“I don’t know,” Norbi says.
“He must have money,” István says. “Look at this place.”
Norbi shrugs.
He’s cutting lines of speed on the black marble worktop.
István sits on a leather sofa, using an empty Red Bull can as an ashtray.
Without the speed and the Red Bull to keep him going he probably would have fallen asleep already. He didn’t sleep much on the overnight journey from Germany. He only fell asleep properly once, he thinks. That was toward dawn. He must have slept for a while though, because when he woke up it was broad daylight and there was a wet patch on his T-shirt where he’d drooled on himself.
He stands up from the sofa to snort his line from the black marble surface. He feels the drug trickle down the back of his throat with a warm phlegmy sensation. He sniffs and rubs his nose.
“What time is it?” he asks Norbi.
He has no idea what time it is.
He keeps forgetting where he is as well. There was a moment, sitting there on the sofa, when he seriously thought he was still in Kuwait.
“Five,” Norbi says.
István has a look around the apartment. It has an empty, unlived-in feeling.
Though there’s furniture there don’t seem to be any personal possessions.
There’s some sort of huge Jacuzzi thing in the bathroom, with steps down into it.
He breaks open another Red Bull from the otherwise empty fridge and lights another Philip Morris.
“You hungry?” Norbi asks him.
“No,” he says.
He feels edgy as they troop down the stairs, which are massive and made of stone. Their feet and voices echo. They’re making a lot of noise, an unnecessary amount of noise, shouting at each other, pushing and shoving, laughing loudly at stupid things.
Then they’re in the street, walking along in the early evening darkness and the sound of the traffic. They have a few beers in a sports bar, the first place they see. There’s soccer on a screen. Toward the end there’s a punch-up, with several players involved. One player is sent off. Soon after that the match ends and they go to the men’s room to do some more lines. They take turns in the stall and snort the speed from the plastic top of the toilet. They’ve been looking forward to this evening for a long time. It was something they talked about a lot at Camp Babylon—this first night out when they got home. Just a normal night out, essentially. That’s what they wanted. And that’s what this is. Except there are moments when the very normality of it feels like a sort of outrage.
They tell the police that they’re soldiers, just back from Iraq. The police found them pissing against the wall of a building. They were standing there pissing when the squad car rolled past and pulled over, and the policeman got out and said, “What do you think you’re doing?”
It turned out that the wall they were pissing against was the wall of a police station.
“Hey,” István said, doing up his trousers. “Sorry, seriously. We didn’t realize.”
That was when he told them that they were soldiers, just back from Iraq.
Flecks of falling rain show up in the headlight beams of the stationary squad car.
“I don’t care about that,” the policeman says.
“Okay,” István says.
“What difference does that make?” the policeman says. “How does that make this okay?”
“Whatever,” István says.
He tries to seem more sober than he actually is. He has had a few beers, on an empty stomach, after two more or less sleepless nights and a long afternoon of speed and Red Bull and more speed.
He’s trying to hold it together.
It’s not easy.
“Sorry,” he says again.
“Go on, then,” the policeman says. “Get out of here.”
They have rum in some sort of rum place. It seems like a rum place. The bar has a thatched roof that’s presumably supposed to look like something on the beach of a Caribbean island. The whole décor of the place is trying to get that vibe. They aren’t that aware of it. It’s quite dark in there. The rum-based cocktails have little paper umbrellas in them.
“These things actually work,” Balázs says, closing and opening the one that was in his drink with a small papery flapping noise.
“Why don’t you take it with you,” Norbi suggests. “It’s raining, isn’t it.”
Balázs holds it up as if it was an actual umbrella.
They laugh at that.
It seems very funny at the time.
Out in the street Balázs is still doing it, he’s still holding it up as if it was an actual umbrella, and they’re still laughing at it.
They get talking to two foreign girls in Morrison’s. One of the girls is quite tall, the other one is quite short. “Where are you from?” István asks them.
“Norway,” the taller one says.
He tells them they served alongside some Norwegian soldiers in Iraq.
“What were their names?” the taller girl asks.
“Sven,” István says. “There was Sven and…” He turns to Norbi.
“Olav?” Norbi suggests.
“Yeah, Olav,” István says. “Sven and Olav.”
“Where were they from?” the taller girl asks. The taller girl does most of the talking.
“Where were they from?” István says.
“Yeah.”
He turns to Norbi again.
Norbi just laughs.
“Oslo, is it?” István says. He starts to laugh himself.
“Did these guys even exist?” the taller girl asks, smiling at him.
“Yeah, I swear,” István says.
They’re speaking English. His English improved a lot in Iraq. It was the language they used to talk to the other foreign troops they were stationed with.
Norbi asks the girls if they want another drink.
They’re drinking vodka Cokes, they say, after exchanging a look.
While Norbi takes care of that István talks to them about what they are doing there. “You on vacation?” he asks.
“No, we live here,” the taller girl says.
“You live here?”
“Yeah.”
“Why do you live here?”
“We study here.”
“You study here?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you study?”
“Medicine.”
“Medicine?”
“Yeah.”
“You must be very intelligent,” István says.
“Yeah, very,” the taller girl says, and laughs.
When Norbi gets back with the drinks he asks the girls if they want to do some speed.
They look at each other and sort of shrug and then say that they do.
They go to the toilet with them to take it, to the men’s.
First Norbi goes with the taller girl.
Then István goes with the shorter girl.
Then Balázs goes by himself.
“Is he okay?” the shorter girl asks when Balázs goes.
“I think so. Why?” István asks her.
It’s true that Balázs didn’t look well.
“He’s drunk,” István explains.
They have a sort of rapport now, he and the shorter girl, after their minute of proximity in the toilet.
“Did you kill anyone?” she asks.
She’s drunk too.
Even though he’s drunk himself, she’s drunk enough that he thinks, She’s drunk, which must mean she’s even drunker than he is, he thinks.
“In Iraq, I mean,” she says.
“Yeah, I know,” he says.
“So?” she says.
“I’m not allowed to tell you that,” he says.
Then he says, “No, I’m joking. I didn’t.”
The speed has made her more talkative and she asks him some other things, and then Norbi’s there with her friend saying why don’t they go back to his place.
They wait near the entrance while the girls sort themselves out.
“Where’s Balázs?” Norbi asks, after they’ve been standing there for a minute or so.
“Balázs?” István says.
“Yeah.”
“Dunno,” István says.
“When d’you last see him?” Norbi asks.
“He went to do some speed, didn’t he?”
“Yeah?”
“Didn’t he?”
They have a look for him and István finds him semi-conscious in the men’s room, sitting on the toilet though with his trousers still on and his face pressed against a wall plastered with old stickers promoting DJ nights at Morrison’s and other venues.