Snow White Must Die (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #4)(31)
“But the chairs,” Hartmut Sartorius objected, sounding distraught. “They were still good. And the tables. We could have repainted them…”
Tobias persuaded his father to go inside, then lit a cigarette and enjoyed his first well-deserved break since morning. He sat down on the top step and cast a satisfied glance at the now immaculate yard, with only the old chestnut tree standing in the middle. Nadia. For the first time he permitted his thoughts to stray back to the night before last. He might be thirty years old, but as far as sex was concerned, he was an absolute beginner. Compared to what he and Nadia had done, his experiences from before were downright childish. Over the years, for lack of comparison, he had pictured them as something magnificent and extraordinary. But now he was able to see them in the proper context. Childish hugs, the embarrassed in and out, lying on the stuffy childhood bed, the jeans and underwear around the knees, and always on the alert—half expecting parents to burst in because there was no lock on the door.
“Ah,” he sighed pensively. It might sound pompous, but there was no doubt that Nadia was the one who made him a man. After the first hurried union on the sofa they had moved to the bed, and he had assumed that was all there was to it. They had held and caressed each other as they talked, and Nadia had confessed that she had always loved him. She hadn’t realized it until he vanished from her life. And all those years she had unconsciously measured every man she met against him. He was annoyed by this admission from the lips of the beautiful stranger that he no longer was able to connect with the friend from his childhood, and yet it also made him deeply happy. She had then succeeded in motivating him to his best sexual performance, making him sweat and doing things he would never have thought he was capable of. He imagined he could still smell her, taste her, feel her. Simply wonderful. Fantastic. Awesome. Tobias was so deep in thought that he didn’t hear the soft footsteps and gave a start when a figure came unexpectedly around the corner of the house.
“Thies?” he asked in surprise. He stood up but made no attempt to approach the neighbor’s son or even give him a hug. Thies Terlinden had never appreciated such familiarities. Now he didn’t look Tobias in the eye, just stood there in silence, his arms clamped firmly to his sides. Today, as before, it was impossible to see his disability. That’s how Lars must look now too, thought Tobias. Lars, the younger twin by two minutes, had been automatically elevated to the position of crown prince of the Terlinden dynasty because of his brother’s illness. Tobias had never seen his best friend again after that fateful day in September 1997. Only now did it occur to him that he had never talked about Lars with Nadia, although the three of them had once been like siblings.
Suddenly Thies took a step toward Tobias and astonishingly held out his hand, palm up. In amazement Tobias understood what Thies was waiting for: They had always greeted each other that way, with a triple high-five. At first it had been their secret gang sign, later a joke that they had kept up. A brief smile appeared on Thies’s handsome face when Tobias gave him the high-five.
“Hello, Tobi,” he said in his odd voice that lacked any intonation. “Great to have you back.”
* * *
Amelie wiped off the long counter at the bar. The dining room at the Black Horse was still empty at five thirty, too early for the evening crowd. To her own surprise it wasn’t hard for her to abandon her usual outfit. Was her mother going to turn out to be right again? Was her Goth persona not a statement about life as she claimed, but nothing more than a rebellious phase of puberty? In Berlin she had felt good wearing the baggy black clothes, with all the piercings, heavy makeup, and flamboyant hairdo. Her friends all looked the same way, and nobody turned around to stare at them when they roamed the streets like a swarm of black ravens, kicking lampposts with their Doc Martens and occasionally playing soccer with garbage cans. She didn’t give a shit what the teachers and other bourgeois people said. They were just bothersome creatures who moved their lips and spouted nonsense. But suddenly everything had changed. The appreciative glances of the men on Sunday, which were undoubtedly due to her feminine figure and revealing décolletage, had pleased her. More than that. She felt like she was walking on air when she realized that every man in the Black Horse was staring at her ass, including Claudius Terlinden and Gregor Lauterbach. She still felt high from it. Jenny Jagielski came waddling out of the kitchen, the crepe soles on her shoes squeaking. At the sight of Amelie her eyebrows went up.
“From scarecrow to vamp,” she said sharply. “So, who’s the new look for?”
Then she cast a critical eye at the work Amelie had done, running her finger along the counter. She found it satisfactory.
“You can go wash the glasses,” she said. “My brother probably forgot to do it.”
A dozen used glasses from the noon rush stood next to the sink. Amelie didn’t care what the task was. The main thing was that she got paid every night. Jenny climbed onto a bar stool and lit a cigarette despite the smoking ban. She did that often when she was alone and in a placid mood, like today. Amelie seized the opportunity to ask about Tobias Sartorius.
“Of course I know him from before,” Jenny replied. “Tobi was a good pal of my brother’s, and he came over to our house a lot.” She sighed and shook her head. “But it would have been better if he’d never come back here.”
“Why?”