Roland Schimmelpfennig

He runs into her on the street in the evening after work, it’s already dark and it’s raining. She starts crying suddenly, and he asks her if he can help her; after all, they know each other from way back – even if they haven’t had anything to do with each other for a long time.
Friends from way back – and back then, nothing mattered: background, money, school, parents. Religion. Skin colour. They got drunk together at night at the bus stop. They had the same tattoos. And then: studying classical languages. Studying history. Getting married, having kids.
Or looking for work without finding it. Today one of them is a head mistress, the other sells cars, and one sits at the checkout in a supermarket. The city is pretty big, but sometimes you do cross paths. It’s been a long time.
You look good.
Do you think so? I don’t.
It’s raining, and he takes the crying woman to her apartment, it’s still the old apartment, the apartment that her parents lived in. A corridor painted green. Poor people.
And later, his wife asks him: Is everything ok? Yes, he tells her, but from this day on, nothing is ok anymore, nothing.