I'm driving to the bank. My Camaro hums as enterprisingly as my last hooker when she counted her pay. That was the day before yesterday. I'm looking for a chick on the sidewalk: skin-tight leather, pale complexion, cherry-mouth. Eighteen or so. Probably willing to the lees. Chat up? Not now.
I'm entering the bank. Inside I see thirteen men and women queuing at the counters. I didn't count them - I can tell by a blink of an eye.
I'm getting in line cause I have to go through a formality. A Japanese tourist is gesticulating at the front desk. I sigh. I hope it doesn't take forever.
Because not even I have that much time.
A woman comes in: blonde curls and handy shapes under the blouse and jeans. Nice soft face. Sympathetic. IQ's about 130. I can tell by the way she moves. She joins the neighboring line.
So I spend my time exchanging glances with Blondie.
Then my sonar is ringing. I always feel when trouble's on the move. Three seconds before - that's the norm. I turn around. Three freaks rumble in, grotesquely masked, waving guns. One of them screams:
"Everybody on the floor! No, you *******s behind the counters keep standing!"
While he belfs, I check the IQs of the freaks. Their boss is 98, the other two around 96.
Simple fellows.
But dangerous.
I decide not to do anything. Just see what's happening. Together with the other customers I lie down on my belly. Blondie next to me gives me a glance. She seems astonishingly calm.
Then my sonar goes off again. Seconds later the leader bends over the woman, grabs her by the hair and pulls her up ruthlessly.
But she's not screaming. Doesn't she feel any pain?
I'm wondering about my sonar, too. Normally, it only strikes when I'm concerned. Now the woman was the trigger.
"Who do we have there?" says the guy. "Charlize Theron's little sister?"
He wipes her hair out of her neck, pushes his mask up to his nose and slips his tongue over the pale flesh. Then he pulls her around and pushes his fist into her belly.
Strange again: she stays upright, not even gasping.
Respect.
Then she lies down.
For a moment Hannibal Lecter is confused.
"Come on," says one of his colleagues.
"Pleasure before business," Hannibal barks back. "My rule number one."
He stomps to one of the counters. The other clowns have spread out - one of them is pointing his rattle at the lying people, another one plants himself at the entrance door.
"Why are you hitting this woman?" a man, well over sixty, yells from the floor. "Haven't you got a conscience?"
The freak goes over to him.
"Of course I have a conscience. And you know what I do with it if it bothers me?"
Three heartbeats long it's silent.
"I'll **** it in the ***!"
He hammers his boot against the old man's head. Groaning, the man holds his hands in front of his face. Blood runs through his fingers.
Arriving at the counter, the ruffian screams:
"Hand over the readies! For each grand less than thirty thousand, I'll blow one head off."
He demonstratively points his gun at...
... me.
I stay calm.
"We have... a time lock for such... high sums", the man behind the counter stutters. "If you'd have a little patience..." "
Hannibal hits the window angrily.
"As you stinker might expect, I don´t! Once again the tale of the time limit, and that guy's retiring."
The steely muzzle looks at me.
I look back - into the eyes of the freak.
I say:
"Hey, you. You know what's best about you?"
I slowly straighten up.
"It's the brown one that ran down your mother as sauce."
Hannibal's gun is trembling.
"Lie still, you wanker!"
I stand upright, grinning.
"Nobody's called me that for two thousand years. Who was it? Yes, Publius Marcellus of the Eighth Legion who wanted to steal my whore..."
"Get on with the money," the clown at the door yells. "What's all this talk?"
"Shut up, dumb-***! I'm talking to a worldly gentleman."
Hannibal's waving his gun.
"And what did you do to him?"
"I'll show you later. But do you know that? A woman, who's ****ing with her lover, gets a call from her husband. You know what´s she saying to him?"
"No, Dr. Strangelove. What is it?"
"She says, ´Honey, I'm coming in a minute´."
"Ha ha ha." Hannibal clears his throat. "Now lie down again or I'll blow off your ****ing smart-*** face."
Before I can react, there's some noise at the door. A customer had entered and got a hit to the head. Clown two drags his victim aside.
"When is the loot coming over?", he screams. "Do you want me to stack up the entering people?"
"It's all right."
My sonar's acting up again. El jefe stares at me.
"On two you´re on the floor, or no more blonde and funny."
Now the gun points to Blondie.
Once again she was the trigger.
"One... "
"Man, you can count."
The sonar is silent. So the next three seconds stay cool.
For me.
"T..."
I switch to combat mode.
Kinetic acceleration.
Factor ten.
Like beginner's training.
My right fist smashes Hannibal's head as if hit by a steam hammer. I rip the gun out of his fist and hurl it toward the bouncer. Freak three at the customers has just blinked as I´m standing in front of him, grabbing his gun and nailing it into his half-opened mouth with the barrel ahead.
Then I shut myself down and look around.
Hannibal tips over like a wet sack.
Broken neck.
The bouncer sinks to the floor with a gun barrel in one of his eyes.
Clown three twitches a bit, then he sinks down, too.
His last supper was too hard for him.
The customers move in disbelief. I bend over Blondie and caress her beautiful curls.
"At seven o' clock in Lincoln Park by the lake, where the rowboats are."
Then I´m gone.
Not in the mood for cops.
I'm taking a deep breath outside. Damn, I was just getting used to my appearance. Now I'd have to modify my face again. Because of the cameras in the bank.
But never mind.
In the evening Blondie waits on one of the benches at the lake. I'll sit next to her. It's windy. The sun glistens on the lake.
"I'm glad to see you again," I say.
"Do we know each other?" she answers.
"I'm the guy from the bank. Please excuse my changed appearance."
She smiles.
"This is you?"
"But of course. All is real flesh, no mask, no tricks. What do you think of the new model?"
"Well... it's even better than the old one."
"Thank you."
Her green eyes sparkle in the sunlight. Whatever was the reason that my sonar was triggered by her, I caught fire.
"How did you do that in the bank?" she says. "Are you a super agent like Jason Bourne?"
I'm grinning.
"When I recently told Matt Damon at a party that his Bourne is a senile tuck against me, he was really pissed."
"Matt Damon?"
"Well, he was just talking to Olga Kurylenko, you know. He was so upset that he trotted off, so that I had an open road to Olga."
"Open road...?"
"Just for one night. Then she had to shoot, somewhere in Mexico."
"Somewhere in...? Who in God's name are you?"
"Speaking of ..." I raise my eyes to heaven, then I laugh.
"No, don't think I believe in God. How could I? When the Romans crucified me in Judaea, where was he? Where, please, was he?"
I have to smile when I think of the show. The soldiers, the roaring people, the weeping women at my feet... Of course, I had not felt any pain.
"It was just a test, you know. A role-playing game. I made a Jewish itinerant preacher who wants to reform his religion, gathered followers around me and produced just like by an assembly-line sayings like..."
I jump up and spread my arms:
"He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day."
"Uh-huh... "she mumbles, but her eyes sparkle.
"That jingle is now in the Gospel of John," I say. "And as for Mary Magdalene..."
"Go on without bias."
"She was the first to find the open grave after I had risen. Female instinct, I'd say. Anyway we had shared our bed for months."
"After all... " She nods warm-heartedly.
"Yes... "I look at her openly. "Mary Magdalene was my first great love. Olga the second. Unfortunately, too short. Now you've come into my life, beautiful woman."
Blondie suddenly has a strange look.
"What's your name?" I ask.
Her fist hits me like a cannonball and I whirl through the air into the shallow water....
I shake my wet hair and get up. Why didn't the sonar work? Some strollers look startled. Blondie on the bench doesn't look harmless anymore.
She has the attitude of a...
Yeah, she's one of them.
Why did I realize it so late?
"You didn't realize it until two thousand years later, you bastard," she shouts´. "I was Mary Magdalene. You had sworn eternal faithfulness to me. Then you were suddenly gone... " She raises her voice ironically. "Resurrection! Departure to the Kingdom of Heaven! To the Father's side! Ha! The others believed it and made a religion out of it, but I knew that your departure would only end in the next whorehouse!"
I stomp out of the water and lift a forefinger.
"That's not entirely correct. I traveled to the Britannians to stand by them against the Romans. Of course there were brothels there, but that wasn't... "
"Shut up!"
I sit next to her again.
So she's one of them. She´s fooled me. Two thousand years ago, as Mary Magdalene and now as...
"What the hell's your name today?", I say.
She shrugs her shoulders. Then she points up to heaven. I look over there and don't see anything conspicuous. When I look at her again, my jaws almost fall off.
Next to me is Olga Kurylenko.
I'm speechless.
"Hi, darling," she finally says. "I'm back from Mexico."
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