Have you ever seen a place so clean I whisper to Jameelah.
I think it has to be, she says, like at a slaughterhouse or something, you know, wherever dirty work is done they have to pay extra attention to cleanliness.
Behind the bar is a little Thai woman. She smiles. The TV above her head is showing a news programme on mute.
Something to drink?
Tiger Milk says Jameelah grinning and as she tries to explain to the woman behind the bar how to make it I look over the guy. He has a three-day beard and is wearing a leather jacket with cuffs, jeans, and New Balance trainers. There’s a long blond hair tangled around his ear, probably from his wife or daughter. Maybe his wife or daughter hugged him right before he drove off to Kurfürsten and the hair got caught, I think, and maybe I should become a detective except for that you must need a degree.
How old is your kid and what’s his or her name, I ask.
I don’t have a kid, says the guy, the car belongs to a buddy of mine who’ll be here any minute.
Your buddy, says Jameelah turning to us, we never agreed on that.
No worries, says the guy putting down another pair of fifty euro notes on the table. You don’t need to worry about him he’s a half-pint.
I don’t understand, says Jameelah tucking the money into her stocking.
You’ll see in a minute and as if on cue the door opens, but not all the way, instead it kind of opens and closes part way as if a dog is trying to push its way through. The little Thai woman hurries to the door and holds it open smiling as a man in a wheelchair comes in. I can’t make out his face at first because he’s wearing a cowboy hat. It’s only after he comes closer and hugs baby-seat-guy and takes off his hat that I can see how messed up he looks. Rainer would say he shows the wear and tear of life. Because even though he’s younger than baby-seat-guy everything about him looks old and burned out, his thin blond hair, his gaunt smoker’s face. The worst part is his legs — he doesn’t have any. One is completely missing and the other is cut off at the knee.
This is my buddy and you’re going to sit on his lap, it’s his birthday today, says baby-seat-guy pushing me into the wheelchair.
Upsy-daisy, says the guy in the wheelchair smiling at me. I land on his lone leg and there’s no lap for me to sit on and for a second I’m worried it’s going to hurt him. He smells of booze, must have knocked back a few belts of schnapps before he rolled in. Baby-seat-guy hands us glasses and we sing him happy birthday. Then I raise my glass with him and toast to brotherhood which he finds incredibly funny. When I put my arm around him he grabs my thigh and his fingernails keep getting caught in my stockings which is annoying so I take his hand and kiss him. Baby-seat-guy and Jameelah are kissing too and he has his hand under her shirt already.
Let me go, squeals Jameelah trying to squirm out of his arms, smiling, I want to dance.
Me too, I say.
We go over to the little dance floor.
Can you turn the music up, I ask the woman behind the bar.
She nods and smiles and turns around and fiddles with the audio equipment behind the bar, though I have the feeling that the music doesn’t actually get louder.
Louder, I call.
It’s already loud, says the woman, but it doesn’t seem like it to me. Maybe it has something to do with yesterday, maybe it’s like when you go to a concert, I think, and the next day your ears ring. Sometimes the music just has to be loud even if your ears ring for days afterwards, sometimes the music can’t be loud enough to drown out the sound of your life and today I want to drown out the sound of my life.
The guys look at us and smile as we dance. It’s always the same when you go off with someone from Kurfürsten, that’s what’s good about it. You notice you have something they don’t have, you’re doing lots of things for the first time, you have a real life that you’re fully involved with. I get the impression that adults don’t really live, that they look at everything from outside like they’re at an aquarium. But when they put their hands on our stockings and kiss us something starts to flow inside them, they dive into the water for a little while, and sometimes they even light up like neon fish and we’re the ones who light them up, we light up and when we touch someone he lights up too because we have enough light for two.
My body feels numb and I bet it’s because of the dancing, I bet I could lift up an entire horse right now I feel so strong, I bet it’s because we saw a murder, I bet it makes you strong to witness death, we’re strong, we’re real hookers, we saw a real murder, we light up.
When the song is over the guys clap, we bow comically and this time Jameelah sits on the lap of the guy in the wheelchair.
Do you feel anything there she asks poking his half-leg with her pointer finger.
No says the guy in the wheelchair.
How did it happen?
In Afghanistan, he says.
Really, I say, are you a soldier?
I was.
So how did it happen, asks Jameelah.
It was friendly fire.
That’s when you accidentally shoot the good guys instead of the bad guys, right, asks Jameelah.
Exactly, says the guy.
And did you know him?
Know who, asks the guy.
The guy who did it, says Jameelah.
Yeah we all know each other well, says the guy putting his hands on Jameelah’s hips.
That’s terrible.
Better that it was one of us than one of them, he says.
Why, says Jameelah.
Well, it’s not the pain that’s so bad or the missing leg. The bad part is when some nutjob wants to hurt you. Violence is when somebody wants to inflict pain on you, not the pain itself but the intent.
Aha.
I have no idea what they’re talking about so I say war is shit, which usually goes over well, but the guy in the wheelchair says, what the hell do you know.
Come on, no sad stories, says baby-seat-guy slapping him on the back, it’s your birthday.
Leave me alone, says the guy in the wheelchair staring at the floor.
It gets very quiet, nobody says anything. I look at Jameelah, baby-seat-guy looks at us, and wheelchair guy stares at the spot where his legs should be. Suddenly Jameelah starts laughing.
What’s so funny, says baby-seat-guy glaring at her.
Nothing, squeaks Jameelah, nothing, but it’s too late, she looks at me with her hand over her mouth and her eyes squinting then throws her head back and laughs so loud that I can see right down her throat past the tonsils and it looks so weird that I can’t help laughing too.
Stop it, says baby-seat-guy.
Don’t be so hard on them, says the guy in the wheelchair grabbing Jameelah’s breasts. She is still on his lap. He’d probably bounce her on his knee if he could, I think, and that makes me laugh out loud again even though it’s not even funny. I don’t know myself why we laugh so hard, no idea, it’s all just so fucked up, I mean, we just wanted to cast a love spell, and we scattered rose petals over the entire playground, I could die laughing.
Alright, now we drink up, says baby-seat-guy shoving the glasses in our faces.
Why, says Jameelah.
Because we’re going someplace else.
Nobody knows about the whole thing with me and Jameelah and Kurfürsten, nobody except us two. There’s all sorts of reasons for that. People would just worry, I mean if Nico knew he’d probably smack me. But basically nothing can happen to us, we have our dogs, the Grims. Two huge black dogs both named Grim, Jameelah got it out of some book. They’re not real but in our imagination they are always with us like a pair of bodyguards. I don’t really think of them much, only when I get a strange feeling. That’s when they pop up and run around us in circles so nobody can get at us. I’m not an idiot or something, these dogs do protect us and they have for a while. There are some horrible guys in the world, the types who grab your crotch as they walk past you and that kind of thing, we’ve seen it all. But since we got the dogs nothing like that has happened, seriously, if I concentrate really hard on the Grims men who I would be afraid of actually cross to the other side of the street. It’s a question of concentration. That’s why I don’t get scared anymore.