Andrew Ervin - Extraordinary Renditions

He stopped outside Eve and Adam’s and tried to settle his heart rate. The windows were all fogged up. The beer sign shined down on him and the steam of his breath. People inside were singing along with the jukebox. He couldn’t make out the song. Probably that “Strange Fruit” bullshit again. Fat tourists sang pop songs while trapped at the very heart of the abyss, only they didn’t even know it.

Eve and Adam’s was significantly more crowded this time. Some girl was tending bar instead of Jimmy, who was nowhere to be seen. Cool — that motherfucker was bad news. Brutus wasn’t about to back down from a fight, but he didn’t want to invite trouble from that dude either. The same stool was available. He planned to tell this girl where to find the rifles and then bail. Everyone was speaking English this time; he didn’t hear a lick of Dutch, German, or even Hungarian. Without taking his order, the bartender brought over a pint of Guinness and a shot of Jameson. She didn’t even look at him when he tried to get her attention. Instead, she walked the length of the bar, scooped up a couple thousand forints’ worth of tips along the way, and stuck her head in the back room. Jimmy emerged to much fanfare. He waved off the drunken greetings from different gangs of regulars, who patted him on the back like he was some kind of celebrity. He took the stool next to Brutus.

“The fuck you think you’re doing?”

Brutus struggled to keep his cool. He envisioned himself shattering a full pint glass over this guy’s Lucky Charms-eating skull and then stabbing him slowly in the eye with the broken end. “Jimmy. Just having a little drink. You know. Buy you one? Hey, another beer down here for my man!”

Jimmy got up real close in Brutus’s ear, like the motherfucker who called him a nigger while he pretended to be asleep. That was a lifetime ago. “I see that you’re empty-handed. You have no idea what you’re involved with, boy.” Assorted drunks continued to vie for Jimmy’s attention. “You are going to disappear, you hear me? This is bigger than you can imagine. Fuck with me on this and dental records are not going to help your next of kin identify your body. Because there won’t be any goddamn body, heh.”

Brutus tightened his hand around his beer, felt the smooth bulb of the glass on his fingertips. “You’ll get your fucking weapons.”

“You better hope so, sweet pea. Now I want you to get your filthy nigger ass out of my bar, get what belongs to me, and just maybe— maybe —I’ll let you keep both of your hands, heh? If you’re not here with my parcel in fifteen minutes I will place a call to some colleagues of our mutual acquaintance. After that time I can no longer guarantee your safety.”

Brutus loosened his grip and took a long swallow. “They’re very close. I just wanted to get the lay of the land here first.” He sipped from the whiskey to buy himself a few seconds to think, then slowly put the glass back down. Pure fear coursed through his bloodstream. He could feel it in his fingertips, in the pulse of his neck.

“Good to see ye, Tommy!” Jimmy said to someone behind Brutus’s back, then whispered again to him, “Do yourself a real big favor. Go get what belongs to me and bring it here, heh.”

Brutus remained silent, his eyes fixed on the row of expensive booze behind the bar.

“And think of your dear Lieutenant Colonel Sullivan. Isn’t he going to be disappointed when he hears you haven’t been exactly cooperative? But he doesn’t have to know. We can still be friends, Brutus. Looky here — I have a train ticket for you to Kaposvár.” Sure enough, he lifted the top of a ticket from his apron pocket. “Be a good boy and this day never happened, heh? Sullivan assures me he’ll welcome you back, no questions asked. You have fifteen minutes and not one second longer. That little girlie friend of yours is going to be awfully disappointed when you show up dead. What’s her name — Magda?”

“Fifteen minutes,” Brutus said.

Jimmy smiled. “See, good. You’re not the mouth-breathing retard I took you for.” He returned to his regular speaking volume: “And now if you’ll excuse me,” he said, and merged into the welcoming crowd. “Ere comes trouble, heh!”

Brutus got outside in a hurry. Something didn’t feel right. His legs sweated in his new pants. The normally centered part of himself melted into a swamp of bile in his gut. Every part of his body hurt again. The only way Jimmy could have known about Magda was if Sullivan had told him. And if Sullivan knew he had been seeing her, what did that mean? What had Magda told him? Now Brutus was getting all turned around inside. Fuck. It was so obvious. She wasn’t going to send that letter because she worked for these people, for Sullivan and this piece of shit bartender. The past couple of months, this whole time, he wasn’t trying to get into her pants— she was the one seducing him. Oh fuck. The whole plan was Magda’s doing all along. From the very goddamn beginning. That perfume. Something deep inside Brutus started to slip off its axis. She had probably tailed him all day long, laughing behind his back, mocking him. It had been Magda all along. Magda attacked him beneath the train station, she and those CIA-contracted thugs from the camp’s restricted zone. Not skinheads, no matter what that crazy old man said. Of course. Brutus must have been a nice little diversion for them, a brief respite from torturing Arabs.

The filthy homeless dude in the Burger King crown he had seen earlier was rooting through the garbage can next to the one with the weapons. Brutus panicked. He ran at the bum and shoved him to the ground. Two girls walking arm in arm through the park yelled at him. They spoke English, but he paid no attention. He pulled the duffel bag from the filth. The bum convulsed on the ground and for a moment, Brutus considered kicking him senseless.

For the first time in as long as he could remember, Brutus was in a position to decide his own fate. He could deliver the guns, or tell Jimmy where to find them, and it would all be over. But that wouldn’t solve anything. It might save his own ass, but it wouldn’t solve anything at all. What was to stop Sullivan from pulling the same bullshit again on somebody else? Maybe he and Magda picked a new sucker every month.

He felt sick. Feverish. He wanted to cry right there.

He took off in a trot, but not back to Eve and Adam’s. Clutching the stinking bag, he reached the parade of traffic on the körút. He was being followed. He had been followed all day, chased by shadows he never even knew to look for. But even that didn’t bother him now. There was one thing left for him to do and then he would be free. Free from the U.S. Army. Free from all the bullshit and hassle in his life. Free from Sullivan and the system that kept slavery alive and kicking. Something had to give. The bag had grown too heavy for one man to carry. He wove through the mess of bleating circus cars and over the trolley tracks. Car horns and angry hollering assaulted him from every direction. Brakes squealed. More car horns, and then even more still.

Lights dotted the Buda Hills at the other end of the bridge like a low-hanging constellation. The island was dark, free from the intrusion of civilization. That was where he was headed. His hands were filthy and bleeding from the broken glass in the trashcan. He smelled like garbage now, like someone’s refuse.

The word sounded strange in his head: refuse.

The winter air couldn’t dissuade him from his rising confusion and anger. It was so obvious now. They wiggled a bit of pussy in his face and he lost his shit. Fucking stupid. Magda was in on it the entire time.

No — that wasn’t right. He was getting paranoid.