Nine (14 page)

“It's an awful thing to say about your own child but . . . well, I think he's a fairy.”

Mr. Max dropped his head.

“Maybe not, boss,” Bolek said. “If he got a haircut . . .”

“Boluś, it's not the hair. You're smart, but sometimes not so. Did you see how he walks, moves? And to think I'll have to leave it all to him. And he'll piss it away on his man friend . . .”

Mr. Max sighed, had another drink. Then he took a second cell phone from the desk and gave it to Bolek.

“Here. Turn it on in two hours and take care of that asshole.”

 

Paweł was repeating Jacek's route of the day before. He counted the circuits from when he entered the underpass by the Forum. The crowd parted for him as you let a wacko, bum, or dopehead pass, but he didn't notice, because time was a tightening noose around his neck. The events of recent days converged, pressed out space and air, and spun. He counted from one to nine and added zero, but each digit could have been the beginning of the number. Backward was a little better, but there was no certainty. To breathe, he went up to street level by the Metropol.

Jacek's window was still dark. He wondered if he was there but hadn't turned the light on. Holding on to this hope for an hour now, he'd been up there three times. The last time he hammered with his fist, then evened the door with a kick. Somewhere in the building, a voice shouted: “Who's making that racket? I'll call the police!” Paweł ran up the stairs into darkness, nothing. He felt along the wall and wooden shelves, then wall again or maybe a door, because it sounded hollow. His hand touched warm pipes. He leaned his back against them, squatted, listened, but there were only the usual building sounds, slamming, the diluted tumult of life, the trembling of the city's asphalt skin. “The prick,” he whispered, and repeated it in his mind until the fear left. He touched the floor. Grains of dirt stuck to his hand. He pulled his knees up to his chin and
wrapped his arms around them. This was a good place to wait, nothing new would happen here, and above was only the cold black sky, where nothing needed to be done.

After a few minutes he went down the stairs and put his ear to the door. The noise of the street filled the apartment, circulated, brushed against the furniture, reached the door, returned to the windows, went back and forth without end. He searched his pockets but couldn't find a piece of paper. He stuck a used match in the door jamb to leave some kind of sign.

 

Now waiting at a bus stop pretending to be a regular person. Waiting for his 131 or 180 or for someone he knew. He lit a cigarette. The wind blew from Constitution Square and brought smells. He remembered that on the far side of the square were stalls with hot food, but he hesitated, mentally counted the money in his pocket.

A few hours before, the man in the tracksuit clapped him on the shoulder and said, “You know yourself how things are, right?” He'd started off in a random direction, but the man said, “I'm going downtown. I can give you a ride.” So Paweł followed him toward the station. He hung back a couple of steps and watched the swagger, the white flashes of the sneakers. At the cab line the man chose a dark-blue Audi 100. The driver lowered his window. They talked for a moment, then the cabdriver got out, took out his wallet, and gave the man his registration.

 

“We'll take Syreny Bridge,” the man said as they drove in the shadow of the viaduct. An electric train waited overhead. Inside the car it was quiet and smelled of Wunderbaum air freshener. The needle of the tacho rose and fell. Paweł noticed a pair of leather slippers under his seat. The man was whistling some
song, and when they turned into Zamojskiego, he hummed another. The gear shift had a leather cover; a silver keychain with a naked woman hung from the ignition key; a tin Saint Christopher dangled from the rearview mirror next to the Wunderbaum. No sound. To the left people were walking toward the bus station or coming back from the stadium. The rust-red tops of buses warmed themselves in the last sunshine. Something chirped in the glove compartment. The man stretched out his hand. Paweł reached in, felt cold metal, found the cell phone, and handed it over. The man said, “Not now,” and gave back the phone. They passed the tunnel and the port, the sky red between the bare trees. They turned left under the viaduct, drove along the embankment, then pulled into the parking lot in front of the stadium. The man looked around. The roofs of the cars gleaming in the slanted light from the river. People standing on the canopy. Some approached their car from behind. The man pushed a lever, and the lid of the trunk hid the new man. Paweł started to turn but heard, “Keep out of it.” The other man closed the trunk, then they headed to Wybrzeże Szczecińskie and the bridge. Without speaking. Paweł remembered the empty stadium twenty years ago. He and Jacek jumped over the barbed wire surrounding the grass and went to the middle of the playing field. Late evening. Over the top of the stands, a silvery moon, and the grass bright with dew. He couldn't recall what they talked about.

At Świętokrzyska the man said, “I'm going to Central Station.” “Fine,” said Paweł. They had a string of green lights and in four minutes were at the main lobby, pulling up behind a white Merc. The neon lights of the Holiday Inn shone to the left, and it was dusk. Paweł held out his hand and said, “Thanks a lot.”

The guy shook his hand with the same frozen smile. Paweł reached for the door but felt a strong grip.

“Don't thank, read,” said the man, and looked down. Paweł followed his eyes and saw that the meter, which had been dark, now showed 450. He tried to pull away but knew it was hopeless.

“Are you crazy? I thought . . .” Nothing more came to him.

“You thought wrong.”

Paweł tried to reach the door with his left hand, but the man twisted his wrist.

“That's no way to behave.”

“Let go,” said Paweł, because the man had his hand in both of his, twisting it down. Paweł slid off the seat and felt the gearshift in his stomach.

“Half a mill, or I rip your hand off.”

“Let go . . .”

The driver of the white Merc got out. Paweł tried to shout to him, but he came up to their car on the left.

“What's this? Some smart-ass?”

“One . . . Mundzio, stand on the other side and watch the door.”

The cabbie walked around and leaned his back on the window. He was big. Paweł rubbed his freed hand.

“So out with the money.”

“I don't have it.”

“Everybody has something.”

Paweł looked out, but black leather covered the window like night.

“I don't have it.”

“If you want, I can ask him to come join us.”

 

So now he was mentally counting his cash, and his hunger slowly left. Cigarettes are cheaper than food. French fries with ketchup, salad, fried fish, burgers, and kebabs go quickly but So-bieskis, a pack of twenty can last for hours. He thought about this to keep from thinking what had happened. He remembered the nauseating smell of vegetables as they left the apartment. He took a deep drag, and the nausea passed. His legs hurt. The cold getting through his jacket. A ground frost setting in. The window still dark. Someone bumped into him and said sorry. I'm standing here like a royal dick, he thought.

 

“With what?” asked Iron Man.

“Dogs.”

“You're shitting me, Bolek.”

“Honest, he started with dogs. He'd stand on Targowa near the Różyckiego bazaar selling puppies out of a cardboard box. In the sixties. He told me himself.”

“And he lived on that?”

“No, something else. But puppies was how he got started.”

“Well, I don't see why not,” mused Iron Man. “Puppies are nice.”

They were standing in front of an open wardrobe, Iron Man trying on different outfits. The shirts OK, the jackets a problem: they hung on him like cloaks, as if he were on the run.

“You can pull the pants up and tighten the belt,” said Bolek, closing one eye, then the other.

“The crotch is at my knees.”

“That's the fashion now.”

“Don't make an idiot of me, Boluś.”

“You have to look decent.”

“There's nothing older? I mean, from before you got fat.”

In the next room, Syl clicked the remote. Sheikh lay in his place and stared at the screen, waiting for a cartoon with a dog and a cat.

“I don't know. Maybe stored away.”

They went into the hall. Bolek brought a chair. It creaked when he climbed up on it. Plastic sacks and trash bags spilled from the storage space. He got down and started rummaging: bell bottoms, handbags, light-blue nylon jackets, well-worn cherry shoes with toe caps and crepe soles.

Iron Man regarded the mounds of garish color, the Dacron and tricotine, the frotté and bouclé, and an odd fabric that jackets were made of twenty years ago—light as paper, rubbery to the touch, and so flimsy you could wrap the whole garment around your hand. He tossed it aside and examined, from sacks, sleeveless Wrangler jackets, black clogs, striped hip-huggers with horizontal pockets just big enough for a condom or an old hundred folded in four, duvetyn pants with a cyclist motif, jeans washed to purple, T-shirts with decals, but didn't find what he wanted. Ankle-deep in the stuff, they remembered the discotheques in the Chemik club, where they would hang out in the bushes drinking and smoking, their cheap jeans stretched tight across their asses. When the cops came by, you ran for it across vegetable gardens, fences, backyards, and the pants would split from knee to crotch. Afterward they would go to Iron Man's mother so she could sew them back together on her prewar pedal-operated Singer, which she did without a word and not asking any questions, even though the two of them stank of cheap wine and Sport cigarettes, and sometimes in their pockets she'd find money. In the dark of the movie house the girls would shine like twenty-zloty coins and have on the latest Hungarian deodorants. The boys stood in a circle of their own
smells. They'd go out to dry the sweat from their bodies. That's how it was, the girls in their reptile blouses and bracelets in the strobe lighting. The boys desired them but knew they'd be able to see everything only by force or trickery, the way things are always taken into possession, also the girls would be used up soon and the boys would have to begin all over again, so as not to settle or come out a loser.

They found a pair of brown Radoskór sneakers with four jagged stripes and rotten insoles; an imitation bear hat; green leather knee-length boots; a suede vest with tassels; a pendant with a picture of Sweet on a cord, and the lads had straight bangs and velvet chokers around their necks; a sweat-stained wristband; a dozen bundled-up plastic socks. Bolek said, “Got it,” and took out a cornflower suit. He put it on a hanger next to his bomber jacket. Wide lapels, patch pockets, covered buttons, and a half belt in the back.

“My wedding suit,” he said, feeling the material. “It's not crumpled at all.”

“Because it's wrinkle-resistant. They don't make them like that anymore,” said Iron Man.

“I was a beanpole back then.”

Iron Man put on the jacket, unconvinced, and looked at himself in the mirror. The sleeves were a little long and the shoulders drooped, but it looked good.

“A little like a hick?” asked Iron Man.

“No. People wear all sorts of things today. It's in one piece and doesn't have any stains. Get a shave and clean your fingernails, and no one will know the suit is twenty years old.”

“I should have a wallet to go with this. It always looks nicer when you don't take money straight out of your pocket.”

“What are you planning to take out?” asked Bolek.

“I mean just in case. And a decent lighter. Not a disposable.”

“We'll find something.”

They went through two rooms, to the living room, and sat by the coffee table, which had an open bottle. Iron Man asked:

“Did he seriously start with those dogs?”

“He had to start somewhere.”

“I guess when you're starting, it doesn't matter with what.”

“You're not wrong, Iron Man, you're not wrong.”

A throbbing green light across the black sky, headed toward Okęcie. Bolek poured, and they clinked. The sound rang pure and high, and Iron Man thought, “Damn, this is crystal.”

 

The Hoochie-Coochie was empty and warm. A stream of smoke, rising vertically over the bar, dissipated in the dimness beneath the ceiling. The owner was nowhere to be seen. Beata and Jacek sat in a corner, she touching his cheek, brushing his hair aside. He looked twice her age.

“It's dry,” he said.

The bartender came from behind the counter, tall, skinny, unshaven, and didn't even look at them. Putting out his cigarette, as if it was by some miracle that he was still on his feet. He looked like Jacek, Jacek's brother.

“I'm sorry,” said Beata.

“It was a nice day. The forecast was good.”

“You're not hungry?”

“He was the hungry one.”

“I have money.”

“Where from?”

“I took it from my mother when I went up there.”

“A lot?”

“Everything.”

“That's not a lot.” He smiled and touched her hand.

“She'll kill me when I get home.” Smiling back.

They were calm. The evening wasn't over yet, they could touch each other, and no one would care. Not many came here. Those who did, did their business and left. Long hair, short hair, ordinary in jackets. They spoke briefly with the bartender, sat for a minute on the tall stools. If they ordered a beer, they didn't finish it. In their wake, the smell of cosmetics, dirt, insomnia. The place looked like it was open all night, though at some point they did close up.

“If we get bored, we can go to Wola,” he said.

“Why Wola?” she asked.