Malena the foreign girl rents from the woman who rents from the man who owns the bathless flat at zionskirchplatz. notification by postcard came with the fact that a week before xmas, the man’s son, cramming informatik at tuebingen, will come to stay until the day after day one of next year. with 72 hours left to find a new bed she suffers giddy-but-desperate despair but makes herself up, does her highgloss hair, wears her very best amongst macintoshes at sankt oberholz in hopes of meeting a decent English-speaking student. but they’re just impudent

brats, not men, the effeminate offspring of America’s tourist classes, chatty-immature and porno-crass, unearned smirks illuminated by flashy nonsense from week-old screens, she thinks you’d never even survive a week of pinochet. Malena pays three milchkaffees and leaves to walk her bad dream along the Spree trailing smoke from the café. she makes her way

through the superfluous xmas markt behind the obligatory museum towards friedrichstrasse, from there to hallesches tor in kreuzberg where joke santas hang from windows like hung partisans and startled pigeons mount heaven like notes torn from throats of
muezzin

.