In this excerpt, punk extraordinaire Skye Wright finds the infamous Molly Mix, singer for the punk band Bus Stop Hookers and the retro 80’s new wave band Hat Confusion, hanging by a liquor store and talks to her about the German language, a subject relevant in her pursuit of finding amissing friend.

Stella Maris is slated to be released this summer.

    She found Molly on the side of Rusty’s Liquors, smoking a cigarette and sitting against a wall just a few feet away from a trio of winos who were sharing a bottle. Molly was wearing her trademark blazer and her hair was sticking out in all directions, even more disheveled than usual, but she was not wearing her glasses.
     Skye walked up and stood next to Molly. “Hey there rock star.”
     “What’s up Skye,” replied Molly in a broken voice.
     “Watcha doin’ here again?”
     “Waitin’ for Harp. She’s got a spot in her house where she says I can crash.”
     “Where your glasses at? I almost didn’t recognize you without ’em.”
     “In my pocket. I don’t need to see anything right now.” Molly took a long drag off of her cigarette.
     “Shay told me you speak German.”
     Molly shook her head around and looked at Skye. She seemed surprised. “Yeah. Sometimes I help Shay out with his lyrics.”
     Skye put her hands in her Derby jacket and leaned against the wall. “Is it hard to learn German?”
     “Harder than Spanish, easier than Russian.”
     “What can you tell me about learning it? What would I be in for if I took a stab at it?”
     Molly dropped her shoulders and leaned back against the wall. “Well, there’s a lot of things about German that’s easy.”
     “Like what?”
     “Like they spell their words the way they’re supposed to sound. It’s not like French and English where you have all these fucked up silent letters, and letters that don’t make no sense in the spellings.”
     “Hm.”
     “And their are a lot of cognates.”
     Skye’s eyebrow went up. “What’s a cognate?”
     “Words that are obvious or the same. Like the German word for hand is hand. The German word for cat is Katze, and for dog it’s Hund, which sounds like hound, so it’s easy to remember.”
     “So what’s the hard part?”
     Molly leaned back. “The hardest part about learning German is the small stuff. That’s the shit that will drive you crazy.”
     “The details?”
     “The small stuff. You know how Spanish has two words for ‘the’?”
     “What?”
     “The word ‘the’. You can’t use the same article if you say ‘the women’ and ‘the man’ in Spanish. You have to say ‘La mujer’ and ‘El hombre’.”
     “Yeah. I know some Spanish.”
     “It’s worse in German. If you want to say ‘The dog, the cat, and the horse’ in German you have to say ‘Der Hund, die Katze, and das Pferd.”
     “Huh.”
     “German has three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter.”
     “That sounds like fun.”
     Molly sat forward and shifted herself around. “It’s weird assigning gender to nouns. Usually they make sense, like a woman is feminine, and a man is masculine, of course.”
     “Sure.”
     “Die Frau and der Mann. But the word for a man’s necktie is feminine. Die Kravatte.”
     “Okay.”
     “And the word for a woman’s skirt is masculine. Der Rock.”
     “Now it’s sounding complicated.”
     “It gets worse. You have to learn the cases.”
     “What are cases?”
     “Cases in German are the reason that you will at some point pick a hard and flat surface such as a table or a wall and start hitting your head really hard against it, because you will be convinced you will never learn the cases.”
     “Sounds like some mess involving grammar.”
     “Yeah. The dog is der Hund. You have to remember that a dog is masculine in German, which is why you use ‘der’ instead of ‘die’ or ‘das. But it’s not that simple.”
     “Using ‘der’ for a dog? What’s complicated about that?”
     “Because you don’t always say ‘der Hund’ when you’re talking about the dog. Depending on where the dog is in a sentence you might say ‘den Hund’, d-e-n- Hund. And other times you have to say ‘dem Hund’, d-e-m Hund. And there’s another instance where you would say ‘des Hund’.”
     “Fuckin’ a.”
     “There are four ways to say ‘the dog’ in German, and in order to get it right you have to go back and study your English grammar and get hip to the cases.”
     “Sounds like a fuckin’ headache.”
     “It is. And all the German professors and tutors will always tell you what the cases are, but they never explain why they’re so hard to learn. But it is possible to learn the cases, and eventually you’ll start using them without even thinking about it.”
     “You’re not making this sound easy though.”
     “It ain’t easy. It’s work. But if you stick with it you can get it down. If you really learn German you will know German better than actual Germans.”
     “Seriously?”
     “Just mention Dativ to a German and they will either not know what you’re talking about or get really irritated.”
     “What’s a Dativ?”
     “One of the cases you have to learn.”
     “Got it. But why wouldn’t a German know that?”
     “Walk up to just about any plain Jane or Joe six pack who’s a native English speaker and ask them what’s the difference is between past tense and subjunctive an’ most the times you’ll just get a confused look and a ‘Huh?’” Molly crossed her eyes for emphasis.
     “Yeah.”
     “It can be a fuckin’ drag, but it’s really cool to be able to speak another language. Too many Americans can’t speak another language fluently.”
     “You’re an American.”
     “Yeah and I speak fluent German. Das ist kein Witz meine Freundin!”
     “German does sound cool. And it would be nice to know what Nena is saying.”
     “Hast du etwas Zeit für mich? Just say that to someone and if they know the next line then they’re German.”
     “What’s the next line?”
     “Dann singe ich ein Lied für dich.”
     “What does that mean?”
     “Then I’ll sing a song for you.”
     “Neat.”
     Molly took off her blazer. Her left forearm had t a large and long scab on it.
     “What the fuck Molly.”
     Molly looked at her arm. “I got into a scrape with a couple a skater bitches.”
     “Damn Molly, you don’t even know how to fight. What you doin’ getting into scrapes?”
     “My girlfriends always fought for me. I always went out with those brawler gals. But now I ain’t got no gal to beat down for me.” Molly rubbed her forearm. “Why you asking me about German anyways? You really wanna learn it?”
     “Casey was learning it. I talked to one of her teachers. She was really getting into it. At least before she disappeared.”
     “Is that unusual?”
     “For Casey to disappear?”
     “For Casey to try somethin’ like learning another language?”
     “Kind of. I never took Casey for an scholarly type. I mean, I can imagine Lori or Yuri goin’ to school and tryin’ to better themselves, but not Casey.”
     “Too fucked up?”
     “Just too wild. And impatient. Normally she would never have the patience for something like learning a language. I just can’t imagine her really tryin’ to learn somethin’ like that.”
     Skye and Molly had not noticed Harp walking up to them. “Look at all these fuckin’ drunks!” said Harp.
     “Aren’t we supposed to be goin’ to a Gilman show?” asked Skye.
     “It’s Wednesday,” said Harp. “There’s a fuckin’ twelve step meetin’ goin’ on there right now.”
     “Well let’s get a bottle a ripple and go,” said Harp as Molly started standing up.
     “I don’t think they make Ripple anymore,” said Skye.
     Harp looked at Skye. “You wanna come with us to eat fries and drink milkshakes?”
     “The place you goin’ got onion rings?” asked Skye.
     “Maybe. I dunno.”
     Molly stumbled as she was getting to her feet. Skye caught her arm and helped her up.
     Molly turned and looked at Skye. “You need onion rings? I’ll teach you some German if you come with us.”
     “Yeah. That works.”
     “We gotta learn German now?” asked Harp.
     “Stimmt!” announced Molly. “Ihr seid jetzt meine Studentinnen.”

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Skye kickin’ it next to her beat up old band sticker covered car.