David Szalay - All That Man Is

She looks tired, more than anything, still in her skimpy dress and heels — though now she has shed the shoes and drawn her legs up under her on the seat. The two men managed a few hours’ sleep while they waited; it is hard to say whether she has. Her brown-ringed eyes suggest not. Her residual alertness seems chemically assisted.

‘Everything was okay?’ Gábor says eventually, while they wait at a traffic light.

‘M-hm.’

‘Are you hungry?’ is his next question, a minute or so later.

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘Maybe.’

‘You should eat something,’ he advises.

‘Okay.’

They stop at a McDonald’s and Balázs is sent in. He is aware, in her presence, of his own obvious stink — he has been wearing the same T-shirt for twenty-four hours. She wants a Big Mac and large fries, and a Diet Coke.

‘Thanks,’ she says, when he gets back to the car and, turning in the passenger seat, passes her the brown bag.

It is the first word she has ever spoken to him.

To her, he says, ‘No problem,’ though she might not have heard, as at that moment Gábor starts the engine.

She pushes the plastic straw into the cup’s lid and starts to drink.

—

Zoli shows up in the middle of the afternoon, while they are all still asleep.

Gábor emerges vague and tousled in a singlet and boxer shorts to hand over Zoli’s share of the money, which he does in the recessed corner of the living room that has been turned into a derisory pine kitchenette. Zoli then hands out strongly chilled lagers and, as they open them, asks after Emma. She has not been seen since the morning — not by Balázs anyway — when she disappeared into the bedroom as soon as they got back to the flat.

Gábor had joined her soon after, leaving Balázs to press his face into the odorous sofa as he tried to escape the light that flooded in through the windows and ignore the sounds from the street, intermittent but easily audible from the first floor, and fall asleep. At about ten o’clock, still unable to sleep, he had masturbated under a weak shower to a torrent of images of Emma in a vaguely delineated hotel room, images of the sort that had filled his head all night. A shocking quantity of seed turned down the plughole. Some time after that, with a T-shirt tied over his eyes, he did finally fall asleep.

‘So everything went okay?’ Zoli says, and swigs.

‘Yeah, I think so,’ Gábor says, with a sort of sleepy snuffle. They are standing at the pine breakfast bar.

‘I know him, that guy,’ Zoli says. ‘He’s okay. He’s a nice guy. I put him in first because I knew he wouldn’t cause any hassle.’

Gábor just nods.

‘Some of the others I don’t know,’ Zoli says. And then, ‘I’m not expecting any hassle, though.’

‘No,’ Gábor says.

‘These aren’t people who want to talk to the police, to journalists, you know what I mean. They’ve got too much to lose. Some of them are famous, I think.’

‘Yeah?’ Gábor says. He doesn’t seem interested.

‘I think so,’ Zoli says, with a nod and a swig. ‘She still asleep?’ he asks.

‘Yeah,’ Gábor says.

Zoli doesn’t stay long, and after he leaves Gábor goes back to bed. If he had had a bed, Balázs might have done the same. Instead he goes out into the blinding day and gets another box of chicken pieces from the same place as the night before. Then he lies on the sofa with the window open, smoking and trying to read a book — Harry Potter és a Titkok Kamrája . He is working his way slowly through the series.

He finds it difficult to focus on the story.

Then he finds it difficult to focus on the words.

—

When he wakes up she is standing in the doorway, in a dressing gown. He has no idea what time it is. It is still daylight.

‘Hi,’ she says in a neutral voice.

‘Hi.’ He sits up. ‘What, uh, what time is it?’

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘Gábor wants to go shopping.’

Balázs is not sure what to say.

She tilts her head as if looking at something upside down — Harry Potter és a Titkok Kamrája . ‘Is that any good?’ she asks.

‘Uh.’ He picks it up and looks at the front, as if the answer might be there. ‘It’s alright,’ he says. He tries to think of something else to say about it.

She stays there for a few moments more, in the mote-filled afternoon light.

Then she yawns, and leaves.

—

Later, when they are sitting in the parked Merc, Gábor tells him about the shopping trip — two and a half hours in the scrum of Oxford Street, followed by a meal in the red velvet interior of an Angus Steakhouse. They have been talking more than they did the first night, the two men. It is drizzling. Maybe that helps, the way the surrounding hubbub softens the silence. The fact is, they do not know each other well. Even in the context of the gym they are not particularly friendly.

At about midnight, Balázs leaves the Merc and walks through the drizzle to the nearby KFC to get their ‘lunch’ — two ‘Fully Loaded’ meals.

Taking his seat again, he finds Gábor in a pensive mood. ‘Sometimes I worry about my attitude to women,’ Gábor says. Water trickles down the window against which his head is silhouetted. ‘D’you worry about that?’

Balázs has just bitten into his chicken fillet burger and cannot immediately answer. When he has swallowed what is in his mouth, he says, ‘What d’you mean?’

‘Just my attitude to women,’ Gábor says miserably. ‘Maybe it isn’t healthy.’ He turns to Balázs, still wet in the passenger seat, and says, ‘What do you think?’

Balázs just stares at him.

‘What would you do in my position?’ Gábor asks.

‘What would I do?’

‘Yeah, if you were in my position.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘If you and Emma were…whatever,’ Gábor says impatiently. ‘Would you let her do this?’

‘Would I let her?’

‘Yeah.’

Balázs is having trouble imagining, with any emotional specificity, the situation Gábor wants him to — a situation in which he and Emma were…whatever. Sex, is all he is able to imagine, and that of an impossibly lubricious kind. ‘Don’ know,’ he says. And then, trying to be more helpful, ‘Maybe.’

‘You would?’

‘Well…’ Balázs attempts to think about it honestly. ‘Maybe not,’ he says. ‘It depends.’

‘On what?’

‘On what…You know…What sort of relationship…?’

‘That’s it,’ Gábor says. ‘That’s my point. That’s what I’m talking about.’ He turns his attention, finally, to the food in his lap.

‘You’re worried this won’t be, uh…this won’t be positive for your relationship?’ Balázs asks.

‘Yeah,’ Gábor says simply, and pushes a sheaf of French fries into his mouth.

‘Well…D’you talk to her about it?’

Gábor shakes his head, and speaks with his mouth full. ‘Not really, to be honest. I mean, I try sometimes. She doesn’t want to. Whatever.’

They eat.

‘It’s her birthday next week.’ Gábor sounds slightly wistful now.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. I’m taking her to a kind of wellness spa place.’

‘Yeah?’ Balázs says again.

‘In Slovakia. They’ve got this luxury hotel up in the mountains. We’ve been there before. Kempinski hotel. You know those hotels?’

Balázs frowns, as if trying to remember, then shakes his head.

‘Fucking nice,’ Gábor tells him. ‘There’s this lake, surrounded by mountain peaks — she loves that shit. They’ve got every kind of treatment,’ he says. ‘Literally. You know. Mud baths, whatever.’

—

The days pass, and every day is the same, from Zoli’s visit in the mid-afternoon, through the long night, to the stop at McDonald’s in the smeary sun and the spasm in the mildewed shower, which smoothes the way to sleep.