Page 2 of Anatomy of a Killer
‘You all right, Ann? You’re so quiet today.’ Dear, sweet, simple Michelle. How concerned she sounds. She’s in her mid-forties, her hair dyed a yellowish colour, and she’s always plastered with make-up, which at the start of her shift makes her look at least five years younger, but later, when it has gathered in the wrinkles around her eyes, has the opposite effect.
‘Sure, everything’s fine,’ I say, for no reason poking my finger into the container with the tomatoes.
Michelle nudges me in the side to cheer me up. ‘I find Christmas depressing too, if that’s what’s bothering you. For three whole days, everyone behaving as if all was right with the world. Peace, love and light a candle. Yeah, right.’ Michelle is a single mother of two teenage boys and a grown-up daughter. Her eldest hasn’t celebrated Christmas with her for years, and the boys are with their father this year. ‘What about yours?’
She means my daughter. I’d called her Diana, because I couldn’t think of anything better when I was put on the spot. Diana, after the Roman goddess of hunting– not, as Michelle thinks, after the dead princess. But basically it doesn’t matter what my daughter’s called. She happened when I was eighteen, happy-go-lucky and naïve, one of those silly young girls who’s just careless. Now I’m twenty-four and I have to earn money for her, just as everyone here at Big Murphy’s has to earn money for someone. All I say is, ‘With her father too,’ and fiddle with the tomatoes again. I don’t want to look at Michelle.
‘What are you giving her?’ is the next question, and the first thing that comes to mind is: ‘A trampoline.’
Just like the trampoline I got for Christmas when I was Diana’s age. The box the frame came in was brown, and so huge that it would have needed several rolls of paper to wrap it up. So my father simply tied a large red ribbon around it. As soon as it was spring and the sun had sucked up the last of the dampness the snow had left in the soil, he would construct it in the garden with his fingers that were all thumbs, the touching clumsiness of an academic. He would position it so that when he sat at the desk in his study he only had to peer out of the window to see me jumping. I liked my present, I really did. But then, in the depths of winter, I couldn’t do anything with it. So I asked him to take the metal rods out of the box, then I climbed in and put the lid on. My father found this interesting, astonishing, strange. With that look of his which reflects his need to analyse everything, he asked me what was going through my head when I lay in my box, as quiet as a mouse, perfectly still and with my eyes closed. He thought it might have something to do with my mother. And that I was trying to find out what it was like to lie in a coffin.
‘But Dad,’ I countered, ‘this isn’t a coffin. It’s just a box and I’m lying in it.’
‘Great!’ Michelle looks really excited, then a second later her face assumes a touch of sadness. I know she’s worried her sons might take after their father, who’s already twice served time for assault. ‘Enjoy it while Diana’s still young.’ Sighing, she wipes her sweaty brow with the back of her hand. ‘The moment they get to twelve, they don’t want to know you anymore and start stealing from your purse to buy weed.’ When she takes her hand away from her face I see brown streaks and her left eyebrow is slightly paler than before. Now she’s laughing again, like she always does when she realises that frying oil is the best make-up remover. But maybe she’s also laughing to hold back the tears. I know the feeling, but I’m ashamed nonetheless. So many lies. Perhaps Michelle would understand if I explained. Perhaps she wouldn’t judge me; she is a good person, after all. On the other hand, that’s what I thought of Zoe too.
‘Earth to Ann. Ann, come in, please!’ Putting on a voice, Michelle speaks into her fist as if it were a radio. I suppose that’s what mums are like. When their children are young they get used to doing silly things they never grow out of.
‘Sorry, I was lost in thought.’
‘I noticed.’ Grinning, she points to the monitor showing the pictures from the drive-in. A car has just pulled up. ‘Customers.’
I hurriedly slip on the headset and take a deep breath before pressing the button that connects the microphone to the intercom outside.
‘Happy Christmas and a warm welcome to Big Murphy’s Burgers and Fries.’ I can’t believe how friendly I sound, how unfazed. It seems that, like my headset, I’ve also got a button, an inner button, that switches me into a different mode if I press it hard enough.You just function, Saskia E.’s father said in the newspaper, and he’s right.
‘May I have your order, please?’
I can only hear static at first.
‘Hello?’
Puzzled, I stick my head out of the window. The intercom is five or six metres away. Only when customers have given their order do they move up to the serving window. From this distance, however, all I see is the silhouette of a car, its headlights stamping two bright circles in the late afternoon darkness.
The static goes silent and a man’s voice crackles, ‘You didn’t really think you’d get away from me that easily, did you?’
Frite. (Ann, 7 years old)
a frite is like when you get an electric shock. your hart jumps up and when it goes back down again its still beating faster than before and sometimes it hurts. theres buzzing in your ears and you feel so cold that you shiver, then the frite nose its worked and maybe it stops. but sometimes a frite is just a joke and you get scared for no reason, then you have to larf because you were silly and fell for the frite.
‘You muppet!’
I laugh hysterically. Jakob, it’s only Jakob, sitting outside in his car, having given me one hell of a fright via the intercom. Jakob, who’s laughing too now.
‘That’s no way to greet your customers. I think I’m going to have to complain to the management.’
‘To get me sacked at Christmas? Charming.’ Seeing the look on Michelle’s face, I whisper, ‘Jakob.’ She grins and raises her left, unpainted eyebrow. I’m embarrassed that she knows about us, even though there’s actually nothing to know. I adjust the microphone in front of my mouth and stick my head out of the serving window again. I still can’t see anything but the car in the darkness and two circles of light.
‘What are you doing here, Jakob?’
‘You said you hate Christmas and don’t want to celebrate. And I said I couldn’t allow that.’
‘I guess you’re right.’
That was yesterday. I was on the till when Jakob appeared at the counter and ordered a ‘Big Murphy’s Mega Meal’. He comes in often, almost every day. I even arrange my breaks to coincide with him. We sweep the snow from the bench in the Big Murphy’s car park and sit there, a coy distance apart like two people who’d really like to arrange a proper date. But they don’t; the woman has her reasons and the man clearly has sufficient tact to realise that she’d give him the brush-off. He thinks she’s studying German and working at Big Murphy’s to cover her rent. And he probably finds her a bit prim too. So he tries to lighten the mood by telling her funny anecdotes about his work at a recycling centre in Kreuzberg. She likes the idea of him helping people get rid of their relics. Their bulky rubbish, worn-out clothes, empty paint tins, cardboard boxes, batteries, garden waste. Most of all she likes the idea of him climbing on to the overflowing paper skips and jumping up and down until the mountains of paper sink beneath his weight, making room for more. His gangly arms whirling in the air, his short, dark hair dancing up and down and his blue eyes gleaming with boyish exuberance. She finds him so carefree, so unencumbered.
‘Well, and that’s why I thought we might. . .’
I sigh. Today, of all days, Jakob seems to have decided to narrow the distance between us.
