John Brady - Poachers Road

“Most. Enough.”

“I should practice more maybe. But the winter is hard on him, and the wind too. There are little bottles he applies quite often. I tell you all this Felix, so…?”

“So you can tell me something else, or ask me, afterwards?”

Speckbauer made a gentle smile.

“Sehr gut. Anyway. When they set Franz on fire they were hoping that that was the last of him. But they did not know our Franz.

What’s the name of that fountain again, Franz?”

“Mandusevac.”

“And a filthy fountain it was. But right in a square, a main one too: they don’t care, you see. Jelacica, that’s the place, the square.

We had a meeting there, didn’t we?”

Franz nodded.

“Well, Franz was out of the car and into that cesspool as fast as, well, as fast as Hermann Maier down that slalom. A hell of an achievement, I tell you. Better than any gold medal Klammer or any of those ski genius boys can pull off in Kitzbuhel. The prize? Way better. Right, Franz?”

Again Franz nodded.

“He got to keep his eyesight. Well most of it.”

“Which I guess makes it maybe a little ironic here,” Speckbauer went on. “He gets to see the face of the guy who did it to him.”

“You mean yesterday?”

“Franzi, you still think, you know?”

“Hard to be sure,” said Franz. “Like the Chinaman said. You know?”

“I don’t get it,” said Felix.

“Right. It’s an old joke. A Chinese guy flies to Vienna. It’s his first time out of China, no? An ORF guy is there to interview him, you know: millions of tourists from China, billions of shillings what am I saying, Euro dancing in the brains of the Tourism Department. Are you with me?”

“Sort of.”

“Good enough. So the interviewer gets the camera on the Chinaman. He sticks a microphone under his nose oh, I didn’t tell you this Chinaman has been studying German since birth, did I? and asks the fateful question: ‘What are your first impressions of us Austrians?’ What do you think he said?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re thinking dirndl? Cowbells? Sacher torte, decent coffee?

Strauss, maybe. Skiing? None of that Hitler crap, obviously. What do you think the guy said?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Well, this is what he said: ‘These Austrians, they all look the same to me.’”

Speckbauer didn’t laugh. Nor did he smile. He remained intensely interested, it seemed to Felix, in a passing tractor that did not slow as it wheeled by the konditorei.

After seconds passed with no response from Felix, Speckbauer leaned in.

“What this means is that these two characters up in the woods could be any of them. ‘Them’? Well, we don’t really know ‘them.’

‘Them’ seems to start just southeast of here. Remember, before the Slovenes got into the EU club, when they had the border post?

You rolled up to the border post and seeing all that Russianlooking alphabet starting just the far side of the barrier? The Cyrillic words…?”

He sat back and eyed Franz a moment.

“But this much I do know. I want Franzi here to be able to use those eyes of his to see the face, or the faces of the men who sprayed the gasoline in the car and threw a match in on him. Verstehst? Got that?”

“I think so.”

“Good. And I don’t much care how we find them.”

Speckbauer looked around the restaurant again, and stretched.

Felix caught a glimpse of the pistol in its holster under Speckbauer’s arm as he arched.

“More coffee?” he asked Felix.

Giuliana was marking something when he got in. Felix had driven back to the apartment by one of those freak journeys, a miracle where he couldn’t actually remember long stretches of the road. Nor could he remember what he had been thinking about. It unnerved him. It also made him aroused.

“What the hell,” she said as his arms went around her.

“Is it a bad time?”

“It’s not that.”

He heard her voice change and she was pushing the papers and her empty cup away. He slid his hands under her T-shirt, and felt the dampness by her armpits.

“Jesus,” she murmured. “You’re hardly in the door.”

“Pretty close. Come on.”

He covered her mouth with his, and felt her rising from the chair. Her breasts flattened against him and his hand traced her spine up and back to her hips, straining now against her track pants.

“You want me so badly,” he whispered. “I just know it.”

“You goof,” she said.

His hand slid around her and pulled her into him. He felt her hips push back and she settled her crotch with a small movement against him. He thought of her ass, of how she was embarrassed in the beginning always but then gave way and stretched, with that cat smile, her eyes almost closed.

She gave a little sigh and he felt her breath puff onto his ear.

His fingers sought the parted flesh and slid over the hairs there, finding their way to her bone and the soft folds he sought.

“You’re terrible,” she whispered. “What’s gotten into you?”

“It’s called ‘We’re on holiday.’ And you made me do it.”

“Me?”

He raised his arms under the T-shirt and did too as he pulled it over her head.

“No staring,” she whispered, but her eyes were almost closed already.

“Will if I want.”

His breath was coming out in short deep gusts now. She held her arms behind her head and opened her eyes.

“Not fair,” she said. “You, you first.”

He tried to keep his eyes on hers while he got his clothes off.

He almost lost his balance with the first leg of his pants.

“How long have you been walking around with that?”

“With what?”

She threw her arms down and lifted the band of his underpants. Then she dropped to one knee to draw them down. Before she had reached his knee, she had grabbed at him.

“No,” he said, lying. “No.”

He felt her teeth settle in, leave and settle in again.

“No, Giuliana?”

She lifted her head, and she slid back on the carpet and kicked off her pants. Her scent reached him and seemed to envelop him, and he stared at her bush as her legs went up, until the cleft appeared. She pulled the last leg off her foot and her hand reached for her crotch.

“Is that what’s on your mind?”

He tried to nod but the muscles in his neck were so tight that he shuddered instead. She was staring at him and the smile was gone. Her hips made a small, sliding movement.

“Let me,” he said. It came out as a croak.

“Let you what?” she whispered. “What should I let you do?”

“Let me do it for you. Come on.”

Her eyelids almost closed.

“Tell me what you want to do.”

He stepped out of his underpants, his penis giving a spasm. His belly contracted in a shiver. Her forefinger had disappeared, he saw.

There was a roaring in his ears, like he was underwater.

He got down on his knees. She reached a leg around him.

“Let me.”

“I haven’t had my shower,” she said.

It was the old fake, and he’d guessed from the start that she’d say it. It was the same way she said her ass was too big, or that her boobs wouldn’t ever go out on a topless beach. It was to dare herself, and him.

He stilled her hand, drew it away. Her hair was like breath on his face, and the soft tissue that met his mouth seemed to dissolve.

She sighed, and seemed to want to draw back. He pulled her more to him until at last he felt her hips begin to move, and to push gently against him.

“You,” she said in a clear voice. “I want to.”

He slowed, and raised his head. Her face was flushed and strange.