The Indian girl sat astride on Gerd’s lap took his face in both of her hands and pulled him towards hers.
“Cheekily winking at me, aren’t you quite something!”
“That’s a nervous twitch, it’s hereditary!” Abruptly he leapt to his feet; the Indian girl fell from his lap and landed on her buttocks, swearing.
“Excuse me!” Gerd said abruptly, “but I have to get out of here!”
“At least finish your whisky!” Sherie called behind him, but he had already vanished through the door.
When he finally stood outside in the smog filled night air, he slowly calmed down. Naturally the chairman would be angry, but it was not Gerd’s fault, that the Indian was such a greedy old bastard, who had somehow gotten wind of the virility drug. Well he might as well forget about the promotion for now, but he would get it one day, that he was sure of. The best chance for him to avert major damages to his career was to immediately call Germany and explain to them that it had not been his fault.
When he pulled out his mobile he realised it was flashing wildly. Six calls in absence! All stemming from the same number: the office of the CEO, his boss Doctor Alberich Seligheim.
Obviously they were anxiously waiting for the outcome of his negotiations. Oh, dear me...!
Grit your teeth and get to it. Gerd sat down on a little stonewall, loosened his tie and took a deep breath. He pressed ‘Answer’ and waited for the dial tone.
“Gerd!” he heard Doctor Seligheim’s voice answering the line, “I’ve been trying to call you!”
“Yes, I am sorry, Doctor Seligheim, I just came out of the meeting, there was no signal!”
“No Problem, no matter, really. Gerd, are you feeling okay?”
Gerd was confused. Doctor Seligheim was known for his punctuality, discipline, initiative, oddly patterned ties, an unbearable tendency to hold monologues about the joys of sailing and a keen killer instinct for business, but on no account for heartfelt sympathy.
“Tha... thank you, I am quite all right. Doctor Seligheim!”
“Fine, I am glad to hear that. How about your health? Are you suffering under stress?”
“Not more than the usual. About the negotiations with the Indians...”
“Oh yes India, I always liked it there, Nice people. Well, I’m sure you’re making progress, you know yourself how important the whole thing is for us. But listen, there is something else: How would you like to take a vacation? You know, unwind a bit, relax! You seem a bit tense lately.”
“I... I don’t understand!” Gerd answered, puzzled.
Doctor Seligheim’s voice became sugar coated. “You don’t understand? Well I’m going to tell you a nice story then: Three days ago my wife went on a little shopping trip to Milan. She took her brand new Mercedes to the airport since she would be parking on the company’s reserved parking space. Great isn’t it?”
A terrible foreboding was creeping up Gerd’s legs, grabbing his scrotum with ice-cold fingers and was forming a lump in his stomach area.
“Can you imagine” Seligman continued cool as a cucumber, “she returns from Milan and someone has scratched the whole car door and kicked a sizeable dent in it. Gerd, any idea what kind of pervert would do such a thing, do you have any idea?”
“Mr Doctor Seligheim I... I really don’t know...” Gerd stuttered, his panic mounting.
“Oh, the story isn’t finished yet, Gerd, the best part is still to come. Imagine, the parking garage is equipped with a CCTV system. Fascinating, isn’t it. The proprietors were so kind to forward the tape to me. And now imagine who it is I see jumping merrily around my wife’s car, ruining the paint job and kicking dents in into it. Do you have any idea who that might be, Gerd, who do you think? ANY IDEA???”
The ground seemed to give way under Gerd; pearls of cold sweat began to glitter on his forehead.
“I really don’t know, I was in such a hurry, and I...”
“IN A HURRY??? Looks like you had plenty of time to demolish my wife’s car!!!”
What’s this all about, what do you have against my wife? Or was the assault supposed to be aimed at me. Your behaviour is unfathomable! I am very disappointed in you, very disappointed. And my wife, she’s also disappointed!”
“Mr Seligheim, I’ll pay for the damages of course, as soon as...”
“I reckon you will!” The excitement in Doctor Seligheim’ voice had given way to ice-cold business talk. “You see Gerd, this is not about money. This is about one of our top managers, who maybe—this being a huge maybe—that this manager is running amuck and is publicly thrashing private property. Do you seriously think this corporation can afford their top managers to behave like football hooligans? The only thing going for you at the moment is your reputation as a red-blooded manager, one that does not shirk from a hot potato! You should fall on your knees and thank your maker that you will be the one who is doing the Indian deal. With this we’ll be raking in a bundle that might let me forget this unbelievable incident. By the way, how did it go?”
Coloured sparks began to dance in front of Gerd’s eyes. He suddenly felt very tired as if he had to fall into a coma right here and there to escape this nightmare.
“I... the signal... reception... bad... call back... tomorrow!” he yelled into his mobile chopping the words and hanging up before Seligheim could reply. At once it rang again. Gerd switched it off.
He got up and walked back to the beer bar very slowly, as if there was a heavy load on his shoulders. What he needed now was a whisky—the cheapest hooch from the first room was good enough for a failure such as him...
Next morning he awoke in his hotel room with a furred tongue, headache and the certitude that he had completely wrecked his life. Gradually he remembered more and more terrible details from last night’s events. Báaba Singh, the beer bar, the phone call... he was fucked!
Not only could he shelve his aspirations to be promoted to the board of directors, no, he would be lucky if they would let him keep his job.
He laboriously got to his feet. He had slept in his clothes. He expertly avoided a look into the mirror by neither shaving nor brushing his teeth. With a grunt he took his luggage hauled it to the reception, paid for the room and ordered a taxi.
At nine òclock in the morning Bombay’s traffic was at it’s legendary best. It would take them at least two hours to get to the airport. Should he dare and turn his mobile back on? No, better not...
When Gerd’s taxi had finally reached the airport, he had come up with a plan. He would write to Seligheim—a long letter in which he would explain everything. Gerd was a good employee, Seligheim was aware of that; he would not sack him because of such an incident.
At least not if Gerd would write his heart-rending letter. He knew he could do that, he was good at that.
He marched towards the check-in counter, checked his baggage, took a seat in the business lounge, opened his notebook and started writing. The plan was to send the letter to Seligheim via email before his departure so he would be mollified when Gerd would turn up for work the next morning. Enough time would have passed by then, his greatest anger would have disappeared and they would be having an explanatory conversation. A little bit of ‘mea culpa’ here, a new special paint job for Mrs Seligheim’s car on Gerd’s expenses there and the whole unfortunate affair would be done with.
‘All will end well, all will end well’ Gerd thought feverishly hitting the keys on his computer.
Half an hour later Gerd had finisher the letter and was pleased with himself. His lines expressed just the right amount of subservience without appearing to be brown nosing.
He was asking for sympathy, without begging, he was putting down the facts, one could understand what had happened where and when—in short the letter was perfect.
He plugged his laptop into one of the open WI-FI
connections in the business lounge and started his email application.
>Please enter password<
Gerd typed his usual password: “Ice Capades”
>Wrong password—Please try again<
Gerd repeated the password: “Ice Capades”
>Wrong password—Please try again<
He cocked his eyebrows. Had some one been messing with his laptop? Could only have been Beate... She probably thought that he would never use this computer again and had just confiscated it. Typical. He tried her favourite word that had for years become a her mantra:
‘Gucci’
With an acoustically pleasant ‘Ping’ the mail program started.
Bingo, thought Gerd and was about to send his letter, when he noticed the messages in his wife’s inbox. There were fifteen of them, none older then a month, all from the same sender:
‘KnobKing2000’ and all with more or less explicit contents:
“You drive me wild!—I want to do you night and day, every which way! Let me be your Hillary climbing to a lustful peak...!” and a lot more waffle of this kind.
Immediately he felt hot and cold shivers running down his spine. His eyelid was doing warm up exercises, the giddiness from yesterday had returned, accompanied by a spontaneous headache and dryness in his mouth. Gerd felt like instantly puking on to the keyboard. With trembling fingers he clicked ‘Sent Objects’.
Beate’s answer-letters to the ominous ‘KnobKing2000’ appeared: “Gerd is such a wimp, I can hardly stand it. Let’s use his credit card and fly to Hawaii first class!”
Or: “You remember the popsicles, you could get at the corner store and you would be sucking them out of the transparent plastic. That’ exactly how I will suck you tonight, you dirty little piggy!”
And more like that... It was devastating!
To find out who was behind the name ‘KnobKing2000’ proved to be rather easy. This
‘KnobKing’ did not appear to be all too bright; otherwise he would have deleted the automatically added signature at the end of his e-mails. But there it was boasting proudly underneath every one of his works:
“Doctor Reiner Jobsten, attorney-at-law”
REINER!!! Up to this very second Reiner had been one of his best friends and the family lawyer on top of that. The son of a bitch was fucking Beate behind his back!!! What a prick!!
And his wife, this lousy spoilt Gucci slut... was fucking his old pal Reiner!!!!
The nerve wrecking experiences of last night, plus this shocking revelation had fermented into an explosive cocktail for the soul, the consumption of which was likely to lead a person to run amok. The typical stages for someone experiencing such a crisis were:
Hysterical anger:
“THAT FUCKING WHORE!!!!!” Gerd screamed making everyone present jump. An elderly lady with a hat let go of her Gin Tonic, the glass shattered on the marble floor. A lounge attendant hurried from behind the counter and tried to quieten Gerd down. “Sir, if you could please lower your voice somehow”
Gerd grabbed him by the scruff of his neck shaking him: “She’s screwing my friend Rainer!!!
Fucking bastard!”
The attendant tried to shake himself loose but was surprised by the next stage of the crisis, namely:
Bodily aggression:
“And how about you, are you also screwing your friends wife, you Indian dwarf?” Gerd howled, slamming the servant against the counter. He grabbed his laptop with both hands hand took a swing and flung it against the wall as hard as he could, where with a bang it disintegrated into shards of electronic scrap. Meanwhile the other guests had looked for cover and the attendant was nervously yelling into his phone.
When two security guards arrived, Gerd was busy jumping up and down on his computer parts, frothing at the mouth, with a crazed look and a rampantly twitching eyelid. The officials held on to Gerd with a tight grip, but Gerd didn’t fight back. He had already reached the next stage:
Boundless self-pity:
“Why me, why must this happen to me...?” Gerd wailed, while the officers dragged him relentlessly towards the exit. Since he did not seem to pose any danger, they sat him on a bench in the terminal and let him wallow in self-pity.
Although he had heard the announcement: “Passengers on the flight to Frankfurt please proceed to Gate 4!” and he also heard it being repeated, he had even heard the urgent sounding announcement: “Last call for passenger Mr Lauterbach, booked for Frankfurt—please proceed to Gate 4 immediately!”—but he had remained seated. He was sitting on the bench, head buried, quietly whimpering and in no condition at all to board the plane for Germany. As hard as he thought about it, he could not think of one single reason why he should be flying home. He felt absolutely powerless and without any strength.
Gerd wallowed in this stage for quite a while.
While his luggage was on it’s way to Europe without him, he left the airport and aimlessly flung himself into the turmoil of men and cars. As if in trance he swayed through the masses, he did not notice the beggars pulling at his sleeves, he did not hear the countless touts, bearers, taxi drivers trying to offer their services and wares. He did not even smell the beastly mix of excrements and smog that hung over the city in a pall of smog.
A four and a half time zone further to the west Beate Lauterbach was wakened harshly from her pleasant dreams by the ringing of the telephone. Disorientated she lifted her sleeping mask and fumbled for the receiver.
“Hmmmmmmyes...?”
There was distorted traffic noise, a hubbub of voices and a strange heavy breathing on the other end.
“Whooisit?” she drowsily tried again.
“It’s me!” Gerd’s voice clattered faintly through the ether.
“Y’know, what time it is?” Beate moaned and pulled her sleeping mask back over her eyes.
A pause. Again only traffic noise and voices in foreign languages.
“Gerd, what is this? Are you still there?”
“Yes, I’m still here!” Gerd answered in a peculiar flat tone, “And I am going to stay here. So you can have all the fun you want with your ‘KnobKing’!”
Beate was suddenly wide-awake.
“What do you mean? How did you know...”?
“WHAT? How do I know what exactly? Your newly found passion for popsicles, maybe?”
“How did you get... how dare you snooping through my private mail???” Beate was appalled.
“Well excuse me, that was very indecent of me. Anyhow, I’m just calling to tell you I am staying in India for a while. That’s all really. Just turn around and go back to sleep. And please give my regards to Rainer, he’s probably lying next to you!”
“Gerd, now listen to me...”
3.700 miles further east Gerd shoved the mobile into the hand of a beggar who put it to his ear and marvelled at the female voice swearing at him in a foreign language. Although he tried to calm the unknown woman down, she inexplicably did not seem to speak any Hindi.
Didn’t matter, still it was fun, since this was his first mobile phone call in his life.
When Beate had been talking to the beggar for another fifteen minutes—assuming it was Gerd who had disguised his voice—she finally hung up.
“He knows everything!”
Rainer had gathered as much since the barricade of oaths during the last fifteen minutes could hardly have been ignored, also it had put a premature end to his sleep.
He gave her a kiss on the cheek and cuddled against her hoping she would not be spoiling this much too early morning with a tedious discussion.
“It had to come out some day. If you’re looking for a good divorce lawyer, take me!”
“He’s out of his mind. Imagine! He wants to stay in India! That’s crazy...!”
Rainer grinned f
olding his arms behind his head. “Well, shattering news can bring about mental instability. Maybe he’ll join an Ashram and becomes a Guru or something. I for my part won’t miss him!”
Beate gave Rainer a dirty look. “Are you mad? Can you tell me how I am supposed to live, if my esteemed husband is happily blowing money which is owed to me and doesn’t bring in any more of it?”
“Well now, you must have put away some savings, haven’t you?”
Furiously Beate tossed her sleeping mask into a corner. “Savings? Do you have any idea what my expenses are in a month? If this jerk is not coming up with any alimony right away, it could very well come to be that I’d actually have to work!”
“C’mon on, until the divorce you could economise a bit. I’ll handle it for you!” Rainer tried to calm her down.
What? I should be skimping, while this jerk-off is throwing my money around in India???
And bye the way, it doesn’t look like a divorce to me.
My hubby obviously, is in no hurry! Can you make a sensible suggestion for a change, what am I going to do??? How about incapacitation?”
Rainer raised himself. This was his professional domain. “Deprivation of his right of decision? That will never work. If he wants to stay in India, that’s his choice, if you like it or not. Of course until the time of the divorce we could request for separation payments, but as long as we don’t get hold of him in India, it could take awhile!”
Beate groaned and frantically started to rummage through the drawer of the bedside table.
“I know I have an Aspirin here somewhere!”
“There would be another possibility though! It would be the fastest and easiest way to get to his money. I just don’t know if you’d like it!”
Meanwhile Beate had spread the whole contents of the drawer on to her bed.
“And what possibility would that be?”
Rainer moved up close to her and lowered his voice. “If he’d have, let’s say ‘a tragic accident’ down there in India, you’d be the sole heir, fast and non-bureaucratic. You don’t have any children; it’ll be very quick! What do you say?”
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