“Finish puking already, man. Need to piss,” I hear from outside. Come on! I stick my finger as deep as it’ll go down my throat. Dry gagging. He knocks again.
Past my spit-covered fingers, I say he should fuck off and I’m gonna need a while. I try to sound as trashed and wasted as possible. Then a torrent of bile finally shoots out of my mouth and splashes into the toilet bowl. The guy laughs gleefully. I have half a mind to throw the door open and stuff the idiot’s face into the toilet, but then you could hear the music again and the door to the men’s room falls shut. I listen briefly. Then I peer underneath the stall. No feet visible. He gave up. I let myself close my eyes for a second. Give myself a breather. Spit sour left-over bile into the bowl. A trail of drool sticks to my lower lip, which I wipe with my bare arm. Come on! I encourage myself. I press down on the lever. The water circles down from the tank and into the bowl. Using my hand with the glove, I reach for the stopper in the tank and hold it up. Use my other hand to unroll some paper and quickly stuff it into the opening under the stopper. I press it down with two fingers. Calcium slime clings to the fingers. Have a sniff. Let go of the stopper. While the tank is filling, I yank at the bobber with all my strength. I drop it and kick it away. Then I put the lid back on the tank and wipe my hands with the remaining toilet paper, and throw that into the bowl.
“Oh man, you smell like a mix of urinal deodorizer and crotch cheese,” Kai says as I climb back into the van and toss the gloves into the door pocket.
Jojo asks impatiently how it went.
“How do you think it went? Because I’m such a fucking idiot, I almost already gave myself away at the door, and I had to stick a finger down my throat in the men’s room, just to deliver an Oscar-worthy acting performance.”
“I don’t understand a word,” Jojo says.
So I give them all the details, the way it went down. Then we wait.
Kai’s constantly lighting up his phone to check the time, till I tell him to knock it off.
“What kind of steel-lined bladder does that dog have? Has to take a piss at some point.”
“Maybe they’ve already fixed the toilets,” Jojo says.
“I did a bang-up job. That’ll never happen—”
Kai taps me on the shoulder, and I follow his gaze through the windshield.
“Well, fuck my shit—is it him?” I ask.
Kai and I slide down a little farther in our seat, and the trio just leaving the bar staggers onto the street and into view. My eyes have narrowed to slits. The three guys step into the glow of a light on the other side of the street.
“It’s him,” Kai says and pounds on his thighs. “That’s the cocksucker.”
I thought I spotted the wart on his cheek for a second. And the blond part.
“Yeah,” I say, and my mouth starts to water, “okay. We’ll wait until they’ve finished pissing. Calmly get out. Don’t slam the doors, and then jump ’em.”
Jojo and Kai nod. We lie in wait for our fucking prey. They walk up the street a bit so that they’re almost level with our van. Then they take position, close together and legs apart, next to the fence that separates off the factory grounds behind it. They appear to be conversing. Their heads move slightly up and down.
“Let’s go,” I say and carefully open my door. Kai and Jojo follow my lead. I keep the handle cocked and close the door as quietly as possible. The click of the lock still feels like a hammer blow. The three guys are pinching it off.
“Hey, you cunts!” I call out.
We’re standing in the middle of the street. They turn around. No chance to react. Kai, of course, is the first there and jumps toward wart-face with his foot extended. The guy flies back against the fence, exactly where he’d just pissed. The two others have no idea what’s going on when Jojo and me run at them. I reach out with my left hand and grab the dude’s shirt, following it with a swinging right that lands full-force under his nose. I feel his rows of teeth through the skin and my fingers supposedly hurt. I pull my hand back. He pukes. Maybe from shock. Maybe from pain. I’ve split his upper lip and the thick scent of blood flowing wafts in my direction. The guy howls. Holds his face and goes down. He catches the blood in his palm and even in the dusky glow of the streetlamps, I can see that his hand quickly fills. I glance to the side. Kai’s pulled wart-face up and is pushing him against the fence. Landing one punch after another to his gut. Jojo’s having a harder time. His opponent has grabbed his arm and pulls him around. Jojo starts to stumble and runs right into his elbow. I run over and pull the guy off Jojo. Put him in a headlock and make my knee slam up like a spring, Muay Thai–style. He tries to raise his arms. But my knee still lands in his solar plexus and he releases air like a beanbag you’ve jumped on.
“What’s going on?!“ yells a loud voice.
I push the guy away and look around for the source of the voice. There are two cars in the middle of the street between us and Lucky Luke. All the doors are wide open. Eight guys are coming our way. At first I can’t make out anything except their silhouettes. Till they come into the light cone from the streetlamp. I immediately recognize two of them as hooligans from Braunschweig. At least three have telescopic batons in their hands, snapping them out.
“Shit,” I whisper and then say out loud to Kai and Jojo, “get outta here!”
Kai and Jojo take a left at the T-intersection, I take a quick detour to the van. Keys already in hand. Somehow I manage to get it into the lock on my first try, and lock the doors. Then I pull it out and run off. The electric whoosh of a baton very close by. It grazes my jacket but doesn’t hit my back. I run. Look back. They’re right behind me. Gather momentum from my arms. I pump the air out in bursts and see the outlines of Jojo and Kai in front of me. Another glance back. Created some space. They yell at us, try to stay close. Kai’s the first who has the idea of running across the field and jumping over a barbed-wire fence. We follow him. Across an industrial ruin. Crumbling concrete under our feet. Don’t bite it now! We move away from the streetlights, running past loading ramps and under conveyer belts. My lungs are burning. I could puke. Keep on running. Until we can’t hear another sound. We collapse in exhaustion on the grounds of a trucking company and wheeze our guts out.
Jojo, who’s splayed out on the cold concrete next to me, asks if we think it’d be safe now to go back to the car.
“What do you think, Jojo? They’ll just leave the car alone? How stupid are you?! They’ll bash in a window, at least. If not with the telescopic batons, then they’ll get a couple of bats. They’re just waiting for us to come back.”
“Kai’s right,” I say.
“What’re we gonna do then?” Jojo asks and lifts his head.
I breathe the cool night air through my nose, in and out. Ponder. My skull is throbbing, as if it was stuck in a vice. I can feel my lungs so distinctly under my ribs, it’s as if they’re foreign objects implanted by someone.
“Ain’t no use,” I say in the end, “we have to call Ulf, have him come and pick us up.”
Kai screams a long, extended “Fuuuuuuuuck!” into the night sky.