“Why do you think I sleep at school? What do you think I do at night that I’m so tired?” he asked seriously. “Tell me what you think. I’m sure everybody thinks something.”
“Well, I … I don’t know,” Anna said, picking up the other glass. “Maybe you’re selling white cat’s fur in the clubs?”
He laughed. “Yeah,” he said, relieved. She didn’t understand his relief. “Well, yeah. But I have legal work, too. If you have contacts … I’m helping out in two bars out here. Sometimes in town, too.”
“You asked Knaake for a job. Our lighthouse keeper.”
Abel nodded. “The lighthouse keeper. Yes. Sometimes it gets to me, and I think I should do something totally different to earn money. Something that doesn’t have anything to do with bars and clubs and … something that’s got to do with thinking. Thinking is something you can do at home, too. I dunno … like maybe I could be a research assistant for someone at the university … that kind of thing … Micha shouldn’t be by herself so much. She doesn’t realize because she’s sleeping, but after what happened today … I don’t know if Lierski’ll come back.” He downed the rest of the vodka in one swig and set the glass back onto the table with a thud. “If he touches Micha, I’ll kill him.”
Anna emptied her glass. She didn’t like vodka. “Could I have another one?” she asked.
While pouring, Abel moved closer, and she wondered whether it happened accidentally. Probably. He seemed too lost in his own thoughts to even notice. “Back then … back then, I couldn’t defend myself against Lierski,” he said. “But now I can. I’m as strong as he is. I …”
Anna reached over to take his right hand, and he pulled it away. “Defend. Yeah, I understand,” she said. “You hurt your wrist. Maybe it’s broken.”
“Oh, come on,” Abel said. “It just got too close to a chair’s leg.”
“Can you move it?”
“The chair’s leg?” Abel tried to laugh. He tried to move the hand. “Sure, I can. Shit. No.”
“You should see a doctor,” Anna said.
“Crap.”
Anna took his hand to gauge the swelling. “Let’s at least put something cold around it. Frozen peas work pretty well.”
“Do I have to eat them?”
“No, you just have to inject them into a vein,” Anna said. How good it felt to laugh! How good it felt to sit on the sofa, to be close to each other, just for a little while, and to laugh. He hadn’t pulled his hand away, not this time. The moment stretched into an eternity, a moment in which nothing happened; their laughs died down, dried out. They just sat there, and that was enough; nobody had to do or say anything …
Anna’s cell phone rang, and Abel started, jumping up as if he’d just remembered something urgent he had to do. It was home. A blue number, full of roses. Anna sighed.
“Not that it’s any of my business,” Linda said, “but where are you?”
“I got kidnapped by a serial killer,” Anna answered. “You can transfer the ransom to Gitta’s account.”
“I see.” Linda was trying hard to sound casual. “When does she plan to release you?”
“Gitta,” Anna said to Abel, “when do you plan to release me? Right now, I think,” she said into the phone. “I’m on my way.”
“Okay …” Linda said, hanging up.
Abel shook his head. “So now I’m Gitta …”
“Should I have told the truth?”
“No. I don’t think at the house of blue air they’d like the fact that Anna Leemann is hanging out with the Polish peddler. By the way, I know exactly three words of Polish.”
“That’s two more than I know,” Anna said. “But that’s not the reason I lied. I thought … I thought you wouldn’t want them to know … but for the record, in the house of blue air, they really wouldn’t mind. They’re not like you think.”
Abel turned to collect the glasses.
“You should go.”
ANNA SPENT ALL OF SUNDAY WONDERING WHETHER she should drive out to Abel’s. To make sure that everything was all right. She would have called, but she didn’t have his number. She finally figured out how Abel had gotten her number—the lighthouse keeper must have given it to him. He had the cell phone number of everybody in his intensive class, just in case of an emergency. Emergency and Anna were the two words Abel had written on the note that Micha had found stuck to the mirror … she almost called Knaake to ask him for Abel’s number.
“Excuse me, I’m sorry to bother you on a Sunday, but Abel Tannatek left his ecstasy in my backpack …”
She put the phone back on the bookshelf. She didn’t call.
Later, she would think, what if she had called, if she had talked to him on that Sunday, if she had … but who cares about later? Later is always too late.
Anna studied for her math exam. She did her homework for literature class, lying on the sofa in the living room, reading some random book, not taking any of it in. She practiced her flute as an afterthought. Music had been her passion, her purpose in life; she shouldn’t neglect it, like a lover she no longer wanted. The flute didn’t seem to take it personally … it lay in her hands, calm and cool as always, seeming to understand why, on that particular Sunday, she played so many wrong notes.
Only Magnus and Linda were surprised.
“Is there something on your mind, bunny?” Magnus asked. “Is it life again? Or something different?”
Anna shook her head and smiled. “It’s life,” she said.
Monday morning, Magnus opened the local newspaper and said, “Chicago.”
“Chicago?” Linda asked with a laugh, pouring more tea. “Are we going on vacation?”
Magnus laid the paper down on the table as Linda instinctively put her hand on the light-blue ceramic butter dish to keep him from knocking it to the floor.
“We don’t need to go to Chicago,” Magnus said. He whistled through his teeth, impressed. “Chicago has come here. Listen to this: ‘Deadly bar brawl. On Sunday morning, after a heated argument at the Admiral, a bar in the woods District of Wieck, Rainer Lierski, forty-one, was found dead between two parked cars. A resident of the area discovered the snow-covered body as he headed to his own car …’ Imagine going out to your car after breakfast and finding a dead body next to it. Jesus Christ!”
“You usually bike to your office,” Linda said.
“Yes, and thank God I do,” Magnus said cheerfully, “with dead bodies popping up in parking lots … ‘Mirko Studier, fifty-two, the owner of the bar, stated that Lierski was a frequent customer. “Lierski liked to pick fights,” says Studier, “always wanted to argue, but I never thought it would end like this. When things started to get violent, I threw him and his three friends out. By the time I closed up for the night, I figured they’d all gone home.” The police are still searching for Lierski’s companions, ages twenty-five to fifty, according to Studier. They are also looking for possible witnesses to the crime and/or anyone in the vicinity of the Admiral between ten o’clock and midnight on Saturday night …’ Hey, they don’t give the ages of the witnesses they’re looking for. What a surprise!”
“Magnus,” Linda said. “This isn’t funny.”
“No … I’m sorry. Of course it isn’t. It’s just this local paper is so ridiculous … Anna? Anna, are you okay?”
Anna nodded. She held her teacup in both hands and pictured Micha’s hands around a cup of hot chocolate and Abel’s hands around a glass of vodka. Abel’s injured wrist. The tiny cuts in his face. The splinters. She closed her eyes for a moment. If he touches Micha, I’ll kill him. Had he really meant it? Had he been at the Admiral? Or had he been close by, at just the right place and time to get hold of Rainer Lierski? She opened her eyes. She felt dizzy. For a second she wished her parents would dissolve into fog, that she was sitting at the table alone. She’d take the newspaper and read the article herself, leave her breakfast untouched, and make a cup of really strong coffee. No. She’d take the whiskey bottle down from the shelf, pour a drink, pace back and forth, get her thoughts in order …