You (28 page)

“Stink, you can’t do this,” you repeated yourself like a cracked record.

So you stood in her way.

Stink laughed.

“What’s going on? Are you trying to stop me?”

“Please stay,” you said, and Stink promised to be back in two hours. She shoved past you and left the house. The door clicked shut, and Schnappi observed, “Stink’s just Stink.”

And Nessi added, “Have you ever seriously tried to stop Stink?”

No, you haven’t.
But it’s time I did
, you thought and did the only thing that seemed sensible—you followed your girl.

Of course there was no way of stopping Stink. On the way to the subway you yelled at each other like washerwomen, tugged at the bag, and finally agreed that you were allowed to come along too. Even though it was a small victory, it was better than letting Stink go on her own.

And now you’re on the subway and still have six stops to go. You’re going to get out at Kaiserdamm, cross the bridge, and walk up Riehlstrasse to the intersection with Wundtstrasse. By the gates to the Lietzensee Park you’ll hesitate for a moment, then go down the path to the football field, exchange the drugs for the money, and then walk back up Riehlstrasse, across the bridge and into the subway, and the whole time you won’t be able to believe you’ve done it. Says Stink.

“You’re crazy, you know that?”

Stink nods.

“And you’re my bodyguard, how crazy is that?”

You look at each other’s reflections, like two gunslingers just waiting to see who’ll make the first move. An old woman is sitting at the other end of the car, snoring away. An automatic voice
announces the next stop. Deutsche Oper. The walls of the tunnels dart past, the light flickers. The sports bag lies between you like a bomb. Stink sticks out her tongue. Your reflection tries not to smile. Another four stops.

The small football field looks deserted. You’re half an hour early and sit on the opposite bank, a hundred meters from your meeting point. The lake is in between. If you could walk on water, you’d be there in a minute.

“Creepy,” you say.

“It’ll be fine,” says Stink.

“Do you really trust Darian?”

Stink laughs.

“He’s a dick. You should have seen him, he looked as if he’s half Rottweiler and half Mickey Rourke. Pumped up, arms like that.”

She shows you what the arms were like.

“He thinks he’s one of the tough guys. I can deal with him. And Mirko will be there too. Mirko’s fine. He’d do anything for me. He’s in love, you understand?”

You understand and say, “Anyone who falls in love with Stink has only himself to blame.”

“Tell me about it.”

She puts her arm around you.

“That’s why you love me so much.”

You pull away and the two of you go on waiting, stare at the football field and see shadows and know that your eyes are playing tricks with you in the darkness. The grass is damp, so close to the water your backsides are slowly getting wet. You really hope you don’t get cystitis.

“What if they don’t come?”

“Then they don’t come, but at least it was worth a try,” says Stink and looks at you, and as she looks you pray in defiance of all the rules of intelligence that she will never be normal, that she’ll always stay this wild creature, and that she’ll still be scaring you with her unpredictability when you’re old grannies and shitting in diapers again.

“Come on, be honest, Ruth, fifty grand is amazing! Just think! If
it works you can buy all the books you want, and Taja can travel till she feels ill, and Schnappi can run away from home and never have to go to Vietnam, and our Nessi won’t need some idiot to support her, and she can have her baby in peace.”

“And what about you?”

“I’ll have my beauty salon.”

“Sweetie, I think a salon costs a bit more than that.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Stink has her second brainstorm of the day.

“Maybe you’ll give me your share.”

“Yeah, maybe,” you say and you mean it, because you’re the only one whose parents are reasonably affluent. And you’ve got enough books.

“Really?” Stink presses.

“Really.”

After a short pause you add: “I might even stay on at school.”

It’s out now. It might have something to do with the darkness that safely envelops you. You have to say it eventually. The strangest moments are the ones you don’t predict. You tense up.

Stink says everyone’s worked that one out ages ago.

“What?”

“Christ, Ruth, if anyone knows you, we do. You’re our professor. Of course you’re going to stay on at school. Your parents would disinherit you if you did some stupid apprenticeship. Don’t worry, we’ll still love you.”

You’re lost for words, you’ve been racking your brain for months about how you’re going to tell your girls, and they’ve known all along.

Who knows who here? you wonder
.

Stink glances at her phone.

“I’m off, then.”

“Be careful.”

“Don’t worry, I’m tough.”

You laugh, draw her to you by the hand, and kiss her briefly on the mouth; your faces stay close for a second so that you can see the golden sprinkles in her irises.

“Be careful,” you repeat, and this time Stink doesn’t make a joke, this time she just nods and puts on her sunglasses.

You let her go.

You hear the whoosh of Neue Kantstrasse, the night bus for Zoo rumbles past, then it’s silent again, and the only sound is Stink’s footsteps. She pauses on the bridge and looks down at you. You wave, she waves back, then you hear her whispering in your ear that it’s all going to be fine, before she walks on and the bushes block your view. The cell phone in your hand is wet with sweat. You see Stink walk across the bridge, a little way up Sundtstrasse, and then down the steps to the other side of the park. The football field is still deserted. No one has come, you can see everything, your eyes sting with the effort.

The field is fenced in and looks like a big cage. The goals are a full-length metal pole without a net, the floor a hard rubber surface. Stink stops at the entrance and looks around. She’s puzzled. It’s five past two. In the distance, with the big sunglasses on her face, she reminds you of a beetle.

Can she see anything?

Stink waits outside the field for a moment before stepping through the entrance. She has promised to leave the cell phone turned on in her jacket. You see her back, she pauses after a few footsteps, you hear a throbbing sound in your ear and curse. Someone’s trying to call Stink on her cell phone, and of course she hasn’t turned off her call-waiting mode.

Hang up!
you think.
Whoever you are, hang up!

It doesn’t occur to you for a second that it might be Mirko. The throbbing stops, it’s quiet again, then you hear a man’s voice saying, “I thought you’d never come over.”

Pause.

“Who the hell are you?” asks Stink.

“Wrong question,” the man’s voice replies. “The right question is: how does someone like you get hold of this amount of drugs?”

Stink takes two steps back. You can’t see the man, there’s only darkness in front of your girl.

“Are you a cop?” Stink asks.

Silence. Then the man says, “We’re going to have a chat now, but first turn off your phone. Your friend’s heard enough. Take out the battery, just so that there are no misunderstandings.”

When you hear that, you almost drop your cell phone. Stink hesitates, and you pray that she’ll turn around and run away, because the man’s voice scares you. Dry, all angles and corners. It’s not the voice of someone who’s going to put up with Stink’s wisecracks.

There’s a rustling sound. Stink speaks right in your ear.

“I’ll call you, okay?”

“Stink, don’t—”

That’s as far as you get, because she’s hung up. You narrow your eyes slightly to see more clearly. It doesn’t help. Stink has stepped forward and disappeared completely into the darkness.

Who is this guy?
You wonder and are about to get up and run over there when a hand settles on your shoulder. Silent as a shadow, heavy as a stone. You turn around.

He looks like a wall with a little shaven head. Muscles on muscles and then that face. You recognize him right away. You’ve seen him on the street and in the clubs. Stink described him very well. His lower lip is slightly swollen and he has a plaster on his forehead. He really does look as if he’s half Rottweiler and half Mickey Rourke.
Even if he’s related to Taja, there’s no family resemblance
, you think, and you’re just about to ask him if he eats raw eggs in the morning, when he hits you. A flashlight explodes in your head. You fall sideways, but before you can roll down the slope, he’s grabbed you by the hair. His face is close to you. You smell his sweet-and-sour breath and see his eyes, the dilated pupils and the fury behind them. Your cheek glows with the blow, you still have your cell phone in your hand and smash it against the spot where the plaster sticks to his forehead. He lets go of you and clutches his face with surprise. The wound has opened up, his hand is covered with blood. He’s stunned. You start to crawl away, he grabs you by the leg, you kick out, hit him in the shoulder and try to pick yourself up, but the ground is too wet and you slide across the grass. You land on your belly and the air escapes you with a dull groan. He grabs your ankle and pulls you to him. Your fingers make furrows in the grass, his fist lands in the back of your knee, the pain paralyzes you, your
fingers lose their grip and he drags and drags you along the grass to the bushes. Now you’re out of range, now he’s pressing the back of your head down so that the left half of your face disappears in the wet grass. You lie there, one eye shut, the other one open, your mouth is full of soil. You hear him say something and can’t make out a word because his hand is over your right ear.

“I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

He takes his hand away and puts it around your throat.

“One more word and I’ll finish you off, okay?”

You nod, his hand disappears, you prop yourself up and spit soil and see from the corners of your eyes that he’s crouching next to you like some fucking toad.

“Didn’t think of this, did you? You thought a backup was a good idea. I’m backup too. We could be a team.”

Your knee feels as if someone’s constantly pumping it full of air. You wipe the dirt out of your face.

“Can I get up?”

“Sit yes, stand no.”

You sit up and spit out blades of grass.

“We’re waiting now,” he says and looks across to the opposite bank as if you weren’t there. There’s a stupid grin on his lips. You don’t know what he’s doing here.
Why isn’t he over there, buying the drugs from Stink? If he’s here, who’s that on the other side?
Five minutes pass, then his phone rings. He listens for a moment and then says:
No, there’s nothing here
, before he puts the phone back in his pocket, takes a deep breath and speaks without looking at you.

“This is really going to hurt.”

The man sits leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. Dark linen pants, black shirt, sleeves rolled up. He could be about your father’s age. You wish you had a better view of his eyes. Eyes reveal everything. His are black puddles. After you’ve taken the battery out of your phone, he pats the bench beside him and says, “I’ve heard about your offer. Take a seat.”

“I’d rather stand.”

You feel his gaze on you. He’s turning your Tic Tac box over and over in his right hand. Gradually it dawns on you that this wasn’t such a great idea. He’s going to wait until you’re sitting next to him. You sit down. He sets the Tic Tac box on his thigh and looks across the football field as if he could make something out in the darkness.

“You’re fifteen? Sixteen?”

“Eighteen.”

“Take the sunglasses off, it’s just us.”

You take the sunglasses off, and at last you can see better. Every wrinkle in his face, the color of his eyes. His mouth is mocking you with a smile as if he knows everything about you.

“You’re aware that your age is irrelevant. You could be ten years old and I wouldn’t care, because at the moment we share the same problem, and that’s all that matters.”

He looks at you again.

“Do you know how drugs get tested? Some people just need to
taste them. They swear they can define the differences in quality and how much the drugs are cut by tasting them. You follow me? Of course it’s all nonsense. No one can establish quality like that. You know what this is?”

He taps the Tic Tac box with his index finger. You don’t react.

“I thought you didn’t. You probably think this is cocaine or speed. A forgivable mistake. The ordinary citizen doesn’t often get to see white heroin. At school I’m sure they’ve told you that heroin’s brown. That’s correct as well. Normal heroin is brown and reaches the streets with a purity of twenty percent, and that means it’s good gear. Ten percent and below is normal. The more it’s cut, the more additives are mixed in with it, usually bitter-tasting materials so as to maintain the supposed authenticity. Have you ever tried heroin?”

You shake your head.

“It’s really bitter shit. But let’s get back to the problem at hand. People who work seriously with drugs test their product in the laboratory. I have a chemist who’s responsible for nothing but that. Can you guess what he discovered an hour ago?”