Broken Hearts On Boulevard Unirii novel Chapter 39

"Wow, that is great!" she commented.

The taxi driver tried to get as close as possible to the building. I asked Oana to tell him to stop right where he was then, a short distance from the flat.

We stopped in a store near the building and I bought a bottle of mineral water to take to the apartment. I asked her if she would like to come up with me.

Sounding relieved, she said, "I thought you would never ask."

We went upstairs. As we opened the door, the foul odor of cigarette smoke that had permeated the heavy curtains and the wall-to-wall carpeting hit us.

"You have to throw out the carpet and curtains." Oana said. "The smell is unbearable."

I opened the kitchen window and a cold wind blew in. The apartment was freezing as the heating was off. After a while, I closed the window and turned the heating on.

"It's going to take several hours for the apartment to warm up," Oana said.

We sat on the bed in our coats drinking hot tea, we moved closer trying to get warm. Oana took off her coat and crawled under the woolen blanket I had bought. I followed her and also crawled under the blanket. Since it was a single bed we were forced to snuggle up tightly. We naturally began to kiss and hug and I was able to feel the warmth of her body under her clothes, which she quickly removed.

"This way we are surely going to be warm," she whispered into my ear.

When I woke up the next morning the apartment was nice and warm. Oana was no longer in the apartment as she apparently had left early for work. After taking a shower and going back to the room to get dressed, I noticed there was a text message on my mobile phone.

"I can still taste your kisses...." it read.

I smiled and immediately replied, "What? You haven't brushed your teeth?"

I went down to a café for a cup of coffee and then took a taxi to Dorina's office. As she greeted me politely and very officially, I felt that there was now a distance between us.

"Here is the list of all my expenses, "Dorina said."I believe I sent it to you by e-mail."

"How much do I owe you?" I asked.

"I am Italian from Tuscany," I replied.

"Io parlo molto bene l'Italiano,[I speak very well Italian]" she said.

"When I was younger, I was a translator. I also worked for the government as so. Whenever official Italian delegations came to Romania or when Romanians went to Italy. The Romanian foreign Ministry also used my services."

I expressed my admiration to her.

"Perhaps you can tell me about the previous tenants of the building," I asked, and immediately regretted it, as she launched into a long monologue.

"By now you know that the building is a three-story building, and originally on each floor there was one apartment. When the war broke out, three families lived in the building," she said.

"Jacont Michelle, his wife, Flora and two young daughters, whose names I have forgotten, lived on the ground floor. The girls were beautiful, maybe five or six years old. In the middle floor a dentist named Alfred Scheinholtz lived. He was of German descent, and he, like the others was Jewish. He wasn't married but lived with the housekeeper, who apparently was his lover. On the top floor, in your apartment and mine, which too was originally one apartment, the Bercovici family lived. The husband, Silvio, was a railroad engineer, and his wife, Ilona Pinto, was a writer. They had three children. The oldest was a boy of ten, then came a fat little girl, Izidora, who was a year younger, and finally their youngest son who was maybe a year old. I don't remember his name, but I do remember that he was adorable.