Seven Demons by Aidan Truhen (best motivational books for students TXT) 📕

Hans needs to advertise and Frankie needs to get out from under and what might they achieve together?

But Hans Eiger cannot be hanging around with men like Frankie Leclerc surely because Frankie is a bad guy there is paper there is a trail and somewhere there is a file and a dozen of those alarmingly competent Eurocops like—

Oh.

Ohhhh yeah.

So now that I know all about his friend I get my Banjo on again and I go and have lunch with Hans Eiger.

—

There is only one place in the city where Hans Eiger will eat lunch it is called the Hirschen. He eats there every day at the same table. He never books. He just comes at exactly the same time and he eats the same thing.

I do not sit at Hans Eiger’s table.

I sit at the table opposite.

I order the salmon.

Hans Eiger absolutely hates salmon. He cannot stand the smell of it.

The steam blows from my table over his because that is why I chose this table.

I can see him hating it but it would be remarkably inappropriate in almost every way for him to object so he can’t.

I eat my salmon. It is excellent. I make little noises.

Omnomnom.

Hans Eiger sits under the stuffed badger and the crossed wooden skis and he eats schnitzel. It is reputedly the second best schnitzel in the world but only because the Kronenhalle in Zürich always and forever holds the top slot and you cannot go to the Kronenhalle every day from Bern and still get anything done with your morning.

Hans Eiger eats his schnitzel and smells my salmon and I look at him and I say:

“O hai! It is me Banjo! You are Hans Eiger I claim my five dollars!”

“Excuse me?”

“It is a joke a very old one hi! We met at the art thing with Herr Doktor Doktor Paul how are you?”

“To be honest Herr—”

“Banjo Telemark—”

“Yes of course Herr Telemark I am having a difficult day and I wish to repose—is that how it is said?—to repose myself and consider and so forth—”

“O I totally understand I am right now making art—hey listen—hey actually can we talk I want to rob your bank—”

“What?”

“Obviously not for real! I would not tell you that. That would be insane.”

“Obviously.”

“I want to rob your bank—like conceptually—like I want to bring in bulldozers and so on—real actual physical bulldozers that you would never ever allow like American monster machines that Chinese thing they use that lays like a half-mile bridge in a day that kind of—and have fireworks for demolitions and music like ‘The Imperial March’—and maybe performance artists in swimsuits eating fire and someone dressed as a bear because you know Bern—”

“I do not think it is appropriate to the reputation of my bank—”

“BULLDOZERS how cool would that be and also maybe actors in commando outfits and we could have pink paintball and—”

“Inappropriate—”

“BULLDOZERS—”

“NO—”

People are noticing our little chat now and Hans Eiger does not want that because Banjo Telemark is not someone he wants to be seen talking to. Banjo is harshing his Swissness buzz.

“I get that but I think you’re wrong like how cool is a bank that is so fucking confident that it allows an artwork about—like we would have a giant inflatable Dillinger—”

“Please speak in a more measured—anyway no—”

“You could kill it! Shoot it with a cannon! You have just seen off a robbery it is like the gossip of the whole town—”

“…What gossip?”

“I am Banjo Telemark Herr Eiger I am connected up the wazoo I know you just shot some motherfucker with a cannon from your battlements and that is exactly what I am talking about—”

“No Herr Telemark—”

“No?”

“No absolutely not where would you hear such a—”

“I hear all things Herr Eiger I am special that way—”

“That is slanderous in the extreme you would do well not to repeat it to a third party it is a disgrace actually—”

“But it would not be un-Swiss sir not at all—”

“To discharge a firearm in a public place—”

“Completely safely you are a crack shot—”

“Against an unsuspecting adversary—”

“A wanted murderer—”

“You sound quite enthusiastic Herr Telemark perhaps you should do this—”

“O do you think so they do say art is violence and mine possesses a unique—”

Something is bugging me and I cannot think what it is like a familiar something like a flavor in the air like a coffee I have drunk like perfume and I am almost there I almost get it before the thing happens but I don’t and—

And that is when a voice says:

“JACK?!”

Hans Eiger’s face goes cold and flat as his mountain.

Back in the day when all I wanted was to put my foot on the face of the whole wide world of coffee—before I was called the Cardinal but after I cut tight around the Sandberg Benin Cartel and dry-gulched those fuckers so that we got rich and they got the other thing and people were starting to pay attention—back then, I was stabled with a guy called Ronald Platt because every straight razor needs a strop.

There is a whole subclass of execs in the world who are there so that they can get fucked when the house burns down and you know what they say: if you do not know who that person is in your company then that person is you. But I never had time to fuck Ronnie up for my transgressions because of the Hamburg Flamingo Incident.

There was this bar like a rooftop bar in Hamburg. This was in the ’90s so no one thought it was weird that it was themed tastefully on The Perfumed Garden, which is a fifteenth-century book on fucking written by a guy named Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Nafzawi. These days it is tolerably unlikely that a bar in a European nation would theme itself on an Arabic sex manual because you know there’s just a whiff of something a little culturally insensitive there plus also the world’s relationship with the, you know, Mysteries of Exotic Islam have shifted since Mike and the Mechanics had