Can you imagine your best friend and your father standing by a swimming pool, your father holding a gun in his hand and your best friend practically shitting himself? Even if you wanted, your imagination has limits, like your planning. If you’d known what you were setting in motion, you’d never have canceled that evening at the movie, and you’d have crept under a car two days ago, just like Mirko. You’d have done everything differently, and this meeting would never have taken place.
Every Thursday afternoon at the same time you sit at Pepe’s, eating kebabs and drinking ice-cold protein shakes. From five till nine in the evening anyone can get hold of you there. On your left are two cell phones and a book on survival training. You’d rather have an office, but your father reckons you’re a long way from being a businessman. Even though you’re not working for him, you can’t go looking for an office without his permission. Rules are rules. He reckons you have to get to know the streets, because that’s how he started. Squatters and revolutionaries—you can really do without that. We’re not in the eighties anymore, and not in the nineties either, even though the radio tries to kid you otherwise, with all that endless fucked-up retro music. We’re in the new millennium, everything’s different, nothing is the way it used to be, and you’re sitting in a kebab shop because you still haven’t got an office.
On Fridays the guys find you in the park, on the weekends you’re working exclusively for the Brothers. On Mondays you’re in the amusements on the Kaiserdamm, you particularly like it there in the summer, because of the air conditioning and the girl on the counter who disappears into the bathroom with you if you ask her. She likes muscles, you’ve got muscles, and the two of you suit each other perfectly. On Tuesdays you play golf with the Brothers and Wednesday is your very private day in the gym. If this isn’t life there is no life.
She sits down opposite you.
Mirko called you twenty minutes ago and said he had something for you. You can see he’s got something, probably a massive erection, the way he’s standing there. Like a full shopping bag that someone’s left on the edge of the road. The weirdest images always come into your mind as soon as you see Mirko. He is loyal, he wants to make something of himself, and grows and flourishes in your shadow more than any of the other guys so far. He’s your man. You enjoy his guilty conscience. If you threw a stick, he’d be the first to bring it back for you. But if you’re perfectly honest you can easily understand why he ran off that night. They were mean bastards, they would have just beaten up Mirko, it was better for him to get out of the picture, it was better for him not to see your humiliation. You’ve got plans for him. Next year you want to take him on tour with you. He was there when you paid a visit to Bebe, and the guys liked him because he didn’t chatter all the time. Sometimes you wish your father had looked after you the way you look after Mirko now. He’s a logistics guy, basically. No one provides better security than Ragnar Desche. Recently he’s been mostly taking care of the storage and transport of drugs and guns. You know that over the last decade he hasn’t lost a single cartridge or a crumb of cocaine.
Be honest, you’re proud of your father and respect his consistency, but your true idols are two men of a quite different caliber.
The Brothers, Jonas and Axel Krüger, are the dark souls of Berlin. They wanted to take you under their wing the spring before last when you were only sixteen, and it took your father over a year to give you the green light. Since then you’ve been dealing, bringing the money in and getting to know the street from the bottom up. You’re not a logistics expert, you want to get your hands dirty and be like the Brothers. Everything they teach you, you want to teach Mirko one day. From violence via discipline to obedience. Humor’s a part of it too, of course. That’s why you tell Mirko, “Come on, dude. You’re standing there like a full shopping bag.”
“Very funny.”
“Sit down, come on, sit down.”
Mirko sits down beside the girl. You give Pepe a sign to bring you another shake. Since his shop has been your base, he’s keeping a mixer on the counter. Pepe knows what goes in the shakes. Even if the stuff tastes horrible, you like the fact that Pepe only makes it for you. Healthy doesn’t necessarily taste good, every child learns that. That’s why it’s so important to grow up, you think, then you can eat anything you like. This kebab, for example, it’s exactly right. Not too much sauce, no onions, and enough coleslaw to make a Russian green with envy. You take a bite, look at the girl, thinking, Well, Mirko’s found a hot one. You know her from somewhere, definitely from around here, you probably saw her in one of the clubs or she bought something from your guys. Superficial as you are, it never occurs to you that she’s a good friend of your cousin. You’ve met her twice at a party, her hair was down and she wasn’t wearing sunglasses. Now her eyes are completely hidden behind dark lenses. You can just about make out the pupils.
“Shake?” you ask with your mouth full, tapping against your empty glass.
She says she is not thirsty. You put the kebab on the plate and wipe your mouth. It’s time for business.
“Let’s do some business,” you say.
The girl rummages in her pants pocket and puts a Tic Tac box down on the table. Orange flavor. You’ve always thought it was ridiculous that Tic Tacs are really white, and only look orange because of the packaging. Someone told you it used to be different. Dyes and stuff. As if there was anything harmful about dyes.
“Aha,” you say and take the Tic Tac box and flip it open. The powder is white, you sniff it, it smells like Tic Tacs. Pepe comes with the shake. Green with white foam. You ask him if he wants a Tic Tac. The girl opens her eyes wide. Pepe says, Sugar no good, and goes again.
“Did you hear that?” you ask the girl and laugh. “Sugar no good?”
She just looks at you, she obviously has no sense of humor and those oversized sunglasses make her look like an over-the-hill porn star who swallowed too much cum. Mirko, on the other hand, finally has a hint of a grin in the corner of his mouth. Mirko knows what’s funny. The girl says, “We’ve got five kilos.”
You don’t move a muscle. Whatever Mirko has brought here, it seems to be a gold mine. You don’t wonder where the drugs are from, your mouth is too watery and your head is switched to profit. When you ask her about the pills, the girl reaches into her jacket and puts a handful down on the table.
“Are you fucked?” you hiss at her, and sweep the pills from the tabletop into the open palm of your hand. She smiles. Humor is a two-sided blade. You stuff the pills in your jacket. Mirko gives you a funny look, and somehow he reminds you of your mother’s top-loader when she took the washing out and left the machine open to dry. As a child you always wanted to get into the machine and travel through time. Your mother always smacked you when she caught you doing that. Now your mother’s with a Spaniard half her age and her name’s never mentioned at home.
“You look like a washing machine. A top-loader, you know?”
Mirko frowns. Yes, the joke was a bit far-fetched. You look around. It wouldn’t be so great if someone from the drug squad was standing at the bar drinking ayran while you were pulling off the deal of your life.
Fuck me, five kilos!
You tap against the Tic Tac box; some powder trickles onto the back of your hand.
“Everybody look away,” you say, and inhale it.
If you could see your smile you would take a photograph and have it framed. It does the trick, the drug moves through your head like a cold switchblade and makes you feel good. Damn good. You tense your upper arms. Great feeling. Steel and flesh. The girl’s probably wondering what it feels like to have arms like that.
“Whoow,” you say, blinking away tears. “And you’ve got five kilos of that? Whoow, that’s the stuff.”
The girl gets up.
“Hey, where are you going?”
“To get the rest. You want to buy it, don’t you?”
You bet your sweet ass I do, you think and bite your tongue to keep it to yourself. You’re confused, you thought she brought the drugs along. You grin at her stupidly. You really want to call yourself a professional? Do you think she’s just going to go walking around the place with five kilos of high-grade drugs?
It’s a good thing the Brothers can’t see you right now.
The girl says she’ll be back at midnight.
She says she wants fifty thousand.
You laugh at her.
“It’s worth more than that,” you explain, which sounds really unprofessional, but the drugs are making you honest, and besides, you want to be a gentleman, because the little bitch is kind of tasty, and maybe one day she’ll feel like snorting a line off your cock. For free, of course.
“I don’t want more,” she says.
“Ah.”
Fifty big ones. Oh my God, the Brothers are going to go crazy. It was so worth canceling the movies for. Mirko hasn’t brought you gold, these are diamonds. But Mirko has a few things to make up to you for.
“Shall we meet here?”
You shake your head. It’ll be jammed in here in an hour. And midnight’s far too early for you. The city’s still wide awake at that time of night. You suggest the park. Lietzensee. At two. The little football field is hidden away, and not even tramps go there at night. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve arranged to meet someone there. The field is hidden way behind an embankment. If two of your guys kept watch, you could hold an orgy there and no one would notice.
“You can have an orgy there at night,” you say.
“You can have an orgy at night anywhere at all,” the girl says as if she did just that every night. “Two o’clock, then?”
“Two.”
She looks from you to Mirko. You’d give a hundred-euro note to see her without those shades.
“Are you coming too?”
“Of course I am.”
She looks at you again.
“You’re not going to rip me off, are you?”
You put a hand on your heart. Of course you’re going to rip her off. She’ll settle for twenty thousand, they always do in the end. And the Brothers will never find out that it was five kilos. Three will be enough to make them weep with happiness. And the pills will make their way into your pocket.
“I’m honest,” you tell her.
When she leaves, you wait till the door closes behind her, then you explode with laughter.
“God, Mirko, what a bitch!”
“Don’t say that.”
You get up, you shake hands.
“You’ve done a great job there, pal, it doesn’t get any better than that, we’re even now, okay?”
Mirko nods, he smiles, the relief is written on his forehead in capital letters. You pull your friend to you so that his thin chest hits your steel plate.
“I’ll pick you up at the pizza stand at a quarter to two.”
You slap him on the back, you’re so fucking high on the drugs that you feel like grabbing Mirko’s backside. I’m horny, you think, and let go of Mirko.
“And I can’t make the movies tonight,” you add, waving the Tic Tac box. “I have to test out this stuff a bit more. Denzel can wait.”
Mirko nods, he understands. You hand him your shake as a present, he takes it outside. You look down and seriously have a massive hard-on.
“Hey, Pepe,” you call to him. “Look what Tic Tacs can do!”
Two hours later you’re lying on your bed exhausted from the drugs, the windows are open, you’re king of the city, the wail of an ambulance, a plane heading for Tegel Airport, and the music coming out of the speakers and the deal of the year in your pocket. MTV is on in the background with the sound turned down, a singer is repeatedly slapping herself on the ass as if she is furious that she has an ass. You tap the Tic Tac box, the powder trickles onto the back of your hand.
Christ, what kind of stuff is this?
The last time you spent a day on speed, you had mates from Köpenick staying with you, and you played the hell out of the Play-Station. Later you went down to the basement and pumped iron until there were rainbows dancing in front of your eyes. Today’s not a day for playing. Today’s a day when you’d just like to lie in bed listening to music.
The deal of the decade, fuckers!
Later, in the park, you’ll show the girl what real business is. You’ve scraped together ten thousand, you couldn’t get more, Bebe threw in five, the rest is from your own pocket. She’ll grumble, she’ll complain, but she can be glad to get anything at all.
“Darian?”
“Yes?”
“Come down here.”
You swing your legs out of bed, your exhaustion dissolves to nothing as if it had never been there. If the old man calls, you run. There’s no later or in a minute. Even as a kid he drummed that one into you, and it didn’t get any better after your parents got divorced. You go to the bathroom, splash water in your face, one last look, you try to smile, the smile slips away.
Your father stands in the kitchen getting a cappuccino out of the machine. He’s barefoot, wearing linen pants and one of those silk shirts that are like air. He looks relaxed, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. You fear and admire him. You want to be like him and then do everything better. You want to give parties and let everyone know that everything’s possible because you make it possible. Your father’s careful with money. He’s careful about who he eats with and who his friends are. He’s slim, almost ascetic, while you’re exploding with energy and your body takes up twice as much room. And we’re talking about not an ounce of fat, all dynamite. Your father has always tried to stay out of the limelight, while you want to grab the world between the legs and shout in its face that you exist. You’re very pleased that you’re taller than him. Two centimeters. The rest is one great genetic defeat. Even when your father has his back turned to you, as if you are not worth being acknowledged, he gives you the feeling that you’re several steps beneath him. But you’re young, you’re still on the way to becoming great, your father is already there.
He asks what you’re doing this weekend, and whether you’ve given any thought to the rest of the summer. He wants you to repeat your technical diploma next year. You don’t think much of the idea, fuck school, fuck diplomas, but you say nothing and hope the Brothers will come to your assistance and support your career. Career, what an awesome word! you think and almost burst out laughing. This summer is due to be your last summer in freedom. You plan to visit your mother in Spain. She has insisted on it. Your father wants to know how the plans are looking, whether you’ve already booked a flight and so on and so on. Then he turns around and looks at you quizzically. It’s only then that you realize that you haven’t answered a single one of his questions.
You stand there, you stand there, you stand there.
“What have you taken?”
Your father sips from his cappuccino. You want to answer him, but your teeth click together as if someone had released a spring and slammed your mouth shut. Is it as obvious as that? you wonder and try not to smile stupidly at your father. You have a lot of questions whirring through your head. You’d love to know why your father never sprinkles cocoa on his cappuccino. Why, Dad, why? you want to say. Tell me why? Laughter bubbles up inside you. Cappuccino, what an awesome word! Just don’t start laughing. Business is business, you think, and grin at the thought of calling your father Dad. You know the rules. Keep off the drugs when you’re working. Always. But this isn’t work, so you’re not worrying about it. What worries you a lot more is the fact that you’re talking to your father when you’re not under control.
He wants control, his life is control, I know that, he knows that, I …
“I’ve got a deal,” you mumble, and fumble around in your jeans and take out the Tic Tac box. You push it across the kitchen counter. It slides into your father’s hand. Safe. Cool. Your father sets his cappuccino down, sprinkles a little of the powder on the surface, and dips a finger in it. He tastes it, he looks at you, he says, “What is this?”
“Coke.”
You just sense the slap, you don’t see it coming.
“What is this, Darian?”
“Co—”
He’s too fast. Backhand. The movement hovers in the air like a paper kite tossing in the wind, leaving nothing but a trail of color behind. Far out, you think, and here comes the next question: “Darian, what is this?”
“I thought …”
You shut up, your head’s burning rubber.
Speed?
It isn’t speed, you’d recognize speed.
Coke?
You’re not about to say coke again.
It couldn’t possibly be heroin, could it? you think and your mouth says, “Heroin?”
“Where does it come from?”
You gush it all out, you tell him about the girl and the deal and admit everything, the pills too, you don’t even lie about the amount, because your father isn’t the buyer, your father is God, and God sees through all lies.
“When?”
“Tonight, two o’clock.”
You tell him about Mirko, who got the whole thing going, and where you’re meeting the girl. Your father doesn’t think much of your plan. He dismisses you with a sentence.
“Get rid of your friend.”
“But—”
“And I expect you to have a clear head by two o’clock.”
With these words he puts the Tic Tac box in his pocket, takes his cappuccino, and leaves the kitchen without giving you so much as a glance.
By midnight you’re sober again. You’ve sweated out the drug, you’ve run ten miles on the treadmill, you pumped iron until your body consisted only of pain. Fifteen minutes in the sauna, a cold shower, and here you are.
Just two hours until the meeting.
You go to the Starlight on the Ku’damm. Rico and André come with you. You sell some tabs and a bit of weed. While the customers go off to the bathroom with Rico, you drink one glass of still water after another and keep looking at your phone. Perhaps your father’s going to change his mind, yes, and perhaps the moon’s made of green cheese. Mirko is waiting for you by the pizza stand at a quarter to two. He’s taken the rest of the night off. You know he’s only thinking about the girl. You wonder what you’re going to say to him without looking like a weak fuck. You’re forgetting something. Something fundamental. Keep it in mind.
I’m the boss, the boss can’t be a weak fuck.
Well done.
Just before half past one you take the night bus down Kantstrasse, get out by the local court, and walk up Windscheidstrasse. It’s really time you got your driver’s license and started driving a car. The summer night groans into your face, its breath is rancid, frying fat and corners full of piss. You like the smell, you’re sweating nicely. When you get to Stuttgarter Platz, you see the pizza stand like a palely gleaming star by the railway bridge. Mirko is standing outside at one of the tables drinking a Coke Light.
“Artificial sweetener gives you cancer,” you say by way of greeting.
“Bullshit,” he says and holds out his hand.
It’s surprisingly quiet. A scorching Thursday night in Berlin. Mirko’s uncle is busying himself with the oven and scrubbing it, the scrape of metal on metal, not a customer to be seen, the lights in the cafés opposite have gone out. Closing time.
“Dead city, right?”
“Totally dead. Shall we go?”
You rub the back of your neck.
“Listen, Mirko, we’ve got a problem.”
“What sort of problem?”
You lie. You lie to him and tell him your father’s rejected the deal.
“No cash for the bitch.”
Mirko wants to know what your father has to do with it. It’s a reasonable question, you’re working for the Brothers. Your father’s just the logistics guy. You’ve gone and opened your big mouth. Well done. Time to act the big boss. You laugh at Mirko.
“Nothing’s happening without my old man. Ever.”
“Man, she’ll go mental!”
Mirko takes out his phone.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to call her, so that—”
“Forget it. She knows.”
“What? How does she know?”
“Because … because I’ve canceled on her.”
Mirko tilts his head a little to the left.
“But you haven’t even got her number.”
You look at each other. You go on looking at each other. Your mind’s racing as if possessed, exploring the database of your messed-up brain and not finding a reasonable answer. Mirko throws in another verbal punch.
“You don’t even know her name.”
Suddenly you grin. A wolf flashing his fangs. You lean forward slightly. There is the indescribable desire to crush the Coke can into your pal’s face till his mother wouldn’t recognize him. The desire is just a spark, you’d never do that to Mirko, never.
“Hey, Romeo, if I tell you she knows, then she knows. Do you think I’d lie to you? Come on, put that phone away.”
He doesn’t react. You grab him by the chin, your great paw covers half his face. Your words are a whisper.
“Mirko, put the fucking phone away. The deal’s off. It’s over. Finito. Get that?”
You hear his uncle shouting something from the pizza stand and look over at him without letting go of Mirko. His uncle curses and looks the other way.
“Okay,” says Mirko.
“Cool?”
“Cool.”
You let go of his chin. He stares at the ground.
“Look at me.”
He looks at you.
“We take care of each other, have you forgotten that?”
“Of course not.”
“I keep an eye out for you, day and night. Never forget that. And we’ll go to the movies tomorrow and it’s on me, okay?”
You punch him gently on the shoulder, wave to his uncle, and walk back up Windscheidstrasse. Hands in the pockets of your sweatpants, shoulders straight. You can hear Mirko and his uncle talking behind you. Yugo-talk, you don’t understand a word. When you get to Kantstrasse, you take a look at your phone. Ten to two. Time to get a move on. Your father’s waiting.