"He WHAT?" Gilbert burst out, dangerously close to spilling the currywurst he held in either hand off their paper trays.

"He dropped by… to give me these CDs. I forgot we even talked about it before."

"Jesus, how long ago?"

"Just a couple minutes."

"Fucking miracle we didn't run into each other then. Christ. Fuckin' Roderich. And here I was worried about Elsi. I shoulda known though, that man's a weasel," muttered Gilbert as he joined Ludwig at the table, placing one tray in front of his brother.

"I didn't ask for currywurst, Gilbert. And it's not like Roderich meant to spy on us—he was just doing me a favor. Even though it is odd he looked up my address and didn't call beforehand."

"Weasel, I'm tellin' you. And eat it—currywurst's good for you," said Gilbert as he popped a piece of the sausage into his mouth and began chewing noisily.

Ludwig raised his eyebrows.

"What? It's got protein. Big guy like you must need protein, not just sissy salads." He took another bite and closed his eyes with an expression of enjoyment that made Ludwig blush. "God, I miss this stuff. Elsi never lets us go for fast food."

Ludwig sighed and took a bite. He much preferred Döner to currywurst, but he supposed it wasn't that bad. And Gilbert had gone to the trouble of bringing it back for him. Perhaps it was a peace offering.

He'd accept it. For now.

…

Ludwig was happily surprised when he reached for his buzzing cellphone and saw who was calling. He hadn't spoken with Gilbert since he'd gone home the day before, and hadn't expected to hear from him so soon.

As soon as Ludwig brought the phone to his ear, however, the contentment dissipated.

"Have you talked to Elsi?" Gilbert blurted out before Ludwig could get in a greeting.

"Your wife? What? No. Why?"

"Oh thank God."

"Gilbert, what's going on?"

"He saw me."

"What are you talking about? Who saw you?"

"The little priss—he saw me!"

Horror mixed with understanding as Gilbert's meaning dawned on him.

"You mean… when you were here. When Roderich dropped by."

"Yes! And he told Elsi, of course." Gilbert's voice stung with spite. "She interrogated me about it and I had to make up something on the spot. Wouldn't put it past her to call you to correlate my story, though, so I wanted to warn you as soon as possible."

"Jesus. What did you say?"

"Well, I guessed you wouldn't have let on to Roderich that I was around, right? So I figured I had to pretend I just decided to show up on your doorstep, currywurst in hand. I told Elsi I came back from Kiel a day early and decided to drop by to surprise you. And… that I left my bags at an old friend's place."

"Wait, what?"

"I… left my bags at a friend's place? A friend from uni?"

"…From university? Let me get this straight—she asked why you didn't have your bags with you if you'd just come from Kiel, and you told her you left them at the flat of some random friend from—eight years ago?"

"I was under pressure, okay? It was the best I could come up with! I told her it was someone who used to live in Kiel but also moved to Berlin, so I looked him up, et cetera."

"You could have just said you left them in a locker at the train station."

"Yeah, you think that didn't occur to me about point two seconds after that bullshit came flying out of my mouth? Not helpful, thank you."

Ludwig sighed, rubbing a hand down his face. "Okay, too late now. So what did she say?"

"Well, she asked why I didn't tell her I was coming back early, so I just said I didn't think it was important… Oh, and I decided to stay the night with you because my fictional uni-friend didn't have the space at his flat. So, you got it? I showed up at your place—surprise!—went back at some point for my stuff at my friend's, maybe chilled with him a bit more, then came back in the evening to your place."

"Mm-hm. And you didn't just go home because…"

"Because I wanted to hang with my little brother, of course."

"Right. And you're telling me Elizaveta wasn't at all suspicious about any of this?"

"Well, uh, no, I didn't say that. She's… I think she's dubious, but it's not like she has any proof. She probably thinks I'm covering up an affair or something."

"…Which is exactly what you're doing."

"Tch, I mean with another woman. Who's not related to me."

"Which would be different how, again?"

Gilbert gave a long-suffering sigh. "Ludwig."

"Forget it. So, what now? Maybe we should find a hotel on the other side of town for next time," he said half-jokingly. "Or go on a vacation together." That was less joking.

The other end of the line was silent.

"Right? Gilbert?"

"Ludwig—how—my wife, the woman I am married to, nearly just found out that I'm sleeping with you. My brother. And you're talking about hotel rooms and vacations?"

"What—Gilbert, she didn't find out though! We just have to be more careful next time, that's all. Which is why I'm suggesting these things. I mean, we should think about it—"

"Yeah, well maybe I don't want to think about it just now."

"Gilbert, you're being unreasonable. It's not like she's going to expect us two of foul play. People don't go around thinking that maybe people are really sleeping with their siblings. It's the last thing she would expect."

"Well not if we keep this up, the way things are going—"

"The way things are—? You haven't even given things a chance to get going! We've hardly done anything!"

"Hardly—okay, I can't talk about this now, I have to go."

"At least tell me when I can see you again."

"I said I have to go, Ludwig."

"Gilbert, we should make a time to talk—"

The other end of the line went dead.

…

He was running late for work: something that hadn't happened in a very, very long time.

Ludwig's alarm had gone off that morning, and instead of getting promptly out of bed and into the shower like on any other day, he'd simply lain there, staring at the glowing digital face of his clock and watching in fascination as the minutes slowly ticked by, one after the other, after the other.

He'd taken his time in the shower, feeling the hot water dissolve the morning stiffness under his skin without a thought for the water bill. He watched the clock again as he sipped coffee at his kitchen table, till the minute hand had long passed the mark at which he was usually out the door.

It didn't feel real. There was nothing forcing him to move, to get on with his usual business: nothing preventing him from whiling the day away as he pleased. He was in a glass bubble: an observer, untouchable and removed from the current of time. He floated in his bubble to the S-Bahn, where he watched the preoccupied morning commuters through the film that separated him from external reality, entirely unconcerned by his own tardiness. What was tardiness or punctuality anyway? They were relative, ultimately arbitrary concepts.

When he got out at his stop, his feet turned east, rather than south towards his office, and he didn't question it. He found himself wandering towards the river, to the Oberbaumbrücke, until he stood at the halfway point of the bridge and commanded a view of both riverbanks.

He looked south: towards the distant Treptowers and the green space between that would soon give way to more offices; towards the Molecule Man, which to Ludwig had always resembled grappling boxers locked by steel in eternal struggle. He looked north: towards the O2 World squatting like a massive blue toad burrowed into the concrete; towards the Wall that was once the world's most heavily guarded border. He could see people walking dogs, riding bikes, pushing strollers along the bank beneath the East Side Gallery. They looked like so many tiny beetles skirting the edge of the gray water, reflecting an overcast sky.

His memories of the Wall, of the day the border first opened, were dim. Far better could he remember a time when the cranes grew thick as grass in the old no-man's land, hastening to efface the ragged scar that had rent the city through its very heart. He supposed the changes had happened gradually enough, in the eyes of a child for whom one year was nearly one tenth of a lifetime. And yet, at thirty-two, standing between the banks of the Spree, he couldn't be certain what he was looking at anymore, it was so new and foreign.

For one quiet, precious moment in his glass oasis, he could hold everything still. He could stop time: freeze the joggers and the bikers and the stroller-pushers, the boats and the gently lapping waters, the cars and pedestrians, the clouds rolling low overhead—just keep them exactly as they were, so he could really see them for once, grasp them, before they had the chance to disappear and be replaced; but only for a moment. He couldn't hold them against the workings of the invisible gears pushing them forwards, forwards; he had to release them once more into the inexorable flow.

He wished, in his little bubble, that he could roll back time, un-build the buildings like sets of Legos, grow himself small again so that a year was an eon and an hour could contain multitudes. Back to a day at Wannsee with sand in his hair and impotent anger in his little fists beating on his brother's back, suspended in a watery world of gray-green and muffled sound. Back to a time when all that was now stretched out before him was empty save an endless wall and he still had parents who slept in the same bed and a brother who tackled him on the couch and mercilessly tickled his armpits. When he'd been one puzzle piece out of four that had all fit so obviously together he hadn't noticed the deepening seams between them until they were already pulled apart.

Something cool pricked his cheek. He looked up; it had started to rain. And just like that the glass shattered. He was rudely pulled back to the physical world, protective encasement vanished, swept away by the press of sound and motion, no anchor, no harbor.

He was an hour and fifty minutes late and drenched to the bone by the time he arrived at his office. Several coworkers peered out of doorways and stopped in their tracks to stare.

A man of diminutive stature rounded a corner and caught sight of him.

"Beilschmidt!" It was his boss, Herr Weidemann. He strode down the hall, brandishing a folder. "Man, where have you been? I needed you to sign off on these reports an hour ago! I've got a conference call in ten and—good God, what happened to you?"

Herr Weidemann stopped in his tracks, finally getting a good look at Ludwig dripping on the carpet.

"There better be a good story here. Never in my—"

"There isn't," said Ludwig blankly.

"Excuse me?"

"There isn't. A good story. I decided to take a walk, that's all."

The other man blinked up at him. "A walk?" he repeated deliberately. "You're two hours late for work because you decided to take a walk. In the pouring rain."

"That's right."

Herr Weidemann narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Are you feeling quite alright, Beilschmidt?"

"Fine, thank you. Never seen things more clearly, in fact."

The man nodded slowly. "Mm-hm. Then I'm sure you can clearly see how close you are to being fired."

"Oh, that's alright, I quit."

Herr Weidemann's mouth fell open. After a moment he pulled himself together and glared. "I don't have time for games, Beilschmidt. Don't test my patience any further. Now get in your office and—"

"I'm not sure you heard me right, Herr Weidemann," said Ludwig, completely calm and firm. "I quit. I'm resigning. I'm done. You'll have to find someone else to do your paperwork for you, not to mention put up with your incompetency and cater to your overinflated ego. I would wish you success and happiness with the business, except I can't say I care much for the future of this firm and its indiscreet undertakings, nor for your own personal prosperity."

The entire office was looking on now in shocked silence. Herr Weidemann was red as a beet and seemed incapable of speech, his mouth working like a fish's.

Ludwig gave him a polite smile. "That's all I came here to say."

With that, he turned and headed for the exit.

A stuttering "You're fired, Beilschmidt!" was spit at his back just before the door closed behind him.

…

His hands and face tingled numbly as he got off the U-Bahn at a random stop. His skin was buzzing and he couldn't slow his heart. He hadn't felt like this since the one time as a teenager he'd accepted drugs from a stranger in a club bathroom.

He needed to talk to Gilbert. He needed to tell him what had happened. He had done it. Quit his job. Now was his chance for a fresh start. Their chance. This was what they needed to get unstuck.

They would probably have to leave Germany. Maybe they could go to London. London was nice. Prohibitively expensive, but maybe Gilbert would have some of Elsi's money if he divorced her properly. Ludwig supposed that would be the correct thing to do.

Maybe they ought to give America a try. Ludwig had never been. He had always wanted to see New York. An English-speaking country wouldn't be too difficult to adjust to, at least for him; he knew Gilbert wasn't quite as comfortable with the language. They could talk about it.

Or maybe remoter would be better. Maybe Mexico. Or Brazil. Surely no one would ever think to look for them there. Who would even care to try?

He glanced around at the crowd of faces descending the steps into the U-Bahn. He had the odd urge to share his thoughts out loud with them; to make them stop and listen, tell them that he was having an affair with his brother and was thinking about ways they could leave the country to start a new life together in incestuous bliss. He wanted to tell that woman who looked like Angela Merkel's ugly sister just how much he loved the feel of his brother's skin, how good it felt to be inside of him. He wanted to tell that skinny hipster how beautiful his brother's voice sounded when he was crying out his name in ecstasy. He wanted to describe to that gaggle of British tourists every position they'd ever had sex in. That group of businessmen—he could tell them just how much he wanted to touch his brother in this very instant, how he burned to feel his lips again. Ludwig felt there would be nothing more satisfying in that moment than dashing the illusion of their bourgeois comfort and complacency.

He reached the top of the steps without giving in to the impulse, however. He squinted into the sunlight—the rain had stopped and the clouds cleared—and realized he'd arrived at the Brandenburger Tor.

He wandered out onto Pariser Platz as he fished his phone from his pocket. His fingers trembled slightly as he selected his brother from his contacts.

Gilbert hadn't responded to any of his previous attempts to contact him over the past week, so he was surprised when the call was accepted after one ring.

"Hi, Lutz."

For a moment Ludwig's voice caught in his throat.

"…Ludwig?"

"Ah, Gilbert, I need to talk to you."

"Yeah, I actually… I wanted to talk to you too."

His heart skipped a beat. "Really?"

"Yeah. Been meaning to call. To arrange something. You know, in person. Better than talking over the phone."

Ludwig couldn't decipher his brother's tone.

"Yes, I agree. I… have some news to share."

"Yeah, me too. So, um, I'll text you? Can you do lunch this week?"

"Yes, I'm free any time."

"Really? Any time? Well, that's… good, then. Okay, see you soon."

"Alright."

"Alright."

Gilbert hung up first. Ludwig put his phone away, still tingly and light-headed.

He wasn't sure what to do with himself without work to return to. He wasn't used to free time out in the city. So he settled himself on a bench in front of a Starbucks, and watched the people come and go under the watchful eyes of Victoria.

...

Translation/notes:

Döner is an even more popular fast food than currywurst, basically like kebab in a pita or something. I don't know, I'm vegetarian so I've never had it. :P

The Oberbaumbrücke is a bridge that crosses the river Spree between Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain, in the area of Mediaspree. The Treptowers are high-rise (the highest in Berlin) office buildings along the Spree. The Molecule Man is a giant metal sculpture on the river. O2 World, renamed this summer to the Mercedes-Benz Arena, is a large indoor arena.

The Brandenburger Tor is the Brandenburg Gate, probably Berlin's most famous landmark. Victoria is the sculpture of the goddess Victory who stands atop the gate in her horse-drawn chariot.