The Bavarian Brew

The beer hall hit me like a wall of noise and I loved it. I'm Milo, by the way, thirty-five years old, brewer from Portland, and six days into my first solo trip to Germany. Becky had told me to meet her at three o'clock at a table near the band, and I had been looking for that table for twenty minutes.

The problem was the crowd. It was the second Saturday of Oktoberfest and the tent was packed shoulder to shoulder, every one of those shoulders holding a liter of beer. I'm not a small guy but I felt small in there. I held my Maß up over my head like a waiter carrying a tray and shuffled sideways between two men in feathered hats.

"Sorry, excuse me, sorry," I said, and one of them just grinned and patted my back so hard I lurched forward.

That was the lurch that did it. My foot caught a bench leg, somebody shoved past from the left, and a full third of my beer went out of my glass and onto the chest of a complete stranger.

I froze. The beer was mostly foam by then but it was still a lot of foam. It soaked right into his soft gray shirt and started dripping off his belt.

"Oh no," I said. "Oh no, I am so sorry."

And here is where I have to tell you the thing that surprised me, because instead of yelling at me the stranger looked down at his shirt, then up at me, and laughed. Actually laughed, loud enough that a couple of people at his table turned around.

"Well," he said, wiping his hands on his jeans, "I have been thinking about washing this shirt for two days. You have settled the question for me."

"Settled it with a liter of Festbier," I said. "That's, uh, that's not usually how I introduce myself."

"Best introduction I've had all week." He stuck out his hand. "Hector."

"Milo." His hand was warm and big and he held on maybe half a beat longer than strangers do. He was taller than me, thirty-something, dark curly hair pushed back like he'd been running his hand through it all afternoon, and a smile that made me forget, for a second, that I was supposed to be finding Becky.

"Can I buy you a new beer, Milo? Since you have donated most of yours to my laundry."

"I spilled on you, that's backwards," I said. "I'm the one who owes you."

"So we will both owe each other. This is how friendships start." He flagged down a server in a dirndl carrying six glasses on one arm, an act I will never understand, and ordered two fresh Maß. "I warn you, it will be the same beer you just gave me."

"That's okay. I'm a brewer, I believe in fresh beer."

He raised an eyebrow at that. "A brewer? From where?"

"Portland, Oregon. Over for a trade show in Berlin, then I tacked on a few days here because, well, because beer."

"Because beer," he repeated, like he was tasting the words. "Good reason. I'm an architect, I moved here five years ago from Barcelona, and my reason was buildings, which is a much worse reason than yours."

"I don't know, this tent is basically a building with beer in it. That's got to be your whole profession right there."

He laughed again and I noticed I was already grinning like an idiot. The new beers showed up, comically heavy glasses that I will never stop being delighted by, and we clinked.

"To laundry," he said.

"To laundry," I agreed, and drank, and it was fresh and malty and much better than the third of a glass I'd been carrying around.

We talked for a while, standing there between benches because there was nowhere to sit and neither of us cared. He told me about the festival the way a local does, half complaining and half bragging. He told me the tents filled up by ten in the morning on weekends and I told him that sounded like a threat.

"It is a threat," he said. "Every year I say I will come on a Tuesday, and every year I come on a Saturday like a fool."

"I came on a Saturday like a fool too, so at least we're fools together."

The band slammed into another song, something about drinking that everybody around us knew and I did not, and the whole tent bounced on the benches. Beer sloshed everywhere. Hector took a sip without looking and didn't spill a drop, which seemed deeply unfair.

"So, Milo the brewer," he said. "Are you here alone? You keep looking over your shoulder like you lost something."

"My friend, actually. Becky, she lives in Berlin now, we met at a brewing conference six years ago. She told me to meet her at a table near the band, which, have you noticed there is no such thing as a table near the band? There's just band, and then an ocean of people, and then more band."

"I have noticed this, yes." He scanned the crowd over my head. "Describe her. I will help you hunt."

"Short, dark bob, probably a dirndl, definitely louder than everyone within ten feet of her."

I didn't even need his help. Becky found us, actually, wove through the crowd like a tugboat and popped up at my elbow, and I nearly dumped the rest of my beer on her too.

"There you are." She grabbed my arm with both hands. "I've been circling that table for half an hour, you jerk, and then I see you standing here chatting with some handsome local and I think, well, obviously."

"Becky, this is Hector. Hector, this is Becky, and I spilled beer on him, that's the whole story."

"It is a good story," Hector said, shaking her hand. "The shirt was doomed anyway."

"He's charming and forgiving," Becky said, looking him up and down. "Milo, did you order this off a menu? Because this is not what I sent you to Europe for, I sent you here for beer research, but honestly, this is an upgrade."

"Becky," I warned, and felt my face go warm, which she absolutely clocked, because she clocked everything.

She leaned in and stage-whispered at a volume the whole tent could hear. "He's single, you know. I can always tell. Look at his hands. Single hands."

"Oh my god, go away," I said, laughing, pushing her shoulder.

Hector was grinning at her like this was the best entertainment of his year. "Your friend is not wrong about the hands," he offered.

"You shut up too," I told him, and he just raised his glass.

Becky stayed long enough to drain half her beer and check that I had her number saved and that I knew her flat was in Berlin and that if I didn't text her by Sunday she was calling the American consulate. Then she pointed at Hector with two fingers, said, "Be nice to my idiot," and winked at me in a way that was frankly criminal, and vanished back into the crowd before I could say a word.

"She is a lot," Hector said.

"She's the best. She's also going to be insufferable about this for the rest of my life."

"About what? We have spilled one beer. Nothing has happened." He paused and took a drink, watching me over the rim of the glass. "Unless you want something to have happened."

The band crashed into another number and I let the noise cover the two seconds I took to answer. This is the part where I tell you, honestly, that I don't usually do this. I've dated on and off since college, nothing serious, my last relationship ended three years ago like two people politely stepping off a train. I don't pick up architects in beer halls. But I was six days into a trip where I'd promised myself I'd say yes to things, and the beer was warm in my stomach and Hector was looking at me like he had nowhere else in the world to be.

"I'm here until Tuesday," I said. "So I guess it depends on the timeline."

"Tuesday is a good amount of time." He finished his beer and set the empty on a passing tray. "Do you have plans tonight?"

"Do I have plans tonight. I have plans to eat a pretzel the size of my head and fall asleep at nine in my hotel like a champion."

"Cancel the nine o'clock. Come to my place first. I have a bottle of something good and, I promise you, the best view of the city lights in Munich, which I would know, because I designed the building."

"Of course you did," I said. "Architects."

"Architects," he agreed. "And, one more thing." He looked almost embarrassed for the first time since the beer hit his shirt, which was a very good look on him and I'm not ashamed of noticing. "I have to show you something and I want you to not laugh. Or laugh, but then say yes anyway."

"Now I'm scared."

"You should be." He was smiling again. "There is a costume party in my building next month and my sister sent me lederhosen as a joke, real ones, leather, the whole thing. I have never had the courage to wear them."

"Okay, and?"

"And you said you are a brewer from Portland and I simply must see an American brewer in lederhosen before you leave my country. It is basically a law."

"I would look ridiculous," I said, and meant it as a joke.

"Ridiculous how? There are two kinds of ridiculous, Milo. One is a man who looks stupid. The other is a man who looks better than anyone expected and knows it." He shrugged, casual, like he hadn't just said a thing like that in a tent with six thousand people in it. "I think you would be the second kind. Come find out."

I looked at my half-empty beer, then at him, then at the ocean of strangers between me and any table Becky had ever reserved.

"Okay," I said. "But if I look stupid, you're doing the laundry."

The taxi dropped us in front of a glass tower that looked like it had been ironed. Hector paid the driver, held the door, and did the thing where you gesture someone in ahead of you like a maitre d'. "Second floor," he said in the elevator. "Or eleventh. Guess which one has the view."

"You said you designed the building. I'm trusting the architect."

"Correct answer."

His flat was all clean lines and one enormous window, the city spread out below it like somebody had spilled amber Christmas lights. He'd told me the truth about the view, which I noted for later, since I was still deciding how much of what he said to trust and how much to just enjoy.

He handed me a glass of something amber and smooth and opened a closet. The lederhosen came out on their own hanger like they'd been waiting. Brown leather, suspenders, little embroidered oak leaves on a green shirt folded underneath.

"My sister's joke," he said, holding them up. "They are probably too short for me but I think they will fit you almost exactly."

"Hector. I am wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a brewery logo on it. These are dry clean only pants with a