Your Perfect Year(11)
“You can start blowing up balloons. If you’re quick, you can get at least fifty done!”
Fifteen minutes later, Hannah screeched to a halt in her old Twingo outside Simon’s apartment on Papenhuder Strasse. She threw the driver’s door open and was halfway out when she almost strangled herself on her long scarf, which had wound itself around the steering wheel.
“Haste makes waste, Hannah,” she told herself as she tried to release the stubborn fabric from the turn-signal lever. Ten seconds later she had freed herself and got out of the car—this time making every effort to act calmly. She slammed the car door shut and walked up to the redbrick building where Simon lived.
She rang the bell marked “Klamm.” And rang again. A third try; this time, long and forcefully. Nothing happened. There was no response to a fourth, fifth, and sixth ring of the bell. Wasn’t Simon at home? Where was he? Hadn’t he told her that he wasn’t feeling well and was going to be tucked up in bed with a hot-water bottle?
Or—the thought crept through her with unexpected fright—maybe Simon wasn’t tied up with a “cold,” but with something else. Could he be lying under the covers being warmed up by something—or someone—that wasn’t a rubber bottle filled with hot water?
No. No question. Simon just wasn’t the type. If it came to a spontaneous fling, he simply wasn’t . . . spontaneous enough. It had taken him weeks to ask her out on a date; he definitely wasn’t a man to rush things.
But what if it wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment fling, but someone he’d known for longer? Hannah tried to ignore the small, malicious voice in her head. It was a crazy notion. Everything had been fine between her and Simon until he lost his job, and in any case, there was no way he would get up to something like that just as she was embarking on her new career. Simon had a sense of decency; that wouldn’t be his style at all.
“You’ve got such an imagination,” her mother, Sybille, would say in such situations. Hannah had inherited her mainly positive outlook on life, while her father, Bernhard, was more like Simon, tending to see a bandit behind every bush. That was another of those turns of phrase that Sybille used, laughing, whenever her husband immersed himself in conspiracy theories about their peaceful neighborhood of Rahlstedt.
Bernhard Marx was convinced the Müllers had something against him because of a chance meeting in the supermarket when his neighbor’s greeting hadn’t been as friendly as usual—only to find out a few days later that Herr Müller had lost his glasses and simply hadn’t recognized him.
Another time, Hannah’s father was convinced that the mailman was holding back a package he was waiting for urgently, out of pure maliciousness. A short while later, Hannah’s mother had phoned the sender and discovered that they had not yet put the package in the mail. Sybille would complain to her daughter with exaggerated outrage about this “impossible man” who was slowly driving her “utterly mad.”
Hannah cut short her musing about her mismatched parents and pressed the bell a seventh time. And then decided that she had waited for longer than was reasonable and now had every right to use her key and see for herself what had happened to her boyfriend.
Her anger was tempered by an uneasy feeling of concern as she hurried up the stairs to his apartment. Because if Simon was not answering his landline, his cell phone, or the doorbell, either he really wasn’t there, had turned deaf overnight—or was dead.
5
Jonathan
Monday, January 1, 9:20 a.m.
After devouring a vanilla protein shake and lean turkey slices on two gluten-free, low-carb rolls, Jonathan sat in his comfy leather armchair by the large bay window in his study, enjoying the wintery view of Innocentia Park.
But the scene was littered not only with the debris of the New Year’s Eve celebrations but also with the overflowing waste from his own and the whole neighborhood’s recycling bins—they were only emptied every other Monday. The recycling had last been collected on the Monday before Christmas, but it now looked like the whole collection crew had been lying together under the Christmas tree singing “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” Sure, everyone was entitled to take some time off for the holidays—but this just would not do.
Shaking his head, Jonathan N. Grief rose from his armchair, walked over to sit at his desk, and opened his laptop. A few minutes later he had called up the website of the Department of Public Works, clicked on the “Contact” button, and begun to write.
Dear Sir or Madam,
As the new year begins, I would like to take this opportunity to inform you that the state of the recycling containers in our beautiful city is currently unacceptable. The containers are overflowing—hardly an attractive advertisement for Hamburg!
I am aware that doubling up on collections to cope with public holidays can cause a certain backlog in emptying the bins, but I would really appreciate it if you would find an emergency solution in this case, one that would benefit both the citizens and taxpayers of the city and your employees.
Yours sincerely,
Jonathan N. Grief
(Resident of Innocentiastrasse, with full bins on my doorstep)
He scanned the text once again, then sent it off with a nod. Yes, very good. He who hesitates is lost. He liked to deal with things methodically and quickly; productivity of this kind gave him a warm sense of virtue.