Nadja Keller drove to her apartment unsure of what to think of the lovely, interesting and yet strange creature she’d just met. She was attractive as hell. Petite, feminine, and with the most beautiful pair of sea-green eyes she’d ever seen. Nadja towered over the beautiful American even though she’d worn heels. Her long light brown mane which was almost dark blond had been breathtaking.
But who the hell took off on a tour of Europe after losing their husband and their home to an earthquake? Especially one who said they hated to travel. And Rainbow hadn’t gone straight to Europe either, from what she told her. She’d first visited family in the eastern U.S.
Something wasn’t right. She wondered if she should even get involved and bother to see the girl again, but it was as if she were drawn to her. Her curiosity and her attraction urged her onward for one last visit.
She wished she had more free time, but work had been crazy lately. With her colleague on vacation, she had so much more to do. Life as a financial consultant was boring.
Nadja was almost tempted to cancel her meeting with a friend she had planned tomorrow night since the friend lived in the area and would always be around, but she knew she would be disappointed if she did, for Belle had been just as eager to see the Turkish band that was performing tomorrow night as she herself had been.
Instead, perhaps she could postpone her Friday night date with Aldrich. The guy wasn’t that exciting anyway. But that would only be if she was willing to take a chance on getting into something that wouldn’t last. Something she wouldn’t be too happy to have to give up so soon.
She thought back to some of their online chats. From what she understood, Rainbow and her husband hadn’t been well off. In fact, they’d been struggling quite a bit thanks to the collapse of the economy. Her husband had been laid off for a long time. Then disaster struck and the guy had been killed when an earthquake destroyed their little trailer. Although Rainbow didn’t seem to believe it, she had been lucky. She had been out bike riding at the time and was able to take cover somewhere and wait the catastrophe out.
Everyone had their own way of dealing with grief, but a journey overseas wasn’t usually one of them, was it?
Moments later she rode the elevator to her fourth-floor apartment and entered her posh living quarters. The two-bedroom apartment was spacious, tidy and modern. Yet it had a cozy quality about it as well.
Setting her handbag on the small table by the door, she had a fleeting moment where she wished she’d brought Rainbow home with her and let her stay with her until she left Germany. It would save her money, and that was another thing right there. How could she afford such a nice hotel? It wasn’t the Ritz, but it wasn’t half bad either. She had a friend, or more like an acquaintance, that worked in the housekeeping department of the hotel she was staying at and it was pretty nice from what she’d described, and the employees received competitive wages.
Must’ve been a fairly expensive car she sold, she decided in the end, to be able to afford a trip that had to have cost around six grand or more.
She tried to tell herself it didn’t matter and that it was none of her business, but Nadja couldn’t help but wonder about the mysterious woman she’d met. One of the things she had always liked about Rainbow was her sense of humor. But her serious, even nervous behavior had been totally lacking in humor. No jokes or anything of the sort had come from the girl during their meeting. Understandably she was still depressed, but perhaps it was also because she’d simply felt uncomfortable being alone in a foreign country.
The thought crossed her mind that Rainbow could literally be traveling off the last of her money and would then do something stupid, but she quickly dismissed that thought. Rainbow may be a bit odd in a unique and eccentric sort of way, but Rainbow wasn’t that out of it.
Was she?
Rainbow tossed and turned in the hotel’s bed that night. Her stress was almost unbearable.
Lady Rainbow. It was Nadja’s nickname for her, though she hadn’t used it at all earlier that night when they’d met. And “Goddess Nadja,” was what she called the woman who sometimes wondered if she’d lived in Greece or Turkey in a previous life. This was because she had always felt so drawn to these countries, particularly Turkey. She’d always felt at home there, as she told her, and loved to vacation there regularly. She’d even lived in New York and worked on Wall Street for a few years when she was in her twenties after meeting a guy up in Frankfurt who was from New York and had recently gotten out of the army.
She kept telling herself to just live it up and enjoy the few days she had left and quit worrying.
But Rainbow was afraid to die. It wasn’t like she was going to change her mind or anything like that. It was just that it was like awaiting surgery you knew you were going to have. You knew you would go through it and you had agreed to go through it, but you were terrified about it just the same.
She had actually wanted to die the moment she learned that Carlos had been killed along with their beloved calico cat and just about all of their possessions. But even though she wasn’t big on traveling, she hadn’t wanted to end it all before saying goodbye to her family. Only they didn’t know it was goodbye. They just thought she was coming to them for support, especially since she had nowhere else to go at the moment.
The hard part was convincing her sister Kelisha that all she needed to do was drop her off at the airport and that there was no need to enter the terminal with her. The last thing she needed was for Kelisha to learn that her next stop was Spain and not California where she was supposed to return to stay with a friend. A friend that in truth had also perished in the disaster.
Not only had she wanted to see her family one last time, but she also wanted to see other parts of the world before she offed herself. Interacting with people online had piqued her curiosity over the last few years, and after visiting a few countries on a cruise she had won she thought it would be an ideal way to go out of the world.
After a week of staying with Kelisha and her husband, she spent two days in Spain, and then she took a train over to Italy where she spent another couple of days visiting other cyber friends in Milan. Finally, she rode the train up to Munich where she planned to spend the last five days of her life.
Part of the journey had been interesting enough, but for the most part, she had felt so alone, depressed and totally dead inside. Despite her emotional state, she’d managed to fool the friends she’d met in Spain and Italy without any problem, leading them to think she was just taking time off to clear her head and would be back in The States soon enough and staying with her friend. Even so, her suffering was so great that she looked forward to the end as much as she dreaded it.
But she also looked forward to one last meeting with Nadja, no matter how platonic it may be.
Rainbow had always preferred women to men. But Carlos, a Mexican native and one of the nicest guys she’d ever known, had been one of those rare exceptions to the rule.
Memories of the years spent with him now invaded her mind. The talks they’d shared, the intimate moments they’d shared, the vacations they’d shared and so much more. In her mind, he and their home were still very much alive and real. She “saw” Carlos in the kitchen cooking burritos. She saw him in the bathroom trimming his mustache. She saw him outside working on their car. She saw him slowly advancing toward her with kisses in mind and the promise of more to come.
She quickly pushed the visions aside as hard as it sometimes was to do. If she thought of him she’d lose her mind and she was already in enough emotional turmoil. Spending her last few days depressed and nervous was one thing, spending it completely insane was another.
Curiously, Rainbow’s mind flashed back to her childhood. She was frolicking along the shoreline of the beach in New England near where she’d grown up. She was in school making plans for the future with friends. Plans that didn’t include losing loved ones. Next, she was playing in a sandbox in the backyard of her family’s home.
She could just imagine the horror her parents would feel if they were still alive and knew of the grand exit she was planning to make from Hotel Earth. She also wondered if she would somehow see them again on the other side once she finally arrived there. They had died in a car accident several years ago.
Or maybe I’ll end up in hell frying in a pit of fire for taking my own life, she suddenly feared.
No! I will not let anything stop me. I do not want to live without Carlos. And I won’t!
Rainbow threw the covers off and got up to pour herself some more champagne. Only in a drunken stupor could she relax enough to sleep. She drank without tasting, set the wine glass on the table by the bed and stared at it as she lay on her side. Another new habit of hers – drinking. Drinking was never something that interested her until now. It’s a good thing she didn’t have much time left. Alcohol was a rather expensive habit. Maybe not like cigarettes, but it could be bad enough if you got too carried away with it.
What would it be like to die? Hmm… she wasn’t sure which idea was worse; thinking about how much she missed Carlos or fearing what it was like to die and what may lie ahead for her in the afterlife. If there was such a thing. And she sincerely hoped there wasn’t! One life was more than enough.
But what if there was an afterlife? Would it be better? Worse? Something totally different that wasn’t even comparable? She would soon find out, she reminded herself, as she willed her mind and body to relax.
Rainbow tried to focus on Nadja and their upcoming “date” however short and sweet it would probably end up being as Nadja seemed to be a very busy person.
She was wondering if she had a boyfriend just as her eyelids were finally growing heavy with sleep. But her sleep didn’t last long for she was just as tormented in her dreams as she was in reality. Alone, scared, angry at God, if there was any such being, and miserably depressed.
Rainbow was floating up towards wakefulness once again, and once again she questioned whether or not she should end it all right then and there. To hell with waiting till the money ran out entirely.
Then an image of Nadja came to mind.
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