Everything’s Fine, Marcel
World War III had broken out inside my skull.
When I finally forced my glued-shut eyes open and rolled over, I found Lena’s naked ass in my face, her three-legged cat sitting on it and purring. Somewhere in my head a general was calling in artillery strikes. The light came apart into colors. My stomach filed its formal complaint.
Empty vodka and beer bottles everywhere. I groaned—something closer to a grunt, really—and tried to sit up, which nearly sent me off the edge of the bed. I caught myself with one bare ass cheek on the nightstand, dislodging the green glass alarm clock in the process. I watched it fall in what felt like actual slow motion, trailing colors and smells and small melodic fragments courtesy of whatever was still metabolizing in my system. Just before it hit the laminate and exploded into a hundred pieces, I could swear it winked at me and whispered: Everything’s fine, Marcel.
The noise woke the cat, which turned and hissed at me with the purest distilled malice I have ever received from a living creature. I spat in its face and stood up. Who the fuck buys a glass alarm clock.
Dude, will you quit making such a fucking racket.
Peter was draped across the red, historically significant couch in the specific boneless arrangement of the severely hung-over, clothes distributed somewhere across the apartment, making no effort to conceal the morning situation he was presenting to the room—pointing it directly at me with full patriotic salute. I could have raised a flag on that thing. The general in my skull dropped his trousers and returned the gesture. Get dressed, you animal,
I told him. I’m going to go throw up.
Peter. Like the guy from Heidi, only with an I instead of an E. American style.
Idiot. Peter-with-an-I had been shipped over from California some years prior—standard-issue slimy blond beach boy, tanned, shell necklace, swordfish tattoo, funding his gym habit and takeaway addiction by working as a lifeguard and surf instructor. Genuinely revolting. Small consolation: the cock was nothing to write home about, which represents some cosmic justice.
I rubbed my eyes and discovered I’d deployed about half my infantry beside the toilet rather than into it. I noted this briefly, attributed it to the ongoing bombardment upstairs, and shuffled to the kitchen for cornflakes. Oh god, did I cheat on Stefan with both of you asocial pricks again?
A voice like a crow with blocked sinuses. Lena.
Lena: studying something, beloved daughter-in-law material, proud mother of two lovable disaster-cats—Eva, whose primary skill was falling over, and Gobbels, too fat to sit upright, wedged in the yellow corner looking like an overcooked football, yowling exclusively when you threw a sneaker at him to verify signs of life.
Yeah, probably,
I said. Cry about it. Your husband’s a total prick anyway.
She picked up the hand mirror and the apartment’s only twenty-euro note and did a line off it while I stared in genuine happiness at my cinnamon cornflakes. I could have embraced the entire world. Each flake a small perfect thing. The milk had gone lumpy and clotted. Feature, not bug. At least he’s a prick with money,
she said.
She made a face, looked at me with that drilling look—the kind that stops a spoon midway to your mouth. Then the sneeze hit her: full-body, atomic, a detonation of genuinely spectacular force, and the entire expensive pile dispersed itself across the kitchen table. Are you fucking kidding me?! I’m allergic to cinnamon, you asshole! Keep that shit away from me!
She hurled the mirror more or less in my direction, collected the three-legged cat, and went to handle the situation in the bedroom. The door slammed. Ugh, what does it even look like in here?!
Then silence. Then, shortly after, the sound of a moaning Lena and the softly sympathetic wailing of Eva.
I gathered my clothes, offered a brief salute to Peter’s morning colors, and got out of Lena’s pink chemical carnival as fast as my legs would carry me. The sun hit me directly in the face. At the far end of the street I could see the TV Tower, which reminded me of Peter’s morning surprise in a way I immediately wished it hadn’t. I put on my overpriced designer sunglasses and walked the avenue down between its thick green trees. Just before ten. Late for work again.
Taxi!