely decisive, above it all. Concentrating, she looks down through the window at the drizzly car park, where the cars are shiny with rain.
At the back, on the right, is the metallic-grey Volkswagen Golf with the tinted rear windows. Everyone knows it’s used by dealers. Scattered around, on the paving stones and under the bushes, are countless empty energy-drink cans. From the second floor, you can see them glinting like shards in the light of the streetlamps. When she looks more closely, she sees cigarette smoke curling from the cracks around the car windows.
A guy on a scooter tears into the car park, heading for the Volkswagen Golf. He parks the scooter, walks up to the driver’s window – now wound all the way down – and bends over. He is handsome, his tracksuit jacket stretched across his broad back and shoulders. She cannot see what happens next. The guy speeds off again, towards the roundabout that leads into the suburbs.
‘Hey Sonya, Aperol Spritz?’
Her flatmate Bram taps her on the shoulder as he passes. Ruffled, she turns round.
‘I just don’t have any prosecco. But I’ll have it delivered. Ten minutes max!’
Sonya looks him in the eye but says nothing. Supreme indifference.
‘You don’t want any? You rather liked it the other day,’ he says, winking.
God, that’s all she needed.
‘Suit yourself. Just stay here then.’
She looks out of the window again.
The metro rumbles past. Sometimes it hoots loudly, a shrill sound like the trumpeting of elephants.
‘Hey, the beer’s here!’ they shout in the kitchen, ‘but Bram wants IPA. Order some up then!’
Now her gaze is drawn to the white van again. The door slides open, and a young woman with tousled black hair steps out. Her pale white legs are clearly visible in the diffuse light. The woman walks away from the van, pulls down her panties, squats and deposits a glistening stream of urine onto the paving stones.
Sonya holds her breath and looks at the urinating figure. The woman is about her age; she even looks like her. She pees near the bushes but still in full view, like a dog in the street. Once she has finished, she shakes off the last drops, looks around, pulls up her panties and disappears back into the van.
Fascinated, Sonya stares at the white van, still standing there motionless, as if nothing has happened. But it has revealed its secret to her: a young woman with pale legs, just like her. A woman who did not pee simply because she needed to go, but because she had just had sex.
So that’s why she saw all those men near the van. Fuck, she whispers, this is not okay, this can’t be good. At the same time, she feels something else. It’s hot in the corridor, but the window feels pleasantly cool. She keeps looking at the shiny white surface of the van, like a projection screen covered in raindrops.
Sounds of cheering and laughter are coming from the kitchen.
‘Hey, the champers has arrived! Come and drink!’
‘Did you order a stripper? No way, man! Not that ugly chick from the other day I hope!’
‘Hey, Sonya! What are you standing around for? Can’t you do a little dance for us?’
She stands behind the glass like a lizard in a gigantic, warm terrarium, staring at the dark world outside. She is thirsty. She wants to turn away from the window but cannot keep her eyes off the white van. What terrible things are happening in there? She thinks of all the men she has seen walking around. They all got what they wanted.
A scooter races past. The metro hoots. The van remains silent.
‘Shall we order some coke?’ someone yells in the kitchen. ‘It doesn’t have to come very far!’
She needs to pee. She walks unsteadily to the toilets and locks the door. But instead of sitting down on the toilet seat, she presses her forehead against the cold wall tiles, takes a deep breath, slides her right hand over her stomach to the edge of her trousers, caresses her breast with her left hand, pushes her right hand into her panties and starts fingering herself, first with short, soft thrusts of her fingertips, then harder. She thinks of the van, the woman, a mattress in an otherwise empty space. Men with muscular backs, hands pushing her down. She must obey. Outside, a man is counting money.
Willingly, she acts out the lie. She lets herself be pressed against the wall, presses herself against the wall. Panting softly, she pushes her pelvis forward, postponing the orgasm until it mercilessly rips through her body like a red-hot wire.
When she’s finished, she glances at her phone, pulls the door open and walks along the corridor to the stairwell, down the stairs, out of the terrarium.

by Maite Karssenberg

Short Story

Published in Extra Extra No 19

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