by René Appel
When he reached the top tread and raised his right foot to feel for a next one, I took a deep breath and shrieked gibberish at him as loudly as I could while shaking the ladder violently. He struggled to hold on, but I shoved my hands between the treads and beat against his chest. He swallowed a cry and lost his balance. I went on screaming as he fell. He hit his head and tumbled backward down the steps before landing with a heavy thump on the bare wooden floor in front of his own apartment door, one flight below.
I stopped shouting and, panting heavily, peered down at him.
His door opened, and his wife appeared. She saw him and then, astonished, looked up at me. “What—?”
“He fell,” I whispered. “Is he dead?”
She dropped to her knees and touched his throat. Then she rose, both hands covering her mouth.
“Dead?” I asked again.
She nodded, her face etched with horror.
“Go back inside,” I said. “I’ll call the police.”
Not waiting to calm down, I dialed the emergency number and used the same overexcited, frightened tone with which I had talked to the owner. After hanging up, I went to stand at my window. I drew a deep breath and was not dissatisfied to note the profound serenity that came over me. The clock on the sill told me that it was three minutes after six. Eleven minutes had gone by since the last time I had stood there.
The park was still dark, though daylight was already peeking out between the treetops. In the distance, a siren sounded. I waited, and it seemed as though—if I paid close enough attention—I could see the night hide itself beneath the benches beside the trees. As if, right before my eyes, it disappeared behind the walls of the park.
SOUL MATES
by Christine Otten
Tuindorp Oostzaan
They were on our doorstep at ten after six this morning. I know the exact time because a fraction of a second before the bell rang—one short, two longs—I woke up and looked at my iPhone. 6:10. It was just getting light. I knew it was the cops. I mean, you just know. I heard Mom’s bedroom door creak, her footsteps on the stairs, the murmur of voices. So I splashed some water on my face, sprayed my pits with Axe, and got dressed. I was calm. At times like this, my emotions just sort of freeze. I grabbed the Prada jacket Miriam gave me, slipped my bare feet into my Pumas, and went down. I’m a good boy, I am. I tried to ignore Mom’s expression; if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s that exhausted, disappointed look she gets in her eyes. Can’t I ever have a moment’s peace? Instead, I focused on the crew-cut heads of the two detectives standing in the doorway, their hands deep in the pockets of their ugly, cheap H&M jackets, and said, cheerfully as I could manage, “Good morning, gentlemen, and what can we do for you today?”
You could see them thinking, This is one polite Algerian. You always gotta stay a step ahead of them. Be the strongest, the smartest, don’t let them figure you out, and most important: keep your anger under control. I learned that at kickboxing. Not too long ago, I got pulled over on my moped on the Meteorenweg because I was supposedly driving too fast. I was heading to the Mandarijnenstraat to deliver six frikandels, three croquettes, a deep-fried bami slice, a couple of kebabs, and fifteen euros worth of french fries with mayo. I guess they were having a party. So, anyway, I was in a hurry, nobody wants soggy fries and lukewarm frikandels. I don’t understand how anyone can stomach that disgusting haram shit in the first place, but whatever, not ours to reason why. The point is, I got pulled over. Must have been the cop’s first week on the job. “Sir, you’re driving much too fast.” We both knew it was bullshit, I wasn’t doing more than fifteen miles an hour, twenty tops, we both knew the only reason he flagged me down is I look like a Moroccan—a Marrow Khan in Tuindorp Oostzaan, I’m a poet and I don’t know it!—but whatever. He whips out his little citation book to write me up, and I say, “I’m terribly sorry, officer, but my grandma is sick, she’s in really bad shape, and I don’t want her to be alone, that’s why I’m in a rush.”
When he hears me talking in complete sentences without a hint of an accent, his eyes practically pop out of his head. “Oh?” he says.
“She lives right around the corner here, on the Zonneplein.” Which is 100 percent true: Mom’s mother lives on the Zonneplein, upstairs from a Turkish grocery.
So the cop waves me on, and that’s the end of it. Which is why I say: you have to stay a step ahead of them. Don’t give ’em the chance to fuck with you.
* * *
Anyway, I had a good idea why the detectives were at our door. See, the Chink’s been missing for five days now and the Mercury’s been shuttered, although the old gook normally opens up at noon ’cause he don’t miss a chance to cash in on the lunch trade. He didn’t tell me he was gonna be gone: no e-mail, no text, nothing.
When I showed up for work five days ago and he wasn’t there, I tried his doorbell—he lives upstairs from his snack bar/Chinese takeaway, see. I was only inside his apartment one time, and the stink of grease made me want to hurl. He really needs to do something about his ventilation.
So I got no response when I rang, and there wasn’t any lights on I could see. Pissed me off, because it was payday, and man does not live by tips alone. For the last couple months, the old guy and me have had a little side deal. “Call it hush money,” is the way he put it. I never asked for nothing extra. Didn’t need to. The old guy read in my eyes that I knew the score. I mean, I’m not stupid. He never should have asked me to fetch that box of croquettes from the freezer, the fool.
All those bricks of brown and white powder hidden among the frozen snacks and fries! Street value? I have no idea. Jesus. I mean, you want to play gangster, at least you could be a little careful about it. Fine, well, anyway, the way I saw it, we had us what you call a win-win situation there. And I could use the extra cash. Him too, apparently. The Mercury Snackbar on the Mercuriusplein ain’t exactly a gold mine, if you catch my drift. Until he gets the windows washed and loses those disgusting orange plastic stools and the greasy Formica countertop and does something about the ventilation, he pretty much needs a little sideline if he wants to stay afloat, you see what I’m saying?
I understand the Chink. He’s gotta think about his future. He’s not gonna wind up some old geezer wasting away in that pitiful apartment on the Mercuriusplein, not when he could live out his golden years in Malaysia or Hong Kong or Singapore or wherever the hell he comes from. Am I right? So I figured he emptied out his bank accounts and was having himself a roll in the hay with some Chinese hottie in a massage parlor off in Whereverland. I was actually kind of proud of him. I wasn’t worried about our deal, or about the cops implicating me in his drug trade, because there was absolutely no paper trail or anything else pointing my way. I’m the delivery boy for the Mercury Snackbar, and that is all I am.
Except, with those two cops standing there awkwardly at the door, I began to feel just a wee bit sweaty.
The older of the two—you could already see the male-pattern baldness making inroads on his temples—cleared his throat. “We’re sorry to bother you so early, but I’m afraid we have bad news. May we come in?”
No way, I thought. But Mom automatically took a step back. I could see her fear in the slump of her shoulders inside her pink robe. She grabbed my face and started whining like a wounded animal. “Where did I go wrong, Armin? You were always such a sweet little boy!” I was afraid she was about to keel over, so I slung an arm around her to keep her on her feet. I mean, I am the man of the house. But I guess I can’t blame her for projecting her shit onto me.
“Calm down, Ma,” I said. “Don’t worry. Let’s hear what the officers have to say.”
To make a long story short, the Chink was dead. At least the detectives thought it was the Chink they’d found hacked to bits and the bits deep-fried, “considering how close the dumpster in the Maanstraat is to the Mercury Snackbar, and his contacts in the Chinese tongs.” The only thing they could say for sure at this point was that what they had found
was definitely human remains, though they were in such a state they weren’t sure it would ever be possible to positively identify the victim. Somebody from the neighborhood had called it in. His little Staffordshire terrier had started barking and howling when they came in sight of the dumpster. The smell was pretty ripe, they said.
The older detective must have seen the dismay in Mom’s eyes, ’cause all of a sudden he put a hand on her shoulder and said they were 99 percent sure it was the Chink, and they hoped the techs would come up with like a molecule of DNA that would lock in that last 1 percent. No such thing as a perfect crime, he said, puffing out his chest, “there’s usually a loose end or two, we know that from experience,” looking like he was starring in an episode of CSI, like he was some kind of a big shot. “We don’t want you folks to worry now, ma’am, do we? Tuindorp Oostzaan’s such a quiet little neighborhood, where nothing ever happens.” I could hear the contempt in his voice. On the downtown side of the IJ, they think we’re all hicks up here in Amsterdam-North.
So I told you I sort of freeze at times like this, right? My friends don’t call me Ice for nothing—after the old rapper/actor with the pigtail from Law & Order, you know? Maybe the story was a little too crazy to believe. Even Mom just stood there crying silently instead of busting out screaming. But I realized pretty quick that the cops weren’t out to tie me to whatever had gone down. When you’re in their headlights, you know it. They were pretty chill about the whole thing. Just said they’d appreciate whatever I could tell them about the Chink, seeing how I was the Mercury’s scooter boy and all—I wanted to correct them and say moped boy, but I didn’t think I ought to interrupt—and I saw the old guy pretty much every day, so maybe I could help them with their inquiries. I told them I thought the Chink was out of town for a couple days, he said something about needing a break, checking out the tulips at the Keukenhof, yadda yadda yadda, and running a Chinese takeout/snack bar in Tuindorp Oostzaan ain’t exactly what you call a sinecure, right? Meanwhile, the little gears in my head are spinning overtime, you know what I mean?
See, something told me maybe the deep-fried dead guy was not the Chink, after all.
Maybe I watch too many cop shows. On TV, nothing ever turns out the way you think it will, right?
But there was something else. Which is why I’m writing all this down, not as evidence but as a sort of testimony, in case something happens to me. For Mom’s sake, you with me? Ain’t nobody I love more than her, not even Miriam.
* * *
I don’t know if I can call Miriam my girlfriend, exactly, since she’s married and all that. She and her husband and their two little girls live in one of those villas on the Kometensingel, a fancy place next door to the house where our family doctor used to live. Once upon a time, Mom was the cleaning lady there. So one night they order a double portion of chow mein from the Mercury. I deliver it, Miriam answers the door, and the rest is history.
Trust me, Miriam is not just some ordinary chick. She is what I’d call a perfect ten. From our very first date, though, she told me she was never ever gonna divorce her husband, ’cause her own parents split when she was fifteen and she wasn’t gonna put her girls through that kind of trauma. That’s class, am I right?
Her husband’s a lung doctor in some hospital up north. His name’s Ed. He’s forty-four. (Just so you know: I’m twenty-four.) I only know him from Miriam’s stories and his Facebook page. Soon as the detectives left, I went online: his most recent photo was posted yesterday, from a bar, right after the Ajax–Sparta game. He was grinning into the lens with this smug doctor expression on his face and a glass of beer in his hand, an Ajax scarf draped around his neck, like, See how normal I am? You could almost hear André Hazes singing in the background. That’s why he bought that house in Tuindorp Oostzaan—to prove what an ordinary guy he is. Miriam told me his whole bio. Ed’s dad worked in the metal foundry on the Distelweg; the five of them lived in this dreary little bungalow on the Pomonastraat. Ed was a nerd, so after high school they told him he could go to college and he grabbed the chance. Props to him and his family, I gotta give them respect. If my loser of a father had half the guts Ed’s dad had, I could’ve . . . nah, never mind, I don’t want to go throwing stones.
Anyway, when Miriam met Ed he was a member of like a fraternity—you know what I mean, a group of students who were ashamed of their origins and put on high-class accents like they were part of the royal family. At first, she said, she thought it was kind of cute, that Ed was trying so hard to fit in. She told me she saw right through his act and decided she could help him “grow into himself.” I mean, bullshit, right—and she knew it was bullshit even at the time. But a woman like Miriam’s gotta have a project. Sometimes I think maybe I’m her newest project, but at the same time I think, What the fuck? I’ll tell you what: she’s my project. I love her.
Miriam and me come from two different worlds. Her mother was something high up at the university, and her father was a bigwig at Nestlé. When she was growing up, they moved to a new country every couple of years: Egypt, Canada, Nigeria, South Africa, Russia, Morocco. I mean, she’s a woman of the world. Sometimes she tells me, “Ed’s a real Tuindorper, totally white-bread. But you, you’ve got that Algerian blood.” She has this tone when she says it, like, This is heavy, man. And the look in her eye, yowza. I don’t know exactly what it all means, but so what? The bottom line is, it’s pretty great with us between the sheets, if you follow me.
But I digress.
I love Miriam, you with me? And I know she’s stuck between a rock and a hard place. Hey, put yourself in her position: your hubby’s cheating on you with some pretty young intern while you sit home and look after a couple of kids. That’d make you nuts, am I right?
So, okay, this is where the story really begins.
* * *
From the first time we ever did it—Ed works irregular shifts and I’m pretty flexible, so she texts me when it’s okay to come over—she’s spilled her guts to me. I’m not so dumb I believe in love at first sight, but something just clicked between Miriam and me. “Soul mates,” she calls us. That’s such a Miriam thing to say. “We’re both outsiders,” she tells me. “We understand each other.” It don’t bother me she’s fifteen years older. Just the opposite: I think older women are sexy, they know exactly what they want in bed.
Shit, I’m getting off track again. Focus, Armin!
So Ed’s fucking this intern, right, and Miriam finds out about it. She confronts him. He goes all guilty, all pitiful, all I’m sorry, you’re the one I love, it don’t mean nothing, and he begs her to forgive him. And she does, the dope.
Okay, fine, I know what you’re thinking: she’s cheating on him too. To which I say, Well, who started it? Miriam was lonely. Can you blame her for taking comfort from a guy like me? A guy who at least listens to her?
As my mom’s only son, trust me, I have learned how to listen.
So Miriam forgives Ed. But meanwhile, Ed goes right on nailing this intern every chance he gets. They’re snorting coke—possibly coke they get from the Chink, what do I know?—and Ed don’t realize right away the woman he’s boinking is the devil in disguise. But then, see, the bitch commences to blackmail him. If you don’t leave your wife and kids, I’ll tell the hospital administrator what you’ve been up to. I’ll say you forced me into it. Abuse of power. Shit like that. So you’ve got a doctor riding the coke train and banging an intern: Ed would definitely lose his job and probably his medical license or whatever you call it. I got all this from Miriam.
So once again, Ed fesses up, only this time Miriam plays it smart. She “forgives” him, she says, but now she has a plan.
“You’re my sweet revenge,” she tells me, this one time after we do it. We’re smoking cigarettes in bed. Ed’s working a double shift, and the girls are at his parents’. “You’re my secret weapon.”
Tell you the truth, that comment shook me up a little. It wasn’t so much what she said but the way she said it, the b
itterness in her voice, and the way she looked . . . like I wasn’t even there, like I wasn’t lying right beside her in the bed.
Anyway, Miriam doesn’t trust Ed no more, but she doesn’t want to leave him because of the kids. So she goes all detective on his ass: when he’s in the shower, she checks his e-mail and his texts. And that’s when the shit really hits the fan.
I’ll kill Miriam if you don’t divorce her.
You’d better get rid of your daughters. My patience is running out.
You’re mine!!!
I hate Miriam.
Miriam’s a cunt and has to die.
And then there are Ed’s wimpy responses:
Calm down, sweetheart.
I need more time.
I love you.
This is all pretty recent, by the way. I was with Miriam just last night, and she brought me up to speed.
So now I gotta be careful what I write. I don’t want to screw anybody over until I’m 100 percent sure. I know what it’s like to be blamed for shit I didn’t do. I mean, how many times have we had the cops at the door because so-and-so made a crack and everybody’s all, It must’ve been Armin who done it?
How am I supposed to prove I didn’t, right?
I mean, come on!
* * *
Look, I figure you’d probably freak if you found out your husband’s lover wanted you dead, right? So I told Miriam maybe she ought to report it. Which, by the way, sounded really weird coming out of my mouth. Report it? Like the cop on the corner is your friend, right? But I just didn’t trust the situation. I was worried about Miriam.
“This is private,” she said. “I don’t want the girls to hear anything about it. I’ll deal with it.” And then she climbed on top of me and drove me out of my gourd with her tongue. We fucked like we never fucked before, like . . . well, like wild animals. It was like Miriam squeezed herself inside of me. She bit me, licked me, raked my back with her long sharp nails, sucked my balls—Jesus, I thought I was about to black out—and meanwhile she whispered all this shit I figured was meant to stir me up and make our coming even more explosive, words and sentences I didn’t really absorb—you know what I mean, we all say weird stuff when we’re excited. I mean, I get it that Miriam wished the bitch was dead and I’m not a baby, I’ve got a pretty rich imagination myself, if you get my drift, I’ve downloaded some illegal videos—you know, where Somebody A really hurts Somebody B, hits her, beats her with whips, cuts her with razors, tortures her—snuff films, I mean, that shit’s fucked up.