Part 25 (2/2)

Rosa bent down robotically and took the man by his boots as Mama grabbed the arms. They dragged him down the hall, leaving a trail of blood on the linoleum. Rosa looked down into the dead face and saw he'd been no more than a boy-maybe eighteen. Why was he dead? What was she doing here?

”In here.” Mama motioned to the bathroom door. Rosa kicked it open, and with great effort she and Mama lifted the man into the tub and dropped him.

Mama smacked her hands and said, ”Got to get rid of this body.”

Rosa wanted to scream and run, but she just said, ”No.”

”Go and get Papa. He's down in the bodega playing dominos. Tell him we need to turn up the furnace all the way. We have something to burn.”

Rosa didn't move and just stared at Mama.

”Rosa, go. Now! Avanza! Avanza! And come back. Don't think of going to the cops, because you touched the gun. Your finger-prints are all over that gun. You're one of us now. I hope And come back. Don't think of going to the cops, because you touched the gun. Your finger-prints are all over that gun. You're one of us now. I hope mi hijo mi hijo picked a good one.” picked a good one.”

Mama reached into a hall closet and smiled when she turned. ”What, you want to watch?” She had a small axe in her hand. She motioned with the hatchet for Rosa to get going. Rosa dully nodded, put on her coat, and opened the door. She moved out of the apartment and floated down the hallway. She opened the lobby door and stepped out into the cold night air and stood on the stoop staring out at the Bushwick street. A gypsy cab cruised by and the driver stared at Rosa. She turned away and saw a shadow move in the alley across the street.

Rosa let out a long sigh and walked down the block, feeling like her body and soul were dying. She would never get out of this neighborhood.

LADIES' MAN BY C CHRIS N NILES.

Brighton Beach She was lush like an old-time movie star in black patent-leather shoes, fishnet stockings, and a fur coat. Her hair had been blonded, rolled, sprayed, and teased so that it stiffly circled her face like a halo on a medieval Madonna. She had Angelina Jolie lips and her heavy-lidded eyes were shaded aqua and rimmed with kohl. Crimsondipped nails grasped fake Louis Vuitton. She didn't look anything like Ana, but that didn't stop me staring.

The rhythm of the train tempted her to doze. Her head dipped. She woke, glanced around, trying not to look anxious, yet tightening her grip on her bag. Falling asleep on the subway. Not a good idea. It was late. The car was filled with a typical a.s.sortment of booze-and drug-fueled crazies, myself included. I'd spent the previous few hours with a couple a friends of the family-Eric Ambler and Comrade Stolichnaya.

Brighton Beach, end of the line. She got out. I did too. I stumbled down the steep steps, my eyes blurry from the booze, but my ears sharply focused on the clip-clip clip-clip of her stilettos She walked west on Brighton Beach Avenue, long strides. It was cold, few people around. I stuffed my hands in my pockets, fingers searching for the Marlboro I knew was lurking somewhere. My head was fuzzy, the cold seemed to be making me drunker. I lit the cigarette and kept pace. of her stilettos She walked west on Brighton Beach Avenue, long strides. It was cold, few people around. I stuffed my hands in my pockets, fingers searching for the Marlboro I knew was lurking somewhere. My head was fuzzy, the cold seemed to be making me drunker. I lit the cigarette and kept pace.

I liked Brighton Beach, it reminded me of my old life. I liked the stores selling canned fish, the babushkas hawking homemade trinkets on the sidewalk, the signs in Russian, the shabby exuberance. After years of exile, the extravagance of Manhattan made me feel ill. Out near the sea, where the choices seemed simpler, I could think again.

She turned left onto a side street lined with nondescript brick apartment buildings. Clip-clip Clip-clip. My cigarette was ashes and the promise of cancer by the time we reached the board-walk. I tossed the b.u.t.t, dodged dogs.h.i.+t. It was spring, but a vindictive wind taunted my exposed skin. I turned up my collar and wondered what shape she was under that big fur coat, what her voice sounded like, what she whispered when having s.e.x.

We pa.s.sed the handball courts. For an instant my attention was diverted by an old guy in a t-s.h.i.+rt sprinting along the boardwalk. In as long as it took me to think, Don't these people ever feel the cold? Don't these people ever feel the cold? the woman had gone. I spun around, looking, listening. She was nowhere. the woman had gone. I spun around, looking, listening. She was nowhere.

Shrugging, I headed to Ruby's for a drink before my s.h.i.+ft began.

People don't tell you this about New York: The reason some never leave is because you can burn up on re-entry. It was almost that way with me. I had tried to make my fortune, or at least my name, as a foreign correspondent, and had failed. Eastern Europe worked for a while and then it didn't, so I headed to Southeast Asia for some professional relaxation. I could have stayed, I suppose, lolling on a beach in Thailand, but there were too many reminders there of the kind of person that I would become-a fat, f.e.c.kless ex-pat who couldn't have survived a day in any city of consequence. Eventually there was no choice but to make things hard for myself again. So I came back to New York.

I hit the tail end of the 1990s and found it was a very, very different city from the one I had left almost a decade ago. It was as if real journalism had died and n.o.body had given it a decent funeral. CEOs were now celebrities and all celebrities were G.o.ds. The scary thing was, n.o.body seemed to have noticed. In some sort of crazy bait and switch, all the vicious, crazy, thrilling, real live New Yorkers had been replaced by a bunch of plastic people. The women were a dis...o...b..bulating combination of perky and dull. The men talked about business school as the high point of their existence. All of them believed that every so-called obstacle in their trivial lives could be overcome if only they put in enough hours at the office and hired a personal trainer.

I did not fit. I missed real people. People who know that life's often unfair. That sometimes, through no fault of your own, things just don't work out. So I shunned Manhattan and my old life. I took a job copy-editing, overnights. The pay was c.r.a.p and the hours were worse. I didn't care.

”Why don't you just f.u.c.king go back, man?” Paul Schneider, my companion in h.e.l.l, asked as he a.s.signed me yet another story about Donald Trump's s.e.x life. ”So you hate it here, so leave.”

”Can't.”

”Yes, you can. You buy a ticket. You get on a plane. Have a c.r.a.ppy meal, drink too much wine, and wake up in Budapest or Bucharest or wherever the f.u.c.k you'd rather be. People do it all the time. I'd lend you the money if I had any.” Paul was expecting a baby, or at least his wife was, and he was working double s.h.i.+fts so they could afford to move out of their 400-square-foot apartment.

”I'd steal it if you had any. But I can't go back.”

The newsroom was quiet. We were both smoking. We'd stuffed a screwdriver in the smoke detectors and bribed Bart, the security guy. Smoking was the only thing that made this bulls.h.i.+t job even close to bearable.

”Why?”

I sighed, pretending to be annoyed at his persistence. ”After the Berlin Wall fell, organized crime became the new growth industry in Eastern Europe. I made some trouble. Wrote some stories that made a few gangsters decide I deserved a whole new face.”

”So what? Aren't journalists supposed to be fearless?”

”Very funny.”

”And what else?”

”Nothing else.” I reached for the cigarettes, Paul withdrew them.

”What else?” He held the packet up between two fingers just out of my reach, a practiced move. My lousy pay didn't even come close to covering all my vices. Paul was used to me b.u.mming off him.

”f.u.c.k you.”

”Ah, a woman.” Paul handed the packet to me after taking one for himself, desperate for a story, anything that would distract him from the numbing hours that stretched before us. ”Do tell.”

”Ana,” I sighed. ”Her name was Ana.”

”And she broke your heart.”

”If you want to put it like that.” I struck a match, it snapped in two. I struck another one and the same thing happened. My hands were shaking. Ana could do that to me still, after all these years. Paul took the box from me and deftly lit the match. I started talking to smother my embarra.s.sment. ”She decided one day that she didn't want to see me anymore I used to pick her up after work-she worked nights-and so I'd sit in this bar in Budapest and wait for her to finish and then walk her home.” I shook my head. ”And one night she'd rea.s.signed the job. That was it. No explanation, no nothing. I had no idea what I'd done wrong. Still don't. She wouldn't speak to me.”

”So no closure.”

”No.”

”b.u.mmer,” Paul said.

”Yeah.” Maybe all those yuppies who paid 150 bucks an hour for a shrink were onto something. I hadn't talked to anybody about Ana, I guess I'd been enjoying my own private h.e.l.l a little too much. But now I felt as if a small burden had lifted. ”All the time I was in Hungary it was as if I had an evil cloud hanging over me. Because before Ana, there was Mike McIlvaney.”

”He broke up with you too?” Paul stubbed his cigarette out on his shoe and flicked the b.u.t.t into the bag we used to remove evidence of our illegal habits from the office.

”In a manner of speaking.”

They called it the Highway of Death for a very good reason. A two-lane stretch of asphalt between Vienna and Budapest where bunches of flowers, crosses, and stuffed animals bore witness to its incapacity to deal with the enormous daily volume of traffic.

The problem was this: Food and wine were cheap in Budapest and the Viennese were fond of getting into their late-model German automobiles and making a bargain-shop-ping day of it. Racing the other way for a taste of the West were their less fortunate Eastern European cousins, shaking behind the wheels of their unreliable, two-stroke Trabbants. Most American lawnmowers have more power than the Trabbant, and there were no pa.s.sing lanes on the Highway of Death. The Austrian drivers, spoiled by superior technology and frustrated at having to sit behind an aerodynamically challenged global-warming machine, took frequent, stupid risks. Trabbie drivers, too, pushed their impotent cars past what they were capable of.

Mike had a Fiat. He, like me, was freelancing, building a name for himself. He had dark hair, a rangy build, and although his parents were American, he'd been raised in Brisbane and had an Australian accent. We'd become friends.

It was a quiet week when we made our decision. The Hungarians had just elected a democratic government and the transition had been fairly smooth. There were rumblings of trouble between Romanians and ethnic Hungarians in Transylvania, and between ethnic Albanians and Serbs in Pristina, but not enough for us to warrant a trip to either place just yet.

”Man cannot live by beer alone, mate,” Mike said one night, slightly drunk in a Pest bar. Food in Budapest was good but mostly limited to what the Hungarians could grow-peppers, cherries, tomatoes, meat, bread. ”I feel like avocados. Can't remember the last time I had an avocado. Let's go to Vienna.”

The next day we set off.

<script>