The lobby smelled vaguely sweet, like a bakery, and the place was a whole lot more luxurious than the outside made it appear. A door on the other side of the lobby led to some kind of beauty parlor. The ugly bitch behind the desk looked at him like he had shit stuck between his front teeth.
“Can I get a room?”
She smiled and sneered simultaneously, and spoke with a vaguely British accent. “How many nights?”
“Just one … no, make it two.”
“May I have your passport, please?”
“I don’t have my passport. I was just robbed.”
“I’m sorry. In that case it’s quite impossible to—”
“Listen, lady. I’m an American soldier and I can pay in cash. Up front if you want. But I need a room.”
He unfolded his new wad of Hungarian money and that shut her up. The bill came to over three hundred American a night. Maybe more. It was steep but fuck it. He was desperate. She was no doubt skimming a piece off the top for herself. That was the way it worked in this part of the world. He couldn’t even blame her, really.
“Fill this out.” She slid a sign-in form and pen across the counter. “Do you need some help with your bags?”
“I don’t have any … any bags.”
She placed an electronic key card in front of him. “You are in room 422. Enjoy your stay.”
Enjoy this.
As good as it would’ve felt to go upstairs and throw some water on his face, maybe rest his eyes for a second, he decided against it. He was liable to sleep for fourteen hours. It was better to take care of business first. His stomach grumbled despite the pain; his next stop would be for some chow. And a change of clothes was in order. He had some extras in the duffel bag but he didn’t want to go back for them just yet. He put the hotel key card in his inside pocket and went back out to the street. So many keys.
He had gotten sweaty in the lobby and this time the cold air outside bit right through him. He didn’t like the idea of breaking out that “I’m an American” garbage, but with all the bullshit he had to put up with every day from his own fucking country he might as well reap some of the benefits once in a while. Fast food — that other thing he hated about America but sometimes there was no getting around it. He sure as fuck wasn’t going to some Hungarian restaurant to have a Gypsy come to his table with a violin to badger him for money, and then get ripped off on the bill because he didn’t know the language or the exchange rate. A block before the river, he got to the bright yellow McDonald’s he had passed in the taxi. The manager came around from the back and watched Brutus while the girl took his order. She didn’t speak English, but he got the message across. He asked for a cup of coffee and three cheeseburgers. When his food arrived, Brutus sat down to eat and every single person in the place watched him like he was an exotic specimen on display at the Please Hassle Museum. A middle-aged man walked by and didn’t even attempt to conceal his fascination and Brutus finally lost it. “Fucking problem?” he yelled, spitting bits of cheeseburger at him. “This some fucking zoo?” The man averted his eyes and disappeared. A couple teenagers somewhere behind Brutus made jungle noises. The coffee was still hot enough to scald his tongue, but he gulped it down and went to the men’s room to see what kind of shape he was in.
The damage wasn’t as bad as he had thought. The real pain, he knew, would soak into his muscles and bones overnight. His mouth ached like a motherfucker and two teeth were definitely chipped. To his surprise, none were missing or even loose. He washed the dried blood off his mouth and from around his eyes, then took a long piss. The laughter and commotion stopped when he came out.
Back on the sidewalk, those fuckers inside watched him through the restaurant’s windows. Following the map, he turned off the körút and crossed a small park, which was really just a block-sized patch of grass next to the river with a few drained fountains and some benches thrown around. The base of Margit Bridge loomed overhead. The sculptures in the middle of the fountains were wrapped in plastic and looked like some kind of modern art project. Kids sat around drinking wine straight from the bottle. They stopped to watch him pass. Someone was throwing up behind a row of plastic garbage cans.
The wind coming off the Danube sawed straight through his coat and sweatshirt, both of which remained wet with blood and sweat. Margit Island looked as green and peaceful as advertised. At the other end of the park, the black and yellow Guinness sign at Eve and Adam’s beckoned him.
An immense wooden bar ran down the right-hand side of the narrow room, and across it a row of vinyl booths overlooked the river and island through a series of tall windows. A dartboard hanging in the back like a saintly icon was being desecrated by four thick-handed boozers who never missed the bull’s-eye. Several well-dressed businessmen stood at the bar speaking a combination of English and Dutch. A gaggle of whores in fake fur coats accompanied them, smiling way too much and drinking unusually small glasses of beer. Someone had crossed the word TIPS off the wooden box next to the cash register and replaced it with SINN FÉIN. Brutus hadn’t even known they were still in business. Some of the ladies looked at Brutus, but they knew better than to bother him. The bartender whispered something to one of the hookers, and she strolled past Brutus toward the door. He turned with a wince to watch her pass and found himself staring down the business end of her moneymaker. Instead of anything he might call pants, she had on a pair of shorts the same color, texture, and which served the same general function as the skin one pulls off the outside of bologna. They left the rest of her ass free to slap together like two flesh cymbals crashing along to the climax of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. The door closed behind her with a jingle.
Brutus sat at the bar and put his head down until the bartender ambled slowly over. He was a stout, red-mustachioed man whose age— thirty? fifty? — could probably be determined by counting the red veins in his eyes.
“I’m afraid we don’ allow sleepin’ at the bar, not unless ye have a few drinks in ye first, heh. What can I bring ye?”
“Shot and a beer. Whiskey.”
“Coming right up. Jameson?”
“Anything.”
“Good man. My name’s Jimmy. Lemme know if I can be of service. From the looks of things I’d say someone tidied you up pretty good, heh?”
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
“I don’t doubt that. Lemme get ye those drinks, heh?”
Jimmy poured a Guinness and left the pint in front of Brutus to settle, then slipped through a door at the end of the bar. The ubiquitous remake of “Strange Fruit” came on the jukebox, reminding Brutus of the last time he had seen Magda. Was that just yesterday? Day before? It occurred to him that Jimmy might be his contact and, if so, he was likely on the horn with Sullivan right then. The Irish accent sounded phony. He reappeared and brought Brutus another beer. “Here y’are, on the house. Here’s hoping yer luck’ll change, heh?”
Brutus didn’t respond. He buried his head in his sleeves again and only nodded off for a second but the resulting disorientation was staggering. The pain settled in and cozied up next to the humiliation of that public beating. The embarrassment hardened like scar tissue; it disrupted the clarity of thought he was going to need. The fresh pint and another double whiskey waited beside him on the bar as if the booze fairy had stopped by. He discovered some new contours while running his tongue over the ridge of his teeth. His neck cracked with an audible snap but all things being equal, he was in decent shape. If he had gained nothing else from basic training at least the army taught him not only to suppress pain but to work with it, to temper it inside him like a burning ember. The cracked ribs and the sore jaw reminded him that he was alive, that he was a U.S. soldier, however disenfranchised. He had work to do; he had to stay alive, get the devil off his trail. He drank the whiskey in one go and took a long pull from his beer. The cold liquid made his chipped teeth ache.