Chapter 42: Mark Takes Twelve for the Team

Mark

“Greetings y’all, and welcome all you dang foreigners from other nations. Dear Lord, be with our guests and prepare them for the butt whoopin’ they’re about to receive!”

That was what comedian Jeff Foxworthy had imagined the opening ceremony of the Atlanta Olympics to sound like. Granted, one could probably expect a bit more refinement, but the skit was still funny as hell. Especially Meri had almost choked laughing about it when I played the audio file I had downloaded off the internet.

Of course the 1996 Summer Games were still in the future. The team had just come back from Belgium with Femke having finally won that three-day tour in Belgium, courtesy of how much time she had put on everyone else in the opening time trial. Moving it to the end of March had probably not been the most brilliant idea. Not only had it wrecked our plans for a two-week timeout on St. Kitts & Nevis, it had also been cold and wet on that last cobbled stage. At the end of the race you couldn’t tell one rider from the other. They were all caked in mud.

With our plans for a short holiday scuppered, Jenny’s school and the weather gods had lent a hand. Now in second grade, Jenny’s class was about to go on their first ever field trip to Prague for one week. Normally that required one or two parents to tag along as no one could expect a single teacher to keep twenty-four excited eight and nine year old’s in check for a week. That usually led to frustrations for the kids suffering the ignominy of having one of their parents along. Well, Jenny was only too happy to have auntie Bea come along, saving at least one other kid the frustration of being under the watchful eye of a parent.

That, and a noticeable upswing in temperature meant we could simply take our short break at home in Emden, which meant I wouldn’t have to stop my lessons in Wilhelmshaven either. 1993 had been a good year, as far as the weather was concerned, with 20 degrees almost until Christmas. But since then it had returned to form with ‘94 and ‘95 being mostly wet and miserable except for the summer.

This year though we could pull the garden furniture out of storage in April. A nice twenty-five centigrade was normally something to expect in late May or early June. One thing I remembered from my early childhood in grandpa Ernst’s home was that as a young lad I had always searched my Easter eggs in either short trousers or a winter coat. There had hardly been anything in between. It was either too cold or too warm for the time. Short trousers it would be for this year then.

Regina

Or no trousers at all, in my case. There was no way I was going to wear anything but shoes in a weather like that, and the term shoes was doing some heavy lifting in regards to my flip-flops. Meri unfortunately had her monthly visitor, so she had to keep the pants on, but Lydia was all too happy to join me in the more liberal interpretation of the dress code.

We even got the barbecue grill out on Saturday, but since Lydia, Meri and the visiting Femke were in the middle of their preparations for Atlanta, they couldn’t possibly eat the fat meat from the supermarket. That’s why I had gone to a rather expensive butchery in town to buy some lean cuts and sausages and marinated them myself.

In fact, cooking for them was quite a challenge. I had to follow strict rules on what and how much of anything could go into a meal.

The only thing without restriction was pasta. They ate massive amounts of pasta every morning and then burned their way through a few thousand calories over the next six hours on their training bikes in the basement.

With the weather being what it was, we had moved the massage bench to the backyard. Unfortunately for the two, or sometimes three ladies, the pièce de résistance of Mark’s massages had to wait until the evening when we went inside. The hedge around the backyard made it impossible to see us, but especially Lydia climaxing loudly would have alerted the neighbors in unwanted ways.

Since it were the Easter holidays, I was currently not working. Mark and I took the opportunity to go to Senftenberg for two days in the street barge. Both not being fond of hotels, we had just folded the rear seats down and thrown mattresses, blankets and pillows from our camping trailers in. With the weather that warm we had decided to just park the car on the estate and sleep in the back of it. The thing was big enough, we could probably had fit Lydia in as well, but for obvious reasons, there were no rear seats.

Our timing was no coincidence. The core construction of our new house had been finished, and since this was Germany, this called for a ceremony called Richtfest, unsurprisingly involving lots of beer and food.

Mark

I looked up at the green wreath hanging from a post on the roof. I wondered who of the workers had been suicidally brave enough to climb up the unfinished roof construction to hang it up there, especially as it didn’t exactly look very light either.

That I went with Regina instead of Meri had two reasons. First, Meri didn’t want to suspend her training, and second, we didn’t feel like explaining why two women would be living here in the future. Germans were relatively relaxed about same-sex couples, at least in the East, but we couldn’t know if any Sorbs or West Germans were among the workers. The Sorbs, although an ethnic minority in East Germany, were a lot more conservative than the rest of the population. Most East Germans were atheists, but most Sorbs were devoutly Roman-Catholic, just like their Polish neighbors.

Like every topping-out rite in Germany, it began by a short speech given by the carpenter who had fixed the last plank to finish the wooden frame of the roof. He asked for the Lord’s blessing of the house and wished us well living in it. As was customary, we had provided him with a glass of Schnapps, so he could bring out a toast on the architects, the builders and the new owners. Then he climbed up a ladder and threw the glass from the roof. As was hoped for it shattered into a thousand pieces, which had about the same importance as a champagne bottle bursting when christening a ship.

Since she was the new owner of the building it was now up to Regina to climb all the way up the ladder and drive the last nail into the last plank. In the olden days this would have been a plank at the very top of the roof construction, but for safety reasons, in recent years carpenters just left one of the lower planks unattached and affixed that last to spare the future owners the dangerous climb.

As the future owner, and organizer of the celebration Regina had organized the catering. The food served was usually simple, so she and Meri had gone for sausages and potato salad, that worked for every party. And since the guests were mostly construction workers and they hadn’t felt like serving hard liquor, the obvious way to go was hiring one of those mobile pubs one found on fairgrounds. Both were easy to find in Senftenberg, after all East Germans loved their events so they were several providers to chose from. In the end we chose an event caterer who had both – a mobile grill shed and a mobile pub and the whole scene looked like a miniature fairground.

My presence soon proved advantageous in another regard. As she was the official new owner, most guests would have drank a toast with Regina, with potentially bad consequences for her head, but old habits die hard. Taking me for her husband or boyfriend, they ganged up on me instead and when the party finally wound down, I was more than just a little unsteady on my feet.

Regina

My word – that boy can snore. Thankfully I always had some earplugs in my handbag – I had been to more than enough of Jenny’s races by now. After valiantly keeping the well-wishers out of my hair, and thus saving me from passing out, Mark had been quite plastered and manhandling him into the back of the car had been a bit of a challenge.

Having gotten a good few hours of sleep, I carefully climbed out and left the car door open a bit. The air had gone quite rancid over the night. Since Mark was hard enough to jump start in the morning, especially when he would be hung-over, I needed coffee. Thankfully the guy with the mobile kitchen had left the keys of the wagons with me as he wouldn’t collect them before the morning. He had shown me where I found everything to get a coffee done in the morning. I had never made coffee with a Bialetti before, but once he had explained it, it was easy to remember. I prepared everything and put the metal can on the stove.

Now I just had to resurrect Lazarus in the back of the street barge.

Mark

Regina had shaken me awake and I immediately noticed that I had what felt like the contents of an Olympic swimming pool in my bladder. I climbed out and after taking the pot of coffee from her, I put it on the roof and yanked down the zipper, proceeding to contaminate half an acre of future backyard. I could not remember having pissed that long, ever.

The coffee wasn’t doing much. Once the pot was empty, I filled it with water and went to brush my teeth. At least it wouldn’t feel like someone had stuffed a dead possum down my throat afterwards. What was it with me and getting ridiculously clattered in Olympic years? The last time I had been this hung-over had been after going on a bender when I found Melissa Kennuck’s blackmail video in the post, just a few days after the Barcelona Olympics. With the coffee not doing much to better my lot, I did something I had never done before – I drank what is called a Konterbier in German. It’s basically an attempt to counter a hangover with a fresh beer intake. The beer served the night before had been drawn from a keg, which had saved my ass because it was a bit lighter than the bottled variety. The owner of the beer wagon had, however, also brought several crates of bottled beer from a local brewery for those guests who insisted on their local brand. Germans are very particular about their beer. Pepsi vs Coke is nothing in comparison.

Regina did give me a strange look. After all, downing half a beer in one go at half past seven in the morning isn’t exactly common workplace practice, not even in Germany. I just shrugged. She wasn’t really in a position to complain. If I hadn’t messed myself up last night, it would have been she who would probably still lie in the back of the car, passed out.

She just rolled her eyes when I had finished the second bottle at half past eight and I was reasonably functioning again. Of course the effect would be short-lived. It helped for two or three hours, but then I’d be just as miserable again. But by then we would hopefully have cleaned up the place and I could sleep it off in the car on the way home.

Being good guests, the workers had mostly cleaned up after themselves, having returned the empty bottles and glasses to the wagon and they had neatly stacked their cardboard plates and plastic cutlery in piles at the head of the table. Regina gave me some rubber gloves and we removed the piles into the large waste container. Pretty much all we had to do was taking down the collapsible tables and benches and load them into the cargo space of the kitchen wagon. Having the keys was coming in handy in more than one regard. We made quick work of it.

By half past nine we had cleaned up everything and just for ‘safety’ I helped myself to a third beer, which got me an eye-roll from Regina. Since we had to wait another half hour before the two guys came to collect their wagons, we took a walk across the estate.

Some parts of the hedge had already been planted and I was surprised how high it was. I had expected it to be perhaps chest-high with Meri and Regina having to wait a few years before it grew to full size. The foundation for the hexagonal bungalow had already been build and the earth works for the pool had progressed as well. Once finished, this would be a spectacularly beautiful new home for Meri, Regina and Jenny.

I had a good idea where we would be spending Christmas this year.

Lydia

Mark had just trundled off into our room when he and Regina had arrived in the evening. The reason had become obvious when she told us about the night before. I decided to let him sleep it off in peace and leave him alone for now.