The Carnival Master

3.

The couple in the corner kept distracting Andrea from her calculations. Every time she totalled the takings for the previous month a raised male voice would make her lose her place. Last month had not been as good as she had hoped. The cafe did good but simple food and she had put on a basic Christmas menu of traditional favourites and had decorated the place, but the cafe was just that little bit too far out from the city centre to attract the masses of tourists that came for Cologne’s Christmas Market. Even the bank of flat-monitored computers that she had installed along the high counter at the back of the cafe had failed to pay for themselves. She was struggling to break even and it annoyed her that she needed her ‘extra’ income to supplement what she made from the cafe.

Andrea gave up on her calculations and checked her cellphone. There was a text message from the agency: two bookings. The one for tomorrow night was annoying because of the ridiculously short notice, but it was the second booking that froze Andrea’s attention. A special date. Weiberfastnacht. Why would someone want to book Women’s Karneval Night? Why did it have to be that date of all dates? She texted back to the agency saying she could make the booking tonight if they sent her details. The other one… The other one she would have to think about.

The sound of raised voices snapped her attention back to the cafe.

The couple had been building up to it. Or rather the man had been building up to it. They had only ordered coffee and the scene had all the hallmarks of them having sought out the cafe as nothing more than a place for them to sit and carry on the one-sided argument they had clearly been having outside. Andrea studied them: he was a loathsome little toad; she was surprisingly pretty to be with the likes of him. But soft. Andrea had begun by occasionally glancing in their direction; listening to the odd exchange as she had worked the tables. But as their argument became louder, it became impossible to ignore. And it was beginning to disturb the other customers. With a sigh, Andrea closed her accounts and crossed the cafe.

‘Is there a problem?’ Resting her red-fingernailed hands on the table, Andrea leaned in close and spoke in a calm, quiet tone. The couple had been so engrossed in their heated exchange that they had not noticed Andrea approach. The young man turned his acne towards her. His eyes traced the contours of her body. Andrea was wearing a tight black T-shirt with the cafe’s logo on it. Her biceps bulged beneath the short sleeves, and her breasts were pulled into small, tight buns on her wide, taut pectoral muscles. There was a trace of a smirk on the man’s lips.

‘What’s it to you?’ The smirk ripened into a sneer.

‘You’re beginning to disturb the other customers.’ Andrea kept her voice calm and low. ‘That’s what it is to me. I think you should leave. Now.’

‘What about our coffees?’ asked the man. The girl had her head down, letting her hair fall like a curtain to hide her face from the other customers in the cafe.

‘You’ve drunk most of them,’ said Andrea. ‘Leave the rest. It’s on the house.’

‘Just what the fuck are you?’ The young man with the acne now seemed aware he had an audience. He leaned back as if appraising her: the mane of platinum hair tied back in a ponytail, the heavy make-up, the deep red lipstick, the power-lifter shoulders. ‘I mean, we were just trying to work that out – what you were born as. Male or female. Fuck knows I can’t tell now. You a shemale?’

Andrea straightened up. ‘Leave. Now.’

‘What makes you think you can work here among normal people? I mean, they sell food in here, for fuck’s sake. People eat here. You’re enough to turn anyone’s stomach.’

Still his female partner sat still and silent behind her curtain of hair.

‘You’ve got two seconds to leave,’ said Andrea, her calm tone belying the furnace of hate and anger that burned in her belly. ‘Or I’ll call the cops.’

The man got up and tugged at the girl’s sleeve. She rose quickly, slid out from behind the table and slipped swiftly out of the cafe without making eye contact with anyone. The ugly young man eyed Andrea hatefully. He tried to push her out of the way but Andrea’s body wouldn’t yield.

‘Fucking freak…’ He laughed derisively as he was forced to squeeze past her sideways. Andrea watched them as they left the cafe and walked past the window, the man laughing through the glass at her, his companion still trying to be unnoticed. When they were out of sight Andrea took a deep breath and turned to the other customers with a broad smile of red lips and strong white teeth.

‘Sorry about that,’ she said. There were a few regulars amongst the customers and one of them said: ‘Well done – that’s the way to deal with trash like that.’

Andrea kept her smile in place. ‘Could you spell me for a while, Britta?’ she asked the other waitress and strode into the kitchen. Andrea swiftly exited through the back door onto the alley. She sprinted along the narrow lane to where a side street ran at right angles to Eintrachtstrasse, then up to the junction with Cordulastrasse. They were there. The girl still had her head bowed while the little shit berated her loudly about something. Their body language, his aggressive, hers submissive, expressed to the world the whole dynamic of their relationship; and Andrea could see that violence played a part in it. There were hardly any other pedestrians and only a few cars passed along the slushy-wet road, with the sound of waves on a shore. Andrea ducked back around the corner. The cold air turned the skin of her salon-tanned naked arms into gooseflesh. But inside the rage still burned.

The man was too busy shouting abuse at the girl to notice Andrea blocking his way. He looked startled as she grabbed the front of his coat and dragged him into the side street.

‘What did you call me?’ Her face hardened into sinew under the make-up. He didn’t answer and she slammed him hard against the brickwork. ‘I said: what the fuck did you call me?’

‘I… I…’ The little shit’s expression betrayed his fear and confusion.

Andrea looked at his pasty, acne-covered face. Deep inside her, someone opened the door of the blast furnace of her hate. It surged up in her, white-hot. Her forehead slammed into his face and she felt his nose break. She let him go and he stared at her wildly, his face covered in blood. Andrea took advantage of his shock and slammed a boot hard into his groin. Gasping and retching, he sunk to his knees, clutching his crushed testicles. Andrea turned to the girl. She was staring, horrified, at her boyfriend as he keeled over and lay on his side on the pavement. Mouth open, a strangled scream in her throat, her eyes filled with tears.

‘You’re worse than him,’ Andrea spoke to the girl in a disgusted tone. ‘You’re worse for playing the victim. For putting up with it. I despise you. I despise all women like you. Why do you let him treat you like that… in public? Have you no self-respect?’

The girl was still staring at her boyfriend. Shock and fear on her face. Andrea snorted, turned on her heel and strode back towards the cafe. As she did so, the girl’s shrill screaming rang in her ears: ‘You freak! You sick fucking FREAK!’