Jutta Profijt - Morgue Drawer Four

“He could also be funny,” she mumbled.

“See?” I said.

“Somehow he was a loser, too, but still sweet,” she said.

“I was not a loser,” I roared.

“Yes,” Martin said, fervently. “He really was a loser.”

“Traitor,” I yelled.

“But sweet,” Miriam repeated.

“Do you need a ride anywhere?” Martin asked.

Now he was making his move—that is not right! I was angry, furious, enraged. I was beyond pissed off. I…

OK, I’ll be honest: I was mad at myself. For years I’d been hauling whatever worthless skanks into bed with me, as long as they had gigantic tits and opened the gas cap when the nozzle came. Meanwhile here was a rather mousy but undoubtedly very sweet girl like Miriam who had somehow liked me, and I had no clue. And even if I had, I’d have presumably given her the brush-off with a dirty grin on my face because the dimensions of her breasts fell far short of my minimum standard. And what else mattered when it came to women?

Suddenly I made myself sick. Really. Here I was, standing at my own grave wondering how much of the shit that had happened in my life was actually my fault. Thoughts like these aren’t really particularly pleasant when you’re alive, but if you ask yourself these questions in time you can still change something. Become a better person, et cetera. But in my case: too late! No insight, however clever it might be, could help me now.

My brain waves were definitely headed in the wrong direction, because I didn’t want to go all sentimental again, like those old ladies who rake the graves and plant those ugly, purple-colored weeds on them that look like they were the only plant that managed to survive a nuclear war. So I banished all thoughts like that from my mind and whooshed along behind Martin and Miriam, who walked back up to my grave and looked at it for a short moment, staring at the shiny black coffin, and then turned toward the exit. And that’s when we saw him.

My funeral was turning into a kind of class reunion. But this particular guest was neither invited nor welcome. Miriam saw him at the same time I did, and she whispered, “Oh, shit,” although such words wouldn’t normally pass her lips.

Pablo. Greasy as ever, his longish black crimps glued down to his head with some kind of glistening slime, acne scars all over his face, and seven or maybe more gold hoops through his left ear. Someone in an extremely inebriated state once suggested that he get a ring through his nose, too. Twenty-four hours and a few strong blows to the back of the head later that someone woke up to find he had a ring through his nose. Since then no one has cracked any more jokes about the ugliest toro north of the Pyrenees.

Now here was Pablo at the cemetery. The Pablo who had, over the course of two years, sold me certain substances that were subject to trade restrictions pursuant to the Controlled Substances Act. The Pablo who was of the firm conviction that I had landed him in the pen. The Pablo who several interviewed persons had assumed was the one who had pushed me to my death.

Miriam had apparently also heard this rumor because she started laying into him like a madwoman.

“You dare show up here?” she yelled, taking long strides toward him. “Couldn’t you tell from the bridge that he was dead?”

Pablo just kept leaning against the tree, pretending not to hear her.

“Who is that?” Martin asked, and I quickly filled him in. Martin was anything but enthusiastic.

Meanwhile Miriam had reached Pablo. She stood in front of him at arm’s length, hands on her hips, and glared at him. God’s avenging angel in sneakers!

“How perverted are you, that you would dare to show your face here at his funeral?” she asked.

“I want to be sure he’s dead,” Pablo calmly replied. Incidentally, he had no accent; if anything he sounded like he was from just an hour or so north of Cologne, from the Ruhr, and not from Barcelona. “I wasn’t the one who bumped him off.”

“Right, like I should believe you?” Miriam snarled. “Half of town thinks it was you.”

“Half of town is saying it was me so no one will notice it was them,” Pablo said. “In any case, I wouldn’t have broken just his neck.”

Martin, who had stopped a few steps back, winced. Welcome to real life, Buddy.

Miriam and Pablo continued their shouting match, and I thought Miriam held her own pretty well. Actually, I suddenly thought she was very attractive and brave and all that. She actually had me stuck in a trance for a while so I didn’t notice one important fact: the setting of the scene had shifted almost without anyone noticing. Pablo was doing it very slickly, but as a dealer in illegal drugs one of course has to be pretty damned careful. In that line of work you develop an eye for dark corners that cannot be seen into from where other people are standing. He had pulled back into a dark corner like that by repeatedly taking just one small step, and then another, and Miriam and Martin had followed him like rats behind the Pied Piper. Before I could warn Martin, it happened. Pablo grabbed Miriam by the hair and pulled her with him two steps back into the bushes, and then we heard an open palm slap against a face.

“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!