Cecilia Brainard Fiction — The One-Night Stand at the Frankfurt Book Fair

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Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard shares THE ONE-NIGHT STAND AT THE FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR, a work of fic­tion inspired by her vis­it to the Frank­furt Book Fair in 2024. This was first pub­lished by the Philip­pines Graph­ics Read­er on May 2025. 

Cecil­ia is the award-win­ning author of three nov­els: When the Rain­bow God­dess Wept, Mag­dale­na, and The News­pa­per Wid­ow. Her Select­ed Short Sto­ries was award­ed the 40^th Nation­al Book Award. Her work has been trans­lat­ed into Greek, Turk­ish and Finnish. Her books have forth­com­ing trans­la­tions in Por­tuguese, Japan­ese, and oth­er lan­guages.  For more infor­ma­tion, please vis­it her offi­cial web­site at https://ceciliabrainard.com

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MARIBEL GLANCED AT HER PLANE SEAT, grate­ful that she had the aisle seat and only one seat beside her. Her seat mate was a young woman who had her ear buds on. Mari­bel was grate­ful for that too; she didn’t have to chitchat with her. After mak­ing sure she had her pass­port, eye­glass­es, and valu­ables in her small cross body bag, she tucked her back­pack under the seat in front of her. She buck­led her­self, and set­tled into her seat, ready for the ten-hour jour­ney from Los Ange­les to Frankfurt.

While pas­sen­gers and the air­plane atten­dants bus­tled around her, she closed her eyes and tried to push away the sad­ness of the past few days. She had been in LA for the funer­al of Lou, her school friend, part­ner in count­less girl­ish escapades, and lat­er, com­pan­ion to more seri­ous polit­i­cal march­es. They were both writ­ers and they had writ­ten their share of arti­cles to try and right wrong (human rights, jus­tice, gen­der equal­i­ty, extra-judi­cial killings). Lat­er, Mari­bel had found her voice in her polit­i­cal-yet-enter­tain­ing fic­tion. The two women had kept in touch even when Lou had migrat­ed to the US and mar­ried an Irish-Amer­i­can. 

It was Lou’s hus­band who had orga­nized a wake just the oth­er night, the first Irish wake Mari­bel had attend­ed. The food and drink­ing were not for­eign to her—Filipinos did the same thing—but the pub­lic shar­ing of per­son­al anec­dotes was new to her and moved her. She had always known Lou was intel­li­gent, feisty, sen­si­ble, yet fun-lov­ing, but she learned more about her friend from the teary-eyed wit­ness­es: how brave Lou had been dur­ing her three year bat­tle with can­cer; how thought­ful she was of oth­ers despite her own falling hair and excru­ci­at­ing pain.

The sto­ries were dif­fi­cult to lis­ten to; Maribel’s own hus­band had died from can­cer five years ago. The sor­row inside of her that she thought was gone had bub­bled up once again, and Mari­bel found her­self strug­gling to con­tain grief and the oth­er accom­pa­ny­ing emo­tions: sad­ness, anger and that awful feel­ing of alone-ness … of being total­ly alone with­out God even, in this vast uni­verse … com­plete­ly on her own in the only life that she had.

She was lost in the swirl of emo­tions when she felt a sharp kick to the back of her chair. “Excuse me!” she said, and she turned to glare at the per­pe­tra­tor. “Par­don me,” a man said. He was around thir­ty-five, slen­der and tall, like a bas­ket­ball play­er, with legs and arms stick­ing out all over the place. Mari­bel real­ized this tall man was just try­ing to find a com­fort­able posi­tion when he hit the back of her chair.

“No prob­lem,” she said, embar­rassed at her out­burst. Ear­li­er, she had reclined her seat and now she straight­ened it up to give him as much space as possible.

“Thank you,” he said, as he strug­gled to find a com­fort­able posi­tion, bump­ing the back of her seat again, which she ignored.

After a meal (pas­ta or chick­en?) she tried to catch some sleep because she knew she’d be busy in Frank­furt. She was excit­ed to be a Philip­pine del­e­gate (one of sev­en­ty) to the Frank­furt Book Fair, the largest book fair in the world. She was look­ing for­ward to meet­ing oth­er writ­ers and pub­lish­ers, attend­ing lit­er­ary events and talks; and she looked for­ward to meet­ing her lit­er­ary agent for the first time. A cou­ple of months before her trip to Frank­furt, she had met a Ger­man con­sul­tant online who loved her two nov­els and con­nect­ed her with Adela a Czech lit­er­ary agent. In a mat­ter of two weeks, Adela had sold the Czech trans­la­tion rights of one of her nov­els, with more pos­si­bil­i­ties brew­ing. “You will meet your charm­ing Czech pub­lish­er in Frank­furt,” Adela had messaged.

When the plane land­ed and pas­sen­gers were get­ting ready to dis­em­bark, Mari­bel saw the tall man unfurl­ing his arms and legs as he strug­gled to get out of his seat. “You had a mis­er­able time, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, look­ing exhausted.

“When you check-in, you can ask the air­line per­son for a seat with legroom. My hus­band used to do that. They will often help you.”

“I did,” Tall Man, said with a long solemn face. “I tried to get Pre­mi­um econ­o­my, but all seats were tak­en. Busi­ness class is almost twen­ty thou­sand dol­lars, a ridicu­lous amount.”

“You have to be charm­ing. Choose a woman at the desk and smile,” Mari­bel said, and the woman beside her, who had final­ly removed her ear buds, laughed. Tall Man cracked a smile.

He walked with her to Immi­gra­tion and lat­er out to the curb where she called for an Uber ride. “I’ll wait until you’re in your Uber,” he said. When her lug­gage was in and she was seat­ed, he said good luck, waved good­bye, then fum­bled with his phone.

Her Uber dri­ver was a young man who was show­ing off his knowl­edge of Eng­lish. “May I be bold and ask you how old you are?” he said.

She smiled at his blunt­ness. “Old­er than your moth­er,” Mari­bel replied.

“I ask because even though you are old, you are very attrac­tive. Still sexy, you know.”

Shak­ing her head, she laughed. But in her heart she was glad she had kept her weight down and that she took care of her skin. Her body was fine, but she won­dered about the rest of her.

“You can ask me any­thing,” he continued.

Mari­bel looked out at the clouds and said, “Where’s the sun?”

The Uber dri­ver laughed. “This is not Cal­i­for­nia.” Ear­li­er she had men­tioned that she had come in from Los Angeles.

He dropped her off in front of her hotel, which was near the Frank­furt fair­grounds. It was a five-star hotel, mod­ern, with theme rooms boast­ing psy­che­del­ic murals on the walls. She had decid­ed she would be safer stay­ing near the book fair. She did not want to take the train in the evenings.

Her room was spa­cious with floor length pic­ture win­dows that bright­ened the room and allowed some kind of view, office build­ings most­ly and a square below with some trees. The wall behind the bed had a zany mur­al that includ­ed Queen Eliz­a­beth and George Wash­ing­ton on a bike hold­ing a huge dol­lar bill. Just a few steps away from the hotel was the Sky­line Mall with a supermarket.

She bought some fruit, nuts, and a bot­tle of Frank­furt apple wine (she had read this was a spe­cial­ty of the area). Then she got ready for the Open­ing of the Frank­furt Book Fair, a two and one-half hour event, rid­dled with speech­es in Ital­ian, Ger­man, and Eng­lish, most of which expound­ed on the impor­tance of books to ward off autoc­ra­cy. Mari­bel knew many of the del­e­gates and she found some close friends to spend the evening with—(after the pro­gram, some wine at the recep­tion, then din­ner nearby).

She slept rea­son­ably well, got up ear­ly, stared out her pic­ture win­dow, and despite the gray sky out­side, felt expec­tant. She made some cof­fee, ate some fruit, then walked to the fair­grounds, which was just across the street, clos­er than she had expect­ed. There was a long line of peo­ple at the entrance, but after a secu­ri­ty check, some mean­der­ing through the var­i­ous halls and stands, she was at the Philip­pine Nation­al Stand by nine. She chat­ted with peo­ple until it was time to head for the Czech Stand to meet her 9:30 appointment.

Adela, bub­bly, stat­uesque, all smiles, greet­ed her. “Your pub­lish­er is here,” she said. “Jan wants to meet you. He loves your writ­ing. He wants to trans­late the oth­er nov­el too.” Adela, turned to call Jan who was hid­den by a divider. The man appeared and Maribel’s eyes widened before she laughed, “It’s you,” she said.

It was Tall Man from the airplane.

He laughed as well, while Adela looked at both of them, puzzled.

“We were in the same Lufthansa flight,” Jan explained. “I was in LA to vis­it my mother.”

Mari­bel said that she had to be in LA for business—she did not men­tion Lou’s funeral.

After a few niceties, Adela whipped out their agree­ment for sign­ing. She had already emailed this to Mari­bel and Jan, so they had read it before­hand. They signed the doc­u­ments, and not too long after, anoth­er busi­ness con­tact of Adela appeared. Mari­bel and Jan got up, said good­bye to Adela, and stepped away from her desk.

“It is this way here in Frank­furt, meet­ings back to back,” Jan explained. “We did not have time to dis­cuss it, but I would also like to trans­late your oth­er novel.”

She nod­ded.

“Then I will inform Adela. And I will let you know if the trans­la­tors have any questions.”

“Yes, and if you need the actu­al books, I can send them to you,” she offered.

“I’ll let you know,” he replied.

They shook hands, said how glad they were to have met, then part­ed ways.

The rest of her day was filled with more meet­ings with pub­lish­ers and oth­er writ­ers. The main thrust was to sell trans­la­tion rights of Fil­ipino books, and net­work­ing played an impor­tant part in this game.

By around 4 in the after­noon, she felt woozy and tired—it was jet­lag. She decid­ed to take a break and sit in a lec­ture about Jose Rizal. The Philip­pine Nation­al Hero had lived in Berlin and had his first nov­el, Noli Me Tan­gere, pub­lished there. Here in Frank­furt, Rizal was a pre­cious link between the Philip­pines and Ger­many. She lis­tened to the talk, tun­ing in espe­cial­ly to the fact that the pub­lish­ing cost of Noli Me Tan­gere was kept low because the type-set­ters were women.

Then she dozed off, just briefly, then woke up with a start, feel­ing some­one was watch­ing her. It was Jan, seat­ed beside her. “You were asleep,” he whispered.

She blinked her eyes, tried to clear her head.

After the clos­ing remarks Jan said, “If you don’t have din­ner plans, would you like to catch some­thing to eat? There is a steak place near­by, or Japan­ese if you pre­fer,” he said.

She real­ized that she had not eat­en lunch and that she was hun­gry. There had been a group of del­e­gates talk­ing about din­ing togeth­er, but the thought of being with more peo­ple that day tired her out. Despite the excite­ment of the day, her feel­ings still felt raw, as if her sad­ness could blos­som once again. It wasn’t all about Lou’s and her husband’s deaths, but for a long time now, her school chat group had talked of noth­ing but their ill­ness­es: one had a kid­ney trans­plant; one had a fall and was bedrid­den; anoth­er had a knee surgery that failed and now need­ed a wheel­chair; most every­one was on med­i­cines for high blood pres­sure or dia­betes. It just seemed to her that death and decay were too close to her.

She said yes to Jan.

They chose the Japan­ese restau­rant called Hanako in the Mall next to her hotel. He ordered Ramen; she ordered shrimp and veg­etable tem­pu­ra, which appeared in a huge plat­ter with way too much food for one per­son. She offered some to him. He ate his Ramen and would occa­sion­al­ly pick a shrimp from her plate. This bit of inti­ma­cy amused her, added to the ease between them.

He was a poet and a pub­lish­er of a small press of Czech fic­tion and trans­la­tions by famous for­eign writ­ers, and he assured her that she would be in that cat­a­logue. He was full of ques­tions about where her nov­els came from, what his­toric events in the Philip­pines had inspired her nov­els, which authors did she like, what books did she enjoy, many questions.

Talk­ing to him made the time pass; it dis­pelled the gloom in her, and when they had fin­ished eat­ing and had paid, she felt a ris­ing dread to go back to her hotel room. It was that feel­ing of alone-ness that she was afraid of. And near the exit of the restau­rant, before they part­ed, she said, “I have a bot­tle of apple wine. Since Frank­furt is famous for this, I thought I’d try it. Would you like to see if it is any good?” she said.

“Only if you have sparkling water. Apple wine has a benign name, but it’s very potent.”

She said there was sparkling water in the refrig­er­a­tor in her room, and they walked the short dis­tance to her hotel. Briefly she won­dered what she was doing, but her room had a sit­ting area, and they were sim­ply going to con­tin­ue their conversation.

They sat next to small round table near the pic­ture win­dow with the view of build­ings with offices that were clos­ing for the night. As they talked, this time she told him the real rea­son why she had been in Los Ange­les. She talked about Lou, their friend­ship, details of their lives in the Philip­pines, Lou’s won­der­ful life in America.

He had attend­ed the Prague School of Cre­ative Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, had worked in New York, returned to Prague and start­ed his own pub­lish­ing house. He was divorced, no children.

At some point her feet hurt, and she removed her boots. “The feet,” she said, and he laughed and straight­ened his spine and stretched out his long legs. “It’s been a long day,” she said, as she sat back down and shrugged her shoul­ders to loosen her muscles.

A lock of hair fell in front of her face, and he reached over to push it aside. They smiled at each oth­er. He pulled his hand back, poured more wine, and they con­tin­ued talk­ing. Lat­er, she got some nuts and fruits and served these on the table. He peeled open a man­darin, held out half the fruit to her, and they both ate in com­pan­ion­able silence.

She glanced at him and real­ized she felt con­tent­ed, no, she actu­al­ly felt hap­py. Sit­ting there, eat­ing fruit and drink­ing apple wine with this man made her hap­py. And this thought upset her because many years ago, a man had made her hap­py and he had died. Mean­ing to end the evening, she said, “Do you have to get up ear­ly? I have a 9:30 meeting.”

He didn’t bite. “Frank­furt night has only begun,” he said. “There are clubs out there that are just open­ing. I should have tak­en you out.” The light shone on his face, such a young face, and attrac­tive. This thought made her self-con­scious about her own looks. She ran her hand through her hair. “My hair must be a mess,” she said.

He sipped his wine while study­ing her. “Look at your­self,” he said, point­ing to their reflec­tion on a large wall mir­ror. “You are beautiful.”

She glanced at her image and saw her disheveled hair, not­ed that most of her make­up was gone, but that her skin glowed and her fea­tures were even and she wasn’t bad look­ing real­ly. She ran her fin­gers through her hair again. He reached over and touched her arm. “No, your hair is nice like that,” he said. He brought his hand up to her face and cupped her cheek briefly before with­draw­ing his hand. It was a ten­der ges­ture. Mari­bel did that often with the peo­ple she loved, cupped their faces before kiss­ing them on the cheeks.

They were qui­et for a while, but Mari­bel felt a shift in the room. There was some­thing … some­thing in the room that Mari­bel could not imme­di­ate­ly define.

When he bent over to kiss her, then it was out in the open. It was a light kiss, but it came to her that the some­thing in the room was desire — this man desired her. She could feel his need, his desire for her. And when this some­thing went on for a while, when this ener­gy expand­ed and filled the room so that it could not be ignored, she said. “Jan, do you know how old I am?”

He smiled and shook his head.

“Let’s put it this way. You are as old as my son.”

“Does that mat­ter? If two people…”

She stopped him: “I want to tell you some­thing. I will tell you about my hus­band Ric. We met when we were in col­lege, col­lege-sweet­hearts you under­stand. We were hap­py togeth­er, and some­times when we are hap­py, we feel invin­ci­ble. We think our hap­pi­ness, our good for­tune will go on and on for­ev­er. I was wrong. He became sick; he had a rare blood can­cer. The doc­tors who diag­nosed Ric’s ill­ness said he had a six-year sur­vival rate. I didn’t believe them because we were invin­ci­ble and besides I was going to ask God for a mir­a­cle. And Mary too. I would ask the Moth­er of God to give us a mir­a­cle. We went to Lour­des, Fati­ma, Med­ju­gor­je, pil­grim sites in the Philip­pines, but almost six years to the nose, he did die. It was not a pret­ty death. Well, I’m not sure any death is pret­ty. So you see my hus­band Ric and my best friend Lou both died from can­cer. And these deaths have been on my mind, even in the plane when I first saw you. But talk­ing to you today, being with you, has made me for­get … no, that is wrong because I have not for­got­ten … has allowed me to laugh and be hap­py despite this sor­row. Thank you.” She got up and dis­miss­ing him said, “But I think it is late.”

He stood up, tow­ered over her. He put a fin­ger to her lips to silence her.

She moved her head slight­ly and spoke in a soft voice, a plead­ing voice. “You see, I do not want to be hurt, and I don’t want to hurt any­one. It feels hor­ri­ble to be hurt. It nev­er goes away. Even when you think you have got­ten over it, the feel­ing can rise up unex­pect­ed­ly, and dev­as­tate you all over again.”

He bent down and pressed his lips to hers, warm lips, slight­ly open, his tongue touched hers.

She felt dizzy; she lost all sense of time, but she man­aged to con­tin­ue, “You under­stand that this can be only a dream. Tomor­row, we will remem­ber noth­ing of this. We will con­tin­ue with our work. There will be no expec­ta­tions between us, you under­stand. No wait­ing for phone calls, nor mes­sages. None. No feel­ings of hurt. Noth­ing. Just this dream.”

He kissed her again, more pas­sion­ate­ly this time. She found her­self kiss­ing him back, press­ing her body against his. Feel­ings that she had for­got­ten rose up, desire among them. Desire to feel a man’s arms around her, to feel the full length of his body against her, to feel his skin against hers, to feel his hands trav­el over her body, to smell and taste him. Desire to feel him on top of her, to feel him enter her, and be inside of her. To be one with him. It had been a long time.

This is only a dream, she said soft­ly, as she led him to her bed on the oth­er side of the room.

~END~

Copy­right 2025 by Cecil­ia M. Brainard, all rights reserved.

BIO: Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard is the author and edi­tor of over 22 books. She has writ­ten three nov­els: When the Rain­bow God­dess Wept, Mag­dale­na, and The News­pa­per Wid­ow. Her recent books include her Select­ed Short Sto­ries and Grow­ing Up Fil­ipino 3: New Sto­ries for Young Adults. Her work has been trans­lat­ed into Turk­ish, Finnish, Greek, Japan­ese, Por­tuguese, among others.

She received an Out­stand­ing Indi­vid­ual Award from Cebu, a Cal­i­for­nia Arts Coun­cil Fel­low­ship, a Brody Arts Fund, sev­er­al trav­el grants from the US Embassy, Nation­al Book Award, Cir­i­lo Bautista Prize, trav­el grant from the Nation­al Book Devel­op­ment Board, and oth­er awards.

She taught at UCLA, USC, Cal­i­for­nia State Sum­mer School for the Arts, and the Writ­ers’ Pro­gram at UCLA Exten­sion. She served as Exec­u­tive Board mem­ber and Offi­cer of PEN, PAAWWW (Pacif­ic Asian Amer­i­can Women Writ­ers West), Arts & Let­ters at the Cal State Uni­ver­si­ty LA, PAWWA (Philip­pine Amer­i­can Woman Writ­ers and Artists), among others.

She also runs a small press, PALH or Philip­pine Amer­i­can Lit­er­ary House.

Her offi­cial web­site is https://ceciliabrainard.com.

Read more fic­tion by Cecil­ia Brainard

Flip Goth­ic
Win­ning Hearts and Minds 
The Black Man in the Forest
The Old Man­sion near the Plaza

AND MORE FROM CECILIA’S BLOG:

Author Cecil­ia Brainard Inter­view by Read Pinoy Philip­pine Nation­al Book Devel­op­ment Board

Cecil­ia Brainard Talks About Her Nov­el The News­pa­per Wid­ow and More — video link

A Book Fair to Remem­ber (And Get Ready For), by Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard, Pos­i­tive­ly Filipino 

Car­los Rox­as Inter­view of Cecil­ia Brainard re Frank­furt Book Fair 

Cecil­ia Brainard’s Trav­el Report of Frank­furt Book Fair 2024

Tags — Philip­pine authors, Fil­ipino sto­ries, Fil­ipino writ­ers, Philip­pine literature