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“No!” The panicked squeak of my voice makes me wince.
“No?” Philipp frowns. “Why not?”
“Because…” I feel nauseous as I think of what I’ve done. My throat locks as I swallow the lump. Because it doesn’t help to freak out. With quivering ribs, I catch my breath, and then it all bubbles out of me.
Philipp doesn’t interrupt me—fortunately. Only his facial expression. It speaks entire encyclopedias.
After I confess to him how I slammed the beer bottle against Kevin’s skull, I have to pause. Compose me.
For the first time in minutes, Philipp takes the floor. “Is that why you don’t want me to call 911? Because you’re afraid you… killed him?”
Although I’m still sick to my stomach, I have to laugh. Which, in turn, hurts so much that I lose my mirth. “No. Unfortunately not…”
Then I tell him about the first moment when I really thought I had slain Kevin. For he slumped before me like one of my failed cheese soufflés. But no sooner had I picked myself up and fled into the hallway, he came after me. Cut off my way to the apartment door, so that I had to save myself in the bathroom.
My agony as his screaming and cursing at the door gave way to a threatening silence. Watching the knob shuddering into motion as Kevin worked the emergency opening from outside. Then my idea, born of desperation, pushing the washing machine in front of the door.
“Damn!” Philipp raises his eyebrows. “The washing machine? I didn’t think you were capable of that.”
His praise caresses my wounded soul. Gives me strength for the rest of my report.
I describe how Kevin opened the bathroom latch. Pushed the washing machine aside with the door millimeter by millimeter. That I, in my distress, saw no other way out than to flee through the bathroom window.
I leave out my panic that the ivy growing up the outside wall would not be able to hold my weight. Jump in my narrative to how I found myself on the street in the pouring rain with no cell phone, wallet, keys, or shoes.
My confession that I didn’t know where to go only comes haltingly over my lips. Most of all, I omit my hurry through the pitch-black forest, where, thanks to the cold, I managed to slip off the engagement ring and throw it into the leaves. And that—because I didn’t find Pauline—I even briefly considered seeking refuge with Kevin’s parents. Philipp doesn’t need to know that either.
“And then you walked all the way across town to get here?” Philipp doesn’t seem to want to believe it. “Without shoes? In this nasty cold?” He bends down and takes my right foot in his hand. “Indeed, you did,” he says after a glance at my nylons, which are torn to shreds. Then he shakes his head. “But why exactly don’t you want me to call 911 now? Kevin survived, after all.” Saying the last sentence, he looks like he’d love to fix that flaw himself.
I contort my face, which—ouch!—I would have refrained from better. “It’s very simple,” I explain. “Kevin’s best friend, Pascal, is a police superintendent at the Mosbach police station. His girlfriend Tabea works as a nurse in the emergency room. And today, of all days, they’re both on duty.”
Philipp shrugs. “Yeah, so?”
“You haven’t seen Kevin…” The lump in my throat swells, and I slap my hands in front of my eyes. “The bottle… It was a direct hit. He was bleeding like a pig. There’s a guarantee that ambulance, paramedics, and even the police will be involved by now.”
“Oh shit.” Philip’s features express his dissatisfaction unflatteringly. “Anyhow: your injury needs to be taken care of.”
I squint down at my bloody hand and can’t think of an argument to refute his statement.
“All right.” Philipp seems to have come to a decision. “Wouldn’t be the first time…” He looks at me with his head tilted for the duration of a blink or two, then I feel myself being swept up again with momentum.
“What are you up to?” I ask as I cling to his broad shoulders.
He carries me past the grand piano into the first-floor hallway. “As I said,” he utters with a growl. As he does, he pushes open the door to the first tattoo parlor with his foot and turns on the light with his elbow. “Your injury needs to be taken care of.”
“With a tattoo?” At the same moment the squeaked-out question crosses my lips, I go bright red with shame for it.Of course, he’s not going to do that!
Thankfully, Philipp overrides my hysteria with an amused-sounding snort. Then, contrary to my expectations, he doesn’t put me down on the treatment couch—but places me in the corner of the room. “Can you stand still? If need be, slide down to the floor.”
Leaning against the wall, I watch him prepare the room as if he really wants to tattoo me. And it’s not until he bends over the couch to wrap the pad with clear plastic wrap that I notice he’s wearing nothing at all except a towel wrapped around his hips.
Although the sight of the muscle play under watercolor-paintbox-colored skin should make my blood pressure shoot up, I remain strangely unmoved.
It must be the shock, I diagnose. And it seems to be more severe than I would have expected.
“Well then…” Suddenly Philipp is standing in front of me, holding out his hands. “Do you want me to carry you again, or can you walk?”
“I’ll try,” I reply more confidently than I thought, gratefully taking in Philipp’s supportive fingers at my elbow. After even somehow getting up onto the treatment couch on my own, I lean exhaustedly against the crackling foil wrapping of the erect backrest.
