Aleksandar Hemon: The Making of Zombie Wars

“Yeah, yeah … We heard that the last time. Got something beyond that?”

“Can I smoke?” Bega asked.

“Can you smoke? Can you smoke ? Hell no!” Graham said. “With all due respect.”

“Okay,” Bega said, licking his lips. “Man has no more friends in Sarajevo. Half of his group is dead, other half everywhere. Women have husbands. Everybody talks about the war all the time. He says, Fuck it! and goes to America — country of Dylan and Nirvana and best basketball. But he lost his soul. And American women are all feminists—”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Graham said.

“—and he works in store that sells guitars. One day mother and daughter come in. Mother is pretty but daughter is fantastic. He plays a beautiful song for them from Sarajevo. Daughter falls in love with him. It is like in love novels, but mother calls police. He is stalker, she says, because she’s jealous.”

“How old is the daughter?” Dillon asked.

Bega failed to hear him. At some point his gaze drifted toward the Godfather: Part II poster and he spoke as if pitching his story to Saint Pacino himself.

“But then mother dies from pills for depression. Daughter thinks he killed her. Police thinks it’s him too. Newspapers think it’s him. He has to prove it’s not him. He’s just immigrant, but his picture is everywhere. All America hates him. Big problem.”

“Is there a killer?” Joshua asked, returning the favor of attention.

“Maybe husband,” Bega said. “Maybe not.”

“That’s pretty good,” Graham said. “Immigrant detective, that’s pretty cool. Like, you are illegal, but you have to go around to figure things out. I would be careful about the detective clichés, though. And also grammar.”

“Maybe the daughter can help clear his name,” Joshua said. “I’m a little concerned about the ending.”

“American movies always have happy ending,” Bega said. “Life is tragedy: you’re born, you live, you die.”

“This could be like a European art-house movie. Which would be good because you could show tits,” Graham said, pausing to picture the tits. “Anyway, we gotta go. Next time, I’d like to see some pages. Things change when you have pages. It all becomes real.”

“Real is real good,” Dillon said.

* * *

Joshua walked out into the thick lightlessness of Grace Street and was just about to unlock his bike when, somewhat noirishly, Bega lit up his cigarette and called to him, exhaling smoke from the restored darkness: “We go for beer? I’ll give you ride.” Joshua trawled his mind for an excuse to decline. An arbitrary vision of Bega twisting his arm behind his back presented itself, but then he didn’t want to be scared nor did he want to look scared. Bega regarded him with a smirk that might have been a derisive smile, or just a long expression of expectation. Dillon walked out and stood before them, beaming a friendship offer. They both ignored it. “Have like a good night, guys,” Dillon finally said, and got into his rust-eaten vehicle, kept together by stickers expressing someone else’s thoughts: If you want peace, work for justice and such. If Joshua had to put one sticker on his car (which he didn’t have) it would be: Whatever is, is either in itself or in the other . Who on the street would ever understand what that meant? That’s exactly what would be so cool about it.

“All right, let’s go for a drink,” he said.

* * *

Bega was at home, he informed Joshua proudly, at the Westmoreland; he practically lived there, everyone knew him. But there was no one there to know him tonight, as the Westmoreland was desolate: a derelict jukebox in the corner; the Cubs game on TV high above the bar; a drunken couple drool-coating each other’s faces over a far table. It was one of those Chicago watering holes that proudly wore the badge of neglect on their tattered sleeves, reeking of yeast and sawdust. Here, the Westmoreland pronounced, livers have been pickled, marriages destroyed, guts disgorged. Joshua took the stool next to Bega, who rearranged a cluster of beer bottles on the bar as though solving a chess problem. The bartender came over wordlessly (Bega: “Hey, Paco!”), stuck his fingers in the rearranged bottles, and nodded barely perceptibly to indicate he was available for orders.

“Whiskey,” Bega said. “And Bud.”

“What kind of wine do you have?” Joshua asked.

“Red,” Paco said. “White.”

“I’d like a glass of red,” Joshua submitted. Paco’s face expressed nothing, but Joshua was sure he could detect contempt in his eyes for his unbecoming fussiness.

“I was thinking, Josh,” Bega said. “Why America now must have superheroes? Why can’t you just have normal heroes? John Wayne was not good enough, now you must have Batman? What do you think?”

“Actually, Batman is not a superhero, strictly speaking,” Joshua said. “He’s kind of an insanely entitled capitalist with a lot of gadgets. He has no superpower, he just works out like crazy.”

Paco brought drinks: Joshua’s red wine was in a martini glass. Ordering wine in this place was not unlike ordering milk — he was fortunate there were no real (or any) men at the bar to mock his pussiness. If you want peace, get a Budweiser. He stared at the wine; he’d have to drink it now, even if fully expecting vinegar.

“John Wayne would throw few punches, break bad furniture, and settle moral argument,” Bega went on, downing his bourbon shot between moral and argument . “These days, you can’t do nothing without special effects.”

The Cubs were losing by ten runs in the eighth inning, but Paco was transfixed, his head tilted back so far it seemed it might break off and clatter onto the floor. It was hard to tell whether he was expecting a miracle or he’d entered some kind of trance where the difference between victory and defeat was void. On the side of his neck he had a perfectly perfect goiter, glowing under the dim lights like a commercial for cancer. In My Darling Clementine , Henry Fonda asked the bartender at the saloon: “Have you ever been in love?” and he said: “I’ve always been a bartender.”

“In Sarajevo I knew one fat kid,” Bega said, washing the whiskey down with beer, waving to Paco to request more. “Fat kids were rare, not like here, so bullies loved him, loved to beat him. Once he came up with crazy story: he saw spaceship through his window in the middle of night and aliens gave him superpower. After that, he says, he can lift cars and destroy buildings, so bullies make secret organization against him. They are after him, always ready to attack. One day, he points at one building and tells us: They’re watching me right now. We look, there is nothing. But he is not afraid anymore.”

“That’s a great story,” Josh said. “That could be a great screenplay.” Bega dismissed the compliment with a flick of his hand. In addition to smoke and cologne, he exuded shapeless contempt for weakness. It was quite possible that he’d been a fat kid who eventually tormented other kids; or a bully who turned fat — his girth was still impressive.

The Cubs had finally lost their game by twelve runs. All the players looked absurdly inept, as though they were expressly drafted to be humiliated, entrepreneurs in the industry of losing. Paco scratched his goiter and it wiggled a bit under the skin, like a mature fetus. Script Idea #11: A gay pitcher sells his soul to the devil to play in the World Series. The price: he has to turn straight . Title: At the Bat . Joshua took a gulp of his wine and it burned his interiority. It was worse than vinegar, it was like dry-cleaned brine, the taste of rough-edged authenticity: by reality and perfection I understand the same thing. Paco pointed the remote at the TV and switched to the news: George W. Bush spoke to the camera, his face so decisively earnest that it was clear he was lying, his button eyes lit up with amateurish subterfuge. Only truly great men can be adept at shameless lying, Joshua thought. This dude was straining to the point of snapping.