Andrew Ervin - Extraordinary Renditions

More drunks crowded the sidewalk. They melted away from his path even as they continued to stare and occasionally jeer under their breath. More jungle noises found him. The tall buildings along the boulevard came in different colors — pale blue or mustard yellow or such dark gray that they blended into the weather. Most had huge windows but a thick layer of grime covered every inch. He could write his name in the pollution: Brutus was here. Spray-painted stick-figure squiggles and swastikas covered the posters advertising raves and HVG magazine. Brutus passed what looked like an off-track betting parlor and then crossed the mouth of a wide alley that led pedestrians into the gaping maw of the Non Stop Nirvana Night Club.

That same bitch was working the front desk of the hotel and that same sickly smell overpowered him again. He got into the elevator. A laminated poster advertised a coffee house on the second floor, which explained the odor. That last cup had burned the shit out of his mouth so he skipped getting another cup.

The window of his small room faced a construction site behind the hotel. The clock next to the bed told him he had plenty of time. He pissed out all the beer, then stood at the window again. Smoke streamed from all the rooftops. He cranked the heat up a few notches, undressed, and went to the mirror to inspect the damage one more time. His eye was opening up more and more, but it still looked terrible. The gash on his tongue grew worse because he kept scraping it on his busted teeth. His lips wouldn’t stop bleeding. He turned the shower all the way to hot and stayed in front of the mirror until he could no longer see himself through the steam. A bunch of snot and blood dislodged itself painfully from his nose, and he crapped the McDonald’s out of his system. The bathroom fan whirred. Fixing the temperature, he showered for what had to be half an hour, using a brittle, midget-sized bar of soap to scrub the piss and smoke and blood off his body and out of his hair. His strength returned, and so did his rage. That was one way the army brainwashed soldiers — by teaching them to turn physical pain into hatred.

He toweled off as best he could, set the alarm for an hour, and climbed into bed naked. No dreams interrupted him and he awoke feeling a little better. His body knew how to operate on little or no sleep, to store energy during short moments of repose. He ripped the tags off his new clothes and left the old soiled ones in a ball on the floor, except for his jacket, which was a mess, and the Temple sweatshirt, which now had a few stains that nobody would be able to ID as blood. Given the dropping temperature, he would need all the layers he could find, even if they still smelled terrible.

10.

He checked out his reflection in the mirrored walls of the elevator and found something wrong. Something was slightly off. His nose was still stuffed up and his lips continued to bleed from a combination of the beating and the dry air. Then the doors closed, blocking out the stale coffee smell, and he couldn’t understand how he’d failed to recognize it till that moment. Magda’s perfume. Someone in the hotel had on the same perfume Magda wore, which was impossible. But there was no mistaking it. He breathed it in and even with the pain in his chest, he allowed the scent to drift through his lungs and into his blood. The rush came as a revelation; it crawled into his muscles and relaxed his entire body. It was a sign. He felt renewed, ready. He would finish the ugly business then return to the base. Magda’s connections at her company could help him deal with Sullivan.

When the elevator stopped, he booked through the lobby and out of the hotel. He felt good, or at least good enough to keep himself moving.

Even in the stink of that rotting city, he could still smell Magda in his nostrils. No mistake about it. Someone definitely had the same perfume on. He walked as quickly as his sore legs allowed through the congestion of Nyugati’s underpass. The noise and commotion had grown even worse, but he saw no sign of the skinheads or even the Jesus freaks. A cloud of smoke hung from the filthy ceiling. Bums lined the walls of the rear hallway. They passed around plastic bottles of dubious vintages and tried to stay warm. Someone among them made monkey noises as Brutus passed. He pointed at a youngish guy smirking at him without teeth. “Just because you’re homeless,” Brutus said, his voice still strange because of the swelling in his tongue, “don’t think I won’t body slam your ass.”

He stepped over the glimmering pool of his own blood, which now lapped at the torn remains of that old man’s discarded necktie. Confident that no one was watching, Brutus opened the locker. The bag had grown heavier. He swiveled his neck as he passed again between the rows of homeless families, expecting a bottle, or worse, to come flying at his head. Their chatter stopped as they watched him go.

The fleet of tiny cars on the körút formed a four-lane parking lot that went all the way to the bridge and produced its own noxious weather system. Streetlamps and electric billboards washed the city with a sad damp glow. Everything still appeared fuzzy in Brutus’s right eye, but it had become easier to discern shapes and movement around him. The cold air both revived and punished him in the same breath. The sky had grown dark, but there was still no sign of the snow he expected. With the Independence Day festivities winding down, a hostile depression colonized Budapest, occupying its buildings and subjugating its citizenry. Hungary maintained the highest suicide rate in the world, and now Brutus understood why. It got dark so early. Even the capital city was gray and listless; he didn’t want to imagine what life was like in the small towns. Most of the people meandered down the street like zombies, though small packs of young people continued to make noise and smash empty beer bottles.

He stopped in front of the hotel to catch his breath and watched in shock as a bum lifted up a filthy child no older than J. J. so that he could fish his tiny hand into a red metal mailbox. They were stealing the stamps and throwing the torn envelopes to the ground.

Hopefully Magda had already mailed that letter home to Joan. Ten or twelve days. After he dropped the bag, Brutus would only need to stay out of sight for ten or twelve days, until his letter arrived and Joan got the word out about Sullivan’s bullshit. No problem. Maybe he should have kept a copy of the letter for himself. What if Magda had forgotten to send it?

Or what if she had read it and turned it over to Sullivan? The thought had never occurred to him. What if that was her perfume in the hotel? It had to be. No one else had the same perfume. It was impossible, but she had been right there. Something was going seriously fucking wrong. It didn’t make any sense at all. He breathed deeply, tried to compose himself. His mind was playing tricks on him again. He grew dizzy. He was close to breaking down.

He sweated profusely. The bag had grown so heavy that he could hardly hold it any longer. He had to get rid of it. He clutched it to his chest and ran, pushing past the other pedestrians on the sidewalk. People hollered at him in a language he couldn’t understand. Still tied up in knots and chains and padlocks, Brutus got an idea, one that would definitely make himself bigger. A delay tactic that might buy him enough time to get gone. He stopped in the park and opened the lid of a plastic garbage can. The smell was atrocious. He pulled out a bag of trash and dropped the weapons in the can. It felt great to get the weight off his hands. He tore open the trash bag and dumped the fetid contents all over the firearms. That Irish motherfucker would love sifting through this mess of banana peels and broken glass, the half-decayed remains of a cat. He would tell Jimmy where to find the guns, then hop in a taxi and get out of town. Head for the Buda Hills, he’ll say to the driver. Or, better yet, he could hide out in the forest down on Margit Island. Live off the land.