“Hey,” Martin yelled, taking a half step forward but stopping again and mumbling, “Shit, this can’t be happening,” but then he shot forward anyway. Given his frame of mind, I don’t need to comment further—he had let the S-word pass his lips, after all. And in this succinct and pithy assessment of the situation he was completely correct.
Pablo had hit Miriam on the side of the head twice, making her cheeks flush red, and then she tried to land a sharp kick right in the middle of his favorite intersection. He had turned around, grabbed hold of her foot, and threw her down in one swift motion. He was kneeling on her legs when Martin arrived on the scene.
Martin apparently has never seen Die Hard. Or Terminator, Triple X, or the other summer blockbusters with more dead people in them than assistant directors. At most he’s seen one James Bond movie, but then I bet only one with one of the older gentlemen like Sean Connery or Roger Moore. That was Martin’s handicap. Because he tried talking to Pablo, when any movie aficionado with better than 20/800 vision could see the only way to move forward was with sheer force. So Martin had hardly opened his mouth when Pablo’s fist slammed into his cheekbone.
It didn’t shatter anything. It’s not like in the movies, where the whole jaw breaks and what not. Instead, a different response is completely normal, which they always get totally wrong in the movies. The guy who receives a real swing to the cheekbone ends up toppling over in the mud.
And that’s where he lies for a little while, in most cases. So, too, with Martin.
Meanwhile Miriam had dug her fingernails into Pablo’s ugly mug and scratched several nice, long welts into him. As he turned back to her, she punched him in his soft parts with her right hand. You see, women can not only kick where it hurts; they can also punch. Pablo hadn’t counted on that. He was still crouching on top of her legs holding her down, but after that last blow to his chicken nuggets his face turned pale as death and he slowly slumped to the side. Martin struggled back to his feet, Miriam frantically pulled her legs free, rolled over, and stood on both feet before the rest of us could really see how she’d done that. She tugged Martin by his hood out of reach of Pablo’s legs, but she wasn’t fast enough. The heel of Pablo’s shoe somehow hit Martin’s shin, he howled but didn’t fall down again, instead limping along as fast as he could behind Miriam.
I had to stand by and watch the whole miserable scene with a seething rage in my gut. But I couldn’t take it out on anyone. God, how I’d have loved to plant my heel into Pablo. No matter where. But, no, poor fucking impotent poltergeist that I am, I couldn’t let off my steam in any way. Everyone else definitely had it better!
Only they didn’t know how much they should appreciate it. At least, not Martin. He was softly groaning, holding his hand over his cheek and trying to hold his other hand over his shin, although of course that didn’t work since he was running. Miriam still had hold of his duffle coat, yanking him quickly toward the exit.
“What was that?” Martin asked, not very eloquently.
“That was Pablo,” Miriam said. There were tears in her eyes. “He’s a first-class asshole.”
“You don’t say,” Martin muttered as he ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth to identify any internal injuries.
“We’re going to the police,” Martin said after his search turned up nothing.
“No way,” Miriam said. “For the moment we’re even. If we go to the police, he will take out some nasty revenge on us.”
“Even?” Martin asked incredulously.
“Yes, even,” Miriam said. “And that’s that.”
Martin took Miriam home and then drove to the Institute for Forensic Medicine. There was a moderate uproar among his colleagues as he arrived with dirt on his jacket, ripped pants, and unmistakable swelling from being punched in the face. The boss who came running over wanted to know what had happened, and Martin somehow cooked up a wild story of mistaken identity, backed up by exclamations of dismay and occasional brow-furrowing, then he had Katrin patch him up and gave in to his boss, who sent him home. The stares of his colleagues and superiors as they followed his departure spoke volumes. In any case I had the impression that they hadn’t bought his story from the get-go, particularly recalling the one or two strange, not to mention unsettling, new behavioral patterns he’d been displaying over the past few days. For example, freaking out during my autopsy, talking to “himself” in the break room, his absentmindedness often accompanied by fervent head-shaking, his frequent visits to the morgue for no discernible reason, or just his overall nervousness and irritability, which were actually uncharacteristic of Martin. Martin, however, didn’t notice the stares, and that was definitely a good thing for the moment.
A bandaged Martin drove in his bandaged trash can to the car shop, had his window replaced as he sat on one of the two chairs in the waiting room, clinging to a paper cup full of foul-smelling coffee that the nice mousy girl at the service desk had brought him. He sat that way for almost two hours, motionless like an Egyptian statue, apart from occasionally moving his left arm to put the cup to his mouth and back down again. The bruise on his cheek had started to look like a red-currant thumbprint cookie, and the thin skin under his eye was turning a similar color. He looked scary.
After the trash can was finally repaired, Martin drove home, carefully took a shower to avoid grazing his shin, and went to bed. Great!
Now here I was alone with the city maps again. But instead of learning medieval street names by heart, I considered whether I should believe Pablo or not. I couldn’t really decide. I did think he was capable of murder in any case, and it presumably wouldn’t have been his first. People used to gossip that he put a guy on ice for calling him a “flaming fairy.” Maybe that guy had hit a nerve. But no one with a brain bigger than a piece of rabbit poop would be stupid enough to try and find out the truth.
I wasn’t getting anywhere this way; all this brooding wasn’t helping, plus it’s not my kind of thing. If I still had a body, on a day like this I’d have crashed in front of the boob tube downing one beer after the other, and at some point I’d have blissfully passed out into a coma. However, if at the time—that is, during my life—I had known how little time I had left on earth, I would’ve enjoyed this near-daily pastime perhaps a bit less often. Now, by contrast, I had until the end of time, but no access to either boob tube or beer.
I was just wondering if I should wake Martin up to turn the idiot box on when the phone rang. Surprised, I realized that it had gotten dark out, and the clock showed seven thirty already. Martin was still napping. The phone kept ringing. After the twelfth ring it stopped, but then immediately started again. Martin appeared at the bedroom door, groped for the phone, and whispered, “Yes?”
“Martin?” a voice asked, which after a moment’s thought we both recognized as Birgit’s.
“Yes?” Martin whispered again. “What time is it?”
Birgit burst out crying. “My car’s gone,” she said, hard to understand through her sobs.
“What do you mean ‘gone’?” Martin asked.
“Stolen,” Birgit said, sniffling then crying louder.
“Did you already report it to the police?” Martin asked.
“Yeahahaha,” she sobbed. “But they said there wasn’t much hope…”
“Now, don’t be so upset,” Martin said in a voice so velvety soft you could still hear the cozy comforter he’d just emerged from. “You can buy yourself…”