Mustard Beer
By Joe Giordano
Posted on
Two dark-haired students wearing Brazilian-flag tee shirts undressed Jessica with their eyes. She tossed her red hair and turned her back on them. She’d arrived in Belgium from the States on Saturday, and this was her first day of a summer semester studying at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. The orientation for new and reentering students had ended, and she weaved through French and Flemish conversations. She was in the square outside the arched portico of the Tower Library, a Gothic, gild-relief building. The sky was gray-smeared clouds.
A sandy-haired student wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a pink tie spoke in German-accented English to a fellow with a three-day beard and flowing blond hair under a black ski cap.
The German said, “Read Kafka. The meaning of life is that it ends.…
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