“Now what’d I tell ye about sleepin’ here? At least let me freshen up that Jameson for ye?”
“Nah, I’ve got to run. What do I owe you?”
“Not a damn thing. These are on the house, Mr. Brutus.”
All right, contact established.
“So, you’re my man?”
“Yessir, I am indeed your man. And I couldn’t help but notice that you’re not carrying a parcel of mine. You wouldn’t perchance have lost it, now would ye?”
“It’s cool. I put it someplace safe.”
“Well I might hope so.” Jimmy leaned closer. “Just to be perfectly clear about this, you understand of course that you’re not the first piece of shit army nigger Sullivan has sent my way, right?” He kept his voice low enough so the johns and hookers at the other end of the bar wouldn’t hear. “And you also understand that any chance you have of ever getting back to your cozy bed at Taszár depends upon staying in my good graces?”
Brutus wanted to reach across the bar and slam that fucker’s pasty-white face into the rim of his beer glass. He looked Jimmy in the eye. “Everything is safe. I just needed to scope out the deal here.”
“The deal here is this: I will expect you back at five o’clock. Not one minute later. You hear me?”
Brutus looked at his watch but it was gone, stolen. “Yeah, the five o’clock whistle.”
“And if for some reason you are not sitting right here at that time, I will personally see to it that the fires of hell are unleashed upon you, your family, and everyone who ever met you.”
Brutus understood, at that moment, that he was going to kill this man, right before he took Sullivan down.
“Now thanks for stopping by. I got me a bar to run,” Jimmy said. He smiled at someone over Brutus’s shoulder. “What can I getcha, heh?”
“Korsó of Dreher.”
“You don’ wanna drink that Hungarian crap, do ye?” Brutus stood with considerable effort and made his way to the door. “Come again,” Jimmy hollered at him. Potato-eating son of a bitch.
Five o’clock. Hopefully that gave Brutus enough time to lie down and figure out what to do. He needed a change of clothes, a quick power nap. A hot shower. He contemplated picking up the duffel bag first but would put that off until it got closer to five. Never knew who could be following him, and he wasn’t exactly eager for a rematch with those skinheads. He had reached his quota of bullshit for one day and was prepared to fuck somebody up. But the not knowing — that was the worst part. He felt a little bit more buzzed than he should’ve been. Bad idea. Some hazy light now penetrated his bad eye, but his forehead was still sore to the touch.
It got dark early that time of year, and the park was now deserted. At the körút, a wicked wind came off the river; the rows of buildings focused it into a steady, powerful blast. He waited on the corner with the foot traffic, and when the light changed he crossed the street, over the trolley tracks. No one got near him; the other pedestrians maintained a buffer zone of revulsion or fear. He wanted to see the view from the bridge again but that would have to wait.
He stopped in a small shop with a Levi’s sign in the window. Two wannabe hotties without one natural eyebrow between them stood perched atop four-inch heels behind the sales counter and gossiped back and forth, ignoring him. He couldn’t make out a single goddamn word. A sign read “Farmers” above a wall of exorbitantly overpriced jeans. He grabbed a pair and a fresh black T-shirt, a three-pack of socks, and a pair of boxers with red cartoon devils fucking in different positions. They rang him up and threw everything into a shopping bag without as much as looking at him or shutting up for a single goddamn second. The bill was over 25,000 forints, which he calculated as something like two hundred bucks. He wasn’t sure that was right.
More drunks crowded the sidewalk. They melted away from his path even as they continued to stare and occasionally jeer under their breath. More jungle noises found him. The tall buildings along the boulevard came in different colors — pale blue or mustard yellow or such dark gray that they blended into the weather. Most had huge windows but a thick layer of grime covered every inch. He could write his name in the pollution: Brutus was here. Spray-painted stick-figure squiggles and swastikas covered the posters advertising raves and HVG magazine. Brutus passed what looked like an off-track betting parlor and then crossed the mouth of a wide alley that led pedestrians into the gaping maw of the Non Stop Nirvana Night Club.
That same bitch was working the front desk of the hotel and that same sickly smell overpowered him again. He got into the elevator. A laminated poster advertised a coffee house on the second floor, which explained the odor. That last cup had burned the shit out of his mouth so he skipped getting another cup.
The window of his small room faced a construction site behind the hotel. The clock next to the bed told him he had plenty of time. He pissed out all the beer, then stood at the window again. Smoke streamed from all the rooftops. He cranked the heat up a few notches, undressed, and went to the mirror to inspect the damage one more time. His eye was opening up more and more, but it still looked terrible. The gash on his tongue grew worse because he kept scraping it on his busted teeth. His lips wouldn’t stop bleeding. He turned the shower all the way to hot and stayed in front of the mirror until he could no longer see himself through the steam. A bunch of snot and blood dislodged itself painfully from his nose, and he crapped the McDonald’s out of his system. The bathroom fan whirred. Fixing the temperature, he showered for what had to be half an hour, using a brittle, midget-sized bar of soap to scrub the piss and smoke and blood off his body and out of his hair. His strength returned, and so did his rage. That was one way the army brainwashed soldiers — by teaching them to turn physical pain into hatred.
He toweled off as best he could, set the alarm for an hour, and climbed into bed naked. No dreams interrupted him and he awoke feeling a little better. His body knew how to operate on little or no sleep, to store energy during short moments of repose. He ripped the tags off his new clothes and left the old soiled ones in a ball on the floor, except for his jacket, which was a mess, and the Temple sweatshirt, which now had a few stains that nobody would be able to ID as blood. Given the dropping temperature, he would need all the layers he could find, even if they still smelled terrible.
10.
He checked out his reflection in the mirrored walls of the elevator and found something wrong. Something was slightly off. His nose was still stuffed up and his lips continued to bleed from a combination of the beating and the dry air. Then the doors closed, blocking out the stale coffee smell, and he couldn’t understand how he’d failed to recognize it till that moment. Magda’s perfume. Someone in the hotel had on the same perfume Magda wore, which was impossible. But there was no mistaking it. He breathed it in and even with the pain in his chest, he allowed the scent to drift through his lungs and into his blood. The rush came as a revelation; it crawled into his muscles and relaxed his entire body. It was a sign. He felt renewed, ready. He would finish the ugly business then return to the base. Magda’s connections at her company could help him deal with Sullivan.