Jorge was hardly listening at the time.
JW promised that a car would come. That he’d fix painkillers.
Jorge asked him to leave.
JW walked down to the road.
Jorge left alone on the ground. Half an inch of movement equaled otherworldly pain. The cold crept up on him. Jorge wanted to pass out. Disappear. But the questions were buzzing worse than the pain in his head: Would the Yugos hurt Paola? Would they leave him alone now? Should he skip the country right away? In that case, what were his chances? No money, no passport, no connections. In other words, about as much chance of survival as a twiggy with attitude at Osteraker.
Darkness settled over the forest. The weather was getting worse. The trunks of the trees looked black. The branches hung low to the ground.
Felt like his upper arms and thighbones were broken. Felt as though his back was torn apart. Felt as though he’d gotten a second asshole torn up beside his first. Nature’s strange symmetry completed: two eyes, two nostrils, two arms, and two legs. And now, two assholes.
He tried to sleep. Not a chance.
He shivered.
The definition of eternity: Jorge’s one and a half hours in the forest before JW showed up again. He had a big guy with him, a gorilla. They lifted him. Jorge thought he was going to die for the second time in four hours. Pest or cholera. First to be beaten to death by a psycho Yugo and then to be carried to death by an enormous Lebanese.
A white Mazda van was waiting on the road. There was a padded gurney in the back. They strapped him down. A Swedish-looking man who Jorge, at the time, thought was a real ambulance EMT poured morphine down his throat. He numbed off. Dreamed of dancing grocery bags.
Fragments of memory.
Woke up in a stark room. Confused. Safe, but scared he’d ended up in a hospital. He’d get treated at the same time as he’d get found out-be sent right back to his cell at Osteraker. Then came the pain. He howled.
A big man in the room, the same man who’d carried him to the van. The guy in a turtleneck and dark blue jeans. Jorge realized he wasn’t in a hospital. Something about the man signaled the opposite-that face didn’t belong in the health-care sector. Dark, coarse features. Scratches/scars along one side of his face. The man smiled; gold gleamed in his upper row. Maybe that’s what confirmed it-no one who worked in a hospital would grin with a gold grill like that.
The man, Fahdi, smiled, “ Allahu akbar, you’re alive.”
A few days later. He woke up. Someone was dabbing at his arm; it was a sickly green color. On one arm and his left thigh, scabs were healing. Improvement. So, he wasn’t beaten black-and-blue anymore-he was beaten green.
The guy dabbing at his arm introduced himself as Petter and said, “You’re gonna be fine, man.” Jorge let his arm fall down on the bed again. The guy reached for a glass of something red. There was a straw in the glass. He held up the straw to Jorge’s mouth. Jorge sucked. It tasted like raspberry Kool-Aid.
The guy left the room. Jorge looked at the wall. Drawn curtains. Was there a window behind them? He tried to turn his head. Hurt too much.
Lay still. Fell back asleep.
Morphine dreams: Jorge was walking on a dark road with Paola. Along the side of the road were tall green stone walls. Spotlights lit up stretches of the road. Soft asphalt. Jorge’s feet sank down. Created imprints in the granulated, warm mass. He thought, If I have to run now, how fast can I go? His sister turned to him, “My prince, do you want to play war with me?” Jorge tried to lift his foot. It was hard. The asphalt mass stuck to him. Black, coarse. Felt heavy.
A couple of nights later: Paola was jumping double Dutch. Two ropes. Made out of twisted sheets. Two friends of hers were holding the ropes. Paola: eight years old. Jorge ran toward the ropes. Was about to fall. Stumble. And right then: an enormous blue trampoline. It cushioned the fall. He rolled around. Couldn’t get up. The trampoline was too soft. Like quicksand. He sunk down. Tried to support himself with his hands, his elbows, his knees. Paola laughed. The girls laughed. Jorge cried.
Later: The guy who’d dabbed at him, Petter, sat by the bed. Said everything would be fine. That Jorge would look so great. Better than before.
Jorge was too tired.
Didn’t ask what they were gonna do.
A bright light blinded him.
He turned his head. Shut his eyes.
Could instinctively feel that something was approaching his face.
A man he hadn’t seen before rubbed his nose with something.
Suddenly: extreme pain.
Screams.
Felt like his nose’d been torn off.
He sat up.
The man held him down.
Poured something down his throat.
He fell back asleep.
Someone was shaking him. “Wake up, buddy. You’ve slept enough today.” Jorge looked up. A dark-haired man. Maybe around thirty years old. In a suit. A shirt with broad cuffs. The top buttons undone. A white Craig David hat on his head. “Open your eyes for real.”
Jorge stared in silence.
“I’m Abdulkarim. Your chance in life. Your boss.”
Jorge, confused.
“You been lying here for over three weeks now. You gonna be a morphine junkie if you’re not healed already. You gotta be able to function by now. Raise your arm.”
Jorge raised his arm. Yellow at the top, near his shoulder, but otherwise okay.
“You look fine, buddy. Allah is great.”
Abdulkarim held up a mirror to his face.
Jorge saw the image of himself: a thin, dark-haired, and bearded man, maybe twenty-five years old, dark eyebrows, bulky nose, almost like a boxer’s, olive-colored skin.
A version of Jorge.
He grinned. At the same time, he felt sad. On the one hand, it was his chance. Abdulkarim-whoever he was-had fixed him up. Rubbed him down with a new type of self-tanner, curled his hair, dyed it. Better than he’d done himself. And he was skinnier.
But aside from that, something was different about his nose.
“What’ve you done to my nose?”
Abdulkarim laughed. “Broken in two places, buddy. Brought in a guy who set it straight. Hope it didn’t hurt too much. I think it looks better now. A little flat, maybe, but cooler.”
Jorge like Nikita: picked up off the street. Woken up, made up, fixed up to be their new supersoldier. How would the rest of the story go?
Abdulkarim kept talking.
“They pounded you real good. You looked like a fuckin’ blueberry when we found you. Then you became like the Hulk. Spotty green. Too bad you don’t have his powers.”
Jorge turned over in bed.
Abdulkarim tried to be funny. “What jerks. Did they pork you, too, buddy? Who was the bottom?”
Jorge fell asleep.
Everything’d gone so quickly. He was almost completely recovered from Mrado’s and Ratko’s rough treatment. The only problem: scars on his back and pain in one of his upper arms. He’d been given a chance to stay in Sweden and earn pesetas. That his nose’d been broken and realigned by Abdulkarim’s people could be an advantage. It was crooked, broader. Jorge’s appearance was even more altered.
Enough time’d passed since his break. The cops no longer had his picture as one of the top one hundred that popped up on their screens as soon as they had a lead. With his new look, the Arab’s money and help, Jorge realized he had a chance.
He knew why he was so perfect for Abdulkarim-his blow know mixed with his dependence and debt of gratitude to the Arab would make him the most faithful dog in Abdul’s dealer kennel. Abdulkarim’s business idea worked the way JW’d explained it. The boroughs were ready for a coke invasion. Blowkrieg. Jorge dug the plans. He’d thought about similar strategies when he was still at Osteraker.
Jorge and JW sat in Fahdi’s apartment during a couple of days in November and made plans. Abdulkarim stopped by and discussed the big picture. Guidelines, strategy. How much blow did they think they were gonna need for the month of January? In which boroughs were they gonna start? Jorge name-dropped. People they had to get in touch with. Dealers to contract. People to consult. Fahdi brought pizzas and Coca-Cola.