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takes on commissions that she likes, and that often leaves her broke at the beginning of the month.
    “I need a new job,” she says. “Just anything, you know? But really urgently. My dad has another new girlfriend, and his girlfriend is of the opinion that I should stand on my own two feet. I mean, hey, am I like fourteen years old or something? He stopped the checks. Just like that. Can you tell me what kind of sluts my dad’s hanging out with? Let ’em come and ring my doorbell, I’ll tell them a thing or two.”
    Tamara has the image clearly in front of her eyes. She doesn’t know whether there’s a Latin name for Frauke’s father complex. Any woman who gets involved with Frauke’s father experiences his daughter as a Fury. Tamara was there a few times, and the memories aren’t good. Tamara sees the father as the problem, not his girlfriends, but she keeps that thought to herself.
    “And now?” Frauke asks, suddenly feeble. “What do I do now?”
    “We could mug somebody,” Tamara suggests, jutting her chin toward the man who stopped when he saw the cigarette butt.
    “Too poor.”
    “We could open a bookshop?”
    “Tamara, you need seed money for that. Monetos, capice?”
    “I know.”
    It’s always the same dialogue. Tamara dreams, Frauke wakes her up.
    “And don’t suggest I go to the job center,” says Frauke, tapping a new cigarette out of the box. She offers one to Tamara, Tamara shakes her head, Frauke puts the pack back in her pocket and lights her own.
    “I have my dignity,” she says after the first drag. “I’d rather beg in the street.”
    Tamara wishes that Frauke’s character traits would rub off on her a little. She’d love to be choosier. In men, in work, in her decisions. She’d also like to be proud, but it’s hard when you’ve got nothing to be proud of.
    I’ve got Frauke
, Tamara thinks and says, “You will manage.”
    Frauke sighs and looks into the sky. Her neck lengthens as she does so; it’s white like a swan’s.
    “Look down again,” Tamara says.
    Frauke lowers her head.
    “Why?”
    “I get dizzy when people look into the sky.”
    “What?”
    “No, it’s true. It makes me really ill. I think it’s some sort of nervous disorder.”
    “You really are a case, aren’t you?”
    And she’s absolutely right, Tamara is a case.
    An hour later they share a bag of chips by the district court building, and wait for the 148, toward the zoo. Frauke is feeling better. She has worked out that she sometimes sees nothing but storm clouds everywhere. When Tamara tells her to take less medication, Frauke doesn’t even pull a face and says, “Tell that to my mother, not to me.”
    At Wilmersdorfer Strasse they get off the bus and head into the Chinese supermarket opposite Woolworth’s. Frauke fancies stir-fried vegetables and noodles.
    “It’ll do you good to eat something healthy,” she explains.
    Tamara doesn’t like the smell in Chinese shops. It reminds her of the hallways in the blocks of apartments with corners stinking of piss, and it also reminds her a bit of an InterRail journey when she got her period and couldn’t wash herself down below for two days. But what bothers her most is that she has gotten used to the smell of dried fish after a minute, but knows very well that it’s still in the air.
    Frauke isn’t worried about that. She puts bok choy, baby eggplants, and leeks in the basket. She weighs a handful of bean sprouts and searches for the right noodles. Then she runs back to the vegetables to get ginger and coriander. She doesn’t like the coriander. She talks to a saleswoman and asks for a fresh bunch. The saleswoman shakes her head. Frauke lifts the coriander and says,
Dead
, then taps herself on the chest and says,
Alive
.The saleswoman holds Frauke’s stare for a minute before disappearing into the storeroom and coming back with a new bunch. Tamara thinks the new bunch looks exactly the same as the old one, but she says nothing, because