“Right, Owen, just like you weren’t looking when you pegged me in the ‘nads with that dodgeball, ya little punk!” I had forgotten how curmudgeonly he sounded—like a codger hunched on his stoop, angry at the neighborhood kids for playing too close to his yard. He was only thirty-nine when he died.
“That actually was an accident, you know?” I wasn’t even bending the truth that time. Sure, I’d tagged him a couple of times, just for fun, but I at least had the decency to aim for the man’s chest. I wasn’t an animal.
“You ruined my life, you little shit,” he barked, his arms waving unpredictably. I prepared for him start foaming at the mouth at any second.
I hoped he’d extend a hand to help me up, but it became clear that there was no squaring this one away with him, so I lumbered to my feet. I wasn’t about to let him ruin my day. I had too many important things to attend to, plans to set in motion. I was Steve-McQueen ready to make my great escape, and I had a girl to bring along with me. I didn’t have time for this little rumble he seemed eager to start.
“Look. I’m sorry I ratted you out, but you were doing some shady stuff.” I extended my hand, hoping he might take it, shake it, and we could both move on. That’s what we were here for, anyway. Instead, his one eye stared daggers through me, and he spat at my feet.
It didn’t matter. Today I was impenetrable. I turned my back to him, dusting myself off and running a hand through my hair. I was happy to march away to the tune of his frenzied tirades. I had nothing against the guy any more But I did have big plans.
12
My entrance through the creaky wooden door of the Depot was met with frantic German cursing, coming in loud and clear over the sound of a polyurethane ball clattering down the lanes and crashing into pins. Within seconds, the little German was stomping toward me, his post at the cash register deserted, and one long, wrinkled finger extended toward my face. He cut a swath through a bunch of lost souls wandering toward a café bench. He stopped just short of me and adjusted the spectacles on the bridge of his nose, his eyes nearly doubling in size; a crooked, knowing grin spread from ear to ear.
“Owen, you are glowing,” he said, looking me up and down. I wasn’t quite sure what he meant. I didn’t feel particularly bright or warm, and my clothes were dirty leftovers from the day before.
“Did you stay the night with deiner Freundin?”
“What?” I stammered, taken aback. I rubbed at my forehead in case someone had scribbled “just laid for the first time in twelve years” up there in pen. No ink, just a cold sweat. He wasn’t wrong, but I was slightly uncomfortable with just how in tune with me he was.
“Alte Füchse gehen schwer in die Falle.”
“Just be cool, old man,” I sighed, shuffling past him.
“You don’t have to tell me any of the details. That would not be right. But you can at least confirm what I have said!” He didn’t follow me into the backroom, so I pinned on my nametag in relative peace. Walking back out, I saw Jonas surveying his grungy bowling alley kingdom, tall and regal like some great Prussian ruler, with his back to the jukebox. And then the fucking piano started. I hung my head, sighing heavily as Bertie Higgins started singing about Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
I rolled my eyes at Jonas, but he wasn’t at all interested in my cynicism. He walked toward me, singing along with the awful tune.
“We had it all, just like Bogey and Bacall. Come on Owen, this is a time to celebrate.”
“I am celebrating,” I said, grabbing a rag and an aerosol can from under the counter. “See? This is how I celebrate.” I started sanitizing the shoes.
“That is not a celebration,” he said. “That is work, which you should have been doing nearly two hours ago.”
“I was a little caught up,” I said. “Her place is a lot farther from here than mine is.”
“I knew it!” he laughed. He pumped his wrinkled fist in the air like he’d won a grand prize for guessing at my sex life. “These are not the kinds of things a junger Mann can easily hide.”
“Okay, okay. I get it, J, you’re excited for me. I’m pretty excited too,” I said, my back to him as I scanned under the counter for a way to avoid talking about this. I had never been one to kiss and tell, and though Jonas was the closest thing to a father I’d found here, I wasn’t keen on divulging all the details to the old man. And if I was being honest with myself, it would have been impossible not to describe every minute detail. Part of me hoped that Paradise would just be that scene on replay for the rest of eternity.
“Liebst du sie?”
I pushed spare shoes into properly numbered slots before standing and turning around, a look of confusion and annoyance on my face. “Jonas. Come on man, give me some time to process, yeah?”
“Owen, I only asked if you love her,” he said, pushing his spectacles up once more.
I stared through him, listening to the awful jukebox, the bluster of ball and pin collisions, the sizzle-pop of the fryer in the kitchen. What gave me pause wasn’t that the question was shocking, or that my answer to it was shocking; it was the sheer realization. After only ten days, I felt a stronger connection to her than anyone in this place, if not anyone before. It floored me. I stood there in a stupor, unsure if my mouth was agape, or if I was drooling on the counter. My heart didn’t grow three sizes; my stomach didn’t fill with butterflies. All I felt was steely resolve.
“Yeah, J. And I don’t want to leave Mia behind.”
He walked back behind the counter, placing his hand—thankfully free of the usual damp rag—on my shoulder, and offering a consolatory sigh. Comically magnified by his spectacles, his eyes flickered back and forth across my shirt, and rose to meet mine as he delivered his best attempt at succor.
“I will watch after her. I will even see if I can get Gabriel to take her case instead of that schmuck Michael. We could get her re-assigned here. I will make sure she is treated well. She seems smart. She could probably do your job much better. I do not think she will be here long.”
I smiled at the thought, at the kindness the old man had showed me during my stay, and how he was willing to extend it to her. I moved around the counter and toward the café, entering the kitchen without replying. He’d follow. He was sweet-natured, but he was also meddlesome to a fault, as though problem solving were soldered directly into his framework.
“It’s okay, Jonas, I have a plan,” I said, grabbing a tray of dirty glasses to drop into the sink.
“What plan do you have? You are not talking about staying longer, are you? You do not know how long she could be here. It is your time to go. You have already stayed longer than you should have.” He spoke with genuine paternal concern.
“You’re one to talk, old timer. But no, no, it’s not like that. We’re both going to get out of here.”
“Ach, Mensch! Please do not break the laws. You will get the both of you stuck here for even longer!”
“J, I’m not breaking a single law. I’m following them all to the letter. I’m just, you know, going to use a loophole.”
“A loophole? There are no loopholes here. You do your penance, and then you leave. Unless a schmuck like Michael lets you stay longer than you should.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Jonas. You’re forgetting something. The sin eater.”
His eyes widened in rage and the lines in his face deepened. “Ach du Scheiße! That is not even remotely an option. That is cheating. Nobody will learn anything. You will take that girl’s lesson from her. Owen, that is not something you have any right to do.”
I’d pegged the old man as a hopeless romantic type. He talked about his wife the way few men ever do, so his reaction surprised me. I hadn’t expected a lavish parade or confetti and streamers, but a little frog-like high-five for beating the system would have been encouraging. It was the only time he’d truly lost his temper with me, and I could feel myself shrinking.
“This is not the right way to do things. This is selfish of you.” He p
ushed me out of the kitchen, a tray of mostly-clean glasses in my hands clattering against my chest as my lower back hit the café countertop. My head tilted back just far enough to see an Archangel standing above me, glowering down.
“I was wondering when we were going to get some service.” Uriel stood in the café, wings tightly reigned in. Her hair hung loose in a half bun and her glasses were slightly smudged. Her look of annoyance slowly faded, but something else caught my eye. A glowing beacon demanding the attention of all available senses, Mia emerged from behind Uriel. The smell of salt, those icy blue eyes, a coy smile, and a wave were all it took to turn me into a scatterbrained schoolboy.
Like a punch-drunk fool, I dropped the tray. The glasses shattered at my feet, and all I could do was smile.
I was completely fucked, bending over and banging my head into the counter, collecting tiny little nicks all over my hands in my mad rush to clean the mess up. I dropped shards and slivers onto the tray.
“Just a sec, guys, and I’ll grab you something,” I called up to the counter, thankful that I could hide my embarrassment for a moment.
“Jonas can help us,” Uriel said.
I was grateful, my cheeks still flushed from Mia’s little wave and smile. It was impossible not to think back on the night before, and my memories had turned me into a total buffoon. I kept hidden. Down on my knees, I pulled a small brush and dustpan from the ledge to sweep up the last of the little gray slivers. A few clung to the cracks in the tiles, no matter the angle or force with which I wielded the brush. I stayed down there, pretending what I was doing was useful, until a natural tint had returned to my cheeks.
“I would be happy to help,” Jonas said, shuffling past me. “Was kann ich Ihnen bringen?”
“Jonas, you’re still as sharp as a tack. You know exactly what I want,” Uriel cooed. It wasn’t quite flirtatious, but it was honey-coated, the way any beautiful woman might talk to a charming elder.
“Ah yes, but not her,” Jonas said, smiling at Mia. She looked at me for help, her face perplexed, but when I caught sight of her eyes, I reverted to that dumb, thirsty ape, dying for another swim.
“I’m not quite sure,” she said. “I’ve never had German before.”
“Just get her the same, Jonas,” Uriel laughed.
I sliced my hand across my neck to indicate what a poor decision that was, but Jonas had already hopped off to the kitchen. I shrugged an apology to Mia and noticed Uriel staring at me, the way a parent does when they’re trying to determine the authenticity of an excuse they’ve just been given. I turned to empty the broken glass into the trash.
“Owen!” Uriel called. “Be a dear, get us each a drink?”
I cringed at the knowing tone of her voice. If she knew what I was thinking, I was certain Michael must have too. I began mentally preparing for a severe tongue-lashing. I could already feel the fires of eternal damnation lapping at the soles of my worn-out shoes. I grabbed two empty glasses from behind the counter and placed them under taps three and five. I tried to look cool as I did it, like someone in a movie, but I wasn’t particularly successful. The beers at least came out alright, with not much of a foam head.
“So, Owen. You’re still here, huh? How’d that happen?” Uriel’s perfectly manicured nails tapped the side of her glass.
“Uh . . . Michael decided that I still had a few things to learn before I was ready to go.”
“You were supposed to leave?” Mia looked up from her beer.
“Believe it or not, he was due out the same day you came in,” Uriel said. “Funny how things work out, huh?” Her mischievous banter made me supremely uncomfortable. The pink mountain ranges on my forearms started to tremble, and an avalanche of nerves spread up my arms and down into my body, filling every vein with tremors of anxiety and rattling the blood close enough to my skin for a full body flush. I was a bright red beacon, a fucking clown nose with a name-tag, staring at Uriel, almost literally caught red-handed.
“Well, I mean . . .” I couldn’t reveal to Mia that I’d stayed here exclusively to get to know her. I wracked my brain for something that could save me from that pathetic truth. “Honestly, he was right, though. I hadn’t really come to terms with how I landed here until last night. It was really, uh . . .”
“Emotional,” Mia interjected, the super-heroine I desperately needed.
“Yeah,” I said, my skin cooling. “Yeah, it was really heavy and powerful. I think that when we meet again, Michael will see that.” I grabbed a rag from the counter and wiped at the taps to avoid where the conversation might be going, but Uriel was enjoying herself too much.
“And that’s in just a few days, isn’t it?” Uriel smirked. “You’ve got, what, about four days left?”
“You’re leaving in four days?” Mia’s voice was calm, but her eyes told a different story. A confounding rush of emotions dueled it out in my stomach: elation over the clear fact that she didn’t want me leave, and intense disappointment with myself for putting her in emotional duress.
Brandishing two lovingly-prepared plates of Jägerschnitzel, Jonas burst through the kitchen door just in time to put an end to Uriel’s inquisition. For possibly the only time in recorded history, I was saved by breaded pork cutlets.
“Now this is a treat, fräulein. You will be very pleased. This was the favorite dish of meine Frau, and she had a very refined palate.” He was practically beaming as he propped his elbows on the counter to watch his customers dig into their food.
“It’s absolutely wonderful,” Uriel exclaimed between bites. “When you finally leave I’ll be so disappointed. I’ll have to find good German food all over again.”
“Ah, but you have all of the records at your disposal, so you can do that easily. I cannot be the only old man in this city who knows how to cook,” Jonas laughed heartily.
“You know, Jonas, you’ve been here a long time,” Uriel said. “I can talk to Gabriel. I think you’ve more than done your time here.”
“Ah yes. Well, that is very kind of you. But I am not so sure. I still have things I am atoning for.”
“What kinds of things?” Mia asked, her eyes brimming with curiosity as she tore at her schnitzel.
“Oh no, that’s not the kind of story that needs to be told right now,” Uriel said.
The old man wasn’t embarrassed, but he was reserved with his past, like most of us in the In-Between. Thinking about it tended to bring back a flood of memories you hadn’t quite dealt with. As I’d learned the night before, it could rattle you to your very core. When Jonas first told me his story, twelve years ago, he’d become a sobbing mess—and that had been after twenty-three years of penance.
“Uriel,” he said. “I do not mind. If das Mädchen wants to hear my story, I can tell it to her.” I pulled two more glasses from behind the counter, filling and placing them both at his side. I poured one for myself as well. Even knowing what was coming, I was not prepared to hear it again.
13
‘‘Jadem das Seine. To each what he deserves.”
Jonas could never forget those words, even if they were scrubbed from his eyes, brain, and heart. He saw them every day, in great iron lettering above every building he entered. There was no escape.
“I was born in Leipzig just after the end of des Großen Krieges. My father returned from the Great War and took a job at Leipziger Baumwoll Spinnerei, the local cotton mill. My mother was so happy that he had come home in one piece.” It was that very night that Jonas was conceived. “They were absolutely wonderful parents; I do not believe I could have been more loved.”
Though his country was slow to recover from the first World War, the cotton mill afforded his father enough to care for the family; his mother only occasionally had to clean the homes of the wealthy. His father promised to provide them both with the life he never had as a child, as all fathers do, and it was rare that he would collect a paycheck without stopping at the shops on the way home.
“I grew to love the end of the
week, when my father would arrive home with his pay packet, and just for me, a big bag of Gummibärchen. I would devour them before anyone could stop me. My mother warned me that I would never grow up to be strong, that I would spoil my dinner and lose my teeth.” His father would laugh, saying it was better that he experienced the little gelatin bears than the big hairy things that the Russians worshipped. His mother would sigh, serving up a dinner young Jonas would barely touch.
“I grew up strong, though, just as they both wanted. I received top marks in my schooling, and my physical fitness was among the best of any boy in the city.” It was often suggested that he should join the growing military, which had been limited after the war, but Jonas never thought himself a soldier. “I loved Leipzig. I could not imagine a need to ever leave, especially for something as horrendous as war. I saw the veterans who had not been quite so lucky as my father. Men with missing limbs, with grotesque faces, men who blamed all their troubles on those who were different from them. It was not the life for me.”
Even if the regimented life of the military had appealed to him, he had already met Anneliese. “She lived two streets over, with ein Soldat for a father. The war left him confined to a wheelchair, with no way to support the family. Her mother did things she was not proud of to keep food on the table. We played together as children; I would share my Gummibärchen when I could sneak them from the house.”
Even that young, he knew she was something special. She became the very embodiment of perfection in his eyes. She was intelligent, caring, and beautiful too. As they grew into adolescence, he often found her in the city’s center, sitting under a tree with a book. He was swept away as her eyes greedily consumed every word from the page. Jonas would stop by and sit, sharing an apple, or a sandwich, or even Gummibärchen he’d purchased with the geld from delivering the newspapers early in the morning. She always gratefully accepted, smiling at him in a way that could have melted the harshest of winter snows. He truly believed that no other creature on the planet was created in the same way as Anneliese.
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