Andrew Ervin - Extraordinary Renditions

Back on the sidewalk, those fuckers inside watched him through the restaurant’s windows. Following the map, he turned off the körút and crossed a small park, which was really just a block-sized patch of grass next to the river with a few drained fountains and some benches thrown around. The base of Margit Bridge loomed overhead. The sculptures in the middle of the fountains were wrapped in plastic and looked like some kind of modern art project. Kids sat around drinking wine straight from the bottle. They stopped to watch him pass. Someone was throwing up behind a row of plastic garbage cans.

The wind coming off the Danube sawed straight through his coat and sweatshirt, both of which remained wet with blood and sweat. Margit Island looked as green and peaceful as advertised. At the other end of the park, the black and yellow Guinness sign at Eve and Adam’s beckoned him.

An immense wooden bar ran down the right-hand side of the narrow room, and across it a row of vinyl booths overlooked the river and island through a series of tall windows. A dartboard hanging in the back like a saintly icon was being desecrated by four thick-handed boozers who never missed the bull’s-eye. Several well-dressed businessmen stood at the bar speaking a combination of English and Dutch. A gaggle of whores in fake fur coats accompanied them, smiling way too much and drinking unusually small glasses of beer. Someone had crossed the word TIPS off the wooden box next to the cash register and replaced it with SINN FÉIN. Brutus hadn’t even known they were still in business. Some of the ladies looked at Brutus, but they knew better than to bother him. The bartender whispered something to one of the hookers, and she strolled past Brutus toward the door. He turned with a wince to watch her pass and found himself staring down the business end of her moneymaker. Instead of anything he might call pants, she had on a pair of shorts the same color, texture, and which served the same general function as the skin one pulls off the outside of bologna. They left the rest of her ass free to slap together like two flesh cymbals crashing along to the climax of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. The door closed behind her with a jingle.

Brutus sat at the bar and put his head down until the bartender ambled slowly over. He was a stout, red-mustachioed man whose age— thirty? fifty? — could probably be determined by counting the red veins in his eyes.

“I’m afraid we don’ allow sleepin’ at the bar, not unless ye have a few drinks in ye first, heh. What can I bring ye?”

“Shot and a beer. Whiskey.”

“Coming right up. Jameson?”

“Anything.”

“Good man. My name’s Jimmy. Lemme know if I can be of service. From the looks of things I’d say someone tidied you up pretty good, heh?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

“I don’t doubt that. Lemme get ye those drinks, heh?”

Jimmy poured a Guinness and left the pint in front of Brutus to settle, then slipped through a door at the end of the bar. The ubiquitous remake of “Strange Fruit” came on the jukebox, reminding Brutus of the last time he had seen Magda. Was that just yesterday? Day before? It occurred to him that Jimmy might be his contact and, if so, he was likely on the horn with Sullivan right then. The Irish accent sounded phony. He reappeared and brought Brutus another beer. “Here y’are, on the house. Here’s hoping yer luck’ll change, heh?”

Brutus didn’t respond. He buried his head in his sleeves again and only nodded off for a second but the resulting disorientation was staggering. The pain settled in and cozied up next to the humiliation of that public beating. The embarrassment hardened like scar tissue; it disrupted the clarity of thought he was going to need. The fresh pint and another double whiskey waited beside him on the bar as if the booze fairy had stopped by. He discovered some new contours while running his tongue over the ridge of his teeth. His neck cracked with an audible snap but all things being equal, he was in decent shape. If he had gained nothing else from basic training at least the army taught him not only to suppress pain but to work with it, to temper it inside him like a burning ember. The cracked ribs and the sore jaw reminded him that he was alive, that he was a U.S. soldier, however disenfranchised. He had work to do; he had to stay alive, get the devil off his trail. He drank the whiskey in one go and took a long pull from his beer. The cold liquid made his chipped teeth ache.

“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.