While I’m busy scarfing down the last piece of cake, I mentally scroll through various excuses, none of which is substantial enough that Manuela wouldn’t throw it right back at me. The rock-hard corners of her mouth loosen, and her eyes, which seemed almost rectangular, relax a little. She probably noticed I couldn’t think of a good objection. I really, really don’t want to do it, but once again, some sort of important connection between my brain and my facial expressions is apparently MIA.
“So it’s a deal,” she decides and is the first to take one of Mie’s meatballs. She bites down and is only barely able to twist her mouth into a smile. I can see her fake a smile for Mie. Mie smiles back, unsure. Then I look at my father, who’s having a staring match with his cake and probably thinking only about the next can. I can’t blame him. I don’t feel any different. Sitting here, at this table, in this house. With my biological family. Damn it to hell, what I want more than anything is to get drunk with the next best can of beer. Nothing here makes any sense, I think to myself, and pat the table, saying, “Good.”
This pulls everyone else out of the thoughts they were just lost in. I down my coffee, get up, and reach across the table for my smokes.
“Got to get movin’,” I say, “lots of shit to do.”
No one was expecting that exit, not even my sister, who’s stuttering away, immediately searching for some random thing we could still discuss. No. Way. I turn on my heel, knock on the doorframe in parting, not looking back, and am through the hallway, out the door, maneuvering my VW hatchback down the driveway.
Wotan Boxing Gym is a former factory building in Hannover’s Stöcken district. Uncle Axel once told me they used to produce fountain pens or ballpoint pens here. The company went belly-up. Axel, who owned part of a bar next to Steintor, had his share paid out and bought the joint for next to nothing and opened the gym. The clientele is mostly made up of less-than-successful martial artists, pals from the security scene, and bikers. And unfortunately, a good deal of right-wing riff-raff. You shouldn’t be too surprised at that if you name your gym after a Germanic god. If I had my way, none of the skinheads would be allowed in. But as the gofer I have next to no say. Adjusting equipment, sorting weights, wiping up sweat and blood here and there. Besides, you can catch wind of plenty of things you shouldn’t list on your résumé. I’ve already been doing the job for five years now. Since I flamed out of school after wasting my second chance. But despite the shit I’ve seen here and have to listen to, day in, day out, I can’t imagine anything else. No suit busting my balls. Axel usually lets me do my own thing. I can work out whenever I want. And I earn more than enough to pay the bills.
Right now, I’m checking the protective covers in the corners of the boxing ring and tightening them as needed. We have a regulation-size ring and two smaller ones for sparring.
“Mornin’, Heiko.”
Gaul sticks his head, ponytail, and full beard through the ropes. His hands, holding tight to the ropes, are covered with skulls. Did it himself. With whichever hand was free. Gaul is a biker and part of the Hannover chapter of the Angels, the biggest in all of Germany. He’s the Angels’ tattoo artist. But we still all go to him. Of course, he doesn’t do our tattoos at their clubhouse, keeping to his kitchen table at home instead. But he’s used the needle on me in the gym’s locker-room, too. He doesn’t have outside customers because he works at the gym, in a manner of speaking. As well as several other clubs and bars. His main job is hustling stuff for the motorcycle gang. Anabolic steroids aren’t for me personally, but I’d be the last to dictate what others can or can’t do.
I pull the knots tight, slip through the ropes, and sit down on the edge of the ring. We shake hands. I like Gaul because he’s a straight shooter through and through. And he’s not a big mouth. But I wouldn’t want to owe him anything. Not after one or two involuntary tattoo sessions I’ve heard about him giving people who couldn’t or didn’t want to fork over something.
“How you doin’?” I ask.
“Draggin’ along.” I nod. “Hey, you already talk to your uncle today?”
“Nope, why?”
“We need the locker-room a little bit later for a couple minutes. Axel’s busy but said you could open up for us.”
“Sure.”
“I’d need you to stand in front of it and make sure no one disturbs us when we’re inside. Shouldn’t take too long. Quarter hour. We’ll come in through the back, you’ll lock up after us and then go up front so no one tries to get into the locker-room from the hall.”
“No problem.”
“Good man. Then I’ll just pop out and make some calls.”
In the meantime, I’m scrolling through my Facebook news feed, even get so bored I sweep the entryway, and I chain-smoke at the back entrance. Axel’s office door is closed the whole time, and he doesn’t come out once.
At some point I’m out back again, puffing away, and Gaul and two other guys from the gang roll up on choppers. They’re trailed by an unmarked delivery vehicle that expels four Turks or Arabs with faces that look like bulldogs. One of them is lugging two chunky black leather bags.
Gaul and his colleagues nod to me. One of the Rabs stops in front of me when I get up from the folding chair and grind out my cig with my foot.
“Who’s he?”
I’d like to tell him it shouldn’t interest him a flying fuck, but Gaul says, “Works here. A friend.”
I walk ahead of them, into the hallway with four doors along the walls. Axel’s office on the right, on the left the storage closet, service entrance to the locker-room, and straight ahead at the end of the corridor, the entrance to the gym. I unlock the door to the locker-room, hold it open for them, and lock it behind them. Then I go up front to the gym. I again check the door to the locker-room I’d just locked and remain standing in front of it.
I can’t understand what’s being discussed in there. Don’t want to know either. Should have brought a chair in case this takes a while.
Tall-boy Töller came in, duffel bag slung over his shoulder. Came to the hooligans the same time as my uncle. He’s even a little taller than Ulf but more of a beanpole. Not a wall of granite like Ulf. I can’t completely get behind Töller. Everything he says sounds like a provocation. It can really get on your nerves long-term. But we actually do have similar points of view. Regarding keeping your political views to yourself on the field, for instance. He has just as little patience as I do for the brown diarrhea a lot of guys spew. And Töller knows his football. His general knowledge doesn’t stop in the midnineties. He’s still a true Hannover 96 supporter. Of course, all of us are, but with a lot of our boys—and this isn’t just the case in Hannover—sometimes you hardly know it’s about football and representing your hometown, so to speak. But what he pulled against the boys from Cologne recently, that’s one of the reasons I can’t really stand him.
I step to the side and block his way because he wants to slip past me. Hold up my hands.
“Sorry, can’t go in there right now.”
“Huh, what? Why not?”
“Just can’t do it right now. Have to wait a couple minutes.”
“Kolbe, I have to be back at work in an hour. So let me get changed now so I can pump a little.”
“Can’t. Just. Right. Now.”
“Why not?”
“Töller, I said you just can’t right now. Closed. You just have to wait a minute.”
He runs his free hand through his dark blond hair and groans in annoyance. Then he pushes past me and turns the knob on the locker-room door. Nothing happens.