Leo and Emmi arrange to meet again

Leo and Emmi arrange to meet again after Emmi’s plea for one final hour face-to-face: a meeting, she argues, would give their intimate correspondence a fitting conclusion without pretending that it has a future. Leo’s agreement changes their relationship from an attachment sustained through messages into a concrete appointment at Café Huber, but the book ends before the two meet in person.

The request for a conclusion

The arrangement follows Emmi’s acknowledgment that she cherishes what she and Leo had, even as she accepts that he considers their relationship unable to continue. She promises to withdraw and stop emailing him, yet asks for one last wish: one hour together face-to-face. Her request is specific and sensory. She wants to speak to Leo, smell him, see his lips form her name and watch his eyelashes; the bodily details mark what the correspondence has kept at a distance.

Emmi frames this meeting not as a demand for a shared future but as a way to preserve what they have experienced. She calls their relationship an intimate not-meeting and argues that its only sensible ending would be a meeting. The request contains a tension she does not resolve: she says she will make herself scarce, but asks Leo to answer one final appeal before she does. For her, the meeting would honor their history rather than overturn his position.

Leo agrees, and they choose a place

The following day, a new chapter opens with Leo’s concise answer: “Let’s meet.” The brevity contrasts with the emotional fullness of Emmi’s request. It accepts the proposed change in their relationship without specifying what the meeting will mean beyond allowing it to happen.

The messages then move quickly from agreement to logistics. When the conversation turns to a café, Emmi suggests Café Huber, explaining that they have never been physically closer anywhere else. The location therefore carries an association with their previous proximity even as the new plan asks them to cross from mediated contact into an actual encounter. Leo and Emmi later agree that they both want to get the meeting over with once and for all, borrowing Emmi’s phrase, a “fitting conclusion.”

From the imagined encounter to an appointment

In a message headed “Straight to the point,” Emmi proposes Saturday at two and wonders how they should recognize one another. She offers either to describe herself so Leo will not have to search for her, or to find him herself. Her imagined introduction turns the uncertainty into a wry little scene: she pictures approaching a man reading a newspaper and asking whether he is Mr. Leike, the man with closeted feelings. The joke makes the anticipated meeting easier to approach, but it also shows how much of their knowledge of one another has been built through words rather than face-to-face recognition.

After a brief exchange, Leo confirms that two o’clock works. Later, Emmi responds warmly to something Leo has said, calling it unprecedented in its circuitousness and intensity of feeling, and asks whether the plan is still for two at Café Huber. Leo confirms the time and place. The repeated confirmations turn the idea of meeting into a shared commitment, while their messages remain the medium through which they prepare to leave that medium behind.

The ending at the threshold

As the appointment approaches, Emmi checks that Leo will really be there. He assures her that he will, and she answers that she will not deprive them of their fitting conclusion. Their exchange makes the meeting sound both imminent and emotionally consequential, yet neither treats it as a promise of a continuing relationship. The stated aim remains to complete something whose future they regard as unavailable.

The final messages count down the correspondence itself: Leo calls his message his second-to-last, and Emmi declares hers the last, signing off with the prospect of seeing him soon and welcoming him to the world of real-life encounters. The ending therefore completes the arrangement but withholds its result. The reader receives a time, a place, and mutual assurances of attendance, but no account of what happens at Café Huber. The transition from email to physical presence is promised, not shown; the fitting conclusion remains suspended at the moment before the encounter.