"Hey!"
Gilbert looked up from his book to find one of the Asian girls from his class smiling down at him. "Can I sit here?" She waved her hand at the floor next to him. He was sitting in the hall outside of class waiting for the teacher to arrive.
"Sure," he said as nonchalantly as he could manage. She was cute in a slightly chubby way.
She sat next to him and pulled out her binder. "So, how did the melody go?" She flipped through the neatly organised sheets of manuscript paper until she got to her perfect, pristine computer notated melody.
Gilbert pulled out his binder and took a rumpled sheet of manuscript paper out of one of the stuffed full pockets. His chicken scratch handwriting was more or less legible.
The Asian girl looked at it sceptically. "Um, didn't you read the syllabus?"
"Yeah, I glanced at it."
She sighed and said regretfully, "It said all assignments must be printed out using Finale or one of the other notation programs."
"Oh."
"Well, it's just the first one. I'm sure it's no big deal so long as the rest are-"
Gil interrupted her, "I don't have Finale. Isn't it like, six hundred dollars or something?"
Asian girl shook her head, "No, that's only if you get the full version. There's a free version you can download online."
Gil stared down at the paper in his hand. "Oh, okay. Thanks." He sighed, then pasting a smile on his face looked at the girl again. "So, what's your name?"
She giggled in that obnoxiously bubbly way that girls do when they are trying to act cute. "Kiki! And yours?"
"Gil."
"Cool, Gil. Short for Gilbert right?"
"Yeah, that's right."
Kiki muttered his name to herself a couple times and traced it on her palm with her finger. "Okay, I think I can remember it! I'm so bad with names it's ridiculous!"
Gil found himself desperately fighting the urge to roll his eyes. "Yeah...me too. Though I think Kiki is pretty easy. Kiki, like a kitty, huh?" He said teasingly.
"Oh, cute!" she squealed. "Hey, where are you from? Your accent is neat!"
Gil chuckled lowly. 'Ah, a germanophile?' he thought with a smirk.
"I am from Germany. East Germany. Leipzig to be specific." he said with an inordinate amount of pride.
"Wow..." she sighed dreamily, "Leipzig...did you grow up there?"
"Yes, until I was eighteen. Then I came here."
"Did you ever go to Eisenach?" she asked in a hushed, reverent tone.
"Where?"
"You know, Eisenach! Bach's town."
"Oh yeah, that's right. No. I never did get the chance."
Kiki seemed a bit put out as though thought she couldn't believe that he had never managed to visit Johann Sebastian Bach's hometown in all his eighteen years in Germany.
"Well, did you ever visit the Bluthner piano factory? I was just down at the showroom in town! Oh my god, they sound sooo dreamy!"
Gil was forced to admit that he'd never been there either.
Kiki seemed to deflate in a sort of comically exaggerated disappointment.
"Why not?" she asked while giving him puppy-dog eyes.
Gil sighed, "I was too busy finishing school?" he tried, but he could already tell that he was losing points with her.
He watched regretfully as she jumped up to follow Dr. Edelstein into the class and thought, 'Ah, germanophiles. Can't live with them...'