Rather than driving straight to Danny’s one Friday, I stayed in Stuttgart to meet up with Vanessa. She was spending the weekend at her parents’ house, so we went out to dinner and a movie. She told me all about her boyfriend, Chris, whom she’d met in Munich. That explained why I hadn’t seen or heard from her in weeks. Strangely, I hadn’t missed her at all. With Christina and Danny at my side, I didn’t seem to need anyone else.
“I’m going to marry him,” Nessa declared. “Chris is definitely the kind of guy you marry.” I rolled my eyes. Every time Vanessa fell in love with a guy, she always called him the ‘kind of guy you marry.’ “How are things with you and Danny?”
“Great,” I said. “Everything’s great.” There was so much Vanessa didn’t know about Danny. I’d have liked to tell my former best friend all about how my Mercedes star had been broken off fourteen times in the past few weeks, how either Danny’s or my car antenna was always missing, and how he’d found a nail in one of his tires just a week before.
But I didn’t tell her any of it. Nor did I mention the group of guys who’d ambushed him and beaten him up several times. Telling Nessa any of that would have meant explaining why it was all happening. I knew I’d have to tell her about Danny’s illness once it developed into AIDS, but I wanted to wait until then. I had no desire to sit there listening to her yammer on for hours about how dangerous this was, how stupid could I possibly be, and didn’t I know there were other fish in the sea?
So I kept silent and felt a pang of envy as I heard all about how perfect her relationship with Chris was. In the back of my mind, I decided to meet up with Vanessa even less often in the future.
By the time I got home, picked up Leika, and set off for Danny’s, it was well past midnight. When I parked my car behind Danny’s BMW, the whole building was dark. Christina and Danny’s blinds were open, as usual, so I could see that their lights were all off. The apartment above theirs was dark as well, but that was normal—Britta and her husband, Holger, both worked a lot, so they were almost always asleep long before this.
Danny, on the other hand, was almost always awake until the wee hours of the morning. He considered sleeping more than five or six hours a waste of time. But tonight, he seemed to have turned in relatively early, by his standards. Unless, of course, he was just sneaking around in the dark again.
I saw it on the way from the car to the building: a gigantic cloth banner stretched out from one corner of the building to the other, with blood-red capital letters spelling out:
DIE, FAGGOT
My throat burned like I’d swallowed a hot iron.
I glanced around quickly, but of course the perpetrators were long gone. Tears of rage and indignation welled up in my eyes. Why would they do something like this? Why? Wasn’t it bad enough that he really was going to die? Our wounds were already far too deep—why did they have to pour salt in them?
I tried to pull the banner down, but I couldn’t reach it.
How the hell did those goddamn assholes get that thing all the way up there?
I wanted to take it down without even mentioning it to Danny, but I didn’t know where I could get a ladder at this hour, so I supposed I had no choice but to wake him.
I crept into the bedroom and discovered Christina on my side of the bed, asleep in Danny’s arms. The sight of them was touching. It seemed like it had been a million years since she’d last come to his bed.
Danny woke up right away when I approached them. There were advantages to his being such a light sleeper—it never took more than three seconds to get him out of bed. I gestured for him to come with me, and he got up and followed me outside.
“Bad news,” I warned him as I brought him out front.
The terrible banner came into view.
“Wow.” He nodded, almost in admiration. “Impressive. They’re really serious about this.”
I’d been afraid he’d flip out, but he was perfectly calm. Far too relaxed for my taste, in fact. I eyed him skeptically.
“This is the second one this week,” he explained.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“No, really. And that’s not all. Check this out!” Barefoot and wearing only boxers, he padded across the street to his car. I followed him, filled with dread, and he pointed to the hood.
Death to queers!
It was scratched deeply into the paint.
“I’m sick of this!” My voice was far too shrill, and my stomach was tying itself into painful knots. How could he stay this calm? “Police! Now!”
“Tina and I went and filed a report yesterday,” he told me. “They said there’s almost no chance they can do anything without proof. We’ll have to think of something. Either I’ll hire some kind of security service to watch our cars, or we’ll need to do it ourselves.”
We went back into the building and fetched a ladder from the basement.
“Speaking of police reports,” he said, grinning. “I received a copy of the one made about me. I’ll show you in a minute.” He leaned the ladder against the building and climbed up seven or eight rungs to reach the banner. I could only shake my head in amazement yet again. Not because he was climbing a ladder barefoot in the middle of the night, but because even this ridiculous situation wasn’t enough to spoil his good mood.
The cord holding the sheet up was glued to the building facade. Danny yanked that side down, and then he climbed back to the ground. Together, we yanked the other end down and wadded the thing up before throwing it in the Dumpster.
The police report was sitting on the kitchen table. I picked it up and read it over. “Well, at least it was worth it. Two broken ribs, two teeth knocked out, a broken arm, and a ton of bruises. Nice job.”
He gave me a concerned look. “I went too far, didn’t I?”
“More like not far enough. You don’t feel bad about it, do you?”
“It was an accident. I wasn’t deliberately trying to hurt them.” He folded his arms. “Except Angelo. I broke his ribs on purpose.”
I nodded, wondering how things would have turned out if Danny had actually been trying to hurt the others. “They were deliberately provoking you, Danny. Nobody has to just sit there and take that.”
“I have an appointment tomorrow to bring the car in and have the hood repainted,” he said, changing the subject. “After that, I’ll go to a security company and ask them to watch our cars for a couple weekends.”